Starting in December of 2021, I embarked on a "Year of One-Shots", where I tried to run a one-shot adventure in a new system almost every month in 2022. I came pretty short of that (despite obviously starting early and also finishing in 2023), but overall I didn't do too badly. I ran one-shot adventures for the following systems:
- Hogwarts: A Role Playing Game (Harry Potter PbtA hack, Itch Link)
- Call of Cthulhu (roll20, 7th Edition Starter Adventure)
- Cyberpunk RED (roll20, Starter Set)
- 13th Age (roll20, Make Your Own Luck adventure)
- Savage Worlds (Foundry, Eye of Kilquato)
- The One Ring RPG (in-person, 2e, starter set)
- Queen Vicky's Sneakabouts (Foundry, Personal Genesys Setting)
- Magonomia (Foundry, Fate Condensed with a custom adventure)
- Achtung! Cthulhu (2d20, Foundry, quick-start)
Why did I do this? Well, I began roleplaying games with the D6 Star Wars in the 90s, but I was in elementary/middle school and never really played more than a few random sessions. I picked up D&D shortly after and but it took until around the end of middle school to get a campaign going, playing a mix of 2nd edition and the 3rd edition preview rule changes (mostly for saving throws and THAC0). Since then, I stayed with D&D until the first year of the pandemic.
At the time, I wanted to do something online (because, obviously, COVID), but that didn't require me to make detailed tactical battlemaps like D&D does (it does). I was drawn back to Star Wars, but this time, I grabbed the FFG (I guess now Edge Studio) Star Wars. I GM'ed a year-long campaign with one of my RPG groups, and I loved the narrative dice system and asked myself, "What else am I missing out on?" This year of one-shots was an attempt to answer that question, and to find what system I'd play when my in-person D&D campaign was over.
I'll make a few notes about what I think I learned or observed from each of these systems. To those who are well-versed in RPGs and storytelling, most of the observations are probably obvious. In fact, even I probably "knew" most of what I "learned" beforehand. But what running a bunch of one-shots in a year let me do was experience these things for myself. Finally, I'll try to summarize briefly why I would, and maybe would not, play each system.
Harry Potter PbtA
Full confession, I was not a good PbtA GM. I ran this slightly concurrently with the FFG Star Wars campaign (so before all these other one-shots) with another group of friends, and I don't really love Harry Potter. But I wanted to try something different and wanted to try PbtA. I won't use this little mini-campaign (like 4-6 sessions) to judge PbtA or the game.
What I think I did wrong is that I ran this and the players played it like a D&D adventure with different rules. More on that below in the Cyberpunk RED section, but basically I tried to plan too much instead of letting the players drive more. I shied away from interpersonal conflicts instead of letting them happen or heightening them. I made the players roll for trivial, uninteresting points, resulting in sort of nonsensical, uninteresting failures.
Witness my shame! But let this be a warning to those of you trying PbtA, it is not D&D and the system will fight you if you try to make it D&D! At the time though, I didn't understand well which of my GM'ing habits were D&D and which were broadly applicable. (I mean, I don't know if I'm actually better now, but hey, I might be!)
Why I would not play this again
- Maybe I'm too old to learn new RPGs styles (no)
- Not interested in Harry Potter
Why I would play this again
- PbtA experience
Call of Cthulhu
The system in 7th edition is reasonably straightforward (nice mechanics for advantage/disadvantage), but what I learned from this and from Cyberpunk RED is how different a setting can feel at the table. This is probably stupidly obvious to those who have played different games, but remember, I'd been playing basically nothing but heroic fantasy (with the exception of the Star Wars) for 25 years. CoC saw extremely different choices when the setup (exploring a potentially haunted house) is certainly a plausible D&D scenario.
This is also the first time I tracked Three Clue Rule . Again, this is probably weird to people who have run more than D&D or have at least engaged with online RPG content. I really hadn't until done "beyond D&D" until the pandemic, other than grabbing adventures or monsters. Like a lot of people, I think, I had mostly stuck to official Wizards of the Coast material.
At any rate, I loved the feeling that these characters could die, and the potential of that death promised to never go away. Additionally, without a class to archetype the characters, I felt like there was a lot more options for players to create (more on that in other systems).
