Happy New Year Adventurers!
5 months ago
– Mon, Jan 05, 2026 at 01:16:20 PM
Happy New Year everyone! We hope you all enjoyed your holidays and are excited for what the New Year brings.
Here at No Short Rests! we’ve gone against the grain, and given ourselves a Long Rest after an intense year of work and a marathon Kickstarter, other than poor Matt who had to work all through the festive season!
That doesn’t mean that we’ve been completely inactive when it comes to One Room One Shots though. We’ve been working together on our plan for the next year and figuring out not just the best way to get this project fulfilled, but how we can provide you with updates and meaningful content during the process.
The next, and most imminent update from us, will be for our pledge manager to go live. In the coming weeks, you should receive a questionnaire from us that will ask you to confirm details that will then be fed into the pledge manager. For VIPs, this will mean confirming your emails so that we can make sure that the Mythic One Hour Encounter is included with your pledge. Following these, we should have the pledge manager up and running where you’ll be able to track the progress of the project.
Having reached 2026, we have a lot of exciting work ahead of us, so stay tuned for more detailed updates coming very soon!
Quick Update - Late Pledges & Resolving Payment Issues
6 months ago
– Thu, Dec 04, 2025 at 07:52:25 AM
Hello everyone,
Hope you’re having a wonderful start to the festive season!
This is just a quick update from us, we are currently in the process of having a much needed long rest following the culmination of our Kickstarter campaign and attending the always amazing Dragonmeet in London.
Our plan is to launch our pledge manager after the festive period, giving us time to choose the best option that provides everything we need and to be as simple as possible for all of you who have supported us so far!
On that note, late pledges are now live on the campaign page. We will keep this open for as long as we can, and our intention is that if we do gain enough post-launch backers to reach our planned tiers to unlock additional adventures, then we will still do so at no extra cost for all backers!
Make Sure to Resolve Payment Issues
There are a small number of backers who have had their pledges errored. This can be due to out of date card details or the banks flagging it as an unknown or unusual transaction. Payment issues will need to be resolved by 4pm UTC, Sunday 7th December otherwise Kickstarter will automatically cancel your pledge, so please check and make sure all your details are correct as we don’t want anyone to miss out on their rewards when fulfilment arrives!
We are so grateful and excited for our next steps, so thank you once again for being with us as we start this epic adventure!
Team at No Short Rests
THANK YOU!!
6 months ago
– Sun, Nov 30, 2025 at 12:33:16 PM
We did it! A huge, heartfelt thank you to all of you who backed One Room One Shots. We’re beyond grateful for your support and belief in the project - it means the world to us.
This campaign has been an absolute rollercoaster and through every twist and turn, you have been the constant that kept us going. Seeing your enthusiasm, your comments and your belief in One Room One Shots has meant more than we can express.
Crowdfunding is never a straight line and this journey reminded us just how powerful and supportive a community can be. You helped us reach milestones we only dreamed about and reminded us why we wanted to create this project in the first place. We’re genuinely grateful for every single one of you.
We’re also excited to share that late pledges have officially begun! If there’s anyone you know who regretted missing the campaign - or someone you think would love these books - now’s the perfect time for them to hop in. Please continue sharing the campaign; every share helps the project grow even more.
Project Updates
Staying up to date with One Room One Shots will be super easy! We will communicate with you throughout fulfilment in several ways.
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Discord- This will be the BEST place to get project updates, ask us questions directly, talk with the minds behind One Room One Shots and receive play-test updates!
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Email - We'll be adding all of you to our email list automatically once we get your data from Kickstarter. Be sure to mark our emails as not "spam" or "promotions" or you might miss critical updates.
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Kickstarter Updates - We'll also continue to post updates right here! You can check back occasionally and we'll keep you posted on how things are going.
Post-Campaign Pledge Manager Surveys
In the coming weeks, you will receive pledge manager surveys which will allow you to…
- Confirm the pledge you made when backing the campaign
- Choose extras and add-ons
- Confirm your shipping information
To ensure we stay on track with production and shipping, it's very important that you complete these surveys quickly.
Project We Love
Check out Gothica: Plagueworlds by our friends at Ink Blade Publishing!
Gothica: Plagueworlds is a ‘Gothic Gaslamp Fantasy’ 5e compatible TTRPG, that aims to bring disease, despair and darkness to your table. Featuring new mechanics and new content, all playable within the 5e system.
Gothica presents:
🛡️ 3 New Classes
⚔️ 30 Class Archetypes
🧬 18 Bloodlines (Each with unique genetic traits)
☠️ New Afflictions and Conditions
🦠 New Plague Mechanics
👗 Victorian England Themes and Equipment
🎨 Incredible Artwork, Created by Humans
Gothica is live on Kickstarter now and heading into it's final days:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inkbladepublishing/gothica-plagueworlds-5e-compatible-ttrpg
...
From the bottom of our hearts, thank you again for your support, your encouragement and your belief in One Room One Shots. We truly can’t wait to bring this project to life with you.
Much love from the No Short Rests! team,
Matt, Alex & Gareth
Mini-Update for Digital Backers - Physical Add-Ons Enabled!
