RPGaDay2024 Day 11 - An RPG With Well Supported One Shots

-


The real answer to this question is the games that provide a number of one shots which allow people to experience the game, or start a new campaign quickly. But to start with, I have a different answer, and that's all the indie-games that I've played at GenCon. 

Indie Games

Events like GenCon run on one-shots--people show up, either having played the game system before, or not. Some games or companies, such as Paizo with Pathfinder, create long-term games, where you can play campaigns as part of the story. But the events that really shine are the indie press games, the pre-kickstarter games, and the games that are people's passion projects.

These events are almost always run by the creator, or close friends who have played the game a lot. And while they may be completely new rule systems, they know how to make the game both fun and memorable--and they almost always have events that show off the systems' best points.

Over the years, I've played Mythcraft, QAGS, Die Laughing, and usually 1-2 other games each convention that have been what I talked about after the convention. Some of these games go on to be long time sellers and standards at GenCon; other games stay in a niche or don't make it. But even in those cases, they are games that had some people who really enjoyed them and have wonderful memories of them.

Dungeon Crawl Classics

There probably isn't a game system that has so many one-shots available. The introduction games for DCC, funnels, have numerous purchasable stand-alone options. And then they have a massive number of single-level games after that, in addition to their "campaign" games that take people from 1st level through the max level.

DCC feels a lot like TSR did in the old days with dozens of official modules, and numerous third-party modules that you can just pick up and run in a short time, and many of them are designed to be run in a single session.

Numenera (and Cypher)

One of MCGs products is their "Instant Adventure" series, which is designed to be picked up and run. There is minimal prep required. Understand the basic plot, understand the party goals, and a view of the places the party can go--and from there, you just fill in the details, including where the MacGuffins are going to be found in the map.

They have these in books of 10 adventures for about $10, and some of the convention modules they create are in this format. This means it's easy to prep, as a gamemaster, but it's also possible for you to add or remove details, depending on how much time is available.

The beauty of this format is that you can run the games multiple times, and have completely different stories, depending on what the party chooses to prioritize and what details you include for each location. I've had the same room work 4 completely different ways in 4 sessions, because of when the party got to that room, what I chose to do with it, and what items they'd already picked up along the way.

Honestly, my only complaint about this format is that they don't create them for all the Cypher products, so Predation, We are All Mad Here, Old Gods of Appalachia, and so on. But for the systems they do have them, I love the ability to just throw out a new adventure and get to it in the 4-hour window we usually have.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2023 GenCon Report Part 1: What Was New

-
Image
(Dork Tower August 14, 2002 by John Kovalic) Last week, I attended my 29th GenCon ("The Best Four Days in Gaming") in Indianapolis, IN. As always, it was a delightful whirlwind of games, shopping, and friends, though this year you could really feel the crowds with a record 70,000 attendees. I wore a mask for the exhibit hall and any movement through big crowds in the hallways, because that's 69,992 people around me that I don't know. One of the things I really enjoy at GenCon is seeing how the industry is changing, year-over-year. The biggest theme in the exhibit hall this year was definitely new dice. I found that surprising since there are always numerous dice vendors, with wide assortments of must-have shiny math rocks.  But this year, with people able to make their own dice with resin and other materials, it really seemed a step beyond.  It's All About the Dice There were probably 10-12 new dice exhibitors this year. Chessex , Crystal Caste and Q Workshop al...
Read more

RPGaDay2024 Day 30 - Person You'd Like to Game With

-
Image
  Questions like this are always fun; there are so many interpretations and answers and none of them are wrong. In this essay, I'm going to provide a few options, some serious and some not. Henry Cavill This is my celebrity pick. Sure, he's a hot star in both senses of the word; he's famous and has been in several fan-favorite shows. But from what I can tell, he's just doing all that to pay for his Warhammer Armies, and would rather spend an evening playing D&D than attending a Hollywood premiere. And the beauty of it is that while there's a lot of hype about his geekiness, that's just the press focusing on it, rather than him trying to promote it. There are other celebrities that would be amazing: Vin Diesel or Joe Manganiello for that same "well-publicized but personally quiet love of the game", Stephen Colbert for his oft-proven brilliance, Kevin Smith because...duh. Jon Favreau is a master director, actor, and chef, so he must be amazing at D...
Read more

The Planebreaker

-
Image
  As a GM, I love alternate planes and have used them for some of my most successful stories. To me, they represent an opportunity to throw out the normal rules, to define a custom reality, and to introduce story elements that are completely alien to the characters. I do this in two ways: I take elements from another plane, and I have them intrude onto the material plane in ways that the players can see and interact with. This could be inhabitants of other worlds wandering into the character's realm with goals, searching or exploring, or even just lost. It could be natural elements that don't exist making their way through, such as a massive, but isolated rainstorm that occupies a 100' radius around a strange key. Or it could be something that is supposed to be bound to a plane that escapes into the character's path. Alternately, I send the characters to another plane and have them deal with whatever they find there. This can involve figuring out the rules of a plane to...
Read more