One shots

Was just thinking about one shots and wanted to get some opinions on things. 1) How much notice do people feel they need to participate in a one-shot? 2) How much thought should go into character/party creation for a one-shot? I had found a little prebuilt side adventure, built it into roll20, and had thought to turn it into a one shot to run when IRL schedule allowed, and/or when a regular D&D game can't be run. The thing would be that if it would get run it would be with fairly short notice. Do most players want to have more time to prepare and chat than other players than a short notice game would allow?

1.) Personally, I would like to have a couple of days to either familiarize or re-familiarize myself with the game and/or character at hand. 2.) I don't think that you need more than a couple of paragraphs explaining how and why the group is together, and why they are doing this thing that they are doing together.

Pathfinder Society Games are run as one shots, I have run a dozen One Shots here, a lot of times folks just would like to play but not have to commit to a regular campaign, One Shots are perfect for this.

Personally, when I do one shots, I make or use pregens, and have the players use those. That way you can all get right into the story and go. Most players, when doing character creation want to spend time and get invested in that. Then you have a player with emotional investment in a character beyond the one shot. If you are choosing to use it as a launching pad for a campaign, you might have character creation, but even then I personally would rather use pregens to show them the world. Then before the actual campaign started, you could have a character creation session where they made their own for that universe. Doing it that way also eliminates much of the 'notice time' that you mentioned, as they can hop in and play on a whim. I usually run superhero games, as as such it is easy for people to hop in and get an idea of what is going on and who their characters are. When doing a D&D game, I would just make a character or two for each class you want in the party (maybe a male and female of each) and then let the players pick a class.