Guide to the Starter One-Shot
There are many different ways of kicking off a sandbox campaign, and the way you do it influences the path(s) the party will take. The one I favor is what I call the Starter One-Shot. In short, its goal is to get the players engaged in gameplay now, and concern the players with what they will be doing next later.
The Starter One-Shot is any one-session-long adventure that hits these prerequisites:
- It presents an immediate and irrefusable call to action.
- It takes place in a constrained location.
- It delivers plot hooks diegetically.
1: The Call to Action.
The first goal here is to get players in their character’s shoes as soon as possible - to break down all barriers to starting the game. To achieve this, the situation at the start of the one-shot is abruptly shaken up as soon as the players take control of the characters, and negative consequences (probably violence) if they don’t immediately get up and do some adventurer-stuff. (A slightly more elegant way to do this is to have the players take control immediately before the inciting event, and give everyone a turn to say what their character is doing or to converse with a conveniently placed NPC.)
Examples: Three armed gangsters bust into the train carriage, guns pointed out. Guards start rushing through the prison you’re locked up in searching for somebody, and a metal file slips through the bars into your cell. An army’s trailing smoke-cloud approaches your village; a messenger declares you are surrounded and that they intend to lay siege.
2: The Location.
The fact that the adventure location needs to be constrained ties back to the goal of reducing the time needed to start adventuring. The players start where the adventure is, and have no possibility of just escaping the location and not adventure - you’ll see why this is important in point 3. Whilst they may not go elsewhere now (only once the one-shot’s conflict has been resolved) the location itself should be organized like a tiny sandbox, and have some inherent dynamism or interest.
Examples: A train barreling through a scorching desert. A walled village in the middle of an enemy-controlled valley. A huge ship where the players are being held captive. The meanest prison in town, built on the side of a cliff overlooking the city. A vampire-haunted fortress where the players find each other staying the night.
3: The Plot Hooks.
I’ve found that, more often than not, rumors don’t really cut it as a form of plot-hook delivery, as they feel detached from the players that hear them. The real purpose of the starter one-shot is to deliver plot hooks in a satisfying manner, and my preferred method of doing this is to tie them to physical things (or people, or events) the players see. This moment of immediate interaction makes it feel like the adventure the hook is leading to is already underway, and thus makes it more enticing, and makes the players more attached to it. Also, tie these plothooks to the larger conflict(s) present in the world, if there are any - and there probably should be, but that's beyond this article's scope.
Examples: A suitcase containing a jar of purple bugs and a 1000-gp contract for its delivery to a location in town the players don’t recognize. The weapon of a legendary warrior, looked for by a bandit king known for their use of force. A note left on a table (or a group-chat message to a journalist teeheehee) revealing secret plans to sabotage the war efforts of a player’s ally.
Also, introduce NPCs. They don’t need to be very complex, and right now they don’t even need a long-term goal, they just need to be doing something in the adventure in such a way that the PCs may interact with them. Depending on the actions of the party, the NPC could collaborate with them, seek revenge against them, seek help from them, want something from them or any number of different things. Another source of plot hooks, and you don’t even have to specifically plant this one with a quest in mind.
BONUS: Equipment!
The starter one-shot is meant to replace most of the functions of the session 0 for sandboxes, by giving the players plot hooks in-world instead of giving them a “select screen” of rumors. Another function which I find useful (and very fun) to substitute is character creation: if you’re using a system with randomized and minimalistic character creation (I do, and think you should) place plenty of mundane items (and a few magic ones if you’re feeling spicy that day) in the adventure location, such that players may grab the ones that best fit the character that they would like to play. The fighter will take the guard’s shield, the rogue the bag of caltrops found in the guardroom, the barbarian the old axe hung on the wall, and so on.