Welcome back to Mining Media where we turn your binging into better TTRPG experiences by reminiscing on the innocent wonder of winter holiday magic in our youths... or was that just me?
This month I want to talk about mining holiday movies for ideas for your festive one-shots, whether you take a break to do something silly or expand the lore of your ongoing game's universe or prep something entirely from scratch for holiday shenanigans - there's gold in them there cheesy movies.
Take home points & some ideas based on holiday movies:
Everything in the one-shot should reinforce the themes of the holidays - community, charity, family (found or otherwise), innocence, memory, and tradition.
If it can't reinforce these themes, lean hard into the setting - go full winter wonderland.
A Muppet Christmas Carol (or any Christmas Carol, really, but Muppets >>>) - have your party experience visitations from ghosts of past, present, and future based on their actions throughout the campaign (or make specific backstories part of the character creation), then give them a chance to right their wrongs before it's too late.
Nightmare Before Christmas - This one's all setting. Have a transplanar hub where the spirits of the holidays are literally their own demiplanes or extradimensional areas, then have some of the traditions of the holiday they know of & what the party sees clash. While they figure out the true spirit of the holiday, chaos has escaped (or gotten in) and they have to fix things!
Die Hard - This one's perfect, just recreate it and reskin everything. Holiday celebration at an isolated location, lots of bad guys doing bad things, the party has to balance stealth and efficacy achieving their goals, with each success and failure heightening the tension in the race between party & bad guys to succeed.
Klaus - The party finds themselves in an isolated location for the holidays, but there is no festive cheer or spirit because the village/area is inhabited by two factions at war. The party must make connections on both sides, earn little bits of trust, find ways the two sides can connect and come together for the holiday, and just as things seem to be going well, one small infraction threatens all that progress - how will the party bridge the gap?!
Hot Frosty / Jack Frost - An inanimate object is awakened by true holiday magic, but for the most part it's just causing trouble. While most of the town is up in arms and wants this thing brought to justice, the few who've seen it in action can explain that it's naive and means well, the disasters aren't its fault! Fix the problems, find the magic being, and help everyone see the good in it or something equally cheesy.
Now go get your notebook, pop on some cheesy holiday movie, and tell me what you come up with!
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Music in the Episode:
Theme Song written & produced by Dan Pomfret | @danfrombothbands
Sleigh Bells Sound Effect by GowlerMusic -- https://freesound.org/s/265458/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
Cozy Town by Qlowdy | https://soundcloud.com/qlowdymusic
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com
Creative Commons / Attribution 3.0 Unported License (CC BY 3.0)
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US
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