Guest Post Monday!

So Mutebanshee and I decided it would be fun to trade blogs and write a guest post for each other. I asked her to write a guest post about one-shots, I'm really happy that I did because she has lots of great insight and you should totally read her blog. Now I'm gonna kick back and hang on an imaginary beach because that's what you do when someone else does the heavy lifting. 

Skullboy reached out to me a couple days ago. "Mute," he said, "I'm posting a ton of stuff about one shots, and you are so smart, I really need you to tell me how to run a good single session game!"

I looked at him through the dark void of internet wires, shook my head, and replied, "No, Skullboy, you already have the session within you."

I might have left it at that, but I really like rambling on about my favorite hobby, so even though I already fixed the problem in a single, concise sentence, I decided to write several more paragraphs about the subject. Sam is already talking about a lot of system things that work well in one shots, and I'm going to leave that stuff to him. Instead I'm going to focus more on my favorite topic... improvising as a game master during a one shot adventure. 

So, stretch out your eyes and open your brains, and join me on this exploration of story telling during a single session adventure.

What is a one shot?

Okay, we all know that a one shot is a single session adventure. That's not really what I mean by the question. Perhaps the better question would be, "What is this one shot?" Because there are many reasons to run a one shot adventure. You might be trying to show off a new system at a convention where you have hours and hours to play. You might be doing a demo night at a local game store, and have only two hours to fill. You might be fascinated by a new system that doesn't fit into your current line up of games, but you will end up playing it, even if it costs you your soul (Numenera, I'm looking at you. Somehow, someday). You might just be hanging out with friends and decide to sit down for some new adventures.

I ask this question first, because the purpose of the game very much determines the tone, style, and type of game you want to play. If you are working with new people that have zero table top experience, and have only two hours to sit down and play, you want to run a much simpler game than you might want to at a convention where experience gamers are looking for new experiences. Answering this question should help getting the shape of your game in mind.

The elevator pitch

Now that you know what type of game you are running, it's time to start thinking about the setting, basic plot, and rpg system that you will run. This is the elevator pitch, and will act as your north star while making decisions in game. It's important to keep this simple, and I really like using random tables for this. A great example of a random adventure idea generator is used in Lasers and Feelings, and can come up with pitches like: "Alien Brainworms bond with an ancient space ruin to fix everything."

When you are pitching your game to potential players, I recommend including the system. So my pitch would become "A Lasers and Feelings game where alien brain worms bond with an ancient space ruin to fix everything." 

Game Prep

The amount of preparation you need to put into a one shot is going to vary widely, determined by both the purpose of the game, and the system that you are running. In Lasers and Feelings, I would do maybe five minutes of preparation, and come up with a list that looks a bit like this: 

• The Alien Brain worms are the remnant of a very powerful alien empire that once ruled the entire galaxy. 
• The ancient space ruin is the lost temple, the only place that the brain worms could reproduce. At the heart of the temple is a spawning pool where water mixes with an incredibly rare element: Element Delta.
• If the Alien Brain worms get to the center of the temple and manage to reproduce, they will once again attempt to conquer the galaxy.
• Possible Moral Question: Do the players destroy the temple and billions of years of culture, or do they find a better (but harder) way to stop the brain worms?

That's it. If I was running a grittier system like Dungeons and Dragons, I would prepare three to six encounters that I thought were likely to happen. I'd come up with something interesting to put at the center of the temple (maybe an encounter waste deep in brackish water fighting some sort of mother worm, while new born birth worms try to crawl into the character's ears), and I'd come up with a couple other encounters as well. While designing the encounters, I would always look back to the elevator pitch to make sure the encounters fit the theme and mood I was going for.

It's not your story

This is the most important rule for any adventure, but doubly so for a one shot. It's so important, that it probably should have gone up higher in the post. But if you have read this far, and only take away one thing from this guest post, it's that the adventure you are going to run is not your story.

