One-shot Scenarios

[Finarvyn]

One of the problems that I encounter in the Amberverse is that once my group invests all of this time in character creation, they want to have a long-term campaign. This means I generally put together a bunch of plot threads and hang them out there for my players to grab or not, as they choose.

I'm not entirely certain if this is the fault of the style of the rules or the style of the GM (me).

What I'm not as good at is the creation of a meaningful one-shot or one-night adventure. Clearly this is done often, since most AmberCon sessions are limited to a couple of hours rather than a couple of months.

So ... what are your secrets and suggestions as to the creation of one-shot ADRP adventures. (Or, if you have them online, post some links.)

[Dilvish]

I'm a little new to Amber and do not have any of these. I would be interested.

[serendipity]

I've played one game with Erick Wujcik (while at Chicago Game Conclave one year). He sort of skirted the whole one-shot/campaign scenario issue. He gave us half an hour to create characters and then dumped us into a situation and let us game. In fact, he left the room for about an hour while we were interacting. It was a great day of gaming and had closure, but I get the feeling it could have lasted as long as we did. In other words, there wasn't a definite ending that had to complete the session. It ended where there seemed to be a few ends tied up. We could easily have continued on to another point with equal success.

I like to think of it like climbing a mountain. There may be a number of false summits--points at which you could decide to stop climbing even though as you arrive you can see that the true summit is higher yet. Stopping at a false summit means you could continue the climb later, but there's still a feeling of achievement and completion.

[Arref]

It might not help everyone, but there are "one shot concepts" described in the game books from past Ambercons.

You'd have to do the work yourself for how such a game would be structured. There are no GM notes included. Look under 'game book' for each year.

www.ambercon.com/past_cons.html

[coffeenpizza]

Most of my Amber gaming has been running one-shot adventures, specifically at Dundracon. I'm not sure how good they are as I'm the only one who ever runs Amber at that con. I can say that every year my game has grown by two or three people as previous players tell their friends. I also have a very loyal group of about ten people I can count on to see every year. Enough about credintials here's my take on running a one shot Amber game.

Competive games work better than cooprative ones. Definatly not every man for himself, but games that set up cabals and secert alliances. Games that have a clear win situation, throne wars are a good example but that's another thread, work well for this type of game. I've run a game where the objective was to be Merlin's wife as Queen of choas and survive till the wedding. I've started games where the players are in the middle of a war and thier actions determine who the winning side is. The main advantage of competive games is the players tend to spend most of their time forming alliances, hence entertaining the majority of the group, so I can focus my time on private meetings to dish out information that not everyone has.

Pre-generated characters tend to work best, followed by making characters speciffically for the game. Characters from pervious games don't usually work because they're from a deferent "multiverse" where the rules work differently. In my exprience great Amber players don't mind recreating they're favorite characters to fit my vision of Amber, and we get a great game. Having a limited character quiz, say ten questions, really helps set the tone of the game. For example in last years game I had the question "How many times have you died before?" setting the tone that your character may die, but that's not the end of the game.

I think it's extremly important to have a real time structure for your one shot game. At a con it's actually easier because you have a time limit. I've almost always used the time ratio of one hour of real time equals one day of game time. I call the hours so everyone knows when time is advancing. I also make the players get in line to talk to me privately. I use a system of how long they want with me to determine where they are in line. The catagories are yes/no question, 30 seconds, two minutes, five minutes, and combat. Those with least time GM time requirment get their issuses resolved fastest. In particular I'd like to point out that combat is at the end because it usually takes awhile to judge.

That was a a lot for a first post, but thanks for the forum and I hope I've helped a little.

[nihilisticmind]

coffeenpizza said:

I've run a game where the objective was to be Merlin's wife as Queen of choas and survive till the wedding.

I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THAT IDEA! ;D

I'm gonna have to apply it to a one-shot session we might have with new players. If you wanna share more details, I'd love to hear!

[blinky55]

The Ambercon past cons scenario descriptions are dead sadly, the page is still operational thou. Wayback Machine has not worked either;/ So, if anybody still has the page contents it would really help if they posted them here. Maybe ill try getting in contact with Ambercon staff to see if they can contribute.

Regarding the topic itself, i plan to write a bit on it in the future, considering how crafting adventure scenarios can be a real hassle in this game. But one could say that about all of them i guess.

[ed]

There does still seem to be Amber chat on Discord. You may have more luck getting Con information there.