A Mystery One Shot with Branching Paths

For this adventure, I would share something I wrote for a D&D one-shot I wrote for my family. It was my younger brother's birthday, and he had requested a mystery one-shot for his gift, so I set to work. I wanted to write a mystery adventure that wasn't really failable; something that would be exciting no matter how you played it. So I conceived of the idea of writing a branching path narrative, where different clues all led to the same result. The one-shot worked beautifully. 

A few notes about the one-shot: I wrote it for my own use, and my notes are generally pretty spare. I improvise essentially all of my narration and most of my storylines, but for one-shots, I do follow some framework. So the resulting one-shot is enough to guide an experienced DM though without issue, but some novice DMs may find they have to fill in some blanks they didn't anticipate. 

Also, in the one-shot, I had ascertained that all three of my family members were playing female characters, and I wanted a magical condition that would affect many people but not the player characters, so I made it about gender, but you could use any commonality for the thing that decides whether a character is affected by the magical condition, even if it's "adventurers" who are immune. 

I've chosen to not directly post the one-shot here because it is written in branching path style, meaning that writing it out makes it very difficult to read. Instead, I'm uploading a Word document of it, specifically because you can use the navigation pane to read the notes more easily. Look at the steps below to use Word to navigate this one-shot. 

In Word, go to the "View" tab (the right arrow), then check the box next to "Navigation Pane" (the left arrow). This will make the window on the left appear. 

Then click on the arrow of the option that the players choose (the top arrow). It will expand into the other options. Continue to click on the option the have chosen (the bottom arrow), and it will lead you to to the resulting details in each situation. 

To narrate this one-shot, describe the scene by telling the players about all three of the clues available to them at that scene. When they choose one, they progress to the next three clues. What the players choose will guide them, but you will always be headed toward a showdown with Anisha the Merciless, a powerful spellcaster who has put all men in the area (or the group of your choosing) into comas. 

Good luck, and have fun with this one-shot. And thanks for being here for this milestone. That's all for now. Coming soon: a free spell slot tracker, a time loop one-shot, and how to spend downtime in and out of game. Until next time, happy gaming!

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