Design Diary: One Shot for Gencon 2024
Thoughts from behind the curtain...
Welcome to the Glyph and Grok - A “weekly” blog-letter exploring topics in the tabletop gaming arena. We explore design, execution, and culture relating to anything played on a tabletop.
Introduction
For the last however many years I don’t even know anymore (at least 5), I’ve been going to Gencon in Indi as a booth helper for my good friends at Archon Games. As part of my effort to thank the crew and as an excuse to have a a good time, I offer to run some kind of live TTRPG game.
In recent years this has been 5E, then Shadowdark, and has led to giving me some excellent experience running for a big group. This year, I’m thinking to do a rules hack and smash between Knave and Shadowdark and see if I can reach a darker aesthetic that I know works with this group.
Design
I will usually prepare some story idea ahead of the convention and then when the group confirms I sprint together some dungeon map I found online and wing a decent portion of the adventure. Games like Shadowdark and Mork Borg with their amazing rolltables have made it easier for me to just roll through and improvise, but I still prefer to do the random rolling before the night of the game, because multiple years now we’ve gone over the time limit for the convention and the space we’ve taken over for the game gets locked down and we get kicked out. ALSO, I’ve run way over time.
My sweet spot in designing one-shots is usually 3 hours, but I almost always go over. This year, I’m going to use some of the real-world timer design of Shadowdark to put a hard 2-hour timer on phase 1 of the game, then have a finale phase 2.
Gencon is NEXT WEEK, so I don’t really have that much time. I need to spend more time preparing and less time overlapping fun ideas that each has a need to be fleshed out.
I plan to come up with a rules reference guide, reference “map” and room key, a couple factions, 10 traps, 10 npcs, 10 treasures/relics to sprinkle, and I’ve got about a week from today to get all this in order.
Here now I will share the introduction I wrote for the game and post a rough picture of The Craghold.
Hidden away at the reaches of a craggy northern coast, there is a great work of the last age built into the high cliff bluffs known as Craghold. The only sign of its existence to the outside world a clockwork light house intended to keep ships from smashing themselves upon the toothy lower jaw of the coastline.
Thought abandoned long ago and left as a wonder by some mage or master maker, The Craghold seems to have been recently taken as a power center as ships have been seen farther up the coast flying the colors of the Order of the Illuminate. Zealous followers of the Lord of Light and constant crusaders against the disparate clans that have lived in this area in relative peace and their heathenous gods.
You have seen the Mercy of Illumination first hand. One by one, the heroes of your peoples have been reduced to the songs of bards. Most given to the flame atop a ritual pyre.
Now knights supplicant have collected what is left of working and fighting age people's of your villages, you all among them, and placed them in heavy rune-carved manacles and blindfolded you with strips of red dyed cloth.
You are all huddled together in the back of a horse drawn, iron-barred carriage. A merciful high coastal wind whips away the stink of your fellow captives. A bead of light keeps moving across your eye coverings. As time passes the light grows larger and washes over your cart and then points out to sea.
You are being taken to the clockwork lighthouse on the bluff, the entrance to Craghold.
The iron bar gate creaks and you are all marched off the carriage and to a large reinforced wooden gate with torch wielding guards. The massive doors creak as they are pushed into the cliffside and reveal a stone hall lit by braziers.
You are prodded forward, and descend until you are made to kneel in a cool stone room. Your eye coverings are finally removed and are met with a large dome of a room adorned with carvings of cogs, stars, and mechanical beasts of all manner arrayed in a constellation across the ceiling. The pinnacle of the ceiling reaching 40 ft at its center.
A 10 foot wide hole of darkness yawns open in the center of the room. Across from your retinue, a thick wooden table is arrayed with simple chairs around a resplendent metal-adorned throne with a sun coming over the horizon at the top of its back. Each seat has a robed and hooded figure in various shades of red and white, and on the throne a mask of ivory depicting a stern, august visage sits as if in judgement. A deep and strange voice comes from it.
"Welcome you wretched souls. Rejoice, for you have been chosen to serve a most glorious purpose."
Conclusion
Preparing and running this game is always a joy for me. I love the people and the challenge, and I love the moments and memories these games produce.
What do you think? Please comment below. If I like this game after it’s run, I may write it up as a one-pager, but I’d be posting here about the results and the ruleset as I go.
If you’d like to see more content around designing and running one-shot TTRPG games, please comment so! I am very interested in what content resonates.
If you’re at the con, I’ll usually be at the Archon Games booth, come by and say hi!
What I Am Up To
TTRPG Reading: Wanderhome, Shadow of the Demon Lord, Solodark
TTRPG Production: Lots of Ideas to Hone :P
Other Learning: The Mythic Bestiary
Audiobook: The Daughter’s War by
Useful Things For Your Games
Spotify Playlist Add - Role: Calming Background Piano
I like the hook on this post. I'm hoping to run some successful one shots in the future. I have many players in my world, and the majority of them are playing solo in instead of in a group (beauty of PBP style DMing).
I am running my first one shot (of a sort) tomorrow. It is the TLI (Transdimensional Literary Invitational)... aka a PVP battle with literary characters.