Hello (tt)rpg people!

Easter is coming and so is my get-together with my friends to play TTRPGs for ~three days straight this weekend.
Last time we played one of the Mothership RPG stories and while there was a bit of friction (“you are not the almighty hero”) it was still pretty awesome for me as a DM.

This year I have an idea for a (for us) different one-shot - Ghost Busters but its just a party full of paladins maybe getting hired for odd jobs in a fantasy setting?
maybe even phantasmagoria - a cross between parts of a modern world and fantasy (e.g. embracing the Sending Stones as phones trope etc).
I am keeping the definition a bit loose in my head and not strictly focused on being a parody of the GB movies so basically anything goes, it’s supposed to be really light and just funny.

If you have any potentially funny ideas, be it bits, custom spells, “combat scenarios” or puzzles please share! I am running a bit dry :D

Also, still not sure if I want to use our usual system Pathfinder 2E for this.
My players default to being (red) button pushers - but are always open to try different things, I wouldn’t do this if that was not the case.
They like to build characters to primarily try out the class combat features & combos, but with this being a one-shot I want to try a more narrative heavy approach - a collective story-telling thing (though my players will definitely need RP hints).
The alternatives I got are either D&D 5e for being simpler then pf2e (and actually having a Paladin as a simple class compared to PF). My searches led me to Shadowdark being a super simple system but I have never tried it.
Either way my current idea is to just pick the core ideas of pf2e/d20 systems and then go with the flow after that.
If anyone can recommend or has an idea how to handle the system when it comes to rules-light, narrative gameplay please share.

Thank you!

  • Skua@kbin.earth
    1·
    6 hours ago

    Sounds like a fantastic weekend!

    I would personally recommend keeping to a system that everyone is familiar with for a one-shot when the point is to play the one-shot rather than to try out a system. Learning new rules always leads to some friction, and that can easily slow a one-shot down enough to make it no longer a one-shot. You can absolutely say beforehand that you’ll be playing relatively loose with the rules, letting more things than usual just happen without rolls or just letting the players narrate the end of a combat that they’ve clearly won

    actually having a Paladin as a simple class compared to PF

    Isn’t PF2’s champion essentially just a paladin? I haven’t played one so I can’t say for sure, but on the surface it looks like the same idea. That said, if D&D simplifies character creation and everyone’s on board that’s totally reasonable

    If you have any potentially funny ideas, be it bits, custom spells, “combat scenarios” or puzzles please share!

    I’m just gonna spout out whatever comes to mind with no particular quality control here:

    • Start the adventure by having it be one of those “haunted” hotels that offers you a free night if you stay in the haunted room. Naturally, this one actually is extremely haunted

    • If you’re using D&D 5E, guardian portraits from Curse of Strahd are horrible extremely funny to use as a GM (and could probably be adapted to other systems easily enough)

    • Make the first encounter be all of the furniture in their rooms. It’s all animated, and they need to scramble for their equipment because they were in bed

    • A social challenge in which the ballroom is full of dancing ghosts while some kind of horrid thing plays the organ. The challenge is to dance your way across the hall to get to the organ and break it, letting the ghosts rest. Make it apparent that they’re not meant to fight their way through by having an NPC beg them to let the spirits rest without dsestroying them or something. Failure to properly blend in results in being forcefully swept into a waltz (grapples/restraints with saves against a steady hp drain)

    • I’m not 100% sure how to execute this one, but an Escherian room like the one from Labyrinth could be a fun puzzle