What’s Wrong With One-Shots?

The Holy Grail for gaming at the Friday Night Roleplay group has always been the extended campaign.

Recent events have left me fairly convinced that this is largely a pipe-dream given our group’s current circumstances. Thus, after a night of something different last Friday, I’m willing to explore the polar alternative: the one-shot pick-up game.

For the purposes of this post, I’m defining a one-shot as a single adventure with characters used one-time, even if the adventure is played over more than one session.

Why The Campaign Isn’t Realistic

Putting aside the clumsy metaphor, playing in a long-running campaign where all the players are available every session, to play for approximately 4 hours each time, just seems to be less and less realistic. The fact is that these games miss players or miss sessions. The campaign is unsustainable.

Our reasons for believing that campaigns are not feasible run to two main issues:

1. With busy adults who have children and jobs, finding 4 hours once a fortnight is a problem for all.
2. A game that misses sessions, or in which 2 out 5 players is common, leads to:
   • Character development and progress becoming sluggish and the campaign losing momentum.
   • Maintaining player and GM interest becoming tough.

Feeling “trapped” within the same game over a year which, in itself, is not really progressing leads to frustration and apathy.

As a GM, I know that without the regular and enthusiastic input of the players then my motivation will drop off. Because it takes so long to make progress in the campaign, what with 4 hours per fortnight actually becoming more commonly 4 hours per month (or less), the spark that makes any story come to life tends to burn out.

As a player, the problem becomes twofold: a) you feel guilty if you miss a session, and then risk resenting the group bugging you about when you’re coming; b) you can’t remember your character, let alone the adventure, and you lose interest.

Honestly, although we keep making the heroic effort to keep games alive… I am beginning to believe that it’s a futile quest.

What Happened On Friday

Friday night we had three people – the regular D&D GM and two players. This was the second session in a row with just three of us, having missed 3 previous sessions altogether and spent the last one “just chatting”.

Personally, I was determined to play a roleplaying game… and, being a GM at heart, I prepped a one-shot “test drive” game of Savage Worlds using the “The Moscow Connection” one-sheet adventure. When our GM announced that, honestly, he needed 4 players to make the D&D session run, well, I mentioned that I had a back-up game.

We sat down, I ran them through the basics of Savage Worlds, and we started playing. The game got underway just fine… although I screwed up fairly big: forgot about Bennies until my Wild Card NPC needed one – doh! But, hey, we muddled through a game, and they had a blast (literally) taking out Red Hand terrorists in New York.

At the end of the session, I suggested that we prep a further back-up game in case we get to 2-3 players another time. The guys agreed, also liked the idea of using Savage Worlds (because it is really easy to pick up and play), and we discussed the next game. The guys voted for some Achtung! Cthulhu for the next time – which is already looking likely for the next session.

Over the course of yesterday, as I sat down to process the idea and work on a scenario, it slowly dawned on me that I was already thinking in terms of an ongoing game. As the guys who couldn’t make last session raised objections to “changing game”, and I dealt with explaining the actual plan, it further hit me what was needed.

We need to be clear that the back-up game is one-off territory. It’s not a campaign!

One-Off Thinking

For Achtung! Cthulhu, I have to think differently.

I get one adventure. This means we are playing episodically and that the whole game will arise in a short-story manner, not like a novella. That makes for something very different.

• Characters will probably only be used once and will therefore work better if they are more iconic, and (for A!C) this means more pulpy.
• While some players might create their own characters, I can’t predict who’ll be present so I must provide pick-up-and-play characters.
• I need to be less subtle in my plot ideas because the story will be too brief to play long themes.
• I can take advantage of the naturally low-complexity of Savage Worlds to minimise my prep.
• Once I’ve run a game, I am free to move on to another setting. Or return for another episode. Or not.

There are countless settings that I’d like to explore and try out. Honestly, I suddenly feel the spark of energy that arises from being able to run a game and then move on. Or not.

On the one hand, we could cycle through a series of different genres and settings over many sessions. On the other hand, if we find a setting we love, we can dig in for two or more adventures there. Actually, the lower expectations are really liberating.

Here’s a shock thought: players who believe they can’t GM a whole campaign could be tempted to step-up and run a single adventure. Whether that’s using the same rules, because Savage Worlds allows that, or just to try out another game is really a small detail. If you know you’ve only got to support 1-2 sessions, it’s easier to give GMing a go.

Either way, for me at least, the idea of letting go of the pressure of the campaign is exciting. That’s not to say I want our GM to stop running D&D – quite the contrary – but it is to say that we don’t have to stop playing games on a Friday Night because life got in the way of two or more of the guys’ attendance.

Let’s give the one-shot culture a try. You never know: it might even work.

Game on!