I have been busy, recently, and expect to remain so. There is a new child in the house and she makes continuous infant demands. It will be hard to find gaming time and harder still to be consistent. If I am going to run games, even organise GMless games, they need to be low-prep and one-shot-compatible.
Worse — my gaming sessions are habitually week nights, seven thirty until ten, which gives two-point-five hours of which we can rely on two to be on-topic. That’s tight. I don’t mind that — with the kind of games I GM (low ratio of rules time to creative time, high GM lift) that, and with GMless games that’s often plenty for everybody.
So, I want options for one-shots in that space.
But… you can’t be sure how long a one-shot will take. Some have easy flex (many GMless things), but some are in the hands of chance and player’s ultimately-tactical choice (most OSR things). So I want some things that can fill out a session that ran short, filler things, sub-one-hour options.
So, lists. I might even update them over time.
(In the below, anything is normal text is something I’ve run before; anything written like “?? thingname” is something I haven’t tried yet.)
OSR stuff
One thing common to all of these — even with the lightweight rules I tend to run (Knave, Cairn) — is that character creation can greatly eat into two hours. So it’s pregens all the way. Often effortful, unfortunately, if you want sensible ones above first level.
Medium-and-up OSR dungeons that suit two-hour raids
- Stonehell
- Hole in the Oak
- The Gardens of Ynn
- Through Ultan’s Door
- ?? The Stygian Library
- ?? Gradient Descent (for Mothership)
Small OSR sites that are “completable” in two hours
i.e. the players can, potentially, see all the interest in two hours. No guarantees, of course, They might just die.
- ?? One-Page Dungeon Competition Winners
- (Downsides: will tend to need some prep work tho, as often generic or unstatted; short-form presentation doesn’t necessarily mean short play time)
- ?? Michael Prescott’s “Trilemma Adventures”
- (Downsides: one- or two-page presentation may mean high GM lift, and that presentation doesn’t necessarily mean short play time; unstatted, though the closest-system Trilemma Bestiary may help)
- NB these are free online, but the version in his published Trilemma Compendium as apparently revised ones
- Skerples has helpfully reviewed every adventure that’s in the Compendium — I’ve only read the ones he marked “good”
- My list to try, most interesting first:
- ?? The Full-Dark Stone
- ?? The Coming of Sorg
- ?? Sirens of Blood and First
- ?? Do It for the Beast
- ?? The Sorcerer’s Feast
- ?? The Task of Zeichus
- ?? Midden of the Deep
- ?? Basilica of the Leper Messiah (atmospheric and distinctive, but not very clear how to use)
- Nate Treme’s pamphlet adventures
- (Downsides: short-form presentation may mean high GM lift, and that presentation doesn’t necessarily mean short play time; some minimally statted)
- Temple of the Bat Serpent (tried — took two hours to explore half of it, but we may just have been slow)
- ?? Barrow of the Elf King (free)
- ?? Witchtomb
- Assorted very small sites by diverse hands
- ?? Please Go To Sleep Arthur Cobblesworth
- ?? Winter’s Daughter “if you skip the fey world part”
- Make my own using the five-room dungeon model
- Make my own using no particular model
- Make my own using ?? other model
OSR encounters or locations that are likely to take under an hour
- Just roll some random encounter (particular on a table of specific detailed ones)
- Make my own list of encounter ideas (easy to rattle off a few in a sitting; an easy way to be creative)
GMless and weak-GM games
- Swords Without Master
- Lovecraftesque
- Inspectres (or InSpace or my own In the Land of Old Magic)
- Fiasco (think I’ve played enough for one lifetime, though)
- ?? Follow (have played it once, but can’t remember much)
- ?? The King is Dead
- ?? Annalise (not primarily for one-shots, but has some advice on doing it)
- ?? Witch — the Road to Lindisfarne
- ?? Psi*Run (I’m told this works well in very-short form)
- ?? Hot War (ever-popular for convention one-shots, tho not sure about two-hour format. Quite old now, probably rather janky, new edition coming soon with modern design.)
Sources
Ideas from the above came from sources including:
The Wrong Kind of Wax 