Want something completely different on game night? Your game night doesn’t have to be the usual, weekly full campaign.
Want to keep D&D, Dragon Age or whatever RPGs you play exciting and easy to jump into, week after week? Game type variety is what you need!
Full Campaigns: The Bad and the Ugly
There are two big drawbacks to always playing full campaigns. First, full campaigns can feel overwhelming and long. Going from levels 1-20 or 1-30 can really feel like a slog for some players – and GMs! If the pace of XP and level gain isn’t right, you risk never experiencing the whole game – even if you play for a few real-life years!
The other big negative is the prep-work involved for both players and the GM – not only before the campaign’s first-ever session but throughout the campaign. A GM has to do some reading and researching on everything from the campaign world, to the starting location, to all the characters’ crunch and flavor. The GM still has to come up with adventures and campaign arcs or themes to tell a great story where the PCs are the stars. Players still have to create and continually update characters, keeping up with their new talents at each level.
One-Shots: The Good
One great alternative to your full campaign is a one-shot adventure – a story that begins and ends in just one game night.
What makes the one-shot approach so appealing compared to full-blown campaigns? For starters, you can choose any level you want to begin the adventure. Want something really simple, mechanics-wise? Start at 1st level. Want to see what high-powered gaming looks like, but – because of those full campaign leveling slogs – never had the chance? Start at 15th or 20th level!
One-shot adventures are also a great chance to use pre-generated characters. This saves your busy players a ton of time and eliminates the need for a character-creation session – or at least reduces it to a brief “character review” session for both the players and GM. Published adventures and gaming sites have vaults of pre-generated characters just waiting to be unleashed into your one-shots.
One-Shot Flexibility Tips
What if you’re a more enterprising GM when it comes to the pre-gen characters for your one-shot? DMs who want to create their own pre-gens for their players to choose from have plenty of time-saving tools or form-fillable pdf characters sheet options. You can also allows the PCs to make a few minor modifications to their pre-gen.
It’s a good idea to focus on one monster type and one clear objective for one-shots. (For example, rescue the duchess’ children from the beholder in The Spinning Tower of Eyes before that nasty beholder eats them.)
However, some one-shot adventures may not fit into your single game night session. One session is your target, but if a few hours isn’t enough, go ahead stretch it into a sequel or trilogy.
The important thing? Don’t go overboard with character creation or changes, plot complexity or adventure length – it’s a one-shot adventure, so stick with the reason why one-shots rock: speed and simplicity.
Liked this? Keep an eye out for more Game Night: Play More articles!
Want more time-saving game and adventure tips? Attack the darkness @ FasterCombat.com!
Kilsek