Having More Fun in One Shots

Drive It Like You Stole It

Jan 14, 2025

I have a confession that might be a bit surprising: I rarely feel confident as a TTRPG player.

It’s probably a strange thing to hear considering I play games professionally and co-own a TTRPG company, but most of my gaming career has seen me seated behind the GM’s screen creating the world rather than inhabiting the shoes of a single character. So every time I get to be a player (yes, I know a GM is ALSO a player, but for convenience’s sake we’re going to continue perpetuating this antiquated dichotomy) I find myself out of my comfort zone.

My discomfort is especially apparent in one-shots when I only have a few short hours to sink in and find the character, and also have fun. So when I got the chance to play in a Wildsea one-shot run by the game’s designer, Felix Isaacs, I used it as an opportunity to consciously practice. Here’s what I learned from that game and what I’d recommend you focus on to make your one-shots even more enjoyable.

Drive It Like You Stole It

This is an oft-cited adage in the TTRPG community, one that Elliot repeated right before we played, and was the thing most on my mind throughout the game. A character in a one-shot is born, lives, and dies in a single session—literally or metaphorically depending on your game—so whatever you want to do with this character has to happen right away. For me, this manifested as trying to use every single piece of my character sheet.

Which do you prefer: one shots or extended campaigns?

Pick One Bit and Wring It Dry

This piece of advice might seem at odds with what I just wrote, but I promise you they work in harmony. When talking about characters in any storytelling medium “complex” is often synonymous with “good” and “simple” synonymous with “one-dimensional.” But in a one-shot, playing a “simple” character allows room for complexity while trying to create a “complex” character often leaves it disappointingly hollow.

My character Redd was a Mothryn Raveller—a moth-person who controls phantom cloth—who was a kind of supernatural conspiracy theorist. This manifested in play as him always saying “It’s all connected!” This was Redd’s mantra, the single statement that encompassed everything he was. And for most of the game it was a great punchline. Anytime two events were vaguely linked he could shout, “It’s all connected!” and we’d get a nice laugh. But with time and repetition that phrase was transmuted from comedy to profundity by the end of the session (sorry, no spoilers!).

No Backstory, All Story

Anyone who has ever built a TTRPG character knows the allure of weaving a rich and complicated backstory for your beloved character with branches and nuance that can be teased out over many many play sessions. For one-shots, forget all that.

Here are good guidelines for a one-shot character:

The most interesting moment in their life is RIGHT NOW
Their needs, wants, and drives are immediate
Yesterday’s history and tomorrow’s a mystery

Put all of their greatest desires and fears right in front of them and make that session the most important moment of their lives.

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Make Things Worse

Things going according to plan is rarely, if ever, interesting. Games like The Wildsea are great because they help you make things worse through mechanics like Twists or Complications that explicitly force you to do things that will hurt your character or make it harder for them to succeed. Trust me, I get it. I want my weird little guy to be cool as hell and make all the wild moves I’m picturing in my head perfectly and with panache. But every beloved story is so beloved because the characters continue to fight even as things get worse and worse. If you have to really fight for a victory, it will feel all the sweeter. And once you get a taste for making things truly awful for your characters, you’ll never play games any other way.

I went into that Wildsea one-shot just hoping to have a bit of fun and record some good bonus content for our Patreon. But by the end I found myself feeling much more comfortable and confident as a player and even more eager to start building my next character. Give these tips a try in your next one shot and let us know how it goes.

— Brian

Talk of the Table Roundtable

The State of Actual Play with Taylor Moore and Dr. Emily Friedman

This week we released our first piece of Patreon bonus content for Talk of the Table: a TWO HOUR roundtable conversation with World’s Beyond Number producer Taylor Moore and Actual Play Historian Dr. Emily Friedman. This is a wide-ranging interview where we dive deep into the past, present, and future of Actual Play.

The first 30 minutes is available for free on the Talk of the Table podcast feed. For the full two-hour conversation (and much much more) join the Many Sided Media Patreon.

🗞️ News Worthy

Talk of the Table Guests Dr. Emily Friedman and Taylor Moore are featured in CNBC piece “How Dungeons & Dragons Made Over 1 Billion Dollars in a Year.”

Spencer Campbell releases his yearly GilaRPG’s Year in Review for 2024 giving a rare and invaluable glimpse into the inner-workings of a TTRPG business.

Ned Donovan (Head of audio Fiction, NJ Webfest) releases a detailed scoring breakdown for the Audio Fiction World Cup (My First Dungeon tied for #12th!).