Five Tips for Writing a Holiday Adventure

Hello heroes! It’s that magical time of year again. People are feeling festive, carols are playing in every grocery store, and the steady arrival of Amazon packages are a constant reminder that the holidays are upon us. We here at the Untold Stories Project love to dedicate these last few months of the year to our annual Holiday One Shots Limited Series!

We’ve been doing this for three years now and I like to think we’ve gotten pretty good at this whole holiday game thing. I wanted to share some of our advice for those of you running games this holiday season:

1. Follow the Fun: This one probably goes without saying, but holiday games are meant to be a fun occasion. Give yourself permission to indulge in some silly nonsense. This is a great time of year to run a pallet cleansing session based on a hilarious premise. Want to run a whacky, Clue-style murder mystery at the North Pole? Do it! Have a villain steal Christmas, turn everyone into snow people in Florida who need to figure out how to change back before they melt away. Get whacky and so unserious!
2. Indulge the Pun: One of my favorite things to do when I’m designing a holiday one shot is to come up with a pun title and build the adventure around that. We have Slay Bells Ring, The Fight Before Christmas, and Silenced Night here on the channel. I’m also running a little game called Batman Got Run Over by a Reindeer too. A pun title inspires story beats and sets tone all before you write down any notes or roll any dice.
3. Keep it Low Stakes: Adventures from this time of year shouldn’t be the stories that your whole campaign hinges on. Make it a side mission with a whacky villain and a scheme that ultimately doesn’t hurt anything more than holiday cheer and possibly a gingerbread village. Players are looking for a chance to cut loose and relax, give yourself some grace and keep the stakes low.
4. Let the Villain Get in on the Festivities: The villain of this story does not need to be Xanathar the Xecutioner with a massive axe and sawed-off shotgun, plundering her way through the winter wonderland sowing orphans and misery in her wake, unless your group is into that. Consider instead using a twist on a holiday figure: Jack Frost, Frosty the Snowman, and Krampus could be excellent candidates. Perhaps the Yule Cat if you’re feeling a T-shirt hating kaiju or a pack of reindeer bullies that need to learn some manners. Andy had us fight a guy who was basically a living chimney who took Santa’s sleigh for a joyride in this year’s Power Rangers event. The only limit is your imagination and your willingness to make festive icons naughty instead of nice.
5. Share the Good Times: One of the great things about a holiday adventure is that you don’t have to tie it into the wider events of your ongoing campaign and thanks to the amount of people traveling for the holidays you probably have access to friends and family you don’t usually get to play with (as do your players.) It’s a wonderful chance to bring in an extra player or two for a fun session.
6. Super Special Bonus Tip as a Little Holiday Gift From Me to You! One fun thing I like to add to any holiday game gathering is a Secret Santa or White Elephant gift exchange. It’s a fun way to add some additional festivity to your game group but everyone gets to feel included. One of the groups I play with regularly is doing a White Elephant dice exchange this year. Each of us is bringing a set of dice and our GM has worked up an initiative system and Sleight of Hand test for us to steal from die each other. I’m looking forward to being one of Santa’s dice goblins for that!