>>96852219

What system?

Also reading a book for a oneshot should be pretty common anon. But still, look at rusalki or kikimori (I'd sugget more the latter, because people will probably expect less a dangerous house spirit).

>>96852219
>don't give me the vague answer of sending me to read a book on folklore because it's freaking one-shot
In that case you can go to the devil, let him teach you all about folklore you lazy homo.

I am having hard time to think of stuff you can fight, but here's some concepts I can remember on top of my head

>Koschei the Deathless - probably the most well known villain. Immortal wizard to hit his death in a needle, hit needle inside the egg, hit egg inside the duck, hit duck inside the hare (Don't ask) and put the hare into a chest buried under an oak on a Buyan (roughly translated as something like Rowdy ro Tourbulent, I guess) Island. Snap the needle and he's gone.
>Zhar-Ptitsa (Firebird) - a magic bird, if you can grab its feather, it has magic powers (Healing usually)
>Solovey-Razboynik (Nightingale the Highwayman) - a banding with supernatural gale force whistle. One of the Bogatyrs fought him
>Magic talking Pike - if you catch it, it will grant you wishes in exchange for freedom. Most famously, will make your stove self-propelled, so you lie on it and travel in comfort
>Rusalkas are often conflated with Meremaids, but they are actually drowned undead women

Several maidens have died while collecting water at a spring. Some survivor or witness saw the entire spring turn foul, and then rusalka appeared and drowned the women. But when you investigate, although they appear drowned, none of them have any water in their lungs, and none of their paints have run, meaning that they were never in the water at all.

The spring itself is now drained, and a hole appears in the ground, with noises of evil and the stench of death coming from below. It's a navigable cave system. What's at the end? Some sort of magma monster or maybe poison demon or some ancient shaman from a forgotten civilization of the people that lived in the caves. There are blind but dangerous scorpions and lizards below, maybe one with three heads, all three blind.

I'm angling for a mystical take on some sort of seismic activity unsealing some toxic gasses and opening into a cave system. I don't know how commonly-known it is, but the area of Kievan Rus had a lot of cave systems in it. A lot of them have been made into cave monasteries.

I don't know how much you care about the scenario I just described, but if you want to be anally historical about it, just pick a decently large enough cave monastery complex and base a one-shot around exploring it before it was turned into a monastery. It's literally a dungeon crawl. Mystical stuff optional, maybe it's traversal, exploration, and fighting a bear or three.

>>96852219
> inb4 mentioning baba yaga, everbody knows about her
You're just a lazy nigger snowflake faggot. Cant be arsed to put in some minimum effort for a fucking one shot meanwhile you have retards like varg vikernes having the autism to design whole games with retarded autistic sheets for fucking rain on his free time from working his farm and taking care of his 8+ children
Why dont you read his or his wife's books? They may have written an encyclopedia of what you're looking for already
Unless you're too much of a lazy ass faggot nigger to read that is

Fact is playing a genre and the 'feel' actually coming through is 99% player buy in.
You can run it perfectly, hit every trope and cliche and really encapsulate the flavor but it's really up to them to the degree they reciprocate how characters in those kinds of story settings behave, as well as how they keep the mood in person.
Same goes for anything: Chivalric, Wuxia, Chanbara, Wild/Weird West, etc etc.

Don't listen to the chud trying to press Nazi propo on you. He's probably just trying to get (You)s from easily baited retards.

>>96853576

Here, just because I'm in a good enough mood at the moment, I'll even plan out the one-shot for you at a high level.

Scene 0: Introduction. The heroes enter the town. They're on some sort of journey or quest or trial. The heroes can have a peaceful day of introduction to get to know some of the locals. Your job is to sell the setting; this is left as an exercise to the GM. This village collects a particular type of bubbly water from a nearby spring that's known to have health benefits. You have to drink it quickly for best taste, but the healing effect remains even if the water is still.

The next morning tragedy strikes! Some of the village girls were collecting water from that very spring, but they have not returned. A witness, a strange man living on the edge of town, almost an outcast, claims that the maidens were called into the water and drowned and became rusalka. Can the heroes trust this man? Regardless, they must investigate.

