Whether you’re taking a break from your current campaign or want to introduce 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dungeons & Dragons to a group of friends, one-shot adventures give Dungeon Masters the flexibility to tell a more personal story. From the player’s point of view, they can play D&D without the strಞess of making the “perfect character” or following through with deep plot threads.
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Writing a one-shot adventure is far less taxing than writing a full campaign guide, but a few traits are often overlooked when doing so. However, don’t worry if the story isn’t💯 set on a massive scale. One-shots are meant to💙 serve as a breath of fresh air or even a refresher course to Dungeons & Dragons and aren’t meant to be taken too seriously.
How To Write The Plot For A One-Shot
When you start writing the outline for your one-shot, one of the key things you should keep in mind is the length of your adventure. One-shots tend to last around three to four hours maximum, which may not ꩵgive you a lot of room for extra details (depending on how attentive your players are꧂).
Keeping time into account, list some plot points and moments you want to inc💮orporate into your adventure. Once you have that, you can start to form a loose outline of what your one-shot will be like.
Although it is not required, adding𒉰 estimated times to each part of the session could allow you to run the one-shot smoothl🐲y.
Example One-Shot Outline:
- The party arrives in a town, does character introductions, and speaks with a few NPCs (Thirty minutes).
- The party learns that Vampires are attacking people at night, so they start to make preparations and get more information (Thiry minutes).
- Night comes and the first wave of Vampires attack. The party fights back and learns that their leader is in an abandoned mansion (An hour).
- The party treks through the woods, dodging patrolling Vampires, and finds the mansion (Thirty to forty-five minutes).
- The party has a final boss fight with the Vampire Leader, killing him, saving the village, and collecting a reward w/ a possible teaser for a sequel adventure (An hour).
In the above example, the good themes of the one-shot are Vampires, Small Town, Combat-Intensive, and Open-Ended. Of course, these short adventures can vary in style and size, from exploring an abandoned dungeon to completing a bank heist and everything in between.
While forming an ou🅷tline is not a highly detailed guide to your one-shot, it is a great way to have mental checkpoints of what the party is striving for while gauging how long it will take.
Combat is what generally takes the longest amount of time in Dungeons & Dragons, so it is safe to slightly overestimate howౠ long it will take, esp🌜ecially when playing with new players.
How To Run A One-Shot
As the Dungeon Master, your job is to make sure everyone (including yourself) has a good time playing Dungeons & Dragons. While maintaining the rules and making sure everyone is playing fairly is important, the overall goal is to have fun.
While it may be tempting to treat them as a complete campaign adventure with deep lore and weaving plot threads, one-shots are meant to be a “quick fix” for those who want to play D&D. Therefore, when running a one-shot, you may be better off letting your players explore how they see fit.
While it may be tempting to memorize every single rule and possibility that could happen, your session will go by much better if you only recall the common rules and actions that occur at a ta꧂ble while saving the r𝓰est to either spend a minute researching or improvising!
For preppi💧ng a Dungeons & Dragons session, rules and information you⛦ should have include:
- The DCs for important checks the party may need to complete later (Or have the Ability Check DC Table on standby).
- General NPC names in case they ask (they always do).
- Statistics of the monsters the party may be facing.
- Descriptions of important rooms or places.
- Pricing information for taverns, general store items, marketplace, etc.
On a technical level, Dungeon Masters only need to have their dice and guidebook to run a one-shot. Other tools that make running adventurꦰes easier are a whiteboard to write quic🐷k notes on (monster HP, random NPC names, etc.), spare tokens (if you’re playing in person), and something to play music to help set the scene.
If you are running a session th𝓡rough an online application (i.e. DnD Beyond or Roll20🌼), we advise you spend an hour or so beforehand getting familiar with the different tools and menu options in the game HUD. This will prevent the awkward situation of repeatedly pausing the session to figure out a mechanic or to fix an issue.
At its core, Dungeons & Dragons started as a “theater of the mind” style game and can be easily played throug▨h a multi-way phone conversation and improvisation.
The key takeaway🅷s to running a one-shot are these:
- Have fun!
- Be familiar with the platform used to play the session. For in-person: you have enough dice, a whiteboard to play on, etc. For online: are you familiar with your chosen gaming application?
- Have at least a general layout of what your adventure will look like beforehand.
- Brush up on commonly asked questions and rules that are commonly used in play.
- Again, have fun!
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