"Trouble at Caston Cove" - A low-prep D&D report & analysis (Patreon)

A friend's partner was in town recently, and had asked if I could run a short game of D&D for them during the visit. I didn't work out the last time they were here, but when I got the text earlier this week, I looked at my schedule (finishing up half of the work of line edits on [REDACTED] and instead of saying "Sorry, I'm not able to make time" I said "Sure, but it'll be very fast and loose."

I immediately had a twinge of regret ala "Why did you agree to do something extra while in edits!?", but I grabbed hold of that feeling and shoved it into a box labeled "Be Excited, Instead!"

And I stuck to it. I set myself the challenge of prepping a 2~3 hour one-shot of D&D in as little time as possible while still feeling like I was bringing some material to the table.

First, a short Actual Play report. Then I'll pull back the curtain to share my secrets. *evil laugh*

The Fiction
We open on a drizzly spring morning as Sidele the Halfling Rogue, Oreath the Elf Wizard, and Rickard the Human Fighter  (NPC) arrive at Caston Cove, a small fishing village on the coast, far from the eyes of the county seat. The three meet Sera the Innkeeper, enjoy some food, and chat a bit about the village. Oreath notices an elder head off to the beach shortly after the heroes' arrival and follows discretely, exploring the village.

After breakfast, they meet the village elder, Liana, who tells them about the eight fisherfolk that have gone missing. She sends a youth, Neel, with them to helm a large training boat as they investigate the disappearance.

They find tracks of people being dragged by small forms, leaving Neel to return and report as they advance on foot. They're ambushed by two goblins, kill one, then chase and capture the other. The goblin is belligerent, speaking of the coming of Kra-Tak and the workings of R'ka (a goblin acolyte).
Led by the captive goblin, our heroes make their way toward a cave. But the goblin manages to sneakily bite through the gag and cries out for help once they're in earshot of the cave.

Now the goblins are ready for them. The heroes defeat two goblins and a giant crab. They spot an underwater tunnel deeper into the cave, but stop to rest before advancing.

As they're cooking the giant crab, they hear a rumbling and Kra-Tak the shark-demon-thing bursts out of the pool to attack the heroes, accompanied by two goblins and R'ka, the goblin acolyte. Boss fight!

The Fighter cohort is knocked out and is almost dragged under water to be eaten by Kra-Tak when a one-two by the Wizard's Magic Missiles and the Rogue's acrobatic melee prowess brings the demon-shark down and turns the tide of the fight.
Their noble companion is saved, but it was too late for the fisherpeople, who were sacrificed in R'ka's ritual to summon the demon.

For a two-player game with new-to-me players, neither of whom had played D&D 5e or D&D of any sort for several years, it went very well! Here's my take on what worked and why.

5 Tips For a Low-Prep One-Shot

1) Player Input
I had prompts/requests from the players. I asked what kind of game they were interested in and got these prompts.

• A fantasy world
• wizards & goblins
• something to do with water

This was great because it gave me bite-sized prompts to build an adventure around. The "Fantasy World" part let me know I didn't need to hew too close to a Very Historical-Feeling kind of setting. This didn't manifest in a big way, but we reached for it a couple of times in smaller moments.

Wizards & Goblins let me take an easy path on enemies, combining the two (with a variation) to create a goblin water cult trying to summon a shark-demon.

I knew that one player is a diver, so I used that to fill out the "something to do with water" in creating a coastal setting where diving was relevant in the final set-piece. We are in Baltimore, so I added a giant crab. 

This type of session zero-style player input was a huge help, as it took me from a blank slate of "I can do anything as long as I can do it with D&D" to "here are some specific targets and tropes." I built backward from the cult to the adventure hook (missing fisherpeople) and staked out a couple of rough encounter ideas along the way.

Of course, lots of things changed in practice, as they tend to. Flexibility always comes in handy.

2) Dig Into Character
Starting the game with some PbtA-style questions about the characters to get a better sense of them as people in this world and to find out more about what the players wanted from the game. I asked the Rogue how long she'd been in the Rogue life, what her goals were, and how she knew the NPC Fighter. I asked the Wizard what his schooling was like, why he was adventuring, and then followed up on his expressed interest in Goblin cults (which he took straight off the character sheet and incorporated into his story).

I made sure to establish the two PC's relationship with each other and their relationship with the NPC cohort, and to give them a reason to be in the area (investigating rumors of the goblin cult). That let me hit the ground running once we moved into scene, as I started them arriving in the village already with some loose goals in mind, ones that I could easily connect to the plot I'd built.

3) Keep it Casual, Keep it Character-Focused
I committed to a fast-and-loose game spotlighting the characters and their interests.

