By: Jared Biti
In this article, I will show you how I build a one-shot from the ground up. I will include examples from a one-shot I crafted some time ago when I was running games once a month for a local D&D kids club. I hope this will be helpful for new DMs and GMs who are just getting started in the world of crafting stories and plots.
I will be using a one-shot I built originally for a Halloween-themed game I ran for the aforementioned kid’s club. I went on to run it two or three more times in varying forms, including leveling it up from a level 1 adventure to level 2 to plug it in as a placeholder in a large campaign I was running. It is my favorite successful example of a simple one-shot, and the story is straightforward but not too linear.
First, I will say that the general rules I follow for building a one-shot are as follows.
1) Be aware of how much time you have to run this.
The typical game session is 4 hours. Sometimes it can be less or more. Just make sure you know how much time you have to work.
2) To build on 1, figure 1 encounter, social, and combat, per hour. For 4 hours, that means no more than 4 encounters. Some will say you need 2 hours for a boss fight, but that depends on your party level and the number of minions you have in the boss fight.
3) Give yourself more time than you think you will need.
4) Do not be afraid to redirect the players back onto the storyline.
Sidebar here: I like to let my players muddle about however much they want in a normal campaign because it gives me time to work things in the background. However, when it comes to one-shots or session-restrictive short adventures, I try to keep them on track as much as possible because there simply is not enough time in the game for the muddling.
Here is an example of this and how you can apply it in the game. When I was running this Halloween-themed one-shot, one player in the kid’s club group asked if they could light the herbalist’s garden on fire… Kids, right!? In the moment, because I did not want to take things off track and I could tell it was just the one player being antsy and wanting to cause a disruption, I gave the garden “plot armor.” I said, “The plants don’t seem to be able to be lit on fire…” And we moved on to the rest of the social encounter.
Now, onto the one-shot. For this, I knew I only had three, really only two hours available with the kids, before the pizza arrived and I would lose their attention spans. So, I started my brainstorming process with a basic fetch quest idea. “Rescue the maidens.” Simple and straight to the point. Something that the longer they wait to do, the worse it could be. Then, I continued to ask myself questions to form the rest of the story and conflict.
Okay, so they need to rescue maidens. Hmm, why, and from what/whom? Well, we can figure that out later. So I started with the “What.” Since it is a Halloween one-shot, I settled on “walking pumpkins.” That sounds spooky enough but not truly frightening. I ended up describing them as “walking bundles of vines topped by a pumpkin-like head.”
So, where are the pumpkins coming from, and where are they taking the maidens? I started with “dark, spooky forest.” I later named it Grimdark Wood. Good and spooky. I, being a “why” person, wanted to know why the locals call it that, though.. So I came up with the descriptor “…a local haunted forest that seems to spook everyone with strange voices and moving limbs on the trees with no wind about…,” as relayed by the quest giver when giving them general information about the quest and where to start looking.
Ok, so we had the “What” and the “Where.” We also needed to circle back to our encounter limits. I stretched rule 2 from above a little and laid it out as:
1 encounter with x-number of pumpkins.
1 encounter with a “Great Pumpkin” (Boss stat-block version)
I decided I wanted more than just a “kill all the things” adventure.. and “Where are the maidens being held?” hanging in the air. I added a mausoleum under the “Great Pumpkin,” gave it some flavor text,
“After defeating the Great Pumpkin Crawler and its minions, the party notices that the giant pumpkin had grown around a mausoleum. They also notice flat grave markers scattered around the glade.”
And
“The engraving on the mausoleum is:
Here Lies Sir Howkin the Unbreakable. Born 945-Died 970”
From that, I decided to have an apparition float out of the mausoleum to interact with the PCs.
This made it interesting because I could have them fight a ghost, or they could talk to it… hmm. Let’s try to make it a social focus first. How do we do that? Make the ghost appear non-threatening but capable-looking. The writing calls it a “Sir Howkin,” so it was a knight or paladin. We can work with that. So I described it as:
“An Apparition floats through the door of the mausoleum. It appears to be wearing full plate armor with a long sword on his side and his helmet tucked under his left arm.”
Then he/it initiated the conversation:
“He greets them in their minds (similar to ‘message’).”
This gives me a way to make it relatable to the party or leave it open for someone else to fill in.
And then maybe we get a “Why” here.
“He demands they bring ‘HER’ to him.”
At this point, the players can keep talking with it, or they can attack. Either option can be reasonable here. If they choose to keep talking to him, he should inquire about the “year”; they will tell him 1199 by common reckoning.
This is just a number I came up with to throw in the opening of the one-shot. I did use that number to determine the above Born/Died on the mausoleum engraving, as I wanted Sir Howkin to be long dead.
I wanted Sir Howkin to be sad about this as he will realize how long it has been and that “her” is likely dead and buried elsewhere. His follow-up to this, though, gives them some depth of story to follow.
I will delve into that in my next article next month! Thank you all for reading, and I hope this and the concluding article will help you make compelling one-shots for your tables!
Game On!
About the Author
Jared “Martel” B has been GMing and playing in several TTRPG’s since late 2013. Enjoys the challenge of bringing his players worlds and stories straight from his mind in the moment that it happens. He is one of the Founders of RPGCounterpoint, happy husband to an active historian wife, and father to two puppers and a new toddler!
RPG Counterpoint 
Leave a comment