Having just talked about one-shots, I thought it would be a good time
to talk about one-shot trilogies. It's quite the seemingly
contradictory term, however it's a nice framework available to
Dungeon Masters. The idea here is simple. We've all seen movies that
get extended into a trilogy. Each movie, ideally, should be a
complete story on its own but taken together add up to something
bigger. We can do the same thing in our games. It's really more of a
three-shot, but “one-shot trilogy” is how I first heard it
introduced and it stuck.
Complete Story
I've found that this kind of setup works best if each session is a
full complete story. It's also what makes it a one-shot trilogy and
not a super mini campaign. Mini campaigns can be a lot of fun too,
but they are a different method and less restrictive. That's a nice
thing, but sometimes more constraints help bring out the best work.
The time spent for introductions before jumping into the meat of things decreases
after the first section, since we'd have set up the settings and
backstory by then and will be adding to it, but we'll still expect to
have a complete story.
Rough Structure
In my rather short career as a Dungeon Master I've seen quite a few of these kinds of
games. One of my earliest Dungeon Masters liked this setup because it
meant that you could have a more involved story than a one-shot, but
still had much better odds of finishing the whole story. It also let
him play around with everything and come up with new concepts each
time, which he liked a lot.
Seeing these play out, and seeing them happen a few times without
having a specific term applied, there were typically some rough
structures that came about. I think they are helpful to consider and
think about, but they are also vague enough that they allow for a lot
of wiggle room.
High Level Overview of General Structure
Introduction
This introduces the player characters to each other, the world, and
the conflict that will be the source of the story to come by having
the players directly contribute to it. Mistakes made by the players
bringing about the conflict, getting dragged into events already
unfolding due to luck or fate, and willingly wading into it either
naively or knowingly are common starting points.
Since we still have limited time to work with, I've found that trying
to get most of the information relating to the trilogy is important
at this stage. The biggest challenge here tends to be still having a
compelling and interesting ending that ties things together nicely
but still leaves room in the next one-shot to expand. In a lot of cases the main conflict hasn't been touched but some level of closure tends to work best.
Complications
The player characters have won a great victory. Or they prevented a
crushing defeat but didn't exactly win either. Regardless, there is
still work to be done. Complications can occur both as a result of
the ending of the previous one-shot or also as a result of actions
taken here. Progress should still be made towards the end goal,
otherwise it could feel like meaningless meandering, but it shouldn't
be a simple journey either. I've seen it work otherwise but it's not
easy.
Since we've gotten most of our information out in the previous
one-shot, we can jump into the meat of the adventure. We could have
held out a few important revelations but by the end of this one
almost everything should be known. If there are some shocking twists planned, making sure you can count all the new bits of
information needed on one hand tends to be a good sanity test. Being
interesting between 2 well focused sections like this can also be a
challenge. Also make sure to wrap up the complications to some degree
so that they can be neatly completed closed in the ending. The
solution here tends to be to make sure it directly contributes to the
ending/solution in some way. In practice this also means that a complication is introduced, partially addressed, but isn't solved. There is also some room for more complications in the next section, but it should be light to keep this structure and a natural result from the events here.
The Ending
It is now time to end things. This will either be a great victory, or
victory won at a great cost, or a form of Pyrrhic victory for the
player character's enemies (the enemy will now lose, though the
players may not see the final blow). Things are wrapped up.
A large part of this often ends up writing itself. The challenge
tends to be to close everything nearly. All of this is greatly
contributed to by the foundation built by the previous one shots. If
there is too much to close because the complications weren't properly
handled, this section can be sloppy. Likewise, if we didn't manage to
introduce everything previously, it may not feel like much of an
earned conclusion. The pieces should be in play, can be guessed at, or aren't too much of a stretch. In other words, everything should be close by and setup. Now it's time to draw it all together and clean up. Ideally this section should be a lot of effort on
the part of the players to bend things to their will.
Past 3 One-Shots
We can add more complication sections and extend this structure past
3 sections. This can work very well but doing too many complication
sections can make things feel more drawn out than you'd want. It can
also start to look like a regular campaign, which isn't what we are
after here. The whole point of the restrictions is to give a focused
and efficient story. This structure can be very refreshing after a
long campaign.
Other Considerations
All three parts don't need to involve the same characters. I've
played 2 of these where all 3 one-shot's didn't share player characters. In
one, an ancient evil was accidentally unleashed by the players in
one-shot 1, though they got what they were after. In one-shot 2, the
same characters sealed the evil but were not able to destroy it.
One-shot 3 had a different set of characters years later finding a
way to find where the ancient evil's prison was to destroy it, racing
against a group who would seek to release it again.
In the other, an ancient necromatic evil was unleashed. The players,
unable to find a permanent solution, restored the status quo. Years
later, the ancient evil was guarded ever since to prevent its
release. Some of the player characters were descendants of the
original group. A new plan was hatched to release the evil once
again and the players stopped it. Finally, hundreds of years later a
method to destroy the evil was finally found. However, the player
character's, some of them descendants from the characters in the
previous 2 one-shots, were unable to convince the establishment of
following through with this plan. What followed was a story of
betrayal and manipulation to attempt to release the evil before it
was finally destroyed or failing that, keeping it intact but sealed. Break in
and destroy it themselves or try to convince the authorities that it
should be done were the main options. Trying to play long distant
relatives of previous characters can be an interesting role-play
challenge. Hopefully these outlines inspire someone out there. We
succeeded in stopping the plot in one-shot 2, however, I suspect it
may have led to an extra one-shot to close things off before heading
into the conclusion if we failed.
Interconnected Trilogies
Instead of making more and more sessions in the same story, you can
make trilogies that are connected in some way. It could be location,
or it could be a common thread such as an antagonist with different
plans over the centuries and millennia. Each attempt would be a
vastly different plot that would take 3 one-shots to prevent. I've
found that antagonists, players, locations, and items work quite well
in this regard.
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