One-Shot Wonders by Sam Bartlett, Beth Davies & Destiny Howell

With the caveat that I’m reviewing the sample set handed out for Free RPG Day 2024, which I must say feels fairly representative of how the book must be as a whole!

I’m actually finally coming around to writing a review of this because I got a chance to use a sample for one my own RPG sessions. I’ve been running Ghosts Of Saltmarsh as an overarching campaign for my local RPG group, dropping in the occasional one-shot between chapters for both cohesion and funsies. Interestingly, most of the adventures included in the GoS book don’t actually take place in the town actual, so I’ve been forced to look for outside materials to help build up Saltmarsh and its citizenry. One-Shot Wonders’ Fishy Business adventure was the perfect way to help do that!

And small wonder that it’s the adventure from which the cover illustration is taken. Over the course of a mere two pages (including the wonderfully evocative art,) Game Masters are given a comprehensive blueprint for an adventure that includes roleplay, investigation and two stages of combat, in an easy to follow layout that requires few additional notes. Important Characters are grouped in one section, with Quick Stats next to that, then Key Locations are provided on the facing page. Even tho there’s plenty of information available at a glance, nothing is crowded together. I ran the adventure with this two-page spread open in front of me (but behind the DM’s screen one of my players helpfully brings to each of my sessions,) with my phone for reference alongside and a notebook to jot down names as I made them up on the fly, often with input from my table. There’s a reason four of the sailors are called Summersby, Wintersby, Fallsby and Monsoonby, lol.

(Also, mild spoiler, if you’re running this adventure and one of your wildlife-loving characters decides to Charm the animals before they turn back into people, I highly recommend continuing the Charm, just to see what happens. My table hit peak hilarity when the human-hating ranger found her sweet animals turning into guys who were absolutely smitten with her. Obviously, do not do this if it will actually make the PLAYER uncomfortable. Role-playing is never an excuse for harassment of an actual person.)

While the sampler is arranged by level, with an introduction and how-to followed by six adventures plus a page of urban plot hooks, the main book is organized roughly by location — one could conceivably cobble together an entire campaign based on this book alone, assuming you can come up with a compelling Big Bad to end it all with! While the adventures are typically D&D-based high fantasy, they’re also easily modified to your setting of choice. I did also very much appreciate how each adventure could be modified up or down to better fit the player characters who will be run through it: while mine are level 3 now, I felt that the way they handled the combat here was a good indicator that I could stop pulling punches in the overarching campaign going forward.

I’m not yet sure whether I’ll be able to incorporate any of the other adventures in this sample set going forward in this particular campaign, tho I imagine that the main book with 100+ scenarios would definitely find constant use. As a DM, I’ve found that I work best when I’m allowed to freestyle off of the scaffolding that most written campaigns provide, with the occasional drop-in chapter to flesh out the main story. I’ve used quite a few GM’s aides in my long RPG career but have to say that the perfectly organized nature of these one-shot adventures in particular sets this collection head and shoulders above the competition: it really cuts down on the prep time needed to gussy everything up for the table. Definitely check out the free content at Roll & Play Press for yourself first to see if you feel similarly before committing to this terrific DM’s supplement.

One-Shot Wonders by Sam Bartlett, Beth Davies & Destiny Howell was published November 7 2023 by Roll & Play Press and is available from their website.