gnunn
A bunch of my regular players are taking off in a couple weeks to go to a wedding in Vegas. In order to get my gaming fix for the week and indulge the fancies of some other friends who have mentioned an interest in gaming together, I am kicking around the idea of putting together a one-off adventure. I have never run a single session adventure and would love some input on best practices and especially pacing!
Here are the things I already intend to do:
0. Run the adventure in my existing Westerlands campaign setting (D&D 3.5)
1. use pre-gen characters... possibly allowing the players to pick their feats &/or assign skill points... or maybe roll their last level.
2. start at level 6... a little robustness to the characters with some cool powers, but without so much variety as to bog things down.
3. Jump right to the chase... I have a very straightforward story in mind. The characters have shipwrecked on an island. They wake up with minimal gear, but the detritus of the wreck around them... including adventure supplies, weapons, etc to select from. In the distance, they can see smoke from a village. When they arrive, they find that the villagers have ships that can take them home, but that BBEG is preventing anyone from leaving the island... Start quest to eliminate BBEG.
4. Use plenty of handouts from treasure cards to tactical/rules cheat-sheets in order to help speed combat.
My biggest specific question is about pacing. How many encounters should I plan for in order to provide a full experience while still making the quest achievable over the course of an evening? My regular campaign has frequent cliff-hangers because of our short play time, but I'm running this one-off on a weekend, and so can take a longer.
Any advice from those of you who have run one-offs before?
Comments
From a pacing standpoint, use your typical gaming session as a baseline, lose the cliffhanger (replace it with a climactic final encounter), and give the players a few places to breathe (unless, of course, you want them to walk away breathless).
Just my two cents...
Cheers,
-Arsheesh
If Joe-bob didn't die then it would just be lizardfolk eating meat or maybe a generic NPC in trouble.
Hopefully this will allow everyone to have a full evening of entertainment.
arsheesh's suggestion of writing out a plot outline will also be useful - if you keep it handy while you're running the adventure, you can add in or skip less important encounters on the fly without scrambling or seeming unprepared.
I'm not sure how long your playtime normally is, but I'll mention this just in case: If you're running longer than 2-3 hours, make sure you have some scheduled downtime/low-point for players to grab snacks, use the restroom, and generally refresh themselves - the game will be better for it.
Also, a neat bit of science for you to apply to story pacing: most healthy teenagers and adults are unable to sustain their attention on a single subject or task for longer than 15-20 minutes without making a conscious decision to renew that attention. If you can introduce some new question, challenge, or activity at regular intervals like that, players (not to mention you) will generally experience less difficulty staying engaged.
Hope something I've said helps. Have fun in Vegas!
-Jonathon
Also, thank you to everyone for the advice! I'm starting to get excited about my little adventure. If things go well, I might start up an alternate series of one-offs separate from my regular weekly campaign. This would allow friends of mine with super hectic and unpredictable schedules to have a gaming fix without having to commit to a full campaign.