Your job as a game master is to facilitate that opportunity for your players to tell the story that they want to tell. And that may not be the story you thought you were going to run. The last time I ran Lasers and Feelings I had my elevator pitch all set up. Lasers and Feelings is never a serious system, but I guessed there was going to be some opportunity for some serious, poignant moments. I had a couple moral dilemmas that I thought were interesting and would add some flavor to the game.

But then my players sat down to make characters, and they all decided that they were space adventurers looking for the most attractive aliens. They were out to coitus where no one had ever coitused before. At first I started having a mini panic. It was one of those, "Oh God, what is happening?" moments. But then I took a deep breath and remembered that I had a pitch.

The basic pitch of the game I ran didn't change. The threat was still the same, even the consequences if the threat wasn't stopped were still the same. But you bet that the captain of a Fleet Ship was a sexy penguin captain. During this game, my players decided to team up with the bad guys, decided three quarters of the way through that the bad guys were wrong after all, and then used a time traveling device that could have destroyed the universe to travel back in time... all to warn their captain not to sleep with an alien ooze that would leave him incapacitated for months and months. The last line of the game was something like, "you step out of the time vortex just as the ooze forms a massive penetrating shape. It raises the shape to plunge into the captain's back door, when you yell, "no, captain! That alien has an ooze transmitted disease!" You just saved your captain, the best coituser of you all."

It wasn't at all the story I thought I would be telling. Even though my pitch never changed, and the threat I had prepared never changed, the entire theme and mood did. And you know what? It was one of the most exciting games I've ever played.

Obviously if you are playing with people that don't want things to get graphic, you can tell the players at the table, "hey, we're going to keep everything pg in this game." If you want, you can tell people what sort of mood you are trying to achieve, or the concepts that you want to explore. But once you start in with the introduction to the game, it isn't your game any more. It belongs to the players, and you are there to help them make the most of it they possibly can.

This point is so incredibly important in a one shot, because it seems so counter intuitive. I know tons of Dungeon Masters that think a one shot needs to be more contained than a campaign. They want to know what every scene is going to be, and have a map of the adventure that they can rely on. And you know what? That's one style of gaming. But it isn't my style, it isn't Improvisational gaming. 

If you are going to try and map everything out, I offer this, every good GM needs to be open to player input and suggestions. Remember that players might come up with ways to solve a problem you didn't expect, and remember to be open to that idea. Every GM runs into situations where they need to improv at some point, no matter how prepared they are.

So, to sum things up, remember: Why are you running the game? What is your elevator pitch? How much prep do you need? And remember that in the end, it's not your story.

I could probably ramble on for another five pages, but enough is enough. Stop reading, and go play a single session game!

The Art of the One Shot

The one shot game is a beautiful thing. When properly executed it can effectively introduce people to the hobby without asking for a time commitment from them and simultaneously scratch the itch of weekly players who want to shake things up. I like that cocktail and I'm going to try and build a system with it in mind.

So here are some loosely structured ideas for what I think a system like this would need if I wanted to use it with all of my favorite old school style modules. If this game exists already, please let me know so I can move on my life and just play that.

Character Creation
This is probably the biggest deal for a system that needs to be able to run fast, and at a moments notice. I've run games where I just go ahead and make a bunch of characters that people can inject their own flavor into but sometimes I don't have the time/want people to come up with things on their own. Plenty of old school systems have quick/randomly generate-able characters but most of them also have super weak first level characters and depend on multiple sessions to get real weird and acquire all the good for plot wild magic items.

So what I'm thinking is that character creation should not only be quick and fairly easy for newbies to jump in on, but should also be a little meatier in the cool character stuff department. I want to generate characters that have a little more experience under their belt without the headache of generating higher level characters off the bat. In order to do this I'm thinking the "class" system will be focused more on the kind of adventuring the character was doing up until now. So instead of picking "fighter" the player could roll up stats and then pick a couple of things from a list like this:

-Cool Fighting Style
-Interesting Magic Item
-Specialized Skill
-Helpful Companion
-Magic

And then maybe you end up with characters like this.

