Learn from my mistakes of running Isle of Dread as a One-Shot

Don't make the same mistakes I made when running a hexcrawl adventure as a one-shot!

Gamers On Games advice on running one-shots:

Transcript

On Friday’s stream, I told a little bit of a story, and I’ve told this story before, but my very truncated retelling of the story inspired a video—a short from Gamers on Games, which I’ll link to. And it’s good advice, definitely not bad advice, but I think something was missing because it didn’t get the whole story. So, here’s a fuller version of retelling, and I think in the context of what I did wrong, the way I did things, and how I would do it differently now.

The gaming group I was playing with at that time had a very linear style of play, and I sometimes found this a bit constricting. It didn’t seem to be an issue with other players, so I didn’t bother bringing it up. I still really enjoyed the game, but I did sometimes bump up against the fact that it was very linear. I forget what the occasion was, but there was one moment when I said, “Hey, come to my house. I’d like to run a game.”

We had a fair amount of time—I don’t remember the exact number. This is over ten years ago at this point, but certainly more than three hours or so. I don’t remember exactly how long we played, but just think of it in terms of time: not a marathon session, but probably more than your average one-shot that you might have at a convention or in a gaming store.

I decided to run Isle of Dread because I wanted to run a hex crawl, and I wanted one that I could essentially run more or less out of the box. So, I picked Isle of Dread. It’s an old favorite—I like it. It’s got a fairly good hex map that comes with these; I just enjoy it. I don’t know, nostalgia, whatever. I didn’t have to draw one myself, and I just shrunk the hexes a lot to make up for the fact they were playing in a short time. It’s not a campaign, just could be one session. So, I shrunk things down.

We also weren’t playing BX or AD&D. In fact, we were playing with Barbarians of Lemuria, which I really liked and I wanted to try out. So, that was kind of the context in terms of setting and system.

Set Expectations for Your One-Shot

The first mistake I made was really not making sure that everyone really appreciated—all the players appreciated—what it meant to play a hexcrawl. I did mention I did have a document where I laid out some things about, “Hey, this is what this one shot's going to be.” But I thought that they kind of understood it. I just said, “Hey, it’s a hexcrawl.” I thought, hey, that’s enough. But I should have—and I would, if I were running this again—do a much better job of laying out what does that mean?

Because, again, our game being very linear, we were essentially—we’d pointcrawl around, we’d know places and we’d go to places and do things. But the idea of being sort of wide wasn’t something this group of players had played a lot, at least in the time I’d been with them. So, I didn’t set the proper expectations. That would probably be step one: set much better expectations.

The game wasn’t a complete failure. We actually got up to and had a great climactic moment, sort of in the—was this the plateau, the crater? We visited all the spots and we did everything. So it’s not like the game didn’t work. It was just a bit clunky; it took a little while to get going.

Did manage to get some feedback, and the feedback that I got (which I communicated in stream) was essentially they felt like it was a monster corridor—that they felt railroaded, even though I was not railroading them.

And in fact, one of the funny things I had to do was show—I think I took the Isle of Dread and I literally drew over that, and here’s essentially the route you guys took and kind of the things you saw, and this is why, where you saw different terrain and everything, this is kind of how it was in the track that you took to show that they were not being railroaded down the linear pathway.

And I found it kind of ironic and interesting that I gave them this open area, and they, coming from a regular game—which I think is very railroady—that maybe because they're used to it, other reasons—they didn’t feel like that was railroady, or they just were used to it. But in this case, they felt the railroad, even though I was trying not to deliver that.

One of the reasons was because I decided—I don’t think I started out this way, but I decided then, okay, let me put some of the greatest hits around, because look, you’re going through the jungle area that’s got those—I forget, what are they? Psionic spiders or monkeys? There’s some different interesting things there.

And I thought, you know what? If they're going through that jungle, let me have them encounter this rather than miss it, because we’re not going to have time to go and explore every inch to find it naturally, because it’s a one-shot. So, hey, we’re moving in this area, so I’m going to put this in front of them.

