Running a Starforged One-Shot
Hey folks, this past Saturday evening, a friend and I ran a Starforged one-shot at our local gaming store. We had a blast, and I wanted to share some of my thoughts on how it went. Six people showed up, which I think was pretty good for a relatively small town game store running a non-D&D ttrpg event!
My friend covered the mechanics and got everyone oriented, then we jumped into Truths. We decided beforehand that we didn’t want to go through all the truths for a one-shot, so we read through the list of categories and let folks pick a few to work through: we rolled for the cataclysm, religion, communities, and lifeforms truths and based on the responses we got, we felt like that covered enough to start playing.
For character creation, we used the archetypes in the book and only worried about the two assets associated with the archetypes rather than trying to cover the whole range of assets.
As a group, we rolled up a single settlement as our starting place and then split into two groups with my friend and I guiding three players each. My group swore a dangerous Iron Vow to steal an artifact from a ship of cultists passing by the system’s white dwarf. As you might expect, chaos ensued, but they managed to succeed.
It was a really positive experience, and I think rolling only a couple truths is the way to go. It gives enough for the players to latch onto without overwhelming them with choices and taking up valuable time. We had a 4 hour play slot and I think we had the entire intro to the system, truths, character creation, and settlement creation done in under an hour.
I’d also recommend having people roll on the archetypes for character creation. That worked really well, and we didn’t spend a lot of time trying to explain what all the assets were. Some people went with what they rolled, while others talked about what they wanted and we matched their desires with one of those archetypes.
Definitely remember to read off the quest starters for the truths you roll. Both groups ended up deciding to use the quest starter for the cataclysm, and we had two very different adventures! My last piece of advice is to start that initial vow no higher than a rank of dangerous. My group managed to get through a dangerous vow and a formidable fight in about two and a half hours without it feeling too rushed. Obviously, that will vary depending on the group and how quickly they grok the system, but in the games I’ve run introducing Starforged to people, dangerous vows are a good starting point.
Starforged is great for long campaigns, but it can also make a fun one-shot. If you’re thinking of running a Starforged one-shot, I hope this helps, and if you have any questions, let me know!
