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Help with ideas for a one shot? Options
Arkat
Posted: Monday, October 26, 2009 7:21:15 AM
Rank: Advanced Member
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Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 47
Points: 141
Location: Norway
This coming friday I'm going to run a one-shot of Spellbound Kingdoms. None of the players are familiar with the game and it will be my first run too. So the challenge is to highlight the cool points of the game and at the same time make it easy on me and the players.

Even though this is a one-shot I'd like to make inspirations important. I want to have a chase scene, one or more combat scenes and at least one social encounter. In the social encounter I'm planning to use Lines and Rudolphs. Oh, and I want to include at least one zeppelin. :)

The basic set up is that all the player characters are madly in love with a high class courtesan. Make no mistake, this is no common whore. This is a courtesan that each night picks one admirer to spend the night with. She charges nothing for this, but all here admirers shower her with gifts in an attempt to catch her attention. The pcs are part of a crowd that each night gathers at the courtesan's house, each hoping to be the lucky one. And when somebody else is chosen, the rejected admirers spend the rest of the evening drinking and plotting together.

The game starts with the courtesan being abducted from her quarters. This will lead to a chase scene and probably a combat scene. The game will end with a midnight battle, under the full moon with the weremage arch villain on his private zeppelin. If the pcs come up with stuff to hinder each other on the way to ensure that they are the one rescuing the courtesan, then that is just gravy!

What I'm looking for is:
- Ideas for cool scenes. I'm aiming for a three musketeer-ish atmosphere. Lots of passions, lots of action.
- Ideas for funny Lines and Rudolphs. I truly suck at coming up with stuff like this.

MadLordOfMilk
Posted: Wednesday, October 28, 2009 5:26:36 PM
Rank: Advanced Member
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Joined: 4/22/2009
Posts: 75
Points: 225
Location: Western NY, USA
Good luck! I'm running a few one-shots this weekend myself :)

How long do you plan the one-shot to be?

For cool scenes, ultimately they should just be scenes of what's happening. I found them right in your description! She's kidnapped, so it starts with a chase scene leading into a combat scene, for example. The thing is, the players' options are open-ended enough that it's tough to predict what'll happen in terms of "order" of the scenes, but even if you guess wrong you can easily make things up on the fly given the system is so rules-light. Unfortunately I'm not a ton of help with this; whenever I've run SK in the past it's been very sandbox-style. This weekend will be an interesting change of pace for me!

P.S. Inspirations always matter, one-shot or not. They're incredibly powerful abilities, and a huge part of gameplay :) I wouldn't worry about it.

As far as your plot, it sounds excellent! Even the competition between party members should work well. Stuff like one-roll "social encounters" (which ultimately are a quick opposed die check) are great when players disagree. I've had groups of characters with VERY different motivations work perfectly together because there was an in-game system to resolve who "won" arguments, etc. :)

For stuff like funny lines, what sort of game are you trying to run? Would you like something more along the lines of "so silly it's funny", stuff with innuendo, non-sequitur humor...?
Arkat
Posted: Sunday, November 08, 2009 2:33:59 PM
Rank: Advanced Member
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Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 47
Points: 141
Location: Norway
Thanks for the feedback. Unfortunately my real life intervened and I neither had time to prepare or read your answer before running the game. In addition to printing out a bunch of style sheets, my previous post was my entire preparation for the one-shot. Fortunately the game ran brilliantly!

As you suggested, we started out with a chase scene. The lady was abducted and the heroes gave chase across the rooftops. Combat with villains on the top of a church tower and the final showdown with the weremage in his crashing zeppelin. The warrior killed the mage, set the zeppelin down in a park and got the girl. The End. Fun was had by all.

Some reflections from me and my players.
- We ran the game back to back with Savage Worlds, and the fact that you never add dice in SK really makes for a slicker game-play. It is lightening fast once you get the hang of it.
- A couple of players commented on the fact that it took them quite some time to understand the nuances of the style sheets. This meant that some players used the same move again and again, while others made all sorts of cool moves.
- While the core game is very easy, there is a lot to remember. Critical hits, wild surges, class abilities, race abilities.
- I had some problems administrating the style sheets. They take a lot of space on the table and are crowded with tokens for every mook.
- I found out that good mooks have only 3 body and no armor. This way heroes with quality 3 weapons will take them down with one critical hit or two normal hits.

All in all a great experience. Will play it again.
MadLordOfMilk
Posted: Tuesday, November 10, 2009 2:24:39 AM
Rank: Advanced Member
Groups: Member

Joined: 4/22/2009
Posts: 75
Points: 225
Location: Western NY, USA
Arkat wrote:
- We ran the game back to back with Savage Worlds, and the fact that you never add dice in SK really makes for a slicker game-play. It is lightening fast once you get the hang of it.

This is one of my favorite things about SK :)
Arkat wrote:
- A couple of players commented on the fact that it took them quite some time to understand the nuances of the style sheets. This meant that some players used the same move again and again, while others made all sorts of cool moves.
I agree, they could be a bit clearer. I think the glosses helped a lot with that before. Once you get them figured out, it's very straightforward, but extra description can be nice to help people get a hang of them quickly.
Arkat wrote:
- While the core game is very easy, there is a lot to remember. Critical hits, wild surges, class abilities, race abilities.
As far as class and race abilities, I always write those down on the character sheet, it makes my life 100x easier. Also, I've found you can use SK in a very modular style. You don't necessarily need to use all the rules right away. When I first played it, I really just stuck with combat encounters and social encounters. Then I started using chase scenes once I had those in. Stuff like that.
Arkat wrote:
- I had some problems administrating the style sheets. They take a lot of space on the table and are crowded with tokens for every mook.
That's true, it can be tough as a DM. It really depends on the size of your combats and the size of your group. I didn't have to have more than 3 or 4 "enemies" up at a time, really, but I could see it quickly becoming overwhelming. Hmm, maybe a custom app is in order to allow a DM to pull up several of these at once and track them on-screen... but that might be a bit clunky/hard to maintain.
Arkat wrote:
- I found out that good mooks have only 3 body and no armor. This way heroes with quality 3 weapons will take them down with one critical hit or two normal hits.

Mooks are awesome :) Though, they might also be the main source of that style sheet crowding issue...

Arkat wrote:
All in all a great experience. Will play it again.
Glad to hear it! :)
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