Happy Holidays! Roll for Intitative!

By: LabLazarus/ Joe Gaylord

The Holiday One Shot(TM) is something a lot of RPG groups start to think about this time of year. But, it can be hard to turn most games into something festive. Here are some starting places to consider if you want to run a holiday-themed game.

The Fundamentals

A quick thought before getting into inspirations for your one shot. Remember that a good concept won’t save a bad adventure, and a theme is only a theme, not a full one-shot. So, do your best to do your homework and prep before the session, find your beats, and build in a mix of balanced encounters. Don’t expect a Christmas miracle to fix everything, that only happens if you have a level 17 wizard in the party or if the cleric gets lucky on their percentile roll.

Pastiche for the Holidays

When running a holiday adventure, you can certainly choose to base it on one you and your table share. Otherwise, you’re probably better off creating a holiday of your own, rather than using one from the real world. However, in creating that holiday, there are many real-world holidays you can use as inspiration. Note that almost all of these holidays include a gathering with friends and family, feasts, and acts of charity. Those aren’t noted except where they’re notable: 

• Bodhi Day- A Buddhist holiday commemorating the enlightenment and life of The Buddha. Celebrants spend the day in special meditation and special meals of tea and cakes together.
• Boxing Day- A British holiday of obscure origin, focused on charity to those in need, gifts to servants or employees, and inversions of traditional power, with masters and servants trading places for the day.
• Carnival- A holiday in Catholic traditions preceding lenten fasts, filled with masquerade balls, feasts, parades, and city-wide parties. In rural areas, townsfolk sometimes dress as ogres or monsters and play pranks on others. 
• Chinese New Year- A celebration of the Lunar New Year including dances by celebrants dressed as lions and dragons, fireworks, and exchanging traditional gifts, including red envelopes with poetry. 
• Christmas- A Christian Holiday, which commemorates the birth of Jesus, connected with gift-giving, light displays and decorations, family parties, and a range of local traditions. 
• Diwali- The Hindu festival of light, celebrated by burning special lamps, feasts, festivals, and the ritual cleansing of homes. 
• Hanukkah- A seven-day Jewish festival celebrating the miraculous rededication of the temple, celebrated with the lighting of candles, eating fried food, and the game of dreidel. 
• Groundhog Day- An American celebration of the coming spring where a groundhog is taken from its burrow to predict the weather for the season.
• Kwanzaa- A six-day American holiday celebrating African heritage, focusing on preserving pan-African cultural traditions, families, and communities. 
• New Years- A secular holiday celebrated at the end of the year, typically with fireworks, parties, and traditional promises of self-improvement for the next year. In some places, it includes the election of a Lord of Misrule, a ritual leader of drunken revels. 
• Saturnalia- A Roman holiday including the rebirth of the sun (The Birth of the Unconquered Sun), it is associated with celebrations of the emperor, gambling, inversions of social norms, and the election of a King of the Holiday. 
• Solstice- A holiday in many traditions celebrating the return of the sun, often celebrated with religious observance at locations of spiritual power, and blessings to ensure a fertile year ahead.
• Thanksgiving- A North American holiday celebrating the end of the harvest and abundance, with feasting, family, and often parades. 

The setting for my home games has two main winter holidays. First Frost marks the start of winter with several days of feasting, candlelit processions by children, and masquerade balls. Meltwater marks the first signs of spring, when the fey walk through the winter forests, celebrated with outdoor festivals and rituals shared with the fey to bring a fruitful spring. 

There are five major genres of holiday one-shots you might want to consider for your game. I’ve broken them down by genre to help organize the ideas, but you can absolutely blend between the genres as you want:

The Classic Movie Redux

There are so many films and stories that take place around the holidays, especially Christmas. You can’t go wrong by taking Die Hard (yes, it’s a Christmas movie), The Grinch, or A Christmas Carol and riffing on the plot. You can even take the exact story and file off the serial numbers (changing details to obscure your inspiration), and you don’t even need to file hard, many groups get a kick out of the “OMG, it’s Die Hard, we’re playing Die Hard” moment.

My version: Merry First Frost, Tucker Prossh mixes The Grinch and Home Alone, where kobolds, led by a green dragonborn artificer have robbed gifts from the town and have camped in a cave in the mountains and set up a Tucker’s Kobolds dungeon full of traps.

The Holiday Festival

In a gentler take on the one-shot, a fair or carnival can let players break the tension and blow off steam, especially in the midst of an intense campaign. You can build games, skill challenges, and opportunities for RP into a fun cozy package. It doesn’t have to be zero combat, either, aggressive animals, a fighting competition, or interlopers can let the party roll initiative without breaking the mood. You might even explore the relationship mechanics from Strixhaven or other systems to bring some holiday romance to the table.

My version: The Great Meltwater Festival brings the party to Conchobar Lake for a week-long party of snowball fights, hot drinks, holiday decorations, and helping locals find love.

The True Meaning of First Frost

For tables that love worldbuilding, the opportunity to explore and engage with holiday lore can be a lot of fun. Options to incorporate deep lore into a one-shot might include exploring a temple related to an ancient holiday, uncovering the origins of a holiday to understand a magical effect or current event, or helping someone wanting to understand or learn about a celebration.

My version: During the events of Meltwater Day the fey spirits that will bring the spring are missing, and the party needs to unravel the rituals the nearby druid circle used to bind them and ensure eternal winter. 

Trolls and Gremlins

Winter holidays take place at the darkest time of the year, and many traditions include ghosts, goblins, or other creatures that lurk in the winter nights. Parties might need to fight them, rescue innocents, or protect others from these beings.

My version: The Hogmanat is a fey spirit of New Year’s revelry that lives in fires creating an aura of drunkenness. An inn the party is staying in has one within it, intent on causing chaos among the guests, and the party needs to stop it.

Saving the Holiday

There are some events that will disrupt a holiday celebration, ranging from the lack of some key element needed for a celebration, some threat intent on disrupting the festivities, or a magical force or curse that would bring an end to the tradition. The party needs to save the day. 

My version: In “The Lost Ones at Last Hearth” a group of hags have kidnapped children as part of an ancient First Frost ritual. They hope to cause a war between local orcs and the people of Last Hearth. The party needs to rescue the kids, stop the war, and save First Frost.

However you decide to do it, remember that the point is to enjoy this event. This is your chance to celebrate a special time of the year, playing a game you love, together with friends. And that’s what the holidays are all about. 

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About the Author
Joseph Gaylord has been playing TTRPGs for 25 years, with almost 50 titles to his name on DMsGuild as an author, coauthor or contributor, including The Great Meltwater Festival, and 10 New Year’s Nemeses. He is on most social media as LabLazarus.