u/DnDrood

I've been working on setting up a oneshot although with very little DMing experience in general

The wise decision would absolutely be to find a oneshot module and just run that, but part of me just prefers the idea of it being something I've designed even at the impact of quality, it'll be modest expectations and all, just running it for 2 friends

I'm uncertain about exactly how much I should prepare, the balance between feeling like I'm overpreparing leads into preparing less for other things and then starting to question if it's underprepared etc...

To give a very general gist of it, I've got the overall goal being a sort of Casino heist, inspired by another one I saw related to a carnival heist, and I've "taken inspiration" for some things there

We want to experiment with the different tiers, and have previously done a start of tier 1 oneshot. I was thinking of making this be start of tier 3, level 5 or so

I've got a general introduction to the plot, a little shop I'm going to set up where they can get some magic items to select from probably favoring fun/creative items for it. Lead into casino, there is about 5-6 different settings to interact with. I don't expect any of them to go for long, and with the potential of returning to them later during an overarching countdown to see things changing a little bit

I've got some various hints for different routes they could take that I could plant around. Not sure if I should just leave them as general hints I can drop to point them towards things or if I should "preplant" them to specific things. The rough idea is that I've prepared 3 different routes I see it as most likely for them to go to do the heist, and then some improv as needed

I've got a NPC planned that will try to tag along with them with some ill intent to deceive them, planning some specific hints towards that along with options should they discover his intent early or later. Likely won't actively be hanging around them all that much so they're free to do stuff on their own

I've got one optional combat encounter "planned" (haven't done any statblocks or anything yet, just that I'll have to look over the encounter design rules and come up with something) + 1 mandatory combat right before the heist. Considering another optional combat with the deceiver, but not sure if I should make it a strict fight encounter or just something like an escape sequence, which would only make sense should he manage to stick around until the end.

Is there any general rules I should keep in mind for how many encounters is fine? It'll likely be 1-3 combats all depending, so is there anything extra I should check to ensure it doesn't go overboard?

I'm also not sure exactly how much I'll have them rolling for, since from what I've seen you don't want to do overdo it with the rolls in Daggerheart, right?

I know this post is very messy in general, but any tips or recommendations would be greatly appreciated!