What's your favorite one-shot? Any system, any setting.

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E-Rocker

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Like it says on the tin, I want to know what your favorite one-shot RPG adventure is, regardless of system or setting. What do you like about it? What makes it fun/ cool/ interesting, etc.?

Hoping to find some things I can convert to Savage Worlds for my library games, which are always one-shots, but I also just want to hear about your favorites.
 
Swords & Wizardry Complete with Stoneheart Valley or Shadow of the Demon Lord with Tales of the Demon Lord. Being a D&D player since '89 or so, S&W comes so naturally. Shadow is just plain easy to run.
 
Jailbreak for Unknown Armies is very good and could easily be run with most other systems.

Hunger for Paranoia offers an entirely different non wacky way to view Paranoia. It's very Alpha Complex specific though so won't work for your purposes.

Monsters vs Humans is basically just sit down LARP, but it's a lot of fun.
 
Coffee Break of the Living Dead from the All Flesh Must Be Eaten GM (excuse me, ZM) screen.

I’ve run it 8 or so times and it’s always different.
 
Swords & Wizardry Complete with Stoneheart Valley
Definitely a fun starter adventure. It's got an easy setup to hook the players, a nice bit of wilderness to explore if you've got a longer session, and the keep is a perfect size for an evening's dunfeoneering. And that thing in the basement is appropriately frightening to a low level party with good foreshadowing.

In the same Lost Land, I've had a lot of fun running Grimmsgate a couple times. The village has a wonderfully depressed feel, like it's about to just be swallowed by the forest and lost forever, and the nearby dungeon is interesting. Although not very large, it still manages four different entries and a variety of paths through.
 
The Edge of Darkness for Call of Cthulhu is one of my favorites. A close second is In Media Res from Pagan Publishing, also for Call of Cthulhu. Both are a lot of fun, and I've run each a number of times for different gaming groups over the years.
 
Behind Enemy Lines (first edition; accept no substitutes!).

Also ran: Boot Hill (second edition)

I would have considered listing The Fantasy Trip, but the risk of your one shot turning into a campaign is too great!
 
Dead Ringer for WFRP2e. It’s just a great one shot scenario with a bit of everything. You can find it free on the internet as it was a finalist in a scenario design contest.

Other great one shots:
- Oakwood Heights for Kult
- Night Floors for Delta Green
- Joy & Sorrow for Unknown Armies
- Village of Hommlet for D&D
- Zombie World (though this is less a scenario and more a create your own scenario RPG)
 
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It's a good one shot with 3 different reasons for the sharks so it's reusable, and has 20 or so pregens for players to draw from when they inevitably get eaten.

As the GM you can freely kill characters as much as you want, players just grab the next pregen from the pile and the game goes on.

Eats a lot of printer ink if you print out the maps and such though.
 
Rogue Night from the Rogue 417 setting book for Fringeworthy. It's a slow burn as a deadly virus spreads and PCs are members of a National Guard unit trying to keep things together. It's Post-Apocalypse during the collapse of civilization.

If you know the original Tri Tac game system, you know how deadly the combat can be, with those very detailed hit location tables.
 
I kinda like I Foogled You! as it works well as a one-shot pilot episode but can also be picked up by the network for a whole season if everyone enjoys it.

Edit: forgot to mention this is for Toon.
 
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Brock Savage Brock Savage already beat me to mentioning Ten Candles so I'll go with 'In Media Res' for CoC. Won't mention the premise as the PCs not knowing it is part of the fun.
 
I've never planned it this way, but every time I run a Zombie Apocalypse (AFMBE) game it ends up being a one shot. I'd like to do a campaign, though, maybe with a different system to break the curse.
 
I've never planned it this way, but every time I run a Zombie Apocalypse (AFMBE) game it ends up being a one shot. I'd like to do a campaign, though, maybe with a different system to break the curse.
Well, you can always try Atomic Highway:smile:!

Though one-shots and the PA genre just kinda fit together. So maybe you're just doing something right:wink:!
 
Well, you can always try Atomic Highway:smile:!

Though one-shots and the PA genre just kinda fit together. So maybe you're just doing something right:wink:!
Have you played Atomic Highway? I do like Gallant Knight games
 
Have you played Atomic Highway? I do like Gallant Knight games
Yes. Amusingly, the longest PA campaign I've played in, was using Atomic Highway...and I played a pitfighter with lizard genes from a primitive place:grin:!
I can only recommend the system, though no doubt the GM had a lot to do with the campaign's success. He's pretty good at this kind of games, too.

Then again, this is also the campaign where my PC used WMAs to murder a band numbering in the thousands. They were threatening his home town, so they had it coming, in his simplistic worldview (which also included Bible references, so I suspect quoting it would break more than one forum rule:shade:)!

Our more advanced friends from the Enclave-analogue were less than amused, though. But at least that was the point when they started taking us seriously and actually negotiating on more even terms:devil:!
 
I've had lots of success with the starter kit for Star Wars: Edge of the Empire. I had a lot of fun playing it as well as GM'ing it with others. It's a bit railroady, but I think a starter game for an RPG people may not be familiar with could use a bit of railroading since most of it is about getting a feel for the rules and system.
 
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