Any tips for DMing a one-shot with randoms in a social setting?
The idea is it'll be a potential activity for people who show up at a friendly local game store event.
The entire story needs to have a satisfying conclusion in only a couple hours, while still allowing for plenty of both dicking around and experiencing crazy lore stuff. So it'll be ultra, ultra condensed, but I've seen it done before.
Pic unrelated.
-Pregenerated characters
-As many things as possible prepared ahead of time (monster statblocks, print-outs of rules players will need, etc.)
-A good but flexible plan. You want a solid story here, but there should be enough gaps and wiggle-room to accommodate dicking around.
Go with a smaller system. A lot of my friends have tried to do one shots with bigger systems like 5E, Call of Cthuhlu, Star Wars FF...and it takes too long to make characters and too long to learn the rules. Go with something that was created for a oneshot...like Fiasco. Still satisfying and with whatever kind of theme you want.
MAID would be pretty awesome, but the players need to be down for it.
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Also play a simple system. Things like D&D 4e are my preferred goto for something like this.
But I've been thinking engine heart is also very good for one shotty games.
Was considering going with Call of Catthulhu, as it's very light, seasonal, contains familiar elements, and has a couple great "force the players to act silly in front of each other" gimmicks.
(Can't carry items unless you actually hold an item in your mouth in real life, can't communicate long distance/"yell" using any words other than realistic "meow"s.)
I've been going through the lore trying to come up with something decent that'll work as a small, self-contained plot. I'd considered simply doing "your owner adopts a stray dog, but he's a Mutt-thra cultist and bad shit happens", but that seems pretty on-the-nose and predictable no matter how I spin it, even if I introduce him as friendly and have him turn on the party later. But I want it to be approachable, and cat/dog conflict sounds about as approachable as you could get, especially compared to the much more detailed threats in the sourcebook.
I GM for randoms every first Wensday of the month at my LGS as a special night is organised for that.
-Pick a simple system, nothing to much complicated, you want to explain the rules and get into the game as fast as possible. I'm often using Barbarians of Lemuria for that
-Pregenerated characters would be nice, but if you can create them fast
-A simple plot, you can either create one or pick a premade adventure from the rulebook or internet
I can post a lot of CoC one-shots if you want them. They all have an action focus in the end but you can start off with the party being called in before that. The night at the opera one would have a lot of social pretext.
That would be amazing if you could, thanks.
I have 13, but there are more in the old Yog-Sotthery general if I missed them or can't post fast enough.
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>-Pregenerated characters
The importance of this one can not be over-stated. It's probably THE most important thing to do when running game with random people, even more important than the script for the game itself. This allows you to skip over few things that usually slow down the game or make people uneasy:
- green players can be more confident, since they (usually) trust you to assume the pre-made characters are good in their field(s)
- veterans will easily understand what are the aims of the one-shot by just looking at the ready characters
- no time wasted on making characters at all, since they are all in
- the scenario can be adjusted around the pool of existing characters, making it feel better than your typical "game 0" scenario, where you don't even know what characters people will bring in
- keeping things thematically consistent on your own whim, so if you don't want to have this or that character type, you just don't add them to the pool
The important thing is to prepare MORE characters than the number of expected players, usually being 2 x Number of Players + 2. This makes everyone assured you are not making an outright railroad and there is in fact a vast choice for picking.
Or rather than picking, making it a "hat picking", so you throw characters into a hat, everyone picks one and then they can switch sheets among themselves if they want. This makes things more "spiced".
Either way, having a pre-made characters for players picking is the most important thing for one-shots, especially with randoms.
>Simple
>Class & level system
>D&D (any edition of it, really)
Pick one.
Also, if you are running one-shots, last thing you are interested in is game using level system, as there is no way to gain anything during the game.
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I recommend this excellent Swedish RPG.
commoner curse of a thousand wands
>pregenerated characters
we /community/ now?
?
You really expect people to show up to a game they have never played before and do chargen?
Pre-generated characters, run Paranoia. Players don't need to know the system, games are usually run with the understanding that the players will probably get distracted and dick about and you can wrap it up very quickly if time isn't on your side.
You will have to explain some of the setting to them, but you can keep that fairly simple - Alpha Complex is full of communists, mutants and traitors who want to bring it down. Friend Computer, the benevolent AI that runs the Alpha Complex for the good of the citizens, has promoted you to a Troubleshooter. You find trouble, and you shoot it. Keep your laser handy. Trust no one.
Real talk, I have no idea what that means. I was referring to the episode of the show Community where Abed makes pregen character sheets clearly designed for specific people on the show and then passes them out to the wrong people. Probably wasn't very accurate to tabletop in general, but it was a funny premise.