With their perception from their lens, what they saw was that there’s just this corridor of monster thing—monster, or, you know, encounter, encounter, encounter, encounter, which I think gave them the false idea that they were—they could only go where I had these encounters.

I think there are some ways I could do that differently now. Well, one, I probably wouldn’t force everything into their path. Again, I was coming from what I thought was a good place of, “Yeah, let me give them that kind of Isle of Dread greatest hits.” Probably better to kind of keep them where they are but do things like I would do now, which is signpost different areas.

Don't Force Interactions

Maybe they don’t see the spiders necessarily, but they can see all the webs. Maybe they hear the calling of the monkeys. Maybe they see a dinosaur in the distance. That can invite them to check things out. But if they choose not to and keep going down a path, well, they can keep going down a path.

This brings me to the other thing that went wrong. For a large part of the adventure, they did not have a sense of direction. They did not have a sense of, “Here’s what we should be doing.”

In my infinite wisdom, I thought, well, yeah, they’re shipwrecked on the Isle of Dread. I don’t remember if I gave them the treasure map, but I thought, okay, I think I gave them something. Or, okay, well, they can, you know, explore, go looking. Maybe it was the treasure—go look for the treasure, go try to fix their boat. I thought they had a couple, three or four things they could do. And I thought, you know, I’ll just riff off whatever they choose to do.

If they choose to try to find another boat and they go searching along the encampments that are along the shore, then, hey, that’s one great method, and they might do some things, we can get to some adventure that way. Oh, if they go into the interior, great, they can do this other thing there. And if they do something else, we can do something else.

What I didn’t anticipate is them just sort of meandering around. Sure, taking something, following it, but not really with a purpose. They were just kind of taking the road because it's there, which I think also gave them that sense of the railroad—like, here’s this world, but we don’t have any context to, you know, why should we do the four jungles versus the hills or the shore?

So, if there's a road, clearly it means the GM’s telling us, “Go on the road.” So we’re going to go on the road, which is not at all how I intended it. The road’s literally there on the map, it’s just part of—you’re in a village, there is a road leading out of it.

I didn’t mean to say, “You cannot not take the road,” or didn’t mean to say that you were not allowed to do anything other than take the road. But that is how they took that. They took it that if I put the road through the desert—in this case it’s not a desert—but to their minds, well, everything’s kind of the same. It’s got no significance to us. So, there’s a road here. Clearly, we’re meant to take the road.

I had thought they might be more inquisitive or curious or even thinking in their characters’ minds of “What do I want to do on the island?” Instead, they kind of took the thing that they thought I was offering them—there’s a light in the distance, the rest of the world is dark, we’re supposed to go to the light.

Provide Context for Meaningful Choices

What I think I would do now is be much more clear and not just doing this one time—because I might have even said in the document, I don’t recall, about their choices—but being more repetitive, just letting them know, reassure them, “Hey, do what you want to do.” This is something I do now in my games a lot. I will reiterate during a session, “Hey, don’t—don’t do things because you think I want you to do them. Do them because you want to do them or you think your characters want to do them. Do what you want to do.”

Here are the parameters I might run this now: Are you going for the map? Are you going to be rescued or to repair your boat? I probably would give them the two choices. Or, you know, if I was running this at a con, I probably wouldn’t give them any choice at all. “Hey, you got this one treasure map. Go right. A ship will be back in five days, do it.” Something like that.

I would set some parameters to give them some direction—not to railroad them, because within that mission the choice is theirs what to do, the choice how to tackle the island, how to get to the central plateau if that’s the goal, or some other thing on the goal is totally up to them.