Scene 1: The Approach. The heroes begin their investigation. They can question locals, investigate the area, but when they get to the spring, they are beset by the undead spirits of the fallen maidens. They find the spring drained into a crack in the earth, and the maidens' bodies in the area that used to be the spring, and although they suffocated to death, their lungs have no water in them, and their makeup hasn't washed off. A foul wind beckons from the crack in the earth. A ragged rabbit jumps out of it, indicating that it's okay to traverse. The strange man from before can appear here again and offer dire warnings or encouragement, as needed.

cont.

>>96853954

Scene 2: The Cave. The heroes traverse the cave. It's your standard dungeon crawl. Depending on your players or system, this can be a series of combat encounters, a series of logical traversal puzzles, or maybe the players need to bargain with some fell entity, or call upon the powers of the divine to defeat that fell entity instead. If you've already sold the folklore vibe in Scene 0, all you need here is just a few callbacks to it, so don't feel too pressured to make it too folksy. Including a three-headed cave lizard is optional.

Scene 3: The Heart. The heroes find the source of the conflict and defeat it. A lich, a shaman, an unclean spirit, or some force of nature, take your pick. The type of villain that caused the spring to drain should match the type of story you've been telling or that the players have bought into. If they've been all about bringing the light of the divine into the dark, it's a demon. If they're more about the pure physical heroics of it all, maybe it's some blind swamp monster with many mouths that drank the pond out of greed, or a column of molten rock that vaporized the water out of envy.

Scene 4: The Return. Depending on how well the heroes did in defeating the villain, their actions will have consequences. Was the source of the spring opened up, and is the water restored? Is the corrupting influence gone forever, sealed, or did it flee? Is the area now a place known for being holy or a place where great deeds were done? The heroes are rewarded their accolades accordingly.

Just go and watch The Wicker Man, the original.
Its the best 'folk horror'.

Here's a gist. Make the crazy hicks seductively rational. Not just fun, but clearly intelligent and with a method to their madness. So that your PC's almost want to join in.

>>96852219
Not to be a cunt about this, but if you don't have any ideas for this one-shot, why do you want to run it?

>>96852219
You should probably go read a book on folklore you fucking cunt.

>How i do I run a game based on shit I know nothing about that I have zero interest in?

Fucking poorly, is my guess.

>>96852219
>don't give me the vague answer of sending me to read a book on folklore because it's freaking one-shot
>not looking for fantasy settings based on Slavic Europe like the Witcher but actual Eastern Europe with a fair degree of historical accuracy

But you're here skipping the work lmao

Watch Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders. (the one on youtube is some weird dude making his own soundtrack over the film, don't watch that).
https://youtu.be/t5YJx2xIoS4

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>>96852219
>hey, I'm a fucking idiot and have no background knowledge in the subject I want to run a game in, spoonfeed me what I need!
>but don't make me actually have to learn anything, I don't want to know about it, I just want my hand held!
You're cancer.

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>>96856241

Honestly, that's a good question. I do have some ideas and knowledge about Eastern Europe, Kievan Rus and Folklore, but I'm not an expert.

Idiots like the ones on this thread miss the point. They give you the smug answer of "go read X book" (which they didn't even do themselves, they just recommend what google says), which demands weeks of reading, days of shipping and money... all of that for a one shot, in which I have no confirmed attending players.

Someone who actually knows about folklore can explain it to you in clear terms, and point you to specific stuff so you can work from there, like these guys did:

>>96853505
>>96853563
>>96853576
>>96853954
>>96854016
>>96854018
>>96856424

A lot of Slavic folklore and culture was intentionally destroyed (or perhaps "sanitized for mass appeal" if you prefer) by the Soviet Union, so a lot of what passes for an understanding of "Russian Culture" is superficial. There was a game released in 2021 called Black Book that might have a vibe you can borrow, but it's set during the final years of the Russian Empire/

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>>96852219
Play Black Book for a couple of hours and you should probably come away with plenty of ideas.

>>96860559
It would take you weeks to read a single book? I'd just quit, dude, you aren't cut out for games.