It is no secret that at the moment I am quite a fan of single session RPGs. There are lots of reasons for this, but first let me clear the air. I love long running campaigns. I love being in them and I really look forward to writing a much longer campaign with a lot more scope to expand the characters and the world that they are living within.
However lets be honest, as a GM there are times when a one off is needed. You know the ones; you have sat there for many nights till the wee hours slaving over the details, making sure the next sessions notes are perfect. You get to the big night, you lay out your maps, your GM shield, and you brought spare pencils and rubbers and dice... then your phone pings .. one of the players has cancelled at the last minute. Everyone is psyched ready for a session, you want to run one, but maybe you need all the players there, for consistency, or maybe specific skills. What to do? This is one of the many places a one off adventure that you can just pull out and run is great.
That all said there are lots of other reasons. I know plenty of players who love being involved in tabletop RPGs but just can't commit to a campaign. Maybe in another post I'll mull over ways to run campaigns with drop in drop out characters, but for now I'll focus on single sessions. Life has a habit of catching up with people, they find they just can't do that one night every month. Or maybe the players just like to vary it up, or you may need a break to write the next section to your epic campaign!
All these are reasons why I think the single session RPGs are absolutely great, and where I'm focusing my time on trying to get into the indie publishing scene specifically from the point of view of one offs. I may re-use styles, settings etc. however each one will be written with a view to being able to be completed within a session and without a reliance on the other adventures.
Don't get me wrong. If I got the opportunity to write a large scale adventure I'd jump at that as well! However for now I'll set my sights on what I can see!
Enough procrastination, back to writing!
No comments:
Post a Comment