Oh My God I'm Drunk and I Have To DM In The Morning

I wrote this last night: ____ "The entrance is a big skull, like a robot skull..." This is Mandy explaining to me about She-Ra. Which she's watching. This is what happens when I go out drinking--I come home and find my woman watching She-Ra at 3 in the morning. The explaining she's trying to do is about how She-Ra is not actually all a lot of suck but actually was the only cartoon when she was growing up which was for girls that prominently featured skulls and lasers and violence and therefore was actually a good thing. It is a difficult perspective for me to accept, especially if you consider the number of beers I have just had, which number is considerable. "Even the Whispering Woods are not safe from the Horde..." Shut up Adam, you have a terrible bowl cut and lavender boots. If you're gonna die, die with your lavender boots on. Anyway the point of this is tomorrow I have to DM a game. A during-Thanksgiving-dinner game. And I am not sober. I must brainstorm. I think I'm going to use the medusa/halfling vampire dungeon which I am able to use because none of the players who will be playing tomorrow read this blog. Unless they do read this blog secretly. If they do then they are reading these words right here now. In which case they are bad and should stop. Anyway. I have to figure out how to make this dungeon into a one-shot... So--last time I ran it, it took four days. So the question is: how do I make this into a short one-shot? Because there is like tryptophan in turkey and this game isn't going to last that long. (This is what He-Man is saying on the episode of She-Ra that Mandy is watching right now: "Magna-beam, what's a magna-beam?" You should know by now, He-Man. Be more educated about your world. Also: no-one likes you, go put on clothes.) Here's my dilemma: if I don't eliminate something the players won't get anything done, if I eliminate too much, it ceases to be a sandbox and becomes essentially a linear dungeon. Hi! Do this. Happy Thanksgiving. I don't want to be that guy. Every time I try to write a one-shot this happens--I make it too complicated. Okay: Eliminate the wandering monsters. Eliminate the minotaur. (I hate eliminating minotaurs. There should always be minotaurs.) Make all the clues point toward the... Oh my god, Beastman just wheeled in a cake and then Skeletor just used a magic spell to turn himself into a chef and his henchmen into sous-chefs. With moustaches. I can't think anymore. Good night. Happy Thanksgiving if you're American and care.