Why One-Shot RPGs are recommended for beginner players and challenging for beginner GMs

I’ve never heard of dungeons and dragons until college. The concept of RPG did not really exist for me outside of acting. 

Over the past few months for the game design class, I played 4 one-shot RPGs as a player, and led 3 of my own as a GM. It’s the first time I’ve ever played RPGs in general. After this intense intro to tabletop RPG, or RPG one-shots, I decided to share what I learned — why I think one-shot RPGs are recommended for beginner players and challenging for beginner GMs.

Quick personalized character building

One-shot RPGs is a quick way for friends to get together and have a few hours of fun without the energy and time investment for a dungeons and dragons campaign, which sometimes could last for months or even years. A quick one-shot could finish in 2 hours. Players are often offered a table with character traits to build their characters around. I’ve never played dungeons and dragons so I don’t know how characters are built. But one-shots allow very quick and personalized character building. The character traits are designed to fit the theme of the game.

For example, here’s the character trait table from Honey Heist, Where every player is a bear. The group together aims to steal honey from a honey convention ran by humans.

Honey Heist Character Trait Table

Simple mechanics that reenforce player characters

One-shots have simple mechanics that are easy to adhere to and reenforce.

In Honey Heist, for example, everyone is a bear. The 2 player stats — bear and criminal represent how bear-like and non-bear-like a player is. Higher bear points allow a player to perform bear actions such as intimidating, running and climbing. Higher criminal points allow the opposite actions, anything that’s not bear-like. The 2 stats always add up to 6, so the player only shifts point between these 2 stats.

While simple, this is a clever way to reenforce the player character, because they dictate what the player is good at and not good at. 

Another example of simple stats that reenforce player characters is Lasers & Feelings. The player choose a number 2-5 to divide their 2 stats — Lasers and Feelings. When performing an action, they roll for Lasers (science and reason) or Feelings (rapport and passion). If they roll for Lasers, they want to roll under the number they chose. If rolling for Feelings, they want to roll over the number. If they rolled exactly the number, they can ask a laser feelings question.

One thing I like more about this point system than Honey Heist is how it divides up success into 4 levels. The different levels of success allow the GMs to have more “legitimate” control over the situation. The players roll different numbers of dice depend on if they are prepared and/or an expert. The 4 levels of success are — no success, bare minimum success, decent success and critical success. While rolling 3 dice allows higher chance of success in general, the GMs can decide what a critical success mean in any situation. 

On the contrary, Honey Heist doesn’t provide a good way for the GMs to work around the outcome of randomness. When I led 3 rip-offs of Honey Heist, I allowed the players to roll 2 dice if they were good at something. The chance of failing during a critical moment kind of happens all the time. I needed to improvise a lot to make sure that the players do not give up. Sometimes it’s scary when the players fail for a few times even when they are experts. It felt like cheating when I asked the players to re-roll their 2 dice just to succeed.

Lots of improvisation for GMs

Even though one-shots provide great settings for beginner players (simple rules and fun mechanics), they are often challenging for beginner GMs because they ask for a lot of improvisation. The lack of rules and mechanics in one-shots shift the responsibility of making up a concrete story structure while offering a decent amount of freedom to the GMs.

A lot of the fun in playing RPGs is in the freedom of exploration. While maintaining short timeframe, the GMs is responsible for keeping things going and allowing a decent degree of freedom. Therefore, the GMs need to balance:

• Freedom

• Story (puzzles)

• Time

All of these combined leads to lots of improvisation that might be challenging for first-time GMs. 

That’s been said, one-shots ask the GMs to improvise a lot. It’s mostly up to the GMs how the game unfolds.

Four Sherlock Holmes and a Vampire is a very fun one-shot RPG that asks for more improvisation than other ones I’ve played. In this RPG, every player is a Sherlock Holmes and only one is a fake “vampire”, who pretends to be a Sherlock Holmes. The players by the end of the game need to figure out who among them is the fake “vampire”. The story in this game is not essential, because the players come up with the settings and investigate on the go. They come up with situations that help identify who’s the fake “vampire”. GM in this game helps keep the game running by reacting to the ever-changing scenarios. 

This game is challenging for first time GMs because how flexible it is. It doesn’t have a point system. The GMs’ goal is to help the players interact with each other while the setting is completely fluid. Improvisation in this game is the ultimate fun and challenge.

To sum up

Why are one-shot RPGs recommended for beginner players:

• Short time = less energy investment

• Quick personalized character building

• Simple mechanics to adhere to and reenforce (puzzle)

Why are one-shots challenging for beginner GMs:

• Lots of improvisation

Happy one-shoting :)