Wealth & Treasure
A one shot game doesn't give us a lot of time to acquire great deals of wealth and then figure out what to spend it on. Instead it gives us an idea of what the characters were up before the adventure started. You know, the first few paragraphs of every Fafhrd & The Gray Mouser story that gives you an idea of whether or not their rich. I'm thinking it gives you a shorthand idea of what your characters have access to, if they have patrons or if they're sort of dirt poor in a gutter. I figure the more things like this that get built into the characters the less work you do as the DM.

Experience & Leveling
We've already established that there isn't really time for a systems that rely on traditional wealth/treasure acquisition curves so Leveling XP have to either be scrapped or changed dramatically. I think there could be a system for opening a character up more as they progress through the plot, without having to consult a chart to level up. Maybe each of those special powers has like a little special power inside of it that comes into play in the 3rd act. Also I'm going to start using acts to describe the flow of the adventures for this thing because it's fairly movie like already and I'm going to pretentiously lean into it.

Death & Dismemberment & Dying
I want to avoid super low survivability, but I do want characters to be affected by the environment and conflict, so I'm thinking that dismemberment, curses, hexes and things like vampirism will definitely have prominent play here. I also want something that keeps a players attention if they DO die early on. Like, maybe they start controlling an aspect of the environment/plot/NPC or whatever.

This is a sketch. I'll break each of these down into more fleshed out posts in the coming weeks.

Free Form Magic System

So a while back I wrote up a system for magic that didn't use a predetermined spellbook, but was instead specifically designed for improvisation and creative problem solving. I'm revisiting it now because I think it would be specifically useful for one-shot games and I'm thinking about trying to build a system around that idea.

A lot of the joy I get in play is seeing people figure out a creative solution to an open ended puzzle and I wanted to make a system that allowed for that kind of game play without having to read the description of a lot of spells.

I also want avoid one of my least favorite things- seeing someones face light up at the description of a spell and then watching it fall when they find out that the spell doesn't do what they thought it did.

The system itself emphasizes things like casting time, avoiding interruption while casting and spell components that definitely read as "fairy tale". Things like objects of sentimental value make for great spell components and tend to add some serious fuckin' whimsy to your table.

This is obviously a work in progress, but I think it could be really fun with the right type of people (fun people).

Spells - Instead of a list of specific spells. Spells are broken into families and after that, you get to make up your own awesome spells (with some give and take with the DM of course). I’m thinking you start with the ability to cast from 1 or 2 of the schools, and learn more along the way.

1. Evocation - Channeling magic to cause harm or damage.
2. Abjuration - Channeling magic as a shield
3. Enchantment - Imbuing an object with magic
4. Transmutation - Changing something into something else
5. Conjuration - Creating something from thin air
6. Illusion - Creating something that isn’t real
7. Divination - Magically sensing things, that may or may not have happened already.

Casting a Spell - To cast a spell a Magic User states the intention of their spell, the DM gives it a challenge rating based on that intent and the caster states how many rounds they will take to cast the spell, and which Spell Components they will use. Each component that you use to cast a spell adds to your dice pool (d6′s)

To successfully cast a spell the total of all the dice must match the challenge level of the spell (determined by the DM) The challenge level also corresponds to the damage, size, duration or overall quality of a spell, measured loosely and colloquially for the benefit of all involved.

Cantrip - A spell with no measurable benefit. These spells are used mainly for looking cool or showing off. No rolls are necessary.

Apprentice Spell - DC 6. d4+mods. Smaller than a breadbox. 1/5 senses. Less than an hour. Less than a hundred feet.

Journeyman Spell - DC 9. d6+mods. Smaller than a Golden Retriever. 2/5 Senses. A few hours. A few hundred feet.

Adept Spell - DC 12. 2d6+mods. Smaller than a refrigerator. 3/5 Senses. A day. A Mile.

Master Spell - DC 15. 3d6+mods. Smaller than an elephant. 4/5 Senses. A week. 6 Miles.

Failure: Spells are fickle and dangerous. Failing to cast a spell correctly, or failing to finish the spell casting lead to unfortunate consequences.

