Rift Walker One Shot: Find Q69
Map setup minus the tokens!
Last week I ran an adventure for some other friends of mine that had a free Sunday. It was awesome because it was for a group that had never played not only Rift Walker before, but mostly never played a TTRPG before of any kind. This gave me memories of the sorts of games I would run in the FLGS where I used to live. It was great to go back to a strict deadline (of which we got through) and try to prepare a simple adventure that would encourage creativity.
We managed to get through it in under 2 hours because they creatively passed a bunch of puzzles. I always like working with new players as they are not “bound” by the rules or what their character sheets have written on them. I had a bunch of different characters prepped to pick from, and let them pick their names/details. We were pretty fast and loose with the rules as I wanted them to enjoy the experience of the game and the freedom to do anything more than adhere strictly to the rules. I been forgot to tell them their “Role” and modifier bonus until half way into the session! It was fun to see them play things out sort of like I intended rules to play out. One player asked if they used one of their special items in their pool slots, could they get a bonus to the roll. I basically said yes to every time they asked as it encouraged creativity and encouraged them to use tactics they were not optimised for. It is a great creative exercise to play with new players and let the rules that matter really stick out.
The story was simple: An anthropologist robot friend of their from the future had gone missing studying some Goblins and the characters needed to go back in time to save them, and recover their futuristic equipment as to not cause havoc in the time-stream! A Dwarven warrior, a Telepathic alien and a Elvish Wizard went through and mind controlled a big troll to get them through their travel sequence with relative ease; solved a puzzle of a bullfrog statue and distracted/fought off some goblins while sneaking into their camp to get their friend back! Inspiration sources of the story were JP Coovert’s Great Goblin Flight and Troll Bog adventures, and Nimble’s goblin stat blocks.
I loved the no pressure nature of a one shot and the perspective it gave me on my rules. Because of this it is now a main feature of the rules to “invoke” pool slot items for a bonus (though once a session). It also reminded me the important of player niche protection (which was one of my original design goals), because some players who didn’t know what to do often inadvertently took ideas from other players; which isn’t wrong but is important to remind myself of mentioning this at the table that they have different ways to interact. I was impressed that they wanted to use their archetype roles to do things off sheet! I have included the prep sheet below, which is a fun tool I have made (more on that here), to streamline my preparation and move toward setting scenarios instead of a story.
My prep notes on one sheet.
My RM screen big post it with key information for quick reference.
