| Theme | Revenge |
| In this adventure, some villain has so offended one or more of
the characters that he cannot be suffered to live.
(Alternatively, the injured party could hire the characters to
avenge his honor.) The villain must be found or otherwise gotten
at, setting up the final duel or showdown between villain and
characters. |
| 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 | Missing Memories |
| One or more of the PCs wakes up with no memory of the recent
past, and now they find themselves in some kind of trouble they
don't understand. The PCs must find the reason for the memory
lapse, and solve any problems they uncover in the meantime. |
| Plot | Event |
| For this plot, choose some sort of event -- a tournament, a
holiday, a celebration called by the king, a masked ball, or
whatever -- and set the commencement of the Master Villain's plan
against that backdrop. |
| Climax | Scattered Duels |
| In this climax, the heroes have gotten to the end of their quest
-- they may have broken into, sneaked into, or escaped from
imprisonment within the villain's citadel, or have marched into
the little town where the villain is holed up -- and they become
separated. You can separate them by having traps and tricks break
the party apart, by having them see two or three things they must
resolve (such as danger to innocents or the appearance of minion
villains) pop up simultaneously; they'll have to run in all
directions at the same time or suffer failure. Once the party is
broken down into bite-sized chunks, you confront each individual
or small group with the enemy or enemies he most deserves to face
-- his personal enemy, the monster which defeated him before,
etc. -- for a grand series of climactic duels. |
| General Setting | Exotic Distant Land |
| The adventure will take the heroes to some fascinating and exotic
distant country, where they'll have to cope with new customs,
monsters unfamiliar to them, and very colorful NPC encounters;
choose one of the more fascinating foreign lands from your
campaign world. |
| Specific Setting I | Mansion of a Lord |
| This can be the home of a villain -- the characters may have to
break in and rescue someone or steal evidence, or break out if
they've been captured -- or of a heroic ally, in which case it
may be used as the headquarters for the heroes' plans and
activities. |
| Specific Setting II | Classic Dungeon |
| This would be the standard monster-filled labyrinth; perhaps it's
a nesting ground for the master villain's monster troops. |
| Master Villain | Ravager |
| This Master Villain is like the Destroyer, except that he
terrorizes a very limited area -- such as a village, island,
castle, or clan stronghold. (He may want to destroy the whole
world but be trapped where he is; perhaps his efforts to free
himself constitute the adventure's plot.) He stays in his area
and terrorizes whatever comes into it. |
| Minor Villain I | Corrupted Hero |
| This villain was once a hero, possibly one known to the players.
He was seduced by the dark side of the dungeon master. Because of
his own weakness, or of a curse, he has become a villain, a pawn
of the Master Villain. |
| Minor Villain II | Lovable Rogue |
| This character is like the Master Villain of the same name,
except that he has no minions of his own and serves at someone
else's bidding. However, he's very independent, not always
working in his employer's best interests; he often makes fun of
the Master Villain's pretensions and may suffer that villain's
retaliation because of it. |
| Ally/Neutral | Absent-Minded Expert |
| The characters find they need an expert in some fields --
pottery, alchemy, whatever -- but all they can find is a somewhat
daffy and absent-minded master of that subject. He's useful when
around his subject matter, but otherwise absent-minded,
incautions, in frequent need of rescuing, etc. |
| Monster Encounter | Ravager |
| This is another classic monster encounter; the monster which is
bedeviling a community or local area and will continue to do so
unless the heroes destroy or defeat it. Yes, this is similar to
the Master Villain of the same name, but the Ravager usually has
no master plan -- it just wants to kill, destroy, or eat. |
| Character Encounter | New Enemy |
| In the course of his ordinary activies, one of the heroes can
make a New Enemy. Hurrying along the street, he can bump into a
disagreeable fighter for whom an apology isn't enough; in a
tavern, he can make some innocuous remark that you deliberately
have the irritable fellow misconstrue as an insult. The New Enemy
will only exchange heated words with the hero at this point, but
will appear again later in the adventure and will eventually have
to fight the hero. |
| 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 | Horseback |
| This is a relatively short chase -- it only needs to go on for a
mile or so before even the best horses are winded. If it goes on
longer than that, the horses may collapse and perhaps die. |
| 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 | Holy Symbol |
| The villain may have the traditional weakness to a specific holy
symbol -- but don't choose just an ordinary one. It may be a
holly symbol no longer used by the church, or may be some
forgotten variation of the current symbol. (For instance, the
cross may not work, but a variation -- such as the Roman cross --
might; alternatively, it might have to be a holy symbol which has
undergone some unfamiliar ritual.) |
| Special Condition | No Hurting the Villain |
| For some reason, the heroes cannot afford to fight the villain
directly. For instance, what if a demon possesses the body of the
child of one of the characters, or a very important child spoken
of in prophecy, one without whom the world will perish? |
| Moral Quandry | Ally Quandry |
| You set up the situation so that the heroes have a good chance at
defeating the Master Villain if they get the aid of two specific
individuals, probably experts in fields relating to the villains'
activities. But the two experts hate one another and refuse to
work together, even if it costs them their world. |
| Red Herring | False Path to the Artifact |
| Once again, if the heroes have had too easy a time finding the
artifact capable of destroying the villain, give them trouble
this way: When they get to the place where the artifact is
supposed to be contained, they find the coffer or chamber or
whatever empty, obviously looted by robbers, who have scrawled
such remarks as "Kelrog was here!" upon the walls. |
| Cruel Trick | Mission is a Ruse |
| In the course of their adventuring, the heroes discover they have
been tricked into performing a mission which helps the Master
Villain. |