If a spell is completed but fails the check it is unsuccessful (duh). After you unsuccessfully cast a spell you roll to see if something bad happens. Roll a d6, on a 1 or 2 something bad happens (DMs choice).

If a spell is interrupted, a d6 is rolled and on a 1 or 2 and the spell deals damage to the caster equivalent to the spells strength.

Spell Components: Spells require at least one of the following to succeed. Using more than one of the components increases the chance the spell will succeed.

Verbal - Words or phrases used to create magical effect. 1d6 per round spent chanting. Any interruption in the chanting causes the spell to fail.

Somatic - Gestures or motions that create magical effect. 1d6 per round spent gesturing. Any interruption to gesturing causes the spell to fail.

Material - Reagents used to amplify the strength of a spell. Materials are rated by how many d6 they can add to spell casting. Materials can range from things like herbs or bones to objects of sentimental value. Material components must be used in conjunction with Verbal or Somatic components to achieve any results. 

There's A Dragon at the End of This Post

Lots of ideas this week so I'm going to try and sort them out.

-Mute wrote a good piece about who gets to hear what info around the table, which is something I've often weighed the options on.

-You can now get a really nice set of pixel hex tiles for Hex Kit. This is literally everything I've ever wanted.  doesn't that just make you want to throw it all away and upload your consciousness into an SNES?

I'm still trucking away at my 5e game and there should be a play report from my 3rd session soon (I know you're on the edge of your seat). I'm getting increasingly frustrated with 5e in regard to information design and unnecessary complexity. I'm thinking of taking another crack at system design, because it's 2018 and what would we need if not another fucking TTRPG system. Don't worry I have no plans to kickstart it or anything like that. If it ever happens I'll just release it for fun, since I'm making it for my own sick machinations.

With that in mind I'm going to start collecting some of the old posts from my tumblr that might be relevant to this and start posting them here. I've been meaning to move them over anyway.

Time to get back to work. Here's the latest from a super secret project.

The Giants

Few predate the giants, for they are older than than the sun, and know how to exist in any form free of warming fire or prisons of flesh. They are form and they are memory and they're knowledge of us is terrifying in its unerring accuracy.

-Some lunatic at the end of the bar 

The giants might be gods. But if they are then they don't exhibit the cloying and parental tendencies that many a narcissistic deity unloads on their worshippers like so much Thanksgiving family drama- it's like we get that you're older than all things, stop making it our problem. They have acquired many worshippers over the years, all whom they have ignored. In the eyes of a giant, the act of subjugation is unpleasant.

Why would you kneel when you could walk away? Why would you walk away when you could sit?

It's these kind of sayings that bring people to their knees in the first place, confounded by the size of the creatures and the seemingly profound natures of the aphorisms they are unable to help themselves and want to follow these monolithic beings to the ends of the earth.

Tianhua Xu

The truth of it is, giants are so old and have seen so many things, that all they can do is spout pithy universal truths. They can also usually tell you where things are, how long they have been there, or why they aren't there anymore.

Some believe that giants come from the mountains because they come and go from heaven as they please. Others believe that they simply have no home and wander the world in search of someone who isn't impressed by them.

Session 2: Season of the Witch

The party stands in the bright burning shadow of a scorched vegetable golem and spies something glittering in the ashes. They approach and see that it's a golden talisman. After some discussing they take it (avoiding contact with the skin) and decide to head back to the farm. They see Granny on the porch again all mostly a plant and decide to try putting the talisman on her. This goes badly and her eyes pop open and she starts staggering towards them all drag me to hell style. They manage to get the necklace off of her before it turns into anything particularly dangerous and decide to load up a cart with all the food they can find that was more than a week old.

On the way back they encounter the dead bodies of the knight and one of the people he was fighting and loot the corpses, finding a bunch of gold on the knight and an old map and an extra pair of socks on the other guy (thank you Vornheim loot the body table). Ovaria decides to take the already mutilated corpses of the dead and arrange them like the worst tableau vivant you could imagine. Then she sketched it so she could show it to her buddies underground later. It's like a dark elf book club or something.

