Let’s Craft a One-Shot: The Short Stories of TTRPGs.
So you want to write a TTRPG adventure, and you heeded my advice and decided to start with a one-shot to get your feet wet. That’s fantastic! Oh? A question? How do you write a one-shot? I’m glad you asked.
Taking adventures and making them bite-sized.
A one-shot is a small adventure designed to be played in a single sitting. Depending on your group, the size, and the length of your sessions, that could change the dynamics of what you’ll be able to do. A four-person 4 hour session will be able to get through a slightly more complex story than a six-person 3 hour session. You will also want to tailor your one-shot to the playstyle preferences of your party. One of my parties are fans of action, so the one-shots I write for them tend to be heavy on combat. Another one-shot I ran for a group of young teenagers was simplified in scope and complexity to be more accessible to their age group. These minor adjustments will make all the difference in a smooth game day.
Remember from my last article that the overhead of TTRPG’s is a big factor in success, and the above-mentioned practical considerations should be first on your list. Being a one-shot, you might be able to get away with a more involved play session than a weekly game, so before you start, figure out who’s coming, for how long, then fire up the creative engine.
The Fundamentals
One-shots being short stories don’t have much in the way of complex storytelling. But that doesn’t mean you have no room for complex characters and a deeply developed world. The task at hand may be simple, but writing a good villain will make the story compelling, even in short form. You can also opt to exclude a villain altogether and take an approach of the party vs the natural world, but you’ll still need a basic plot and an NPC to help drive your story. The world of the one-shot may be small, but to your heroes, it’s the most important thing of their lives right now, so treat the story as such.
I’ll use Episode 6 of my actual play as an example. A zoologist needs some adventurers to fight a monster while she takes research notes on its fighting technique for a book. We have a strong supporting character, the zoologist, to give the adventurers a task. As she’s there chiefly as a researcher, it also allows her, and by extension the DM, to accompany the party, but also gives her an excuse to stay out of the action so that the players can do the fun combat.
Let’s write a one-shot.
The easiest way for me to explain the writing process of a one-shot is to show you mine. We’ll take a one-sentence prompt and turn it into a small 2-3 hour adventure. I won’t do all the work, because that will spoil the fun, but feel free to use what we come up with as a template to build on. This adventure will be half combat, half roleplay, and we’ll build on this prompt:
“Someone has stolen the queen’s birthday cake!"
The Hook
Ok, we have our prompt. Let’s see how we can dress this up with some intrigue for a session. We need some reason for our adventurers to want to get involved in investigating this theft, so let’s add a reward for help offered. But let’s expand the scope beyond Grand Theft Pastry. To up the stakes, let’s say that someone has stolen the queen’s birthday cake, and also, there’s been a murder, but that’s not important right now. Just like that, we’ve established a few important details. A murder mystery, a theft, and the general NPC perception of the relative importance of the two events. This intro, despite being played for laughs, also hints at the kind of kingdom the adventurers are in and is a great tool for backstory and worldbuilding. To answer the important question of how the party gets involved, we can take a simple approach. As it is the queen’s birthday, let’s say the party is in attendance of celebrations when they hear the scream of whoever finds the body, and being noble adventurers, they investigate. (An alternative approach is the party being sought out specifically for their skill and renown.)
The Plot and Characters.
We have our story. Our party is tasked with solving a murder and a theft, and there’s a hefty reward for them. But now we need a heading. A murder mystery is a classic whodunit, and like any whodunit, we’ll need a victim and some suspects.
A cake has been stolen, so let’s make the murdered party the baker’s apprentice. But who would be out to kill a baker’s apprentice? After all, he’s an innocent here. So let’s weave a story. A bakery tasked with baking the queen’s birthday cake would have renown, so perhaps this apprentice won a coveted spot. Which would make his enemies fellow bakers who applied for the same position. For the sake of a short story, let’s say there are four bakeries in the area, all of which have new apprentices who failed to reach this crown bakery.
Again, these details might seem silly at first, but that’s okay. In a world where we fight dragons and merfolk, solving the theft of a cake is pretty mundane. The key is consistency and scale. Four suspects is an hour or two of roleplay, and allows for a small-scale murder investigation. Add in some constables, and we’re starting to have the foundation of a good story.
Rising Action
Which baker committed the murder is only half as important as the thrill of the hunt. You could easily run a whodunit that ends in identifying the murderer from clues and bringing them to justice, but we also want some danger. This serves two purposes: a reason for your party to catch the suspect, and it can build the character of your murderer. How do you add this danger? Thematically!
We’re solving a bakery-related murder, so keep the threats on theme. Perhaps a rack of knives almost falls on a particular member, or a bowl of cake batter explodes in their face. Once again, we are taking the silly and making a serious adventure, and while cake batter exploding is funny, it can be a very real threat that also demonstrates the capabilities of the murderer. This also gives the party a clue of possible strategies in taking her down, and lets them formulate a plan before the takedown.
The Climactic Combat
As we investigate the murder, we will come up with a suspect. The details of who and why I’ll leave to you, but they will be found, and this is your chance to add some thematic combat. Our murder suspect is a baker, so would have various implements found in a bakery available to her as weapons. For low-level adventurers, she might attack with a knife or rolling pin, but if you want to up the stakes, you can let her attack with improvised splash potions and other minor witchcraft. Remember that exploding batter? That’s a great way to do fire and potentially acid damage.
Write a combat how you see fit, and let the party decide if they capture or kill the murderer. Giving them decisions like these allows them to show their true colors, and if this is a one-shot to long-term adventure, allows for a foundation building for further character exploration.
The Denouement
It may only be 15 minutes, but make sure to write a conclusion to your little adventure. Have the party meet the queen and earn their reward. And just because it’s the end doesn’t mean you can’t add characterization. Maybe the queen cares more about the death of a citizen than a trifle cake, and you can subvert expectations, keeping the party engaged.
Closing Thoughts
And that’s really all there is to it. Remember, no idea is too crazy, and in every case, execution is where a story comes alive. If you’re stuck on pacing, my recommendation is to look at one-shots already out in the world. DM’s Guild is a great place to find some of these, with the added benefit that most of them are written by community members just like yourself. A key element of storytelling is to embrace the silliness, especially in fantasy writing. And while you can read a lot of articles on the “how”, the best way to write good adventures is to write some not-so-good ones first. If you need prompts, I would recommend what I love doing: scoping out Reddit’s Writing Prompts subreddit. So go out and write an adventure and tell me about your stories!
Until next time, may the rolls be ever in your favor!
Zia Ellithiel is a game artist and forever Game Master, who has been running D&D fifth edition adventures for over ten years. You can connect with her on Bluesky at @spacegothprincess.