@Tristan Fishel ha, would you want to maybe have a little reunion for those that could make it? Who was running it?

@Jonah Fishel Oh I love it, and it speaks to that piece of advice I give often about being up to switch systems. And also sounds like you have a preeettyyy good starting place for the game jam... just saying.

@Jonah Fishel I had 25 people in a board gaming group, that became eight people who played in various RPG nights, which eventually became five core people that are willing to rearrange their life to meet consistently weekly. Recognize that's 80% attrition. Some of those people were and are wonderful friends and we occasionally catch up with them in other ways, but you got to decide if you're going to be one of the people that will rearrange dates, let jobs know that you're not going to make it to shifts during game day, and generally be up to try new things. That being said, it's not like you have to play in every single game, I for one cannot stand Pathfinder 2E. I've made it known that I will absolutely step away for a few weeks if they ever want to return to it. They actually finished the second Arc of that Pathfinder path without me. We had a lot of false starts, and inconsistent game nights to begin as we shuffled down to our core five. I actually have a funny story about how when I started to expand my group again, I ended up with 10 new players who wanted to join up. What I ended up doing was coordinating them into two new groups based on geography and general scheduling. Sadly one of the DMS of a group was flaky and the players were flaky from the other group but behind my back, in the best way possible, the consistent GM reached out to the consistent players and they created a new super group that played through the entirety of a campaign. So technically that was only 50% attrition!

@Jonah Fishel It's the sad truth! Even in the 6 shots I have run online, which I normally run over two months have loose at least one of my four players. People take a lot of offense or they turn that criticism inward when they can't keep a group together, but even if they are you best of friends, life just gets in the way.

Welcome in! I think writing with out a system in mind is actually best. Are you going to be running this for a group you know well?

So this is a different scale, but I gave my players legendary actions at the end of a very high level campaign. My biggest suggestion is to be ready for it to change the balance of the game, and if a player is disappointed with the usefulness of their power be ready to buff it up, rather than ever nerfing another players power.

@Jonah Fishel Oh do I have a lot to add! I even have run secret prologs before, so I have experience with that as well. My biggest suggestion is that this is a great opportunity for the players to try out builds they may not be used to. I would suggest that everyone play a class they aren't used to, and if they hate it, they change in the full campaign. I find this can knock people out of ruts in their gaming. This also lets them shift the blame a little in the ensuing campaign to the characters who were present in the one shot, and not the ones who were there for the campaign. I know the fear of people not falling into line for a one shot, and I think the biggest thing is to make sure that if the hook doesn't provide a lot of agency, the solution really needs it. Lay out to them that how they take the artifact is up to them. Do they take it with guile, Violence, or by being sneaky? do they demand payment, a favor, or an artifact in kind. I think that introducing the core concept prior to the session, and changing the question from "why would you character care to do the theft?" to "how was this only solution to another problem" or "why would the old man choose each of these characters" reframes the hook from the standard, " old man in a tavern" to epic stories about the PCs that may or may not be true gives the players agency that they crave. Then when expanding into PARP for the campaign, you can take the problem states of why they did the heist and expand them into full goals, as the heist should have either given them a step towards that goal or caused them even more issues. This should be the players choice. From there, really lean in to using the character goals to generate world details. Someone is looking to break a generational curse? Turns out their grandfather was once in a party with the evil wizard, and was tricked into the temple by said wizard. Another Character is cleric looking to atone for their sins when they went overboard "saving a village from goblins" The goblins are the same ones he later stole from, only doubling his karmic debt.

@Corwin Duncan I do love the idea of skipping "boss encounters" if they don't take the route that takes them that way!