One-shots

We played as a group of five, with ridiculous names.

I can not stress this enough, but behaving as a Carebear is a deeply unsettling and frustrating experience. When done correctly, If the players play along, it is the main interest of the one-shot.

So our mission was simple. Carebears daily task is to be a kind of dream-keeper, making sure that children of the whole world are protected and happy when they sleep.
>a different group of Carebears has been captured (forced to stay in some place) by the Tiny-meanies
>Tiny-meanies are bad-behaving creatures with pointy hats, who can throw paperballs at us with peashooters,and since they coat it in saliva, it's and unpleasant feeling (sticks to the fur, etc)
>but we know that deep-down, they are the children that didn't receive enough love, and that huging them or projecting rainbows at them will put them in a sleep filled with sweet dreams (they fall on the grass, smile on their faces, and turn back to red-cheeks kids)
>we have to go past the blue river and the magic forest to get our friends back

Roll credits
youtube.com/watch?v=jA6YBXaPItg

I will spare you the details of the journey, but in short,
>the magic clouds drop us at walking distance from the objective
>a few encounters with tiny-meanies
Of course we do not "fight", we do not "bleed" (our toy fur gets dirty)
>On one occasion, they are to lany and we have to call the magic clouds to drop a rain of love on them
>we make good use of our powers (shooting tummy love really fast, hugging really strongly, etc)
>we eventually get to the forest, after an hour of game

At this point of the game, our brains are reduced to strawberry-flavored marshmallows. Some find it fun, some find it infuriating, but can't show it.

>we get to the forest, start progressing
>the end is near, we know it, for the moment the game is nothing more than "lulz, for once I can't torture peasants and eviscerate BBEG in badassy action, or shout SHIT"
>progessively, the games starts getting...weird
>it all starts with a thin rope, stretched horizontaly a feet-level
>one of us trips over it, triggering an explosion
>everyone looking at the DM
>a what ?
>yes yes, an explosion, and Fluffynours is in bad shape, coton is sticking out of his body
>suddenly, Tiny-meanies in approach
>we have to act fast, and start sending the love
>more and more obviously, an uncanny shift sets between how we describe our actions and what the outcome is
>we are still knee-deep in a children cartoon, but the violence escalates quickly
>"I hug the closest one"
>"You jump on him from behind a bush, taking him by surprise. You hear his skull crack under your boot. It's true you were good at sports in high school"
You get the idea, we are put in an extremely brutal jungle warfare setting in under a minute, atrocious descriptions, blood, screams and fire all around.
We understand that we are an American squad in Viet-nam, and that the lsd is starting to wear off

So, the idea, which requiers some premium DMing to be effective, is to put your players into a "everything is nice, no one can get hurt, cozy-cozy-joyful" feeling, in an entertaining way (really, force the players to get impossibly nice and generous. It should seem to be the main interest of what you offer them).

When the mood is set, drop them brutally into a traumatizing moment, with a sick and gory twist.

It gets some players blood-thirsty (my DM used it to get them in the mood for games set in a grimdark universe), it gets some others shocked.

When done right, it's something you never forget

jesus christ, I can hear your GM's maniacal cackling from here

Dude is insanely brilliant.
He is not GMing, he is group-hypnotizing

Also one of the people I can call true friends

Bear detective.

So that went from me thinking your GM was pedobear to realising he's a genius.

I'm finding a way to steal this. If not a one shot in my regular D&D game as some kind of illusion trickery.

>he's a genius
You are god damn right.

I could go on for hours. His Te Deum campain was beyond awesome. Spanned over fifteen IG years, and is still live

for fucks sake tell us more

He conceived a renaissance setting, starting in 1550. A year would pass between each game, making our characters age, make children, get higher responsibilities, developping networks, etc
We took part in real historical events in Italy, France, Scotland (with just enough influence to make it fun)
I was/am part of the core group, but people would come and go at the table. We developped secondary characters, played our PCs children, managed legacies, debts, and services (for example, my PC, notwanting to risk his life in every expedition, hired people to do it for him, which would be my secondary PCs)

It was immersive as fuck, funny, sometimes even moving, and badass

I plan on keeping my PC alive until the Saint Barthelemy at least, and as nothing less than a Cardinal

PS, think of it as a Series of ambitious proportions, letting you taste religious wars, court life, diplomacy and aspects of everyday life in the XVIth century Europe

Try Paranoia. The players learning the rules isn't an issue.

So much this

Eclipse Phase
Continuity

Basically the coolest 1 shot ever, it's like a round of SS13 mixed with Event Horizon.

"Fly to Heaven" for Unknown Armies 2e, from the One Shots book.

Nothing fancy. Old School Hack or some other even simpler system; or D&D 5e with pregen characters. Almost every RPG can be condensed down to 2 pages.

Run something you know as the back of your hand, modify a module to be faster and simpler, have pregen characters for, and can play quick and end a session in 4-5 hours, with a small unfinished end so that if the players liked it they'd be able to play again with you.

"So you saved the princess from the dragon... the end"; the next quest if they want you again is the road home.

I don't know how well this fits for new players but I don't see why not.

The idea is basically Dungeon of the week. GM makes a dungeon, players smash through it. You bring disposal characters at whatever appropriate level either premade or scratch built and roll some dice and kill some monsters.