Upon returning to town they delivered the food to Connie, who had mixed emotions upon hearing (most of) their story. She would need a new farm to supply the inn, but was happy the party came back with something. They all hit the tavern and eat dinner/grab some drinks and unwind. The bar begins to fill up and the party hears a few rumors about things like the underground sales of Gryphon eggs, the recent imperial troop occupation of the town and that it's open mic night. The bard performing is doing some beatbox looping with his wand and free styling over it. Clubion decides that he doesn't understand these hip new bards and decides to call it a night and grows himself a little grove out behind the inn to sleep in.

With the night winding down, the others decide to go to sleep and head up to their rooms. Ovaria gets a knock on her door from Connie, who totally wants a piece, but Ovaria shoots her down and the party proceeds to slip into dreamland.

I'm a chump DM that loves to use dreams for things. Especially talking to your god and stuff like that so I used this as an excuse to level them all up.

Fern dreams about new potion recipes!

Kenje dreams in puzzles and learns how to better solve them and pick locks and stuff.

Clubion has cocooned himself like a weird moth, and dreams of all the animals he can turn into now.

Ovaria dreams she was partying with Lilith, who gave her some new spells and then they made out a bunch.

Ham Sung-Cho

It was around that time that Ovaria awoke to the sound of someone rummaging through her stuff. It was a witchy looking woman, frantically tearing apart the contents of her dresser in search of the necklace.

Ovaria jumps out of bed and pounces on her, pinning her to the ground. The Witch attempts to spray a bunch of poison out of her mouth at Ovaria, but misses.

The commotion awakens the others and they barge in the room to Ovaria and the witch cursing each other out and tussling on the floor.

The witch breaks free and summons a bunch of daggers to fly around the room at them and they all spend some time trying to dodge a bunch of knives. It's around now that Clubion awakes in the middle of a dream about turning into a horse and canters his weird, half horse self up the stairs into the room to further add to the confusing melee of daggers and bodies.
Fern takes matters into his own hands and hurls a potion of charm person at the witch like a grenade. She gets doused with it and instantly becomes docile and friendly and asks the party nicely if she can have the necklace back (it was hers and she dropped it while drunkenly dueling another witch somewhere in the skies above the fields of amber). She says that if she doesn't get it back, her patron, The Manticore of the Holy Mountain will be super pissed at her. Ovaria gets it, patrons are weird in like a dating your boss kind of way. She offers to tell the party a BIG secret if they let her have the talisman back and they agree on the condition that she also breaks the weird plant curse on (most) them. She does, and then relates to them this tale.

You know how like the world is all boned up by wizards? How they control all the trade and puppeteer all the rulers and generally treat the land as their personal chessboard? Well I used to date one of them. He goes by the name The Saintly Skull (ugh wizards are so lame what was I thinking) and the secret is that he's been dead for years. His tower has been running on autopilot, keeping all the charms and spells he's worked on the land going. Without him alive to guard it, the tower is not only approachable, but might even be possible to deactivate. It's far from safe, and The Gaptooth Mountains are a challenge to traverse in their own right, but if someone were to make it there and break his seals or charms or whatever, all of the rotten shit he's worked over the last couple hundred years could come crashing down and usher in a new era of freedom from all these gross wizards. 

I know, I know, why haven't I gone and done anything about it? Well truth be told I could give a shit about all of that. I'm not risking my ass for anybody but me, and if I get this necklace back I'll be made in the shade.

The party gives her the necklace and breaks the spell. She tells them all to get bent and flies off. They decide that they're exactly the kind of rag tag group of heroes that could pull off a crazy stunt like this and decide that they'll set off in a few days.

Session 1: Hangovers & Hard Times

Quick you better stop reading if you don't like actual play recaps.

