Has anyone ever run a one-shot game?

[Stofsk]

I'm just asking to see if, when introducing new players to Traveller and who have never played a game before, whether you have run a one-shot game that doesn't have any bearing on a larger meta-plot of a campaign. It's just there to give the player or players a sense of What Traveller Is About (To You). If so, share the details.

I was thinking about this earlier today, because I was thinking of running something next week. I would be interested to know what ideas people have come up with to have a fun, short game of a couple hours' duration.

 

[Woas]

Yes. So far I have ran three one-shots for Traveller. Two of them were exactly like you describe, short adventures that didn't amount to any overall story by the end of the night that I ran to introduce the group I game with to Traveller before we jumped into a long-term/weekly campaign.
For these two 'intro' games I used free adventures that I used, one from Signs & Portents and one from JTAS.

The third one-shot was a scenario I made up to run for a local, twice-a-year gameday/mini-Con event. The scenario was a space-station casino heist and it went great! The players (none of them had any knowledge of the Traveller rules. And of them only one really knew about the game in general) did very well. Grasped the rules very quickly (which really deserves it's own topic but I feel the basic 2d6±DM ≥ 8 system is really slick) and had a fun time.


Another thing about Traveller though is that, unlike games like D&D and such that have character growth completely through 'face time'. That is, having the player there running their character. Traveller is set up in a way that throwing a complete out of nowhere side mission is easily done. Kind of along the same lines of a 'filler' episode for a TV show. Furthermore I've toyed with the idea of having the players (or different players which I guess it all depends on how many people you have in your area that you game with. I'm lucky that in my area there is a large enough pool of table-top RPGers that I could potentially get a slightly alternate group) roll up new characters, run a one-shot game with the goal that by the end of the session, the fallout of those events would show up in the regular game.
So for example taking that space-station casino heist. Run that for some people as a short one-shot and then the next time you play the regular, long-term game the characters get wind of a huge heist in such-and-such system an a huge bounty for the thieves (which are the PCs from the one shot).

 

[Gaidheal]

Actually, I've not done this for Traveller, as it happens but the principles are general enough to apply to pretty much any setting and game I can think of.

I have tended to have the players roll up 'standard' characters, no special options or unusual variants, etc. I then run them through some slowish background laying material, get them into a couple of fights or other tense situations, each more complex and more 'serious' than the last, before having them triumph (hopefully!) in the grand finale.

The characters they roll up for the next game will then have heard of these 'legends', might even be descended from them (timeline dependent, of course) and will usually be much better rounded and more keyed into the setting.

The players themselves will have gained a feel for the setting and the way I like to run that setting, got to grips with the rules mechanics and got a handle on what they need to select in order to have a character they want to portray, as well as being able to more authentically portray someone who grew up in that setting.

 

[saundby]

I've used the CT adventure Shadows as a one-off adventure for MGT. It makes a good intro adventure since it gives the players a chance to see what they can and can't do with their characters in the game. The basic adventure is a bit flat, throw in some back story and the third party with an unhealthy interest in either the pyramid or what the party is doing at the pyramid to spice things up.

Have the third party arrive at the worst possible time. Extra points if one of the characters is hanging from a rope waiting on others to move them up or down when a firefight ensues.

I've also run a great number of one-off games under CT. For the first year or so I ran it, back in '77, that was all I did since I just ran it as a fill-in game for our regular ref.

 

[Pyromancer]

I have a rather nice one-shot adventure especially for new traveller players.

The PCs are the typical Traveller free trader crew. They get wind of a few battle suits left on a abandoned research station due to an Imperial accounting error.
So they can fly there, trick the lonely Close Escort patrolling the area, explore the not quite abandoned research station, have to deal with the frozen platoon of marines left right next to the battle suits (also an accounting error) and hopefully escape before other partys also in persuit of the suits arrive.

Six hours of fun, I say!

 

[Sangrolu]

I've run two different con/gameday adventures intended as one-shots. I pull from the events in my larger (home) campaign as fodder, but don't really read to much into the continuity unless it's convenient or entertaining for me to do so.

One adventure "A Fistful of Credits" has the PCs delivering a cargo for a down-on-his-luck scout, only to get caught between two feuding factions on the destination world. That was a lot of fun except two players who I gave entirely too much leeway to trade (and do accounting) as they went along.

One adventure was called "For Blood or Money" and was more of a mercenary campaign that drew inspiration from Dune and Aliens. A retired Marine Colonel who is part of a noble household contacts his old Corps friends (now mercenaries) when a rival noble household kidnaps his fiance as leverage to keep them from allying with the new Archduke. The group mounts a covert rescue mission, only to find that the fiance has been moved to an old research station, which houses a biological weapon that the Solomani imported and one of their agents is about to unleash. This one I was less happy with; some of the tactical scenarios took longer than expected, including one that was supposed to be a milk run to get players up to speed on the system.

 

[5h4ne]

I've run 2 one offs so far at a couple of private "cons". Both were published in signs and portents - "Fair Game", and "The Rescue", and both went down really well.

I used characters that I'd prerolled and the players picked the ones they wanted to play. I had 6 playing each session.

I'm currently writing my own one off scenario - the premise is that in the process of some trading in "grey goods" i.e. of dubious legality, the characters discover an interesting artefact on a fairly lawless world... they'll probably discover its present keeper is quite attached to it, and other factions on the world, interested in the offworlders presence on their planet, would probably quite like to have it as well.. throw in some corporate muscle and a souchon of survivalist gung-hoism and it should work out....