Quick Tips for Choosing A True Single Session One Shot

A true great one shot, an adventure completed in a single sitting can showcase a new system, awesome mechanics or fresh ideas. So the question is how do you spot an adventure which can truly fit into the one session timeframe, I'm talking 3 to 4 hours and still deliver an amazing experience? Here I will give some of the elements I look for when i'm looking for my next one shot that will run in a single short session.

Opening and Hook

Perhaps one of the more critical elements for a successful one shot is a great opening and hook. Something that drives the adventure forward and sets up a clear goal for your players. A clear goal will help players make more meaningful choices and save game time for the actual adventure rather than setup.

In the excellent Call of Cthulhu one shot Dead Light, the adventure starts with our investigators driving cross country in a storm when they collide with someone running out from the forest. It's dramatic and immediately gives a clear goal to the player and sets up a number of interesting questions.

A great opening will save you time. It immediately gets the players engaged but it should also define the goal and intern the boundaries of the one shot. If you are reading an adventure and don't find the main goal obvious, the start uninspiring or without a strong driving force then I'd move onto the next candidate.

Location Count

A great indicator of how long a game can take is the amount of locations the adventure has. When you consider that a location will mean a combination of new descriptions, NPCs, encounter(s) and things players will unexpectedly want to investigate, locations will cost a surprising amount of time.

I look for one shots with few locations that are feature rich, or if there are many locations they are modular and can be swapped in or removed as needed depending on time.

Modular Moments

Adventures often have a "critical path", this is the set of goals or "beats" that need to happen to get to the ending of an adventure. These beats don't need to be super specific and could even be side stepped by creative players.

I look for adventures which either have few but impactful core beats as part of the critical path or beats that can be easily moved or combined. A critical path which can be easily adapted allows for better player decision reactivity and making small changes on the fly to shorten the adventure at the table.

If you have ever been to an escape room there will be some kind of timer to keep guests moving through. If you take too long on one puzzle/segment of the experience often the escape room will have a short cut which will activate and allows your group through to the next section or at least to a satisfying ending of the experience. When reading a one shot look for where you can easily add these short circuits into the adventure and even better when the adventure outlines these for you.

The goal with this is not to remove agency or consequences but ensuring that the game has an exciting meaningful ending. These "short circuits" can come at an in-game cost or reward depending on player choice. For example in a murder mystery the killer strikes again against an important NPC but indoing so reveals who they are, bringing us into the "climax" of our murder mystery.

The Feature

What is the main driving feature of this one shot? Is it an amazing mystery with a very clever twist. Is it an awesome combat encounter with great environmental effects and rising lava! Or is it finally a reason to use those chase rules you have been avoiding. Either way a great sign is when the one shot has a central key idea that it builds the game around.

Sometimes showcasing few things well, and giving a few core ideas, mechanics or encounters more time to shine is better than rushing through many. This is especially true if the rules of the system are new to you and/or the players.

A Matter of System

Personally I think that certain systems lend themselves better to shorter one shots where others longer form campaigns or adventures.

Call of Cthulhu for example has a pile of excellent one night adventures which are short sharp and yes - quite often deadly. Dungeons and Dragons with it's massive community contribution has a huge selection of adventures but many of these can very easily become long games due to lengthy combat and other complexities within the system. While games which lean more rules light and quicker conflict resolution will by their nature chew through encounters quicker.

I don't think that this necessarily prohibits certain systems from having a great one shot but its worth keeping in mind that systems and their mechanics will showcase in a shorter form differently.

Quick Tips

• A strong opening and hook will save you time. Giving the players an idea of what that goal or quest will be before the session, helps them create characters and lean into ideas which will get the adventure underway quicker.
• Many locations will cost you surprisingly large amounts of game time. Groups will want to explore as much as they can.
• Identify how easy it will be to chop, change and cut different elements of an adventure. Having some "short circuits" to the next stage of the adventure ready to go can help in the timing of a one shot.
• Don't cut your ending or core feature of your one shot - it makes for an unsatisfying game. This is where being modular with encounters and having "short circuits" can help.