I have tried to make one-shots, but they usually end in my trend of: go to place, kill stuff/other. I just have no ideas (besides like, murder mystery) to do anything else

so ye :p

(also I try to make low, low level adventures)

SO, a one shot that is "good" has 3 basic parts to it:

1 -- the Players are invested in it; their characters have a personal reason to be doing the thing, and the players buy in on it. If the players aren't invested in it, then they won't have any kind of reason to really think about it or be a part of it. The easiest way to do this is to provide backgrounds that the players enjoy, or to work on them together.

2 -- A storyline. Not so much a Story, as a path that a story *could* take. There doesn't need to be a BBEG at the end, but there does need to be an end, as well as a beginning and a middle.

A Beginning will introduce the place, the characters, and the problem, and you should set up different hooks or baits to get the characters interest in taking a bite of them that will lead them into the the story. The problem can be anything, but it is the heart of the adventure. Often, folks will think of an adventure as needing a BBEG because the BBEG is the problem; that is not always the best way, however. Indeed, it is usually one of the worst things to do because it is done so much.

A Middle will start after the party is in the process of trying to solve the problem and will essentially involve a series of three to five "steps" or bits, one of which should se tth eparty back and make them think they will fail. A good cadence for this part is success, failure, success, failure, and success. These are steps in solving the problem, whatever it is, so a success means they solve some part of the problem, and a failure means what they tried to do didn't work. Failure is not death or or anything -- it is a challenge that they attempt but is basically a little too much for them. Each step should be a little harder than the last one. However, each time they try something they should learn a little more about the problem that will ultimatel lead them to the solution for the problem. 

An End comes after that last bit, when they have the solution to the problem and can dive into makign that happen. Usually this is the lead up to the big fight if a BBEG is involved, but it can be anything that solves the problem, whatever the problem is.

Three examples:

A - The Problem is a group of Bandits has been harassing caravans coming to and leaving a town. They are led by a Bandit Leader who is merciless and cruel. Standard stuff -- group of bad guys, a fort in the wilderness, a BBEG. (great for a side mission) Solution: Kill the bandits. Murderhobo happiness.

B -- The Problem is the town's water supply is drying up. The river is getting lower every week, and people are going thirsty and fighting over water. Far upstream, several days journey through wild lands, there is a series of dams, culminating in a Giant beaver dam that includes some awakened plants. Solution: slowly break the dams. Encourage the beavers to move on. WHich might involve climbing into the giant beaver dam. Although if they just blow the damn, they will flood and wipe out the town.

C -- The Problem is something is killing the crops, and some of the town's citizens are getting sick from eating tainted food. A blight has moved into the area, and is slowly killing everything -- caused by underground abyssal rats released by an accidental summoning gone bad. The solution is to get all the rats out. Of course, abyssal rats are kind demonic little bastards.

The key part of the adventure is not a bad guy or what creatures are to be fought or even if there is going to be combat at all. The key part, the core, the heart, is a problem that needs to be solved. Early on they learn about the problem and it becomes personal or important to them. As they try to solve it, they have success that begins to explain the problem to them more clearly, leading them to the next clue pr thing they have to do, until finally they figure out what it is they have to do to solve the problem, whatever the problem they have to solve is.

3 -- The last thing is it needs to test all the characters. As they move forward, there should be something that each member of the party can shine at being the one that can do it -- bonus points if they are the only one. There still needs to be things that they can all do (like combat), but there needs to be things that need that strange skill, or that rely on that particular background, or that employ that one special magical item.

Most of the time, Dms will sit there and figure out some cool thing and a way to solve it and then hope that the players will solve it -- when what hey should probably spend more time on is cool things that the characters can do, not the players. The Players are not the heroes of the story, the characters are. This is why puzzles and traps can be so tricky to get right -- they rely on the players, because you can't rely on the knowledge of the characters since that's just a score on a sheet meant to be used with a roll of the dice.

Now, note that of those three things, two of them require the DM to know the characters in the one shot. If the players are just power tripping murder hobos, well, they are going to love doing a whole lot of "A" type stuff. Role Players are probably going to really enjoy the B type stuff. But the reason these things make for a great one-shot is because they bring all of it together, and they involve the broader sweep of the players and their characters, and are about what they do and how they do it more than any kind of story that the DM wants to tell for their sake.

This is, of course, entirely my opinion. And I will note that a lot of the published adventures sorta completely ignore a lot of it. BUt if you want to make a good one-shot, even for sale, then it needs to find ways to incorporate these kinds of things -- from possible background suggestions to ideas for NPCs that are friends of the party members, to just having it be something that personally affects the players. It means suggesting certain Feats or skills or magical items, and maybe even giving them out early in the process as chekov's guns that will be useless after the adventure is over.

But, you asked, and that's what comes to mind.

So, something else occured to me.

A good One shot can mean a couple different things.

It can mean  single session adventure (in which case everything is small and short), or it can mean a one time adventure.

Generally speaking, I like to use movies for my one shots.I will yank a movie out of my collection, often something everyone has seen, and the make it into an adventure for my game. 

I've done something with pretty much every Marvel movie, for example. I've used gone with the wind. I've used agatha christie movies and Friday the 13th films. Since there's pretty much no movie I can't turn into a D&D adventure, it is fairly easy for me.

And it is usually somewhat fun when folks realize they are playing in that movie about half way through the adventure, sometimes later, because I don't use the same names and it sure as heck ain't the same places, but it often becomes familiar because of the story beats.

Quote from inew >>

I have tried to make one-shots, but they usually end in my trend of: go to place, kill stuff/other. I just have no ideas (besides like, murder mystery) to do anything else

so ye :p

(also I try to make low, low level adventures)

Aim, if you have one shot, you must aim.  

This endeth the lesson.