Prologue

No one is sure how it started. Everyone wishes it would end. The world is in shambles. The countryside is lousy with monsters, the cities are rife with corruption. The wizards pull all the strings. They control every port and every army, warping them to meet their strange and incalculable needs. The play at war like chess, each piece as valuable or disposable as the game dictates. It is tiresome and it is costly to all involved.

Never the less people attempt to live their lives in this madness, withstanding the corruption and oppression. The people have taken their protection and well being into their own hands. Companies of brave (or possibly stupid) able-bodied youth do their best to stave off the darkness. You are a part of one such company, located in a small town a few days ride from the city. The area is dangerous and it's your job to make it safe- or everyone dies, in which case they probably get brought back as some sort of terrible skeleton foot soldier by a wizard looking for cheap soldiers that don't need to eat.
So try not to fuck up.

Session 1: Hangovers & Hard Times

The story begins with a bunch of sad and hungover adventurers who had met the night before and partied far too hard at The Lonely Goat, a tavern owned by a young woman named Connie Hatchets.

Say hi Connie. Art by Guillaume Singelin

They all stare at Connie as she relates to them the bad news, the food order didn't come so there's nothing to eat for breakfast. She tells them that if they go to the farm nearby to check it out and make sure that the delivery wasn't waylaid by bandits or anything she'll let them off the hook about the astronomical bar tab they racked up the night before. So in order to keep from spending the day hungover and washing dishes-

Kenje Sandersong - Dwarf Rogue
Ovaria Blüdcunt - Dark Elf Warlock
Clubion Stieve - Tiefling Druid
and Fern - Human Alchemist

Set out on the road to see what's amiss at the farm. They decide to take the main road to save time and notice a fight happening between a Knight of the Realm and three scrappy looking characters, but decide to keep their heads down and move along, too hungover and hungry to think about anyone else's problems. They see no signs of a cart the whole way,

Oh no.

They arrive at the farm and find it strangely quiet. They make their way into the barnyard and find the cart, completely unladen. They open the barn door to find some strange creatures feasting on the remains of a dead pig. The creatures hear them and charge. When they finally get into the sunlight they are revealed to be five child sized, mutant turnips with terrible circular mouths and rows of sharp teeth.

They fling themselves onto the party, who defend themselves admirably, I'll save you most of the details of combat but we did learn that Ovaria's breasts were literal spiders*, not just tattooed to look like spiders like we had all assumed when she said "I've got spider tits" so we decided that in the Underdark, it's fashionable to use real, lets say schnauzer sized spiders as a form of breast augmentation and that just sort of chill on your chest. We figured out Victoria's Secret and it's very unsettling.

After the fight Kenje, Ovaria and Fern succumb to their hunger and eat some of the dead mutant turnips. They all agree that it's pretty fucked up but they taste delicious and their too hungover to care.

After taking a short rest and feasting on their vanquished foes, they set off towards the farmhouse to see if anyone living their is still, like, living. They find an old woman on the porch, partially transformed into a rutabaga. Clubion uses speak to plants to communicate with her and finds out that something strange fell from the sky about a week ago and now all the vegetables have come to life and are building something out in the north field and that anyone who at the vegetables in the last week has been mutated into one. This of course worries the party because they just had like a crazy smorgasbord with a bunch of dead mutant vegetables. They roll saves to see if their effected by it and both Ovaria and Fern realize that their hair and in Fern's case, his beard have become green and leafy.

The party decides to check out the north field and sees that the vegetables are all assembling some kind of crazy golem out of their own sacrificed bodies, and the party agrees that they need to burn it all down. They make their way back to the farm to get some barrels of accelerant and run into a couple of mutant onions riding goats flanking what can only be described as "Like Dolf Lundgren but it's a carrot"

This fight was a tough one, mostly because of how 5e handles weapon types and damage resistances. But thank god Kenje had an axe so they came out on top. They went back to the farmhouse, grabbed some barrels of oil out of the root cellar and managed to sneak back out to the golem, douse it in oil and set it on fire. It burned up real good and we called it quits for the night.

*Kavi, who plays Ovaria, has never played D&D before and may I say, is FUCKING NAILING IT.