Player/Character Interests:

• The Wizard was interested in magic and religion, so I filled out a bit about this village's religion - devotion to Launa, goddess of the sea, rituals in a smokehouse and on the beach. This was easier to do because I have an academic background in religion, folklore, and mythology, so those details aren't hard to create on the spot.
• The players were excited about the food at Sera's Inn, so we lingered there with details of the food as the PCs talked about what they thought was going on in the village. Letting the camera linger in the first scene to give the players time to explore the space and inhabit their characters (I had almost nothing on the village, but we ended up spending about 40 minutes there - I improved the layout, the NPCs, and the food in the tavern, adjusting to their interest to give them space and then still present the adventure prompt. 
• The Rogue was excited about using her acrobatics skill, so I made space for her to describe her creative application of the skill as they chased down the goblin. This involved stretching the rules, but fun and storytelling > strict rules interpretations for me. The players were satisfied with that, so it worked out just fine.

Low-Tech Visual Aids:
I used no minis, no terrain props. Just a wet-erase board and some markers. I drew a simple sketch of the village on a blank piece of paper, free-hand.

Would it have been cool to have fully-painted minis for the goblins and especially for Kra-Tak the demon? Sure. But I didn't have those, and so I didn't stress it. I try to make up in description what I lack in props. As a professional writer/storyteller, that's in my wheelhouse. It's not automatically a better or worse way to play, it's what works for me.

4) Every Party Needs a Tank
My players selected the Halfling Rogue and Elf Wizard pre-gen characters, which meant that they were without a tank.

Enter Rickard Ambrosio D'Estino - who is just the Human Fighter pre-gen character with the Noble background. I mentally cast him as boisterous, bold, but considerate. I didn't want to play him as domineering or too entitled, since the PCs had to be the heroes and be making the decisions for the group.

While I didn't want Rickard to take the reins of the story, I did use him to prompt role-play with the other characters (shifting from out of character discussion to in-character discussion at times) and, sparingly, to drive the action forward (killing the captive goblin after they alerted friends). And having him in the party let me throw more dangerous monsters at the team, let the players pick the character types they wanted, and let me prompt the heroes to work to protect their somewhat-brash front-line fighter.

5) Experience Matters
I started playing tabletop RPGs when I was nine or ten. I had a few years away from it in my early 30s, but beyond that, I've been actively playing and/or running RPGs for a LONG TIME. That level of experience with a wide range of games plays a huge part in how I approach role-playing. 

Everyone GMs/DMs in their own way. You bring yourself and your interests to the table, from a love of doing silly voices to an interest in sculpting terrain to a background in music. Whatever you love that you can connect to the game will make that game cooler and make it feel like YOU. Matt Colville of MCDM Productions talks about this a lot, and I 100% agree.

What I Could Have Done Better
The heroes defeated Kra-Tak and the goblin cult, but they didn't save the villagers. That's kind of a bummer, though the players were still happy with the game.

I could have done a better job of making it very clear to the players that there could be a cost for taking the rest in the cave before heading through the tunnel. I used the village elder NPC to convey a sense of urgency to the PCs, and then mentioned (as the GM) during the middle of the session that slowing down or taking more time could have a cost, but I didn't *specifically* stop and make it clear that there could be a cost if they stopped.

If I were to go back, I would have used some tools from Apocalypse World/Dungeon World and foreshadowed a big threat before making the hard move. As the heroes sit down to cook the crab, the weather turns nasty all at once, far too fast. Maybe the sky turns an unnatural color. Maybe the water in the pool in the cave starts to bubble. Maybe one wounded prisoner escapes, emerging bloodied from the tunnel.

Another tool I could have used to telegraph the ritual was a visible Clock building to the completion of the ritual. I wouldn't even have to say what the clock was specifically, just "I'm starting a clock. That clock represents something happening off camera, and every time we advance a scene, I'm going to fill the clock by one segment." That would make it very clear to the players that something was coming, and that maybe they wanted to hurry to stop it.

It's not automatically bad that the heroes didn't save the villagers, but I think it would have been more dramatic if it happened specifically from a conscious choice using the tension of "do we still have time to rest up?" and an in-character discussion.

Wrap-Up
Even with the not-entirely-happy ending, the players were satisfied. They saved their cohort, solved the mystery, and put an end to the cult, as well as banishing Kra-Tak to lick their evil demon wounds.
Pretty good for a couple hours of prep and a game with few props played around a small dinner table.

To give you another peek behind the curtain, I've attached my GM prep notes below, all three pages of them (Where more than half of the space involved is dedicated to monster stat blocks).

You're welcome to use this scenario, and if you do, please let me know! Have you ever answered the call to run a quick-prep RPG, and how did it go? Do you have any other tips for great one-shots?