If one were to make a one shot play set, what do you think needs to be included to speed up play.
Things already included:
-Generalized location and theme
-Map
-Schedule
-Quick NPC creation
-List of options for players to choose about setting
If one were to make a one shot play set, what do you think needs to be included to speed up play.
If one were to make a one shot play set, what do you think needs to be included to speed up play.
Don’t overview after character creation what you can describe in scene
Phillip Wessels I’m not sure what you’re saying, can you please clarify?
Yeah. You know how normally after character creation everyone goes around and introduces theirs and what they chose from the lists and such? A lot of that can be relayed “on-screen”.
you mean like have every player doing a their own cut scene to introduce their character before strings are assigned? Sounds more of MC choice than a setting kit thing.
Yeah, it just gets you in scene faster.
That’s not really the type of feedback I”m looking for. There are a lot of pacing techniques for running a one shot and everybody has their preferences. I’m more asking for what should go into a one shot scenario kit so there it launches quick while still letting players create a unique game session.
I don’t know how extensive your map is, but you may also want a list of scene locations outside of school.
It’s actually a summer camp. I took a map from an existing summer camp and erased the label for any facility that might be out of the game. Cabin designations and generalized building labels were kept.
My one shots are: Location & Theme, Subset of skins that play to that theme, Some flexible pre-written NPCs that play to the location and theme that can be included (with the expectation that I’ll include some, but not all). A fight, a party, and or a disappearance, and maybe a custom move.
Example: My fairytale-themed one-shot had a location (small town surrounded by spooky/enchanted forest), more fairytale focused skins (Queen, Fey, Werewolf, Witch, Giant, Selkie, Oni, Unicorn, Chosen, Mortal, and Wyrm), some one-sentence descriptions of classmates that play into fairytale themes (example: Hunter Sinclair. Captain of the football team. Rival to wolves. Works for queens.) Three menaces (an evil PTA mom with poison apples, a trollish liquor store clerk who covets and kidnaps beautiful innocents, and a D.A.R.E. cop to drives home the “taste the food in the lands of faerie and you’ll never escape” thing). And a party: a metaphorical Cinderella ball thrown for the distant but handsome rich kid by his matchmaking besties.
When I ran, we had a PC queen who played pretty villainous so I didn’t bother using the NPC Menaces. Hunter definitely did exactly what he was supposed to by being the Queen’s pawn. We decided that the Selkie was the adopted sister of the “prince” and was the one throwing the party.
I think I’m going to wait for MH2 to come out before I do more one-shots, though. Avery chose to remove menaces for a reason and I’m going to take the opportunity to re-evaluate how I can keep things feral in a game that only lasts four hours including character creation.
When I run MH as a con scenario, I do what the Blood of Misty Harbour did … Background/String questions that relate to the situation at hand.