Provide an Objective

I’d give them some kind of objective. An objective would be given over to them—especially if I was playing with players who I didn’t really know or who I was unfamiliar with. Now, these guys I was familiar with, and I think that’s part of what led me astray a little bit, is because I thought we were more on the same wavelength, we were talking the same language. In some ways we weren’t, and I put that on me—I could have and should have been more clear, been more overt in just saying what I was trying to do, what this adventure would be about, what I was expecting from them, instead of assuming if I said a word like a term, “hex crawl,” that they would suddenly get, “Oh, hex crawl. Okay, now we get it.” That wasn’t the case.

All that said, we had a fun time, everyone had a good time. We got to have fun with Barbarians of Lemuria, they got to see a bunch of stuff, and if the game didn’t totally work out, it wasn’t a total bust. Plus, I think it’s something I could do—like I think now, I guess I’m 10 years older at least, and wiser maybe—that I could take that same idea of “Here’s the Isle of Dread map” and run it as a one-shot or two-shot or something of that nature—run it at a con, run it at my local gaming store. I would just do things a little differently.

Yeah, I’d give them some kind of mission, some kind of imperative. I will choose, “Hey, do this or do that.” If I knew them, if I was running it for my Thursday night game, I might say, “Hey, the choice is yours. Just let me know, right? Hey, you want to get rescued? You want to try to build another boat? You want to do something else?” I might say for that group, since I feel like I know them better, “Okay, let me know what you’re going to do.” But I would still want to have that discussion and not just assume.

Don't Assume

And that’s probably the biggest—if I was going to break it down to—my biggest mistake with all this thing is I made assumptions that I shouldn’t have. Don’t repeat my mistake, right? Don’t make assumptions. If you think your party, your players know, just ask them. And if they say, “Yeah, dude, we know,” then okay, great. But if they didn’t know, if they had a different idea than you, then you’ll suss that out straight away, unlike what I did.

Give them something to focus on. Don’t think—and I’ve said this before about hex crawling in general—you put some folks and just drop them in a world; none of this stuff has any context for them. So, whether the high road, the low road, the middle road—you say take one of those three roads, they don’t know. So, anything you put out there is going to look like you’re telling them which way to go.

If you say take the high road, the middle road, and the low road, and there’s a halo of light at the high road, they’re going to take the high road. And that halo of light might be because a nuclear bomb just went off—but you know what? To them, it looks like you’ve made a clear choice for them, because none of the other choices have any meaningful difference. It literally does not matter, even with something like the Isle of Dread—you’ve got this hex map, you’ve got these different things—ultimately, in terms of that session, what difference does it make?

So, when they see something that feels like I’m telling them—like I’m putting an arrow marked in the soil, they’re going to follow the arrow. So, don’t make assumptions, give objectives. Make sure you’re stating and repeating what you’re trying to accomplish, what things mean. Ask them questions because they may think they know the same as you. That’s the other thing—the players, your players may think they know, but you don’t have the same idea. So you end up at cross purposes and that can end up creating friction that you don’t want.

Running a Hexcrawl or Sandbox One-Shot Can be Done

But I think if you do those things, then you can totally run something like the Isle of Dread. You don’t have to make a linear adventure. I’ve talked about that when I’ve mentioned the game that I ran at Arcane Con and also at Shyrecon and some games I’ve played in.

I think if you’d asked me a few years ago, I would have said you’ve got to run something more or less linear. But my eyes have sort of been opened on that and I’ve seen things—I’ve played in games, I’ve run games—and said, “No, you don’t have to, but there are still some things you do have to do.” And a big part of that is that objective setting. Make sure everyone’s on the same page, don’t make assumptions, all that jazz.

So, that’s what I would do differently if I was going to run the Isle of Dread today under the same circumstances I ran it then. But, you know, that’s what we’re constantly learning in this hobby: making mistakes, but you get back, you make a mistake, you fall off the DM horse, right? Your saddle—get back on it, and try it again. That’s the real story.

And let me know what you would do if you had to do this, or what you did if you ran into this problem yourself. Or not necessarily a problem, maybe a conundrum. That’s all I got, folks. Gamers on Games, thanks for the tips. For the rest of you, game on, and I’ll talk to you later.

Bye now.