How do you know when you're putting too much into a one-shot session? I'm currently writing our group's second-annual Halloween session. It started out as an epilogue to the campaign they just finished, but I've added more "scenes" to it and I'm concerned that it may be too much.
For background: the group just got out of a campaign where they had to deal with the aftermath of a long-dead hag. Now this Halloween, they will be forced to attend the hag's funeral! To me this sounds like a lot of fun on its own, but since I started working on it I have added two more scenes: one where minions are harassing a village for food (trick-or-treating) to take to the hag funeral, and one where the party must navigate a corn maze to reach a portal to the funeral.
My dilemma is this: both of these additional scenes seem like a lot of fun, but they also seem like they could be their own session entirely (a corn maze-themed dungeon crawl and a "save the town from fake monsters"-session). Would it be better to put them in the reserves for future Halloweens, or would that be too much planning ahead, and it's better to just use them now? The session will be three hours, so both of these segments would have to be relatively short if I use them in this adventure.
I'd use the trick-or-treating as you can spin it to have the players either fight the minions or realize its all in "good fun" and try to outdo the minions in order to take command of the hag army.
It looks like you already have a time frame in mind so what i suggest is figuring out how long or how important all the "scenes" in the story are. If the "scene" is not very important but is just meant for a good laugh for some fun then work to make it short and sweet, keep role-play pretty light during these scenes and keep the momentum going during these parts. If they have fights then keep the fights small and use them as an introduction to the types of fights that they will deal with. The "scenes" that you wish to put the most emphasis on and make center pieces for the story should have more detail and have the most time spent on them in order to engage your players. In my opinion i like the idea of the trick-or-treating goblins more than the portal and i think the goblins would add a comical aspect and make the session lighthearted. I hope this helps and wish you luck.
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How do you know when you're putting too much into a one-shot session? I'm currently writing our group's second-annual Halloween session. It started out as an epilogue to the campaign they just finished, but I've added more "scenes" to it and I'm concerned that it may be too much.
For background: the group just got out of a campaign where they had to deal with the aftermath of a long-dead hag. Now this Halloween, they will be forced to attend the hag's funeral! To me this sounds like a lot of fun on its own, but since I started working on it I have added two more scenes: one where minions are harassing a village for food (trick-or-treating) to take to the hag funeral, and one where the party must navigate a corn maze to reach a portal to the funeral.
My dilemma is this: both of these additional scenes seem like a lot of fun, but they also seem like they could be their own session entirely (a corn maze-themed dungeon crawl and a "save the town from fake monsters"-session). Would it be better to put them in the reserves for future Halloweens, or would that be too much planning ahead, and it's better to just use them now? The session will be three hours, so both of these segments would have to be relatively short if I use them in this adventure.
I'd use the trick-or-treating as you can spin it to have the players either fight the minions or realize its all in "good fun" and try to outdo the minions in order to take command of the hag army.
It looks like you already have a time frame in mind so what i suggest is figuring out how long or how important all the "scenes" in the story are. If the "scene" is not very important but is just meant for a good laugh for some fun then work to make it short and sweet, keep role-play pretty light during these scenes and keep the momentum going during these parts. If they have fights then keep the fights small and use them as an introduction to the types of fights that they will deal with. The "scenes" that you wish to put the most emphasis on and make center pieces for the story should have more detail and have the most time spent on them in order to engage your players. In my opinion i like the idea of the trick-or-treating goblins more than the portal and i think the goblins would add a comical aspect and make the session lighthearted. I hope this helps and wish you luck.