Last year, I did a fun game design experiment where I asked Call of Cthulhu fans what some of the most underused and forgotten Lovecraftian monsters were. I then took one of those obscure creatures — the alien Insects of Shaggai — and wrote an entire adventure around them. Centering an adventure around a monster […]
Tag: call-of-cthulhu
I’ve written a lot of adventures for this site over the years – twenty-seven in all! Somehow, I also find time to run other adventures, too. I recently had a blast running Goodman Games’ Tomb of the Savage Kings for Dungeon Crawl Classics, my favorite OSR game, which was only improved by the appearance of […]
Those of you who have read this blog know that I’m a big fan of cliffhanging pulp action. I think it’s one of the best genres for one-shot adventures — exotic locales, big villains, and fast-paced action! Plus, players are already familiar with the conventions, since it takes place in the real world and everybody […]
I started this roleplaying blog over two years ago now! My mission has always been to make it as easy as possible for GMs to run an fresh, new adventure for their friends. As a result, I created this blog to give GMs an easy way to do something new, whether it’s run a game […]
This month’s free adventure is St. Cecilia’s Blasphemous Bordello. It’s a creepy, investigative horror adventure set in the old west. But I’m going to use this adventure to talk about the problem with all modern-era big bads. The problem is this. With magic and melee deemphasized, the toughest RPG boss can barely last a turn […]
If you ask Call of Cthulhu fans to list their favorite horror adventures, Dead Light is guaranteed to be in the top 10. It’s been described as a “quintessential” horror adventure. I won’t spoil the adventure for those of you haven’t played it yet. But the back cover advertises it as an adventure about surviving […]
The two pulp adventures on this site, The Lost Jewels of Eire and The Uncanny Curse of Sekhmet are big favorites. I personally think pulp is one of the best genres for one-shots, and also perfect for taking a break from typical D&D style fantasy games. Big characters, high adventure, lost artifacts and civilizations, and […]
Last month I asked Call of Cthulhu fans for suggestions of rare monsters. I wanted to know which Lovecraftian monsters had rarely, if ever, appeared in a scenario. My challenge to myself was to write an adventure based around an obscure monster I had never heard of. I received lots of suggestions. The Hounds of […]
One of my favorite old-school videogame RPGs was 1992’s Darklands. Set in medieval Germany, the game was brutally difficult, seeped in superstition and folklore, and — way ahead of its time — a massive sandbox you could explore. It was also incredibly buggy, had UX issues, and required some some serious autoexec voodoo to get […]
It’s been a busy 2020 on the 1shotadventures blog! This year, 9 new free adventures were published for systems ranging from D&D and Call of Cthulhu to GURPS and Savage Worlds. Special thanks to everyone who gave me feedback or dropped a note to here or on Twitter. I originally started this blog because I […]