Halloween D&D session for co-workers, difficulty: Expert (levels 1-3)

September 7, 2015 7:18 PM

Through a bizarre drunken conversation it has been determined that I'm DMing a one-off D&D session for 6-10 co workers at my office most of whom haven't played before.

It's going to be a Halloween session and I'm a very experienced DM so I'm not worried about being able to pull it off, but it also has to be straightforward, immediately fun and present lots of opportunities for emergent hilarity. I'm expecting about two hours session length.

Has anyone had experience with con games or other pickup games that they can share to help me make this awesome, ideas to quickly bring newbies in, fun china shops for the bulls to rampage around?

System will probably be Mentzer Basic - I don't want to burden them with too many numbers.

posted by Sebmojo to Work & Money (9 answers total)

How will you handle character creation? If these folks are not familiar with role playing, you might want to create a slate of archetypal characters (a warrior, a ranger, etc) and maybe even base them off famous characters people might know so they can get into character. Give them out ahead of time if you want, people might like thinking about it in advance. Then explain how dice fit in - when they want to do something they have to roll to see if they succeed - and when it's time to roll, remind them how to check their result. In general, be prepared to lead them in the story and prompt people early on as to the kinds of things they can do. ("You all just walked into a dimly lit room. Who wants to see if they can detect anything? Does anyone have low light vision?")
posted by cabingirl at 7:58 PM on September 7, 2015

Best answer: Why are you doing such low levels? One of D&D's worst faults is making people play those levels. Few stories, movies, or any narrative starts off with characters as weak and as prone to die of a pine cone falling on their head or simply tripping as D&D.

Make them pre made 6th level characters and let everyone enjoy themselves instead of living in fear that a goblin might trip them to death.
posted by bswinburn at 8:20 PM on September 7, 2015 [7 favorites]

One of my favorite things for a one-off is to have ZOMBIE ATTACK (or kobolds, or robots, or giant spiders, or any sort of favorite creepy crawly)-- have the characters pre-made, have them holed up on a map-- a place everyone knows IRL is great, like "the dining hall" or "our workplace", but you can also use "A rustic tavern" or "A little mining village" or something-- and just explain that f'ing ARMIES of the baddies are comin' to eat your brains-- what do you do? Fortify buildings, fight monsters as they come down chimneys, quick sneak out and get to the storage shed to look for weapons... etc!
posted by The otter lady at 9:57 PM on September 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

This situation seems ideal for a zero-level funnel.

Instead of giving each player a single, more-robust character, give everyone 2-3 pregenerated very simple zero-level peasants and then you can cut loose on them without worrying too much about anyone's fun ending prematurely due to death. When I run games like this, I use the cool purple sorcerer zero-level party generator tools to print a deck of pregens and then deal them out randomly when needed.

With this technique, your startup time is minimized, and you can deal late arrivals in with zero effort.

This is how I run my casual work games and it works every time. It's very Six Sigma to watch your coworkers try to figure out a plan to kill the Beast King with a bag of gong, a chicken, and a rake.

I would be averse to handing out characters that have any mechanical complexity to them. 6-10 new players each puzzling out their options will make the game sloooowwww. In 2 hours, you won't go very far.

I've written a ton about one-shot adventures at http://tiny.cc/tight-dw-oneshot. Not precisely applicable to your case, but maybe useful.
posted by Sauce Trough at 9:58 PM on September 7, 2015 [4 favorites]

I know very little about the mechanics of role-playing but I have been around it more than a handful of times. One thing as a non-player is just how in-character some people get. I assume that most people will already be in costume (as it's Halloween) but I guess maybe not in-costume as their character.

One thing that may throw off new players is that in-character aspect. I wonder if you can have a quick chit-chat before. I knew people that we ALL IN with voices (multiple voices) for their characters and DID NOT break character the whole time even when reporting their dice throw total they still used their graveling batman voice. That can be a bit off putting for some people. So I'd maybe encourage people to do what feels comfortable to them and if they refer to their character as "Joe the Elf wants to" instead of "I want to" then it's okay. Obviously this all depends on the group and the people but I saw quite a range and some serious commitment among different groups.
posted by Crystalinne at 10:53 PM on September 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

The intro boxed set for 5th edition does a very good job of getting straight into play, with a good range of pre-gen characters with a range of abilities that make sense to anyone who knows modern fantasy or vidya games. They're first-level but they're decently tough and have enough options in most situations to keep everyone involved. The first couple of hours will involve mostly bopping goblins on the head, but it worked well for me and a bunch of D&D newbies.
posted by Hogshead at 3:24 AM on September 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

I agree with Hogshead; you can download those pregens here.

(If you're running 5th Edition, you can also point potential players to the free basic rules.)

As for pickup games, I have had some successes shaping scenarios around familiar pop culture ideas. For example, I once had the adventure hook presented by someone who was recognizable from his description as The Doctor; another time, I use a Ghostbusters-style hook when the characters had to put to rest a spirit haunting a temple. You might try something like that.

A zombie horde attacking is a good idea, too, but I'd suggest adding a memorable villain as an end boss.
posted by Gelatin at 7:17 AM on September 8, 2015

(Disclaimer: I haven't played pen-and-paper RPGs for eons.)

You have limited time, and a party full of noobs, some of whom are probably only casually interested in the game. You need to trim away complexity and boilerplate wherever you can.

Prefab characters, like cabingirl says. It lets the game get moving quickly, and spares the noobs from another set of details and mechanics. I also like the idea of letting players choose their characters beforehand: that lets them start getting mentally into the spirit of the thing, and it means you don't spend the first twenty minutes on character selection. Put a stack of character sheets in a common area, maybe with some brief notes, and tell people to take one—first come, first serve.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 8:57 PM on September 8, 2015

Pathfinder have some great adventures in the We be Goblins series which are fun as heck as you play a Goblin fighting against humans & causing mischief is your goal. Which I think fits into the Halloween theme nicely.

The characters are all pregen and it is super easily convertible to 5e. Heck I just ran the same adventure with 5e rules and the best part is it's all done for you character sheets the works & it's free.
posted by wwax at 8:30 AM on September 9, 2015