One-Shot Games

A one-shot game is a scenario intended to last for a single play session. These scenarios might be “standalone,” with little or no connection to other campaigns you run, or merely a diversion for your regular characters to give you extra time to put together the next major challenge. Paizo’s Pathfinder Society Scenarios are designed for just such situations, and can be downloaded from paizo.com. Keep in mind that the characters in these sessions can be the usual PCs, affiliates such as hirelings, or totally new characters intended only for a single game—one-shots are often perfect for unusual character ideas that might fail or grow stale in a longer game.

Characters

Unless you’ve got a very short scenario to run or a very long game session planned, create new characters ahead of time. In a time crunch, you might create them yourself and allow your players to pick from the bunch. In this case, you should make a few more than you’ll need so that nobody feels stuck with the leftovers. If you decide to have players create their own characters, be clear about the power level, gear, and other game details you’ll allow and reserve the right to review and edit characters to better fit the group. You might even want to meet up with players one-on-one or have them submit characters early for review.

Getting Started

Introduce the scenario in a way that engages the players. Don’t give away any secrets, but let the players know why each of their characters is getting involved—having several “adventure hooks” allows you to pick which one would be most compelling for a given character. You can also always start the action with the party already committed to the adventure or facing a situation that leads in to the rest of the scenario, so as not to waste any playing time.

The concept of the macguffin often proves useful here. A macguffin is some element that drives your plot forward, but that you can ignore once it’s served its purpose. Your macguffin might be a rumor, a mission or request from a friend, a cryptic message, a treasure map, or anything else that piques the group’s interest without giving away too much.

Wrapping Up

Consider how the party’s activities, successful or not, might end, and be ready to sum up when the last die stops rolling. Because your players might never play these characters again, you can plan unusual rewards or endings that would be awkward in a regular campaign. Of course, more than one adventure that began as a one-shot has stretched into a campaign when both players and GMs found the plots and characters too much fun to retire...