The One Shot Idea

I'm not good at creating one shots, however my reading activities have sparked an idea and an urge to do so. Not exactly a one shot, but series of them where the characters names remain the same but the skills and perhaps players change. 

At the beginning of 2020, I started rereading The Damiano Trilogy by R. A. MacAvoy. It's a historical fantasy about witch who finds adventure galavanting around Europe in search of his heart. Its pretty standard fare for early eighties fantasy, swinging from super light to moderately dark concepts. Clearly, the 90's antihero was not yet in fully realized, but these contemplative stories had the kernel of the idea gestating a decade before. 

At about the same time, I purchased Aquelarre Breviarium. I got the Spanish Language edition, so it's been a slow slog for me. But from the character descriptions, it seems like this rule set captures the ideas of the Damiano series very well. 

Aquelarre takes history and morphs it into a playable system. Characters don't have classes, they have professions. There are no races, there are cultures. 

Damiano, the titular character could be a couple of different professions, however the Trilogy breaks the character into different phases or evolutions throughout the series. This is fairly neat for a character in a game because each aspect is divorced from the others except for the name. 

Damiano could be un Mago or un juglar (minstrel),
each distinct from Saara the witch and Gaspare the dancer. 

The lengthy list of professions are well suited for dealing with not only the main character but also the associated secondary characters. I could see doing a series of one shots where the characters from the books display one profession per session. The names stay the same, but the professions change. Therefore, if the players change for each one shot session, no one cares. 

If you like you can pick up Aquelarre in English via DriveThruRPG.