What are some of your favorite ways that one-shots or campaigns have jumped off?
Including games that I did not GM myself, one of the most memorable campaigns that I remember included our party starting on a spire, with the information that one of our party members holding the knife that was just thrust deep into someone’s chest. That’s where the questions started. It turned out that the body was a sister of one of the other characters. I can’t quite remember why it happened, but it had to do with some portal or dark magic that was connected to her life.
At GenCon, I enjoyed the first question “Who is hunting you?” I experienced it in a game as a player, and then used it in a game as a GM. It was fun!
My most memorable first question as a player was, “Where does the tear in the fabric of the sky lead to, and why are you flying into it?”
Using the Research move has spawned many an enjoyable one-shot but my recent favourite saw the players on a quest to free the great forest guardian from an outworld parasite. It was Princess Mononoke meets many many testicles…