One Shot Campaigns Dungeons & Dragons

Dungeons and Dragons is (mostly) always a fun game to play. First off, some terms:

Dungeon Master (DM): The person who runs, creates, and narrates the game.

One Shot Campaign: A one time campaign run in a self-contained story.

NPCs: Non-Player Characters. Controlled by the DM.

PCs: Player Characters

Dungeon Masters have lots of prep put behind each session that they run for the players. Every now and then, when playing with those who have been playing the same characters for a long time, a one shot might be called for.

Personally, I’ve made about a dozen one shots or so, and run about 3-4 of them. Though it may seem like a daunting task, you can add as much or as little detail to the campaign as you want. Afterall you are the dungeon master of your own games.

The general outline I follow is a story hook, theme, NPC characters, final reveal, and climax.

Where you start your campaign, should represent the theme you are going for. Before you decide this, you should talk to your players about what kind of game you all want to play. Horror is fun for combat games. A mystery theme is great for role playing and a more social game.

After this has been decided, the plot hook is needed. All books have a plot hook, something to drag people in and earn their interest. It can be through a quest giver who hired the party, or a general need/idea that brought the party together.

For the sake of simplicity, I like to start with a horror genre for combat with a quest giver that requests the party to accomplish a seemingly simple task, such as clearing a mine or finding a flower that an herbalist needs for her new potion. How to incorporate horror is up to you, I tend to spread it by making the creatures seem incredibly strong and powerful, giving the parties a sense of low hope (all of my creatures have a weakness though). These two combined are the most important features of a One Shot.

Where you start in the campaign usually unravels and provides inspiration for the rest of it. Most of my games have overarching stories, so I like to spread out my information over the span of the game. The best way to do this is through NPCs that your players may meet.

A few questions to think about when quick building would be: Who are important people? If it is combat-oriented, what are the intentions of the attackers? Of course, all of this is up to you to make up, but it is always good to keep general ideas in the back of your mind or jotted down to pull out mid-game.

While I run social encounters, information should be given by a number of unimportant NPCs: the more important pieces/hints should be given by the few people that matter. For combat games, there are usually anywhere from 3-5 rooms with no particular importance, 3-5 with combat encounters/information givers, and 1-3 with powerful creatures or bombshells of info.

For example: An herbalist needs a special ingredient from the forest and the players need to travel into this forest hedge maze in order to find it. They traverse through several rooms with varying levels of information to find this flower and/or monsters to fight. There may be a guardian at the front guarding the hedge maze, or not. It's really up to you as the DM, and that's the fun part: building this "dungeon" for your players to figure out and adventure through.

Usually there is more information the deeper players are in the dungeon, the few powerful creatures or the bombshells of information are revealed. In the last room, is where you want to place your big climatic event.

The climax could be finding the culprit, fighting the boss of the dungeon, or there might not even be one. Whatever it is, the players should have influence on what happens.

Most of the games that I have run are generally based off of the boss, if the boss is a dragon, there is a decent chance that the reason that all of the kobolds in the cave were there simply as servants to the creature. If not based around combat, will the party ever meet the person they were searching for? Or is he simply the person who gave them the quest? No matter if there is no boss or climax, they should have at least completed their objective on their way to the end.

Regardless of who and what the main dilemma of the session is players should always be considering what is next. What will happen after the creature is slain or the person is put to justice? Yes, the large worm may be killed, but what about the person that released it?

Though most of these should be answered, you could always turn these oneshot games into long running campaigns too! More often than not, a player should have been able to gain all of the knowledge of the creatures and people by talking to all of the generally important npcs or by reading notes/going into the rooms of the dungeon.

With all of the info, you, the DM, should be able to have the characters set off on their next adventure feeling ready for whatever comes next. Usually the used PCs are never to be played again, but some DMs (me included) like to run one shots with the same PCs they ran them with last time, tying him into a large sidestory for the party to play every now and again. I personally also like to add rewards for the players, particularly if they will play the PCs again, similar to ending a quest in regular campaign; They usually result in money, magical items, and or friendship with npcs.

Regardless, a one shot should be brief, but have a general storyline that gives what the player needs to understand it. If the creature is simply fighting to survive, give it more flair. Making and modifying creatures always makes games more fun. For whatever reason you run the game, it should be engaging and keeps players thrilled and excited to run around the corner to be given a new hint or fight the next wave of minions.

Afterall, that is the goal of Dungeons and Dragons, isn’t it?