I'm writing a series of one-shot tabletop RPG adventures called We Lost One. They're for the night someone in your regular group bailed. Self-contained sessions that work for 1 to 3 players plus a DM, runnable in about 3 to 4 hours.
Each adventure is system-neutral with 5e and Pathfinder 2e stat block appendices, tuned for variable party sizes (solo with a sidekick NPC, duets, or full three-player tables). The first three are heading to itch.io and Gumroad.
An old miller stumbles into your inn at dusk — barefoot, flour-dusted, bleeding. Something large is hiding in his windmill on the hill, and the last sack of the day's milling is still up there. He'll pay everything he has.
What's actually in the mill isn't what Hoeg thinks it is. The encounter has two complete paths through it, and the adventure refuses to mark either one as the right answer.
You're resting at Hammerlost Hold, a dwarven forge cut into a mountain pass, when the watchman's horn sounds. At the gate stands a barn-sized iron mech of wagon axles, plates, and rope — with forty goblins packed inside, cranking it in blind coordination. It moves because they believe it will. And it does.
Combat is on the table, but it's not the only lever. The mech runs on something other than steam, and the adventure rewards groups that figure out what.
You arrive at Brackbrook Farm to find your companion's sister. Instead you find the farm barricaded. Two nights ago, something came up through the dry well — eyeless, bone-pale, faster than anything should move. It took two people alive. Nessa, the midwife, has been holding the farm alone since.
A bite carries something worse than a wound. The session is honest about that from the start — what it gives you are choices, all of them with weight.
We Lost One by Aaron Beebe is licensed under
CC BY-NC 4.0.
Share and adapt freely for non-commercial use with attribution.
