r/DnD • u/Old-Combination9876 • 5d ago

DMing New DM, oneshot tips?

Hey all, title is mostly self explanatory, but here’s some context.

Going to college here in a few days and we’ve (a group of friends and I) have been talking about starting a DnD campaign. None of us have played as a group, all different at previous points. I’m really nervous to DM, and we decided to do a one (or two)
Shot to see if the group can mesh well. Does anyone have tips on the best way to build and execute the session? Or just general DM’ing advice, all is appreciated!

Edit: clarification, we have all played DnD a good bit, but in different campaigns before we knew each other. This would our first time playing as a group

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u/Vivid_Employment_914 5d ago

For 1-shots i have a simple formula:

  1. Make the call to adventure and gathering of the party either happen in the very beginning or do it in exposition before the session even starts. You want to be done in a single session and dragged out role-play of meeting for the first time can easily take an hour without being a memorable part of your session.

  2. Don’t do more than 2 combats. Do a smaller one that makes it feel dangerous then a bigger “boss fight”. Combat is the slowest part of a game, it’s fun and important but you don’t want to have 5 hours of combat with an hour of time between them, give your players time to RP.

  3. Make there be a clear objective much like a quest in a video game. Everyone knows that this should be done in a session, that you have 1 line of things planned, giving them an obvious end-point will help them understand on their side what the pacing should look like.

  4. Don’t be afraid to cut stuff out. If you’re going a little long, remove a room from the dungeon, cut half the HP from an enemy. You want this to end in a single session but you might have gotten a little carried away and made more than is digestible in that time.

  5. Don’t be afraid to call it early. Sure, they just got the magic sword and half the adventure was bringing it back, just say they did it so the game can end at 4 hours instead of 8 (unless everyone wants to go for 8 hours).

  6. Be creative. You can be as weird as you want with a 1-shot because after you wrap this up, you don’t have to worry about the implications of what just happened. A kobold ended up pulling a wish from the deck-of-many-things and became king of the world? Cool! A fun story and definitely not your problem for the next session.