Happy holidays wonderful duet-ing friends!
I hope that you’re finding moments of joy in what has been a long and difficult year. This post offers a few ideas for creating additional moments of joy for you during this holiday season through a special duet session!
I start with a gift to DMs—getting to be the player, followed by suggestions for festive duet one-shots.
Giving Back to Your DM
If you’re looking for a perfect gift for your Dungeon Master, consider running a special one-on-one session just for them where they get to be the player.
If you’re already playing a duet game, see if they’d like to switch roles—you DM for them, and their DMPC becomes the player. Or, perhaps they would prefer making an entirely new character for the occasion!
Our Plan
I’ve planned a special session for later this week that I’ll run as a one-shot adventure for Jonathan’s DMPC in our home game. We’ve written previously about switching DM and player roles, and I know it can be intimidating.
But it’s also a great way to express care and affection for your DM as well as to thank them for all of the wonderful adventures you’ve shared this past year!
I’m basing the session around some of the puzzles in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything* and linking the story to our current campaign arc. As a player, I don’t enjoy puzzles very much, but Jonathan does, so I’m hoping it makes for a unique and interesting session.
In my experience, it does feel weird to go from needing to be very active as the PC to taking a step back as the DMPC. Because of that, I usually set up our flipped sessions with my PC more in the background or conveniently missing.
Incorporating Side-Narrative One-Shots
How do you go about incorporating a side adventure that perhaps has nothing to do with your regular campaign? Or, players, how do you set up a session for the DMPC to be the main character without sidelining the DM’s grand plans?
There are a few different possibilities here, but the easiest we’ve found is a dreamscape! You take the characters as they are, where they are, whisk them away into dreamland, and run the adventure in their sleep!
In a world with demiplanes and fey lines, you can also have the adventuring party step through a snowy portal, or a mistletoe archway, to find themselves somewhere intriguing and unknown. Then, like magic at the end of the adventure, they find their way back!
Festive Duet Adventures!
Below, I cover a couple of our holiday-themed adventures that you can run as one-shots. I’ve also added some suggestions for tweaking a few of our other adventures for a festive one-on-one session.
There’s Snow Place Like Home*
Steal gifts. Fight reindeer. Save the holidays!
This is one of my favorite adventures we’ve written! Like First Blush,* we based this adventure on one of our home games from the first year we started playing D&D. We added references to some of our favorite Christmas movies and shows throughout. There’s Snow Place Like Home* makes for an engaging D&D session that you can easily incorporate into your existing duet game or as a standalone adventure!
Frozen Depths
If you’re looking for a daring adventure in a frigid landscape, look no further than Frozen Depths, a short one-shot adventure for levels 4-5. Brave the frozen waters and rescue a summoner in over her head!
A Spring Court Quest
For our friends in the Southern Hemisphere, I recognize that it’s not wintery at all at the moment, and, while we don’t have a summer court adventure ready yet, this spring court quest through the Brightlands would still make for a really fun and special duet session!
Cupid’s Sparrow*
With some creative festival tweaks, this Valentine’s Day adventure can transition perfectly to a winter solstice (or summer solstice!) festival in a nearby town! Part of the adventure revolves around finding gifts for a loved one or friend, and the rest takes place in a restaurant where things are…not quite right.
I hope these ideas have been helpful for you!
Are you planning a special duet adventure this holiday season? Let us know in the comments below!
If you like what you’re reading, please consider supporting the blog by purchasing our adventures and supplements in our shop or sponsoring us on Patreon. We appreciate you so much! Thank you for joining us on this adventure! – Beth and Jonathan
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We’d love to hear your thoughts and questions!