| Theme | Action/Adventure |
| This is the most common and straightforward sort of adventure
there is. In the Action/Adventure scenario, you present your
characters with a task and then confront them with obstacles to
overcome in order to accomplish the task successfully. |
| Goal | Thwart Monstrous Plan |
| This is a classic fantasy-adventure plot: The characters learn of
some horrible plan made by a monstrous enemy, and must thwart it
before the kingdom is lost or the world is destroyed. This is an
epic goal, and usually requires that the characters go to all
sorts of places, rounding up allies and artifacts, before being
strong enough to face their enemy. |
| Story Hook | Pressing Buttons |
| As a general story-hook approach, think about the
player-character -- his personal goals and his personal dislikes.
If the hero is pursuing a specific goal, you have one of the
minor villains, as a side-effect of the villain's master plan,
thwart the hero's latest step towards that goal. Alternatively,
if there's something the hero truly hates to see, have it happen
-- and have the villains be responsible. |
| Plot | Geographic Progression |
| This is the simplest sort of adventure plot. The heroes have an
area to investigate or travel through; they have encounters based
on where they are. For instance, the traditional dungeon, where
monsters are tied to specific rooms or areas. Or, if the heroes
are travelling along a narrow valley or through an enchanted
forest, they might suffer ambushes and other encounters fixed to
various points along their travel plan. The plot, then, is
getting to the villain by surviving the intervening obstacle
encounters. |
| Climax | Bloody Battle |
| This is the best Climax for an adventure involving the clash of
mighty armies -- or for any adventure where, toward the end, the
Master Villain and a large body of minions confront the heroes
and their own troops. This finale is characterized by a monstrous
clash between the two forces, with the heroes chewing through the
enemy ranks to get at the Master Villain and his elite guards.
It's strenuous, exciting, and classically simple. |
| General Setting | Cosmopolitan City |
| Most of the story takes place in a large, sophisticated city;
center the villain's plot and activities around that city. This
setting is best suited to adventures involving more people than
monsters; most of your villains should be human or demi-human. |
| Specific Setting I | Military Encampment |
| This is best used in an episode involving warfare; it could be
the good-guy army's encampment, from which the heroes launch
their adventures, or the villains' encampment, in which case the
heroes might have to sneak in on a mission or escape from it if
they're captured. |
| Specific Setting II | Shacktown of the Oppressed |
| Part of the action centers around the tenements or shacks of the
worst part of town; perhaps an allied NPC lives here or the
characters are fugitives hiding out in the nasty part of town. |
| Master Villain | Sufferer |
| This Master Villain disguises himself as some other sort of
villain. Long ago, he was given an ugly curse -- he longs for
death but can never die unless slain by heroes unaware of his
curse. (Naturally, the way the curse works, he has to defend
himself when attacked by the heroes.) So this villain works hard
to make sure the best heroes in the world have sufficient cause
to want to come and kill him. He'll insult them, ruin them,
kidnap or murder their loved ones, whatever it takes to bring
them against him. Often, he can only die -- his curse can only be
undone -- in one specific holy place, so he'll have to lure the
heroes to that place to face him. If the heroes are doing
research on the villain all this time, they may find out his
secret, leading to a sad and painful end to the episode as the
unkillable villain has to leave and find someone new to kill him. |
| Minor Villain I | Snivelling Vizier |
| The Vizier is a throne-room villain. Functionally, he's rather
like the Hard-Eyed Advisor, offering tactics and advice to his
master; but he's an ooily, sleazy, cowardly sycophant. He's
usually brilliant in his field of advice but has no combat
abilities. |
| Minor Villain II | Chief Assassin |
| The Chief Assassin is the favorite killer of the Master Villain.
The Assassin works mostly in the field, first killing witnesses
who might prove harmful to his master, then zeroing in on the
player-characters. He usually meets his end before the
adventure's climax, but he may taken one of the heroes down with
him. |
| Ally/Neutral | Talkative Barkeep |
| This classic encounter is the garrulous innkeeper who has
information the characters want; trouble is, they'll have to
bribe him to get it, or agree to stay at his inn, or buy a lavish
meal, or listen to his incessant stories about his career in the
army, or whatever. |
| Monster Encounter | Nocturnal Predator |
| This is a classic monster encounter; the arrival of a hungry
carnivore in the middle of the night. Usually, this attack
happens to heroes camping between villages or out in the deep
wilderness; a wild animal, attracted by food odors (from the
heroes' campfire or from the heroes themselves) sneaks in for a
bite. |
| Character Encounter | Bureaucrat |
| Some time in their adventure, the heroes must deal with the local
government and run into that most horrible of nuisance monsters,
the bureaucrat and his red-tape dispenser. The heroes don't have
the right forms. When they have the right forms, they forgot to
fill them out in triplicate. And so on. |
| Deathtrap | Pit and the Pendulum |
| Actually, we're applying this term to any of many time-delay
deathtraps. In this sort of trap, the villains capture the heroes
and place them in a trap which will soon kill them -- it operates
on a delay, often based on a timing device or a burning fuse. |
| Chase | Endurance |
| The Endurance Chase is not some sort of climactic chase -- it's a
rugged, tiring, persistent pursuit that tests the characters to
their limits. In this chase, the heroes and villains are pursuing
one another across a lot of territory and they're not catching up
with one another very fast. This may be a horseback pursuit
across a hundred miles of savannah, a camel chase across several
days' worth of desert, or a chase across arctic tundra. |
| Omen/Prophesy | Hero Fulfills Prophecy |
| This is the most useful sort of prophecy. In the early part of
the adventure, one of the heroes discovers that he fulfills some
ancient prophecy. |
| Secret Weakness | Love |
| The Master Villain possesses the "weakness" of genuine affection
or love -- probably for some NPC, though it could be very
intriguing if the object of his affections is a player-character.
The heroes can then defeat the villain by holding his loved one
hostage, or proving that his loved one will be seriously harmed,
betrayed, or killed if the villain keeps up with his activity. |
| Special Condition | Time Limit |
| Finally, the most obvious condition to place on an adventure is
to give it a time limit. If the Master Villain is going to
conclude his evil spell in only three days, and his citadel is
three hard days' riding away, then the heroes are going to be on
the go all throughout the adventure -- with little time to rest,
plan, gather allies, or anything except get to where they're
going. |
| Moral Quandry | Respect Quandry |
| This is much like the Ally Quandry, only at a greater distance.
The heroes have been utilizing the aid of two (or more) powerful
NPC allies. Now, in the course of the adventure, the heroes come
across a task which can be accomplished in one of two ways --
say, through military intervention or by esoteric magic. The
problem is, the NPC allies are arguing for different choices, and
the one whom the heores choose against will no longer aid them. |
| Red Herring | Lying Rumor |
| This is the worst and most useful type of red herring -- the
interesting rumor which just happens to be false. In adventures
of this sort, the best Lying Rumor concerns the Master Villain;
it gives the heroes some "important" information about him which
later turns out to be useless. |
| Cruel Trick | NPC Turns Traitor |
| He may alert he enemy when the heroes are planning a raid; he may
steal the artifact and take it to the villain; he may stab a hero
or important NPC in the back (literally) before departing. |
Based on tables from the
Dungeon Master's Design Kit by TSR, Inc.