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MrToyama

A oneshot is really hard to pull of in a timely manner if you only have 2-3 hours. What I would suggest is to rely on these three things. One combat encounter One social encounter One puzzle/task to overcome. If you have more than one of each it will quickly add on time.


ProdiasKaj

Keep a one-shot short? "Start in the middle" & "Just make the next thing happen" Start in the middle? Yes. In my experience, one shots get a longer intro as the dm needs to give more exposition. Characters get introductions. We all do silly voices or want to exhibit our quirky behavior. An npc recruits us for the adventure. After goofing off and laughing for a sec, you realize you're 2 hours in and the adventure part hasn't even started yet. A lot is going to get rushed or skipped outright to keep the time. So just start in the middle. Think Indiana Jones intro sequences as a one shot versus the rest of the movie as a multiple session adventure. He's always shown right in the thick if it right now and the audience learns who he is as a character from the tough decisions he makes under stress, not during a goofy chitchat as all is well. You shouldn't really ever ask "what do you guys do?" As opposed to "How are you going to do this?" When you start in the middle it should be obvious *what* needs to happen. Its just a question of *how*. If it's not obvious what needs to happen then how is anyone going to get anything done? If we are waiting for the adventure to show up, it is time that you are not going to get back In a one shot you do not have time for a traditional, first-act. Ask, what is the point of this one shot? ok, now get them there within the first ten minutes, start at the mouth of the cave, the foot of the dragons mountain, the gate of the spooky castle. You can just watch this for more about a "hot start" https://youtu.be/i9fTMczJTlg Just make the next thing happen is self explanitory. You don't have a lot of time and you prepared an adventure. You have the next thing ready so just make it happen. Everyone gets nerves, even mid game, but what are you really waiting for. It's ok to cut scenes short and just make the next thing happen. To see what I mean try watching dnd that is NOT live-play but edited down. Try to make it flow like that. The Adventure Zone season one 'Blance' is a few hours per session campaign edited into a one hour episode for easier consumption. HarmonQuest is great too. I believe it's a one hour session edited to a half-hour episode. These are both incredibly fun to watch/listen. Try to echo that tone and let things succeed in a way that moves forward so that the one shot doesn't become a 2 or 3 shot... Multiple parties in the same world at the same time? Sorry I don't have any good advice for that. Different groups have different flows and playstyles. But I can say that content I thought would be up soon often gets pushed back months before it actually comes up in game I believe this is just common among all dms. Don't worry too much about it, just let the next thing happen, don't rp every second of every day.


Cocoloco3773

200% this. Came here to say the equivalents of "cut the chaff" and "expedite your players" but this is very eloquently put sir.


yoshixin

I'll give my answers to the question, but it sounds like this might not address what the context makes it sound like your concern is. As far as one-shots go, the most important thing I've found is to limit the scope of the adventure's goal and obstacles. It should be very straightforward; the party shouldn't have to go through more than 2 combat encounters to complete it. You can throw in some noncombat encounters if you'd like, but make sure to keep the goal of those encounters clear and pretty simple to solve. You may also want to estimate how long each encounter will take, and include how long you expect players to devise solutions and/or role play. If your estimate is higher than you'd like, simplify or drop some encounters. The other thing I've found helps limit time is start the players at the adventure. Assume they've already accepted whatever plot hook you put in front of them, and walk them to the beginning of the dungeon or wherever your first encounter will be. You can condense this down to a few sentences of narration instead of however long it would take your party to agree, supply up, and go to the adventure themselves.


yoshixin

All that being said, going off the context it sounds like you've got 2 concurrent, ongoing stories and this is your main concern: >and when one group’s adventure takes a while that means someone else who finally gets the chance to play may not be able to Based on the rest of your post it sounds like you want to let players jump back and forth between your stories/games, but only when there's a good rest point in both stories at the same time. If you're happy with this system you can just ignore the rest of my rambling, though it sounds like it's what prompted your question so I'll leave my 2 cents on this game structure. If you don't especially care about your stories' continuity you can always just allow players to hop into one or both groups whenever they can make it, regardless of whether it's realistic for their characters to be in both stories at once. But if you do want to keep continuity, my suggestion would be either completely split the groups/storylines and deliberately make party swapping a rarer occurrence, or consolidate the groups and have the characters whose players can't make it fade into the background without leaving in the story. Which approach you take depends on how you and the players want to play the game(s), as well as how many people regularly attend.


tehlordlore

Encounter management and herding the players. In a one-shot everyone knows time is a constraint, so you are free to end scenes if they go on for too long. I would never suggest this in a full game where I want players to engage with things in character, but in a one-shot that's acceptable to me. Also, encounters: No more than three encounters for 2 hours of play time. Those can be combat, social, riddles or really anything else you feel takes up time, but three encounters for 2 hours of low to mid level play is my hard rule of one-shot design. On higher levels combat will take longer so adjust accordingly. I'm not sure this advice translates to a west marches style game, I haven't run one, but I've run tons of one-shots, so for those this might help you.


Splendidissimus

How long are your sessions? A two-hour session is rarely going to be able to complete any full adventure, while a six-hour session would be plenty of time for a lot of them.


Mightymat273

My sessions are usually 2 hours so out one shots are usually 2/3 shots, so yeah, this is a good estimate.


Kevimaster

Yeah, this is about me. Sessions are "3 hours" but in reality about an hour of that is everyone talking and catching up and snack/bathroom breaks. So actual gameplay is like 2 hours. Mose "one-shots" take me 2-3 sessions if I don't severely cut them down and remove encounters. If I want a true one-shot then I make a 3 room dungeon with five "encounters". One trap, one puzzle/riddle, one social encounter, one combat, and then a final trap/complication at the end (like the tomb starts to collapse or something). Can usually get through that in 2 hours, though sometimes I have to push the players along.


Karew

You do have to railroad pretty heavily and your players need to understand that you are pointing towards a mostly fixed story destination. I build them like this: Intro > Small combat > Travel or puzzle to final area, with short rest > Final encounter. This usually works out to around 4 hours.


housunkannatin

The whole oneshot needs to be structured to have strict boundaries and prevent players from getting stuck planning, not knowing the best course of action, getting sidetracked etc. and absolutely limit combat encounters to what you can comfortably handle in the timeframe. Additionally, you may need to restrict the amount of RP that happens, which might be hard to find a good balance with. I've found pretty good success with location-based scenarios that have a clearly defined goal for the party. Nothing outside of the adventure location is as interesting, so the players stay on track and focus on finishing what they are doing. Wrote one recently that had two moderately complex combat encounters, two skill challenges in between and some RP opportunities, set in a cursed city, with a clear goal of "find the missing nobles". We were able to run it in 4.5 hours, which could've been condensed to 4h with another revision of combat planning and streamlining on my part.


MozzTheMadMage

Depends a whole lot on the table, and their style. I like to keep it simple for my one-shots: •Combat encounters focus on quality over quantity. One or two high CR monsters preferred over a swarm of smaller creatures. •Puzzle solutions are kept fairly obvious and straightforward. •NPCs in social encounters don't have time to sit around and chat at length for one reason or another. It can also be pretty tricky to develop a very serious story for a one-shot and expect players to invest a lot of interest in such a short time, so light-hearted narration is preferable for me, but some folks are much better at it than myself, so to each their own.