6 months ago
– Sat, Nov 29, 2025 at 01:12:23 AM
It's always fun discovering a flaw in Kickstarter's system almost 24 hours before the campaign ends!
Digital backers, if you have pledged, but would like to add physical Add-Ons, we have now added a new tier for you to do so.
It turns out that when a digital reward is selected as such for shipping (why wouldn't it?), Kickstarter doesn't allow physical Add-Ons to be added to the selected tier.
We've skirted this for you by adding shipping to the new Digital Tier, that allows you to add any of our physical Add-Ons should you wish to do so! Of course, shipping will be calculated at fulfilment, but will be in line with whatever physical Add-Ons you have ordered.
This has been our public service announcement. Thank you your time!
T
A Spotlight on Our Hardest Adventure: The Flayed Performer
6 months ago
– Fri, Nov 28, 2025 at 12:08:18 PM
Building a Villain Worthy of Applause
The Flayed Performer is what happens when Matt has an idea, dives deep into research and resurfaces with an adventure that looks nothing like the one he started. It began as a light-hearted one-shot involving a magical wardrobe - until Matt explained to his wife that performers were being flayed and hung from the rafters. She excused herself before he could elaborate. Fair enough.
This adventure pulls heavily from ancient Greek mythology (damn it Matt, not again!) and takes cues from the playful satyr as well as a lesser-known myth whose grisly ending inspired the darker tone. From that seed, the adventure quickly shifted from whimsical to wonderfully macabre.
With that tonal shift, we knew two things: the adventure needed to target higher-level players and it deserved a villain who was genuinely terrifying. After heroically failing against Strahd for the umpteenth time, we spent time reflecting on what makes both a great villain and a satisfying challenge. Curse of Strahd can often feel punishing or obtuse at times, with overwhelming threats dropping in seemingly at random -but its world and villain are so compelling that we, like so many others, keep returning to it.
So how do you “improve” on such an iconic campaign? You don’t. We never set out to make something better than Strahd; instead, our ideas naturally evolved as The Flayed Performer took shape. We started with a grisly concept and a unique mechanic (we’ll get to that soon!), but early drafts focused more on the gruesome lore than the villain himself.
Play-testing changed that. The Performer kept stealing the spotlight - literally and figuratively - and once the artwork arrived, it became obvious that he wasn’t just the title character, he was an icon for One Room One Shots.
Like Strahd, the Flayed Performer is the undisputed master of his domain. He’s so confident that instead of confronting heroes directly, he turns their attempts to stop him into a theatrical spectacle of his own design, where players must complete a variety of performances to impress him - lest they lose their skin in the process...
Centring the adventure on the Performer allowed us to refine him as both antagonist and narrator. He introduces each encounter with a dramatic monologue and forces the party to participate by demonstrating the consequences of refusal. He’s been a joy to write, a delight to portray and we think he’ll be a villain players never forget!
A Villain Who Evolves with the Story
The adventure begins almost like a fantasy episode of CSI: the party investigates a recent death while the theatre magically prepares for rehearsal. A disguised version of the Performer appears as a curious, helpful observer. It likely won’t take long for the party to uncover his true identity - then the real show begins.
There are ten unique encounters, with three chosen at random for each play-through by the DM, a die roll or by drawing one of our Add-On Encounter Cards. Nine are inspired by the Muses; the tenth is tied to the Performer’s tragic past. Each performance highlights a different gameplay mechanic, giving every class a chance to shine. Along the way, players piece together the Performer’s history through NPCs, lore and environmental storytelling.
Every encounter has two outcomes - success or failure - and each one unlocks a legendary action in the Performer’s stat block. That means every run of this adventure plays differently. Failures add complications: enhancements to the Chorus (the flayed victims reanimated under his control), shifting stage effects or even entirely new enemies appearing in the final battle. Some encounters even have bonus outcomes - secret objectives that can result in the party acquiring unique items or even potential allies for the final battle. As you can see, there is a lot packed into these epic scenes!
Expanding the Adventure offers two short campaign paths for The Flayed Performer:
The Painted World
A return to the original concept: the party investigates disappearances at a theatre, steps through an enchanted wardrobe and finds themselves trapped in a world that behaves like a living stage. The horizon feels strangely near, the trees are props; nothing is quite real except the danger. Hunted by the Performer - the architect of this bizarre realm - the party must survive a gauntlet of living performances. This short campaign gives us the opportunity to add in many of our encounter ideas that lost out in the final version of the one shot, whilst expanding it into a theatrically macabre painted world.
A Ballad of Blood
A darker, investigative campaign where players track the Performer’s killing spree across the city. With new characters, enemies, factions and lore, the party must uncover both his motives and his location while contending with his agents and the villain himself. This campaign sheds a brighter light onto the origins of the Performer, who he is and how he came to be.
Of course, DMs seeking a longer, more elaborate campaign can merge both paths into one grand fable: an urban hunt leading into a theatrical nightmare, culminating in a deadly dance of wits and steel inside the Performer’s twisted domain.
What are you most excited to uncover in the hunt for the Flayed Performer?
Tell us in the comments:
Are you most excited to discover the Painted World or does a citywide chase get your blood pumping? Or, perhaps you want to see how you fare against the Performer himself when the final curtain rises?
