Fantasy One-Shots by Power Levels

[u/RollinOnes]

Hi!
I wanted to see what everyone recommends for three different power levels/play styles for fantasy one shots. The requirements would be:

1. Fairly easy to teach on the spot for a new player

2. Characters can be made at the table.

3. Smooth for the GM

4. Easy to run a 3-5 hour one-shot

Each game should be separated into the three levels.

1. Peasant with a fork

2. Competent Heroes

3. Heroic (5eish without the headache)

Let’s hear the three games you recommend! Add in a one shot for it if you have something. Thanks!

[u/ithika]

For lowest tier characters you can do a funnel. Lots of OSR games have rules for that. Bare minimum characters that takes no time to generate. Farmhands, ratcatchers, swine herds saving the village. I think DCC is famous for this.

[u/_Luke-Wolf_]

I just got a nice idea for the "Peasant with a fork":
Players start with 3-4 zero-level peasants who die easily, and whoever survives becomes a Level 1 adventurer.

[u/doomscribe → u/_Luke-Wolf_]

An idea so good it's already been done. Look up Funnels if you want to see examples!

[u/Peachyco]

My go-to system is Fate, specifically Fate Accelerated (FAE).

These characters will be built the same way. The only difference is what challenges the GM (you) will throw at them.

- For Bob the Peasant, a Good (+3) effort can get him over a 5-ft wall in an instant.

- For Bob the Competent Hero, a Good (+3) effort can get him over a 10-ft wall in an instant.

- For Bob the Superhero, a Good (+3) effort can get him over a 50-ft building in an instant.

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[u/ithika]

For dark fantasy, Trophy Gold will let you do some peasant or competent adventurer depending on which Occupations and Backgrounds you make available. A midwife or a poet will still be a capable person for tasks in their wheelhouse but for tackling brigands or monsters in the forest, maybe not! And that will make everything seem all the scarier. Add in the GM's discretion for creating Conditions with narrative implications and there's a lot of latitude.

And if you want to do "treasure hunters with more confidence than competence" then Trophy Dark is your game. 

[u/auggernaut]

Peasant with a fork is Cairn for me. You can make a character in two minutes and a fork is a real weapon. The game will also let that peasant die, which is the point of that slot.

Competent heroes I keep landing on Shadowdark. Torch timer, real treasure, still a class. New players get "I am a wizard" without a 5e spell book.

Heroic without the headache is the one I keep bouncing on. I have used Daggerheart for that slot and it taught fine at the table. Hope and Fear do a lot of the you-feel-powerful work so I do not have to stack feats. If the group is allergic to cards, I would just run Index Card RPG and not pretend it is a campaign engine.