Café de Nuit

I was asked to DM an hour-long one-shot for my classmates. It's gonna be me & three 12th-graders - two of which are long-time players, the third will be trying for the first time.
It's for a Hanukkah party and supposed to be in-theme. My teachers probably expect an RPG version of the holiday's story, but the only thing that comes to mind in that direction is either something really childish and forced-out, or something that will force me to do extensive historical research and invent a new subclass (which would be awesome but take a lot longer than the few days I have).
So I want to do an unrelated story, but one with a strong Light VS Darkness theme. Some spookiness would be nice (I think undead are mandatory), but nothing too twisted for the teachers.
Do you know anything suitable?

For one hour session... you would be really hardpressed if you include combat. So, my opinion is: Avoid combat. Yes, I said it. Combat is what draws many people to the game but it is a time-sink.
If you want to be less controversial, have one short but difficult combat at the end of the session...
but that means the story part of the session would be 30-40 minutes to have a 20 minute combat.

alhoon wrote: Sun Dec 14, 2025 9:43 am For one hour session... you would be really hardpressed if you include combat. So, my opinion is: Avoid combat. Yes, I said it. Combat is what draws many people to the game but it is a time-sink.
If you want to be less controversial, have one short but difficult combat at the end of the session...
but that means the story part of the session would be 30-40 minutes to have a 20 minute combat.

Really?
I was thinking the opposite, 'let's make it one big battle and try to incorporate some roleplay into it'.
My idea was a scenario where the party is against a vampire and has to use the terrain against him - with the goal being to keep him outside and survive until sunrise. Usually I'm big into the more storytelling aspects of RPG, but how do you make it meaningful with only one hour?

That is a very interesting approach too, my friend. In Media-res... Start them practically at the end of a big session and play the juicy fight.