At the 2021 Origins Game Fair, I experienced one of the best convention one-shot RPG sessions I’d ever played in—as well as the worst—back to back. This gave me a unique opportunity to compare and contrast what went well in the first session and what went awry in the second, especially in light of my experience as a tabletop RPG professional responsible for developing one-shots as well as demoing RPGs for convention play. Over the last ten years, I’ve run open and VIP tables at large flagship conventions like GenCon and Origins, regional cons such as AcadeCon and Con of the North, and local mini-cons on college campuses and at my own home. Over the years, I’ve also made my fair share of mistakes that I hope you can learn from.

Although there are many aspects to consider when planning and running an RPG one-shot at a convention, focusing on three elements of the session can give you a solid foundation and yield the best payoff per hour of prep spent. These three essential ingredients are: 1) exciting and accessible pre-generated character sheets, 2) a scenario that is optimized for one-off play, and 3) excellent player management at the table. In this third and final part, we’ll take a look at the hardest part of running a great one-shot: handling the players themselves.

In January, I kicked off a new roleplaying game campaign using Night’s Black Agents. The premise of this GUMSHOE-based RPG is basically “what if a couple of Jason Bournes were hunting vampires?” Intrigued, I ran the NBA one-shot “The Van Helsing Letter” from Free RPG Day 2016, and the group liked the system and concept well enough that we decided to dive in with our own characters and story. Who’s behind Unternehmen Braun, and what do they want? Is Operation Edom friend, or foe? And what else besides vampires might stalk the night?

To facilitate character creation at today’s session zero, I quickly worked up this Agent Creation Cheat Sheet to help guide the group through the process. Along with printed out character sheets and a copy of the core rulebook, the session ran as smoothly as I could hope for. Download the PDF for free here.

Who can’t believe that 2023 is nearly over? *raises hand* As the year winds down, this seems like the time to reflect on the things that helped us or brought us joy. The following is a list (not exhaustive) of my favorite apps, books, music, TV, and video games from the last year, including many that I would recommend to others. You can find my list from 2021 here. (I missed compiling this list in 2022, in no small part because I was sampling eastern Germany’s best Christmas Markets all through December.)

Apps

• Airalo. My new go-to for international data, but you’ll need an unlocked phone. I was able to save a ton of money by setting up a second e-SIM to access Japanese mobile data networks. (It cost $10 for 10GB of data across 30 days, which was plenty for the week I spent there, and much cheaper compared to my phone plan’s offerings.) I wish I’d heard of this before my trips to England and Europe this year, but I was able to try it out in Japan successfully. I’ll definitely be making use of this app when traveling in the future. The only downside is that I can’t have both e-sims active, so I had to restart my phone in order to check my text messages. Luckily, most communication is done over apps these days instead of SMS, so I wasn’t missing much.
• ​Reverso. This app pulled more than its weight for me while I was traveling abroad this summer. The thing I liked most about it is how it pulls up example sentences so you can help see the context and usage of a given word. It also saves your searches for you, so if you were a more disciplined language student than me, you could write down any new vocabulary in a notebook to study later. Also, it’s free and works fairly well offline, and it’s able to handle multiple languages in the same app.
• Vivino. When in France, drink as the French do, I suppose. But when you’re at the supermarket trying to decide between the many, many wines available for less than 10€, this app helps to narrow down the field. Scanning the label gives you the user score for that vintage, plus a personalized rating for how it compares to previous wines you’ve enjoyed. By rating the wines I tried, I was able to get a better sense of my preferred styles and remember which labels to avoid in the future. It was also excellent to have on hand when we went to Bordeaux and sampled various Grand Crus. The app helped me to get a sense for how much those bottles would fetch back home, and whether it was worth it to buy it in France to bring home or to seek it out at my local liquor store.

At the 2021 Origins Game Fair, I experienced one of the best convention one-shot RPG sessions I’d ever played in—as well as the worst—back to back. This gave me a unique opportunity to compare and contrast what went well in the first session and what went awry in the second, especially in light of my experience as a tabletop RPG professional responsible for developing one-shots as well as demoing RPGs for convention play. Over the last ten years, I’ve run open and VIP tables at large flagship conventions like GenCon and Origins, regional cons such as AcadeCon and Con of the North, and local mini-cons on college campuses and at my own home. Over the years, I’ve also made my fair share of mistakes that I hope you can learn from.

Although there are many aspects to consider when planning and running an RPG one-shot at a convention, focusing on three elements of the session can give you a solid foundation and yield the best payoff per hour of prep spent. These three essential ingredients are: 1) exciting and accessible pre-generated character sheets, 2) a scenario that is optimized for one-off play, and 3) excellent player management at the table. In this second part of three, let’s take a deep dive into the next ingredient: the scenario.

With 2022 around the corner, this seems like the time to reflect on the things that helped us or brought us joy in 2021. The following is a list of my favorite apps, books, music, podcasts, TV, and video games from the last year, including many that I would recommend to others. The categories for this list are taken from Jesse J. Anderson’s Extra Focus newsletter, but the selections are my own.

Apps

• ​FitOn. I’m a strong believer in the idea that staying physically healthy is important to nourishing creativity and focus. FitOn was my favorite app for working out at home throughout the pandemic. It’s got a pretty extensive collection of yoga, strength training, and cardio workouts, and it can build a “routine” for you based on your fitness goals. The paid version adds popular music to the background of the workouts, but you can’t control what tracks play so it’s more like a radio add-on.
• ​Insight Timer. I’ve tried several guided meditations apps, but often the features you want most are behind a paywall or embedded with ads (which makes sense—content and apps take time and money to create). Insight Timer works on a model similar to YouTube: the content is creator-uploaded and users can donate to creators. Whether you’re looking to relax or fall asleep or become more mindful and aware, chances are you’ll find it here.