Buy Me a CoffeeRandom Adventure Generator
| Theme | Horror |
| This type of adventure is designed to scare both the characters and the players. Just having a monster attack is not enough for a horror theme; the monster must first frighten the characters. | |
| Goal | Settle a Debt |
| A player character may find himself in the position of needing to settle a debt. He could gamble away all his money and need to raise some more to repay the gambling house before its enforcers come for him. On a more personal level, the character may need to settle a debt of either money or honor that he owes to an NPC. | |
| Story Hook | Hero Offended |
| Someone greatly offends the hero, so much so that he'll pursue his offender right into the adventure. (Note that this usually means that the offender is a minion of the Master Villain. You'll have to decide whether the minion offended the hero precisely to bring him into the adventure or just as a side-effect of his ordinary villain activities.) | |
| 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 | 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 | On the Road |
| Most of the adventure takes place on the road, as the heroes are travelling from place to place. This is especially good for adventures where heroes are investigating a wide-ranging mystery, are part of a caravan, or are being pursued by loathesome villains. | |
| 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 | Madman's Fortress |
| This is the citadel of a major enemy: Strong, unassailable, filled with soldiers and monsters, lined with secret passages and deathtraps; not a wholesome place for adventurers to spend their time. | |
| Master Villain | Corruptor |
| The Corruptor is the villain who wants to make something nasty out of something that is currently nice. He may be working on a small scale -- i.e., wish to corrupt one character or a few characters, particularly PCs and their favorite NPCs. Alternatively, he may be a big-scale villain trying to change an entire city or nation into a jaded, debased pit of sin, hatred and death. | |
| Minor Villain I | Misguided Moralist |
| This fellow has been convinced that only by helping the villain achieve the Master Plan can he improve the world. He tends to be encountered all through the adventure's plot, usually escaping from the heroes and taunting them for their wrong thinking. Fortunately, he's no more effective as a villain than he is as a thinker. | |
| 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 | Tragic Fellow Hero |
| The heroes are in the company of some hero well-known to them; he may have been a companion or ally, or they may just know him by reputation. He is a tragic figure; he may have lost his family to the master villain, or lost his properties and titles, or be afflicted with a curse he cannot be rid of, or be committed to a quest he knows will take his life. He's dour, and gloomy, prophesying doom and having no fun at all. | |
| Monster Encounter | Stampede |
| Should the heroes ever cross plains or prairies, their villainous enemies may wish to stampede a herd of large animals at them. Alternatively, beasts in the forest may be stampeded by fires set by the villains; in this case, it will not be one sort of animal charging through, but a mixture of terrified forest animals, from the smallest fox-cub to the largest bear. | |
| Character Encounter | Seducer |
| One of the characters is invited to a romantic liaison with an attractive local. This local can just be interested in a brief tryst, could fall madly in love with the hero and follow the hero through the rest of the adventure, could be a Loving Deceiver monster encounter, could be a thief and rob the hero blind, or could be a spy or assassin working for the Master Villain. | |
| Deathtrap | Rock and a Hard Place |
| This trap starts out as an Animal Pit, Pit and the Pendulum, or Tomb Deathtrap, but an obvious escape suggests itself very early on. Trouble is, it leads into even worse danger. The hole out of the animal pit may lead to the lair of an even worse animal; it may lead through a succession of dangers (collapsing old catacombs, into an underground river, into a den of zombies) before the heroes reach the light. | |
| 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 | Totem Animal |
| If a hero has an animal which is his totem, he may see the animal engaged in a fight to the death with another animal -- one which, coincidentally, is the totem of one of the villains. How his totem defeats the other -- or is defeated by it -- gives the hero some clues as how to fight his actual opponent when the time comes. | |
| 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 | Coping with a Curse |
| The curse might be making the hero progressively uglier, might be draining out his life-force (he's losing experience which will be retruned if he succeeds), or might be making him progressively insane. Each day, as he sees his reflection in a mirror or pond or fountain, he'll know himself to be less than he used to be. | |
| Moral Quandry | Honor Quandry |
| You want to use this on the character with the most strongly developed sense of personal honor -- someone who has lived all his life by a strict code. Toward the end of the adventure, this character realizes that the best way to defeat the Master Villain is a violation of that code. For instance, the character might be a paladin, who discovers that the only possible way for the heroes to defeat the Master Villain is to sneak up on him and stab him in the back. | |
| Red Herring | Loony who Has It Wrong |
| You can have the heroes "aided" by a so-called expert who is actually a lunatic who doesn't know anything about what he's talking about. Once he's led the heroes off to some remote part of the continent, his evasive answers and bizarre behaviour will alert them that he really doesn't know anything about what he's pretended to be an expert on. | |
| Cruel Trick | Wanted by the Law |
| One final complication, one which occurs pretty frequently, is when the heroes are wanted by the law. When they're wanted by the law, they have to travel in secret and very limited in the resources they can acquire. |
Based upon tables from the Dungeon Master's Design Kit by TSR, Inc.