Try These One Shots In 2024!
Hey, these are just some ideas
You’re missing 2 of your regulars to your [insert day] game. Do you cancel? No. You are a pro GM hard up for money in this hellscape economy. You have one shots available for such an occasion and you’ve already told your players. You’ve prepped and uploaded whatever assets you need and you’re just waiting for this to happen.
Here are my favorites (in no particular order). Buying these through my links helps support me (affiliate link), so that’s cool of you.
Without further ado:
The best fucking one/few shots ever made and/or just what Friday has played and thinks is good
One Night Strahd is a labor of love between my friends Jake & Adam who developed this to be played in one 12-16 hour sitting, sometimes between 1 or 2 parties. This is a short campaign and might be better suited to run your group for holidays or extended periods between longer campaigns. It is meant to be highly replayable, however, as the two major paths vary the experience by a lot! Did I mention its twice the size of the original module?
The writing is fantastic and the visuals are captivating. It’s worth the $18 and it’s laid out in such a fabulous manner that it’s no wonder that it won an ENNIE for best e-book.
“Precise and messy as a vampire bite, One Night Strahd (ONS) delivers the spectacle and catastrophe of gothic horror as a consistent and fast-paced short campaign for D&D 5e. It condenses and remixes the 200+ hour campaign of Curse of Strahd into a replayable adventure weighing in at 525 pages with 150+ illustrations, 12 maps, 16 encounters, 27 new magic items, and 60+ quick-play charts. With careful attention to the design of exploration, combat, and role-playing opportunities, our goal has been to make something for every DM and every table. After three years of extensive testing, we're proud to share this explosive adventure with you.” - DMs Guild description
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/376774/One-Night-Strahd/rss.php?affiliate_id=2822085
Uncaged: Goddesses is perhaps the prettiest and most unique anthology book I’ve ever purchased. I love my physical copy and the digital copy is great for making running an online game easy.
Most of these Tier 4 adventures are great for theater of the mind games. I especially like the Theros themed adventure involved Pharika and have run it many times to great effect. What’s more? Players love playing one shots in Tier 4 just to try busted combos. Let them.
“Each adventure in this massive 297-page book centers around an evil- or neutral-aligned goddess from the Faerûnian pantheon in Dungeons & Dragons, as well as the Fury (Eberron), Mother Night (Barovia), and Pharika (Theros). Many of these goddesses have been featured in past D&D publications, but rarely do these stories explore the goddesses’ histories, conflicts, and goals. In Uncaged: Goddesses, the goddesses finally get to shine.” - DMs Guild description
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/382873/Uncaged-Goddesses/rss.php?affiliate_id=2822085
Shore of Dreams is a fantastic Tier 2 adventure featuring fun elemental adversaries and themes. It has a wonderful puzzle, too. The combat can be brutal, so be aware of that! But it’s just a fun one shot, aint it? Well - it might be a two-shot for many tables, there’s a lot in here.
Especially good for campaigns set in Forgotten Realms that want to veer off the coast from Chult. It has hooks to include elements of Princes of the Apocalypse if that’s your jam. I ran this for stream with my friends BethTheBard, Legal Kimchi, Sebastian Yūe, and my pro GM friend Katie!
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/232354/Shore-of-Dreams/rss.php?affiliate_id=2822085
Do you love space? Do you love horror? You’re going to get a lot of mileage out of Coriolis.
Last Voyage of the Ghazali is a fantastic introduction to the system. If you’re unfamiliar with Free League games, they’re D6 oriented with some mechanics around stress, etc. They’re great! Feed that space itch for some of your players when you have a short table. If the table loves it, there’s enough in here to fill 3-4 play sessions but you can run it on a shorter timetable if that suits you better. Bonus points: This directly feeds into the long-term campaign Mercy of the Icons as a prequel, too.
That’s all for now! Let me know if you enjoy these type of newsletter send-outs and I’ll build more lists like this in the future.