1 - Running One Shots In Public
Greetings everyone,
I was really struggling to pick a topic for the first article of The Dragon Next Door and I decided to write about my experience in running games in a public setting. Recently I worked with the Silver Dragon Games team to run 4 games at Phoenix Fan Fusion. In addition I have also run several public games at Silver Dragon Games. I thought it would be beneficial to write about how I ‘prep’ and run one shot games for a public setting when I have no clue on the experience levels nor the player count of my game. Every public game I have run has been Dungeons & Dragons, however I see no reason why you could not take the following and apply it to other TTRPGs but I leave that to you.
When I run one shot games I tend to focus on the combat pillar of play more than any other. Oftentimes I will include some level of exploration but I rarely include social encounters in my games. I don't have a good reason for this and I recognize this is a weakness of mine, but I wanted to give that disclaimer before I proceed into my thought process.
The last disclaimer I will give is that I often am a minimalist prep game master. If you give me a stat block and some dice that's all I really need. I often improvise and make things up as I go without any real records or notes. That makes sharing my thought process very important because in reality it isn't that I don't prepare at all. It is more that all of my prep work is done in my brain and then translated directly into action at the table.
Concepts: For me this is often the hardest part of running a one shot. How do I come up with an event that will last 3-4 hours and be entertaining? For me I work best when I work backwards. I will either flip through a few stat blocks or select a challenge rating and figure out what seems fun to run. Essentially, I am looking for a monster who sparks my imagination and allows me to fill in the gaps. From there I will figure out what kind of environment is the most interesting or dynamic for that monster. I write up a brief description of the players needing to either defend themselves against the monster or have them go and stop the monster from causing any further harm.
Planning: I plan the same way I come up with concepts. I start with the ending and backwards. I will talk more about the final fight and boss battles in a separate article because I feel I have more to say about it and would add too much bloat to this. I will say this about the final fight - once I have a vague concept, typically just a boss monster stat block and a location I tend to do most of my ‘prep’ on the rest of the encounters. I will try to come up with 4 - 5 encounters and depending on the party's speed to play I will cut 2 to 3 of them on the fly. I judge this by trying to save between an hour and an hour and a half for the final fight.
Planning ‘Warm Up’: Now, how do we find the final fight? Is the party making their way through a dungeon? Climbing a mountain? Journeying to a sunken ship? Whatever it may be I will come up with what I call a “warm up” encounter. Something easier than the final fight and the party will have to waste some resources on. I try to aim for this encounter to only last between 2 and 3 rounds to make sure we keep the game moving because this is not an important fight and most players will know this. This also allows me to gauge everyone’s experience level and how proficient they are in the game as well as the players to get a better grasp of their characters if it is their first time playing them. This ‘warm up’ encounter is one I will not cut. My prep for this is working backwards from either the final fight or the location. Heading through a dungeon? Maybe a Gargoyle animates and attacks without warning. High up on a mountain? Maybe a Yeti jumps out as they are climbing with another lying in wait. Heading to a sunken ship? Maybe some Merfolk or Merrow attack the ship before you can get there. If I am running a final fight that has a specific theme I will often use lesser versions of that monster to give the players a taste of the fight before the end. For example if the final fight is a fully realized Vampire I will throw a group of lesser Vampires at the party. This specific example lets them know what they are fighting and makes it possible for them to test out strategies before the ending.
Planning ‘The Rest’: Once I have what I want to do with the final fight and the ‘Warm Up’ I start to gather ideas on what fills in any empty space I have. This is often one of a few things - sometimes I will simply look at what maps I have at my disposal and what fits the theme I have set up so far and gather inspiration from them. I tend to use a book of maps which have several pages of maps - great for public games because they are easy to move around. I tend to prefer traps to puzzles because they tend to have a more mechanical impact and challenge rather than a puzzle which challenges the player’s intelligence and not the characters. Traps can burn resources either in terms of damage or limited use abilities or items. Pit traps are iconic for a reason but I also like making terrain that is difficult to cross - such as pools of ooze that are toxic. Players have to navigate through them or take damage.
The Game: While running the game I am mainly looking at how comfortable everyone is with the game. I adjust and remove what I do not need as I go. If the group is having fun I try to linger on the scene. If the players are not into it and not paying attention I move the scene along quickly. This is why I try to have more encounters than I could possibly use within the time limit because I have no idea what these players will like or enjoy. The other thing I try to do is run the game as close to rules as written as I can - I love house rules as much as anyone and I have plenty (let me know if you like me to share them) but they take too long to explain in the time we have available to us.
If you have any questions or want a more in depth article on a topic I touched on here, reach out to me through the Q&A section. My next article is going to be how I make final fights scale in difficulty with player experience as well as making them dynamic and interesting. It is very important when running these kinds of games to have a few dials to be able to tweak and change games on the fly to adapt to your unique party.