Hello all!  I'm looking to get some ideas for a one shot I'm looking to make for four friends of mine.  I"m a newer GM so this would be my first time running this.

The concept is that they pcs are going to be playing as stuffed animals (just basic reskin of races and classes, nothing fancy.  Its for fun and to let them pick what they want to play).  They are defending a sleeping child from nightmares and monsters under their bed.  The mission will ultimately be to find the child's favorite stuffed animal that was lost under the bed and is the final boss.

I'm looking for ideas for monsters or puzzles that could be done in the mission to find this lost toy.  I'm trying to figure out what a good mix would be for this sort of adventure stuffed toys would find fighting off nightmares and searching under the bed.  If anyone has any thoughts it would be great!

Thanks!

The favorite stuffed animal is the BBEG? Why? What's the reason they became the BBEG?

So all this is taking place in the child's head as they sleep? Or the toys are protecting the child from physical boogeymen in the room?

My initial thought is to have the BBEG be not the child's favorite toy but one they have cast aside and maybe is languishing under the bed. They've kidnapped the child's actual favorite toy and some of the toys loyal to the favorite and the child set out to free the favorite toy.

If this is taking place in the physical world, not the dream world, then some of the challenges could be getting past a beloved pet (maybe the child has been crying a lot because of the nightmares/lost toy so the family pet has taken to sleeping in the child's room or just outside it but will react to the toys being ambulatory). Setting the adventure in the physical world will somewhat limit you on locations and puzzles. In the dream world, the nightmare they're fighting through can be anything. Maybe the toys have to cross a wasteland of broken toys, fending off the whispers of the forgotten (WIS save or be frightened/paralyzed). Maybe they have to fend off someone like Sid in Toy Story who delights in taking toys apart and cannibalizing them into other things. Heck, those kinds of things could be the monsters they have to face in the BBEG's lair. Depending on what toys you cannibalize for the BBEG's henchmen, that can guide you to what MM stat blocks to use for the baddies.

Will your players know going in to the one-shot that they are playing stuffed animals? If not, I would suggest making them aware of it. I played a convention one-shot where we were all rats running around a mansion. It was supposed to be that way but because we didn't know, a couple of us wasted quite a bit of time in what limited time we had faffing around trying to figure out if this was an enemy spell or what and trying to figure out how to break it.

For monsters giant rats (really normal size but to plushie pcs they'd be giant), Owlbears as teddy bears, crawling hand as mittens/glvoes.  If the sleeping child is a girl monster high dolls (so you could pick any monster really then)

for puzzles. Perhaps there are other toys looking to guard some part of the room like the toy chest or cloest. To get entry the players need to answer a riddle or figure out the password. Tasha's book had a good password puzzle where the guard would give a number and the person would have to count the letters and give that number as answer.  or there's a pad lock on a chest and the players have to look around the room for the number combination.

I agree with cosplaywrite; be very, very careful if you use a child’s favorite toy as an end boss/villain.  You’re playing with childhood ideas, so expect your players to react with childlike emotions.  Discovering that your oldest, most beloved friend has betrayed you is devastating enough when it’s a person, but a stuffed toy is expected to never have the will, desire, or ability to turn traitor.  We trust our stuffed animals and baby blankets more than we ever trust a human being, especially as we get older.

That said, I think your idea is really cool!  I just think you’re going to need to handle the issue of a villain with care.

Honestly... you've got a lot of room for fun, silly scenarios with this setup.

Like, for a puzzle you could take an actual children's puzzle and force them to solve it or else another NPC won't assist them. In a traditional D&D setting you would have to pay an NPC for information, or maybe perform a job for them or something... but within the confines of this child-like setting, you could have an NPC that's just a big stuffed caterpillar who refuses to help the party until they answer some silly nursery rhyme riddles or like... solve one of those cheap plastic slide puzzles.

Maybe at some point the floor becomes lava simply because someone declares that it is, and suddenly the characters have to navigate a difficult map solving puzzles to get across. Maybe they've got a few lego pieces they can strategically place to use as bridges, or they have to knock over a toy chest and leap across the contents that spill out.

You mentioned fighting off nightmares, so I think that's a good source to pull from when creating monsters. I think insects in general are a good direction to lean... the MM is full of stuff like spiders, centipedes, etc. that would be terrifying to a child. 

You should check out the board game Stuffed Fables this is the concept of it so it might give you some good ideas to start from

Quote from TransmorpherDDS >>

Honestly... you've got a lot of room for fun, silly scenarios with this setup.

Like, for a puzzle you could take an actual children's puzzle and force them to solve it or else another NPC won't assist them. In a traditional D&D setting you would have to pay an NPC for information, or maybe perform a job for them or something... but within the confines of this child-like setting, you could have an NPC that's just a big stuffed caterpillar who refuses to help the party until they answer some silly nursery rhyme riddles or like... solve one of those cheap plastic slide puzzles.

Maybe at some point the floor becomes lava simply because someone declares that it is, and suddenly the characters have to navigate a difficult map solving puzzles to get across. Maybe they've got a few lego pieces they can strategically place to use as bridges, or they have to knock over a toy chest and leap across the contents that spill out.

You mentioned fighting off nightmares, so I think that's a good source to pull from when creating monsters. I think insects in general are a good direction to lean... the MM is full of stuff like spiders, centipedes, etc. that would be terrifying to a child. 

 Insects are a great idea!  I don’t know of any kid who isn’t/wasn’t terrified of bees.  My sister and I share a bizarre phobia: a fear of moths.  We don’t know why, but we’ve both been afraid of moths for as long as we can remember!  Oddly enough, however, nobody in my immediate family (including me, my sister, my brother, my mom, and my dad) has ever been afraid of spiders!

Kids often take on strange, unexplainable fears of random things.  When I was about two, I developed a paralyzing fear of turkeys that lasted for years.  The catch is, I had never even seen a turkey.  I didn’t even know what a turkey looked like!  

My point is, depending on how much backstory you want to give this kid, you can give them a fear of almost anything; it doesn’t have to be logical!

Thank you all!  These are great ideas, I like the rats and insects as maybe surprise encounters that could be tweaked if time is running short.

To clarify the end boss, its maybe a slight mystery that the favorite toy of the child has been corrupted by all the nightmares while they were trying to protect the kid.  I'm working out how to drop hints about that through the story, but that would be the prefect ending if they can figure it out.  These people are also my best friends for years, so I'm not too worried about it being a problem with all of them.  If I was running this for strangers, you all are correct and I would be careful about it.  But we're a big bunch of goofs so it could be cute or funny or endearing depending on how we play.

Thanks so much for the ideas, its helping me flesh out the ideas!