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Whether you’re taking a break from your current campaign or want to introduceDungeons & Dragonsto a group of friends, one-shot adventures give Dungeon Masters the flexibility to tell a more personal story. From the player’s point of view, they can play D&D without the stress of making the “perfect character” or following through with deep plot threads.
Writing a one-shot adventure is far less taxing than writing a full campaign guide, but a few traits are often overlooked when doing so. However, don’t worry if the story isn’t set on a massive scale. One-shots are meant to serve as a breath of fresh air or even a refresher course to Dungeons & Dragons and aren’t meant to be taken too seriously.
How To Write The Plot For A One-Shot
When you start writing the outline for your one-shot, one of the key things you should keep in mind is thelength of your adventure.One-shotstend tolastaroundthree to four hours maximum, which may not give you a lot of room for extra details (depending on how attentive your players are).
Keeping time into account,listsomeplot pointsandmomentsyou want to incorporate into your adventure. Once you have that, you can start to form a loose outline of what your one-shot will be like.
Although it is not required, adding estimated times to each part of the session could allow you to run the one-shot smoothly.
Example One-Shot Outline:
In the above example, the good themes of the one-shot areVampires,Small Town,Combat-Intensive, andOpen-Ended. Of course, these short adventures can vary in style and size, from exploring anabandoneddungeonto completing abank heistand everything in between.
While forming an outline is not a highly detailed guide to your one-shot, it is a great way to have mental checkpoints of what the party is striving for while gauging how long it will take.
Combatis what generally takes thelongest amount of time in Dungeons & Dragons, so it is safe to slightly overestimate how long it will take, especially when playing with new players.
How To Run A One-Shot
As the Dungeon Master, your job is to ensure everyone (including yourself) has a good time playing Dungeons & Dragons. While maintaining the rules and making sure everyone is playing fairly is important,the overall goal is to have fun.
While it may be tempting to treat them as a complete campaign adventure with deep lore and weaving plot threads, one-shots are meant to be a “quick fix” for those who want to play D&D. Therefore, when running a one-shot, you may be better offletting your players explore how they see fit.
While it may be tempting to memorize every single rule and possibility that could happen, your session will go bymuch betterif youonly recall the common rulesandactionsthat occur at a table while saving the rest to either spend a minute researching or improvising!
For prepping a Dungeons & Dragons session, rules and information you should have include:
On a technical level,Dungeon Mastersonly need to havetheir diceandguidebook to run a one-shot. Other tools that make running adventures easier are a whiteboard to write quick notes on (monster HP, random NPC names, etc.), spare tokens (if you’re playing in person), and something to play music to help set the scene.
If you are running a session through an online application (i.e. DnD Beyond or Roll20), we advise you spend an hour or so beforehand getting familiar with the different tools and menu options in the game HUD. This will prevent the awkward situation of repeatedly pausing the session to figure out a mechanic or to fix an issue.
At its core, Dungeons & Dragons started as a “theater of the mind” style game and can be easily played through a multi-way phone conversation and improvisation.