Why I would not play this again
- Want something with heroes
- Want stories about people and not mysteries
Why I would play this again
- Cthulhu Mythos
- Easy system
- (I hear) fun published adventures
Cyberpunk RED
I was really excited for this, small-c cyberpunk is one of my favorite genres. I'd been aware of Shadowrun for decades (shoutout to the SNES game ), and I absolutely love Cyberpunk 2077 (it's one of my favorite games of all time). Never mind the countless cyberpunk novels, movies, and animes I've read and watched over the years. I was initially confused by the starter set's adventure. It presented situations instead of an obvious path and certainly not a dungeon crawl. Lots of text about hooking characters into potential scenes, and not so much about "the characters should do this next". It's not that I was unaware of this style of adventure, I had already done some of it while GM'ing the Star Wars campaign. But to see it in a published adventure was new to me.
I ran this twice, and the situations instead of paths created very different sessions. One of the sessions ended with a player grabbing a rocket launcher and downing a helicopter, which was sweet. The other ended with a semi-successful escape from corpo-backed gangs via a van, but unfortunately one of the players watched his character's (in-game, NPC) girlfriend lose her life.
I'd always been a bit afraid of was making really bad things happen to characters. Backstories could have bad things, but they would be off-screen motivation and not session developments. Yet, when I killed the girlfriend (it was me, the GM, but we both agreed it would be a pretty awesome and appropriate cyberpunk-y tragedy), I imagined a world of stories that opened up as we explored her death and the ramifications it could have. Maybe the girlfriend had been a secret corporate terrorist, an integral part of a small-time theft ring, or maybe there was a loving family she had run from. Maybe I could just keep thrusting people on the player that he would have to try to protect and fail to do so!
This was the first one-shot where I could easily see how a campaign could be based on the characters activities and choices, but I think that has less to do with setting or system, and more to do with how the starter kit set up the characters and led me to making more interesting GM choices.
Why I would not play this again
- System felt a little janky sometimes
Why I would play this again
- System is fairly straightforward
- Actually reasonable hacking
- Night City is dripping in flavor and lore
13th Age
This is (obviously) the most D&D-like game I played. I've heard 13th Age described as an alternate universe D&D 5e, a mash-up of 3rd and 4th edition, and that seems appropriate to me. I've actually been playing (not GM'ing!) a 13th Age campaign for a few months (in 2023, long after our one-shot) and that description just gets more accurate. As it's so D&D related, there's not much to say about how the one-shot felt. But I can comment on how the rules felt to me.
There are a few things I really liked about 13th Age. The combat felt dangerous, and swingy, and it seems to remain that way up to the mid-levels (based on the campaign I'm now playing). I think the choice to make skills sort of broader and more about the character was fun and works out okay (I'd say it seems like Fate aspects, but isn't everything a Fate aspect?). Icons was a great idea and to my mind, tilts the game towards more earth-shattering heroic fantasy and supports it better than D&D does. It was a touch awkward to use, and I'm not surprised to hear there's alternative icon rules.
After finishing the one-shot, I thought 13th Age was the system I'd prefer to use for heroic fantasy. After playing in a campaign, I no longer feel that way. I think the skill system is a good idea but requires a lot of GM fiat to interpret when a background applies. The icon system is clunky. Also, I'm sort of over classes and levels, for now at least, or I'm over heroic fantasy maybe. A regret as I look over the one-shots I've done is that I never got any OSR games scheduled. I certainly intended to, but somehow it never happened. (as I edit this, I did do a funnel adventure for DCC, which I may as well write-up at some point.)
Why I would not play this again
- D&D or its knockoffs are played out for me
- Icon system feels awkward
- Classes and numbers and power parsing, oh my.
Why I would play this again
- I admit, Heroic Fantasy is really really cool
- Icon System at least tries to hook mechanics to story
- One Unique Thing is something all D&D players secretly want
- Theater-of-the-mind ready combat
Part One Conclusion
This is longer (and much more rambling) than I think a blog post should be, so I'm going to split it up and get to reflections later. But I learned a lot about GM'ing and more to the point just from these few one-shots, I already knew that I didn't want to start any more D&D games. There's too much great stuff out there, and to limit yourself to always crawling dungeons seems pretty unfortunate! If any reader takes anything away from this, I hope that it's the "only D&D" players. Speaking as someone who mostly played D&D for decades, go try other things. You'll learn what D&D is really good at, and where it provides the most fun by seeing what other games and settings do well.