Write One-Shot RPG Campaigns! (GM Tips w/ Matt Mercer)

One-shots can be fun and handy for trying out new characters, tactics, and more. Critical Role's Matthew Mercer outlines a basic structure to designing your own one-shot, and gives some tips to make them better.

[evaos]

"Or hell, letting someone else GM for once so the usual GM can actually play" *silently walks away*

[marcush]

My favorite two-shot was a story about a warlock that was enslaving/torturing elves. We did it on halloween and it was gonna be a horror themed story. Somebody got a call and had to leave, so we agreed to finish the oneshot JUST before they discovered the evil warlock's lair.

Next time we all got together was Christmas Eve. So I was like "f--- it, this evil warlock enslaving elves is gonna be santa".

It worked out SO well. Had we gotten togther any time other than halloween, it wouldnt have been horror themed. Had we gotten together AGAIN any time other than Christmas, it wouldnt have been christmas themed.

But everything worked out JUST right that it looked like a planned horror santa campaign. We still talk about it today.

[SteveBonario]

List of the tips:
#1 - Assemble the Player Characters
#2 - Define the Style
#3 - Create a Plot Hook
#4 - Develop a Climax
#5 - Flesh out Key NPCs
#6 - Prepare Social Encounters
#7 - Player-tailored Challenges
#8 - Loot Rewards
#9 - Outline Key Locations
#10 - Avoid a Wandering Intro
#11 - Keep the Pace Moving
#12 - Character Epilogues

[zackymas]

"Do they each prefer a different style?" I completely, wholeheartedly, felt that.

[HEAVYISPY]

I have played D&D (and similar systems) for a few years now, and my friends who have never played before wanted to play. So I created a one shot, that has turned into a regular game, and I decided the way around the awkward "how they all met" scenario was that they were all students under a long time adventurer. It made sense being that it was their first time, and it allowed them to get a feel for the game. I created an NPC to guide them as their teacher on simple raid on a goblin encampment. Once it seemed like they had an idea of what they were doing, I had the teacher get blind sided and kidnapped by some stronger goblins and the party had to rescue him. Just an idea, for new DM's.

[Dlnew]

I really want to see Matt Mercer playing instead of DM'ing. He's already one of the best DM's I've seen, I want to see if just how he plays a PC too. Maybe for a Liam campaign.

[Ashley-ofro]

Okay just watching matt getting 'angry'/being passive aggressive at things is extremely funny..

[mateusfolletto]

Wanna a strong plot hook and getting players together? Make some of them hate the villain. Once a player of mine was seeking this antagonist for vengeance and met the other player while he was hanging on a cage by the road, left to die of starvation by the same antagonist. They both had reasons the hate the dude and bonded through the story progression.

[Hammeh]

Hah! Loving the Matt M venting - let it all out sir....:D These vids are gold, learning so much :)

[someonekul]

I love how the chest on the table shakes for no reason...





*MIMIC!*

[Nerdarchy]

One shots are also a great place for DMs to test-out game ideas, monster capabilities, items, and story telling techniques without worrying about future ramifications in your main campaign game. -Nerdarchist Ryan

[archarteus]

instructions unclear, my one shot became a 2 year campaign

[OrangeyChocolate]

I've been DMing a series of single-player adventures to teach my girlfriend how to play D&D, and I've had to make use of some of the methods suggested here. For example, my girlfriend was supposed to spot and subdue a pair of kobolds hiding in a bush in order to find out where their lair was, but she failed her Perception check and started meandering, so I had to improvise a situation where she caught the kobolds in the process of raiding an upstairs room in a tavern. It was messy, but it got the story back on track. I'm as new to DMing as she is to playing, so it's been a learning experience for both of us.

[HalfElfHalfling]

'so the GM can play for once!' YES. WHERE MY GM s AT

[sennarosity]

*Matt:* "Avoid the 'You are all strangers and you meet in a bar...' intro. It's awkward."

*Critical Role Campaign 2:* _MOST OF THEM ARE STRANGERS AND MEET IN A BAR._

[dizzytitan]

my favorite introduction of players coming together is the story that they were all walking the same path, at different points during the day, and each were captured by a fanatical religious village that was going to sacrifice all of them after sundown. Restrained together, they must work together to escape!

[oOPPHOo]

Another tip I've received is to make the encounters modular. If you suddenly find yourself low on time, skip or switch out an encounter to get yourself closer to the finale. You simply describe how they managed to track the information they needed or how they fought their way through the guards at the gate instead of having it actually be played out.

[grnteabug]

One of my favorite things to do for one shots is genre swapping classic D&D into film noir. Imagine. A city has mysteriously been surrounded by a dense fog. All color within the city now has been sucked away and people within it are slowly beginning to lose their memories. This mysterious apparition has drawn all sorts of characters out of the woodwork from curious mages to curse lifting paladins to thieves who want to take advantage of the trouble. It is up to the players to find out what's going on and restore the city.
This gives the DM a chance to really use some of the their more interesting social encounters and gives if combat does break out, characters can vanish into the shadows if they are too important to be killed.

[BarokaiRein]

Our DM did the whole ''you're strangers in a bar'' thing once. It actually turned out to be the best damned intro we've ever had. The way it worked was that we were all in the same town doing various different things but we eventually ended up in the same tarvern. A lot of awkward things happened between our characters, for example my dragonborn paladin accidentally spilled stew over my friends dwarf since he bumped into me and I was simply too tall to even notice him in this really packed tavern full of mercenaries etc. He tried to push me in anger but ended up flying against the wall since, well I just rolled better and was overall A LOT stronger. I recruited the half-orc barbarian played by one of the players into my mercenary group and our next job was to escort a caravan of dwarfs to a city up in the mountains. Needless to say the dwarf that tried to fight me after I spilled stew on him was a part of that caravan. It didn't take long for us to end up as friends thou and the beginning was pretty damn unique to anything we had done before. Usually 2 of the players were already travelling together and then met the third player in a city or a town. I had the tendency to be the third player since I can make shit up on the fly and cause some sort of scene to get the attention of the others so they'd approach my character without breaking RP.

[aa-oyil]

I've been DMing for six years now, but everytime I sit down to prep a new game I watch this. It just helps me