This rotates so each week a different player makes the dungeon of the week so everybody has a go at gming and playong. Probably no reason why you cant play the same character for each one either and gain items/xp as you go unless they die of course.

What does that have to do with running a one-shot.

It's a suggestion for a style of weekly one shot games???

Which has nothing to do with what OP asked, idiot.

>OP. "What are some good oneshot ideas?"
>Me "Dungeon of the week is a fun one shot idea".
> You. "Reeeeeeeeeee, dribble, dribble."

Dungeon of the week is not oneshot idea. It's an idea for a long-running game.

Play one last job in a fantasy setting

Game needs to be noobie-friendly, quick to learn, and is being played in October? I'm surprised no one has said Dread: A Game of Horror and Hope.

It's for one shot horror games, and it's played with Jenga. Need to do something stressful, or that your character couldn't normally do? Pull a block. Knock it over, and that's it for your dude.

Not really. They are one-shots, each one is still self contained. You could have just one session and you don't miss any sort of conclusion or resolution to the story. They just all happen to have the same overarching style of play which is dungeons.

Honestly I kind of like that idea, my group seems to enjoy savage dungeon crawls more than any other part of the campaign, so having rotating DMs for the dungeon crawls seems like an interesting idea, especially adapting to the styles of other DMs.

When the game is supposed to happen one time, and one time only, as in ONESHOT, it doesn't matter what they would do on session number two.

Now kill yourself before you continue polluting the board with your idiocy.

>When the game is supposed to happen one time, and one time only, as in ONESHOT
Which OP could do.
>Dungeon crawl
>Game finished
>Never revisit it again

Goddamn you are autistic. Just because the guy mentioned that the same formula could keep being repeated doesn't mean that it has to be.

>what are some good one-shot ideas?
>you could run a one-shot

Kill yourself retard. You're not contributing anything to the discussion, you're not contributing anything to the board, and I very much doubt you're contributing anything to your life, either.

>What are good one-shot ideas
>You could run a simple dungeon crawl
>Hurr that's not a one-shot
I didn't even make the suggestion, I was simply backing it up. But tell us about all of your great ideas for one-shots.

>Best one shot games
Lasers & Feelings
Dread
Dead of Night
Fate Accelerated

>One Shot Ideas
Shotgun Scenarios
One Page Dungeons
Five Room Dungeons

I tend to structure all sessions similar to one-shots, just contained in a larger story. It should have a satisfying beginning, middle, and end. That's just me, though.

>But tell us about all of your great ideas for one-shots.

Suck my dick and I'll give you one shot of my baby batter to the back of your throat.

Call of Cthulhu has a massive library of one shot sessions. The haunting stands out especially.

No one attacks the bar?

I once had the greatest DnD session of all time starting like this. It ended up with the players attacking the bar via 3 separate secret plots, including one that used a fake dragon... god, I love players.

go deliver the thing to the place for the people
there are dudes along the way
the place is actually full of dudes not full of people as was assumed
what twist
everyone dies via lynching

>John wakes up in a strange room, not long later a guy in a suit walks in and asks him to sign some kind of bill because John is the president

>John wakes up with an ak47 in his hands pointed at a gagged man's head while some suspicious Arabs scream at a camcorder mounted to a goat, John was about to do a TV execution for ISIS

>John wakes up inside a dark house wearing a balaclava with a knife, john is a burglar

>John wakes up staring at a blank book in a grandiose stone room and is then summoned to a wizard meeting with his peers to discuss his findings, John is an archmage that read the Necronomnicon

>John is going up in an elevator with four heavily armed men, just as the doors are about to open one of them says "remember, no Russian"

>John wakes up around creepy looking men some wearing cartoon pony costumes, John finds out he too is wearing one, John is a pony forum moderator at a my little pony convention

>John stands facing a wrecked white door with a fire axe, on the other side is a screaming woman with a knife, Jon is in The Shining

>Everyone is Joker

>John wakes up in a nice bed in a nice house with a nice family. John is living in a suburban nightmare

>John wakes up discovering he is a cult leader, about to give a speech on their upcoming greatest achievement

>John wakes up in a stalled car in the middle of the field. On the passenger side are 5 passports of different nationalities and identities, 25k in different currencies, two pistols, and the severed head of a goat.

>John wakes up in line at airport security, he has a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. He is being asked by security staff to either remove the briefcase or go with them for further inquiry.

What about Lady Blackbird?

Pros:
- Only a couple of pages, making it easy for both GM and newbies to learn.
- Pregen characters, with a lot of elbow room to make your version of the character feel more personal.
- Strong theme - which can be played straight, over the top, or campy, depending on the tastes of the table.

Everyone is John is pretty great, but my groups play almost always ends with a very large amount of violent crimes being commited by John.

>any roleplaying game ever (except Japanese)

5e and use pregen characters all part of an adventure guild. The guild offers contracts (1 shot quests) so you can have characters drop in and out.

This concept is briliant

CSI:SVU but replaced with holy characters like paladins/clerics.

One last job is pretty rad

>literally everyone's quirks are about fucking, pissing and shitting, and the game ends with John having skullfucked everyone in the eyesocket

My friends are 12