This is awesome. There should be 6 of them, a couple of 10-11 year olds and four 12-14s. They've all played before.

I need to run a one-shot for them, about four hours. I'm busily coming up with ideas, but I figured I should ask for yours. Any one-shot modules I should shamelessly steal from? Any ideas?


I'll be making pregen characters, too (more than six, so they have some choice). Any ideas for those?

There's always the uber classic: Keep on the Border lands.

I'd start with a small combat encounter, then (maybe) a RP encounter (which they can combat out of), and then have a big combat encounter at the end.

The stuff in between?  Doesn't matter.  Breadcrumbs.

Make 8 characters if you have time.  Decide if you will allow them to modify feats, etc., or not before you start.

Figure out what level you want to do it.

Higher level characters required more work, but they also offer more opportunities.

Beginning characters offer pretty much the same fare of monsters to fight (giant rats, orcs or goblins, skeletons or zombies, and... that's about it).

If this is a one-time, single session, why not use a published tournament module like one of the sessions from the classic Slavelords/Giants/Queen of the Demonweb Pits series?  Those are designed to be run as a single session, may come with pregenerated characters and should have the necessary flavour to allow fun for both the hack-n-slash wargamers and the drama lovers.
Alternatively, if you have a city with a vibrant atmosphere, just set up a simple plot and let them follow their own ideas in how to accomplish the goal(s), interacting with each othee and with your NPCs.  I have had a mystery that I set up on one page in a pocket-sized notebook turn into six weeks of very enjoyable Champions gaming, so don't worry about not plotting LotR for them.

Well... basically, it's because I don't think the published modules are very good. As far as I know they're all very combat-heavy, and don't give that much room to improvise. Coming up with pregens isn't difficult, and frankly I'd rather make them myself in any case; official pregens are usually full of questionable choices.


An idea I've had, drawing on a non-one-shot I've run before, was that the PCs are agents of the royal family (direct or indirect). Said family came into power a couple of centuries ago, during a big war, and they've pretty much all been geniuses, brilliant leaders, very good for the kingdom. Currently, there's an exiled older son, a daughter off studying somewhere... and the youngest prince: a prodigal son, careless about his duties but loved by the common people, with a fondness for slumming it--he hangs out with the guards who serve him, spends his time in rather obvious disguise about town, etc.
Secretly, he's actually as brilliant as the rest of his family, and is the unofficial liason to the common people of the city (who come to him with things they wouldn't or couldn't approach the royal court with) for his parents.

He disappears. Poof, up and vanishes, no note, nothing (although there'll be plenty of clues to point them in the right direction, obviously). He does this because he wants to prevent some sort of conflict that he feels is urgent (he can't convince his father of the fact, though, which is why he's run off to do it himself). The players need to track him down and bring him back discreetly; of course, by the time they find him, he'll try to shanghai them into helping him.

The conflict in question is a gathering of hobgoblin tribes. They're gathering at the instigation of the aforementioned exiled prince, who feels that the throne is his by right, and wants to hit the capital city during the big festival and put himself on the throne (at which point, because he's royalty, he shouldn't need too much military force to hold--once he's gotten his brother and parents out of the way).


Of course, that might be too much for four hours. Maybe I should simplify and keep it vaguer.

Yeah, I got overcomplicated.

However, I've gotten a better idea: Planescape! Providing an excuse is simple--find X person or Y object--and it's got a lot of advantages. It's a cool setting that their characters will be new to (as visiting Primes), it'll let me use any crunch I make (since I can always just put it wherever they go), and there's certainly no shortage of interesting people to talk to.

I'm glad it went well.  Would you care to share any details?