Buy Me a CoffeeRandom Adventure Generator
| Theme | Comedy |
| This adventure is fun for fun's sake. Its basic purpose is to provide humorous entertainment with a minimum of actual danger or tragedy. | |
| Goal | Survive Environment |
| The characters could end up in a hostile environment which they must cross -- a desert, a jungle, or other hostile setting. In the course of the adventure they'll need to find food and water, resist the elements, and perhaps fight off attacks of the natives. | |
| Story Hook | Better Late than Never |
| Some bad guys have arrived and done some bad guy things. The PCs were none the wiser. The bad guys have now made good their escape, and the PCs have caught wind of it in time to chase them down before they make it back to their lair, their home nation, behind enemy lines, etc. | |
| Plot | A-B-C Quest |
| This is an epic sort of plot. In it, the heros are given (or undertake) a task to perform: The taking of a city, the rescue of an innocent, the destruction of a monster, the creation of a magical item, the defeat of a Master Villain, etc. But the path to victory is not a simple one. To get to their goal, Event A, they find that they must first accomplish some other task -- Event B. But when they undertake the task of accomplishing Event B, they find that they must first accomplish Event C. This goes on for several encounters, until the heroes accomplish all the obstacle events which prevent them from returning to Event A, their original goal. | |
| Climax | Divine Retribution |
| Here, the heroes' goal has been to alert the gods that the Master Villain threatens them or their plans; in the last scenes of the adventure, as our heroes face an overwhelming enemy force, the gods bring down their divine retribution on the villain, causing a massive earthquake, tidal wave, lightning storm, or flood of monsters. This is all well and good, but the heroes are too close and must escape the fringe effects of this awesome disaster. A variant on this is the Natural Disaster. No gods are actually involved, but the Master Villain has been tampering with the delicate forces of nature. He may, for instance, have been powering his master spell with the energies of a volcano. When the heroes attack the scene of his spellcasting, the spell goes out of control and so does the volcano. The villain is consumed in the eruption and the heroes must escape or be consumed themselves. | |
| 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 | Tavern/Inn |
| This is a classic fantasy setting, the residence of travelling heroes and the home of the tavern brawl. | |
| Specific Setting II | Legendary Forest |
| This classic adventure site is the sometimes dark and fearsom, sometimes light and cheerful, always magical and incomprehensible forest inhabited by the oldest elven trives and most terrifying monsters. | |
| Master Villain | Zealot |
| This villain is like the Conqueror, but he's not trying to conquer to own; he's trying to purge the world of something he feels is pure evil (another religion, a human, demi-human, or nonhuman race of sentient beings, a custom). He operates just like the Conqueror, enslaving or killing all those who belong to the "wrong" race or philosophy. | |
| Minor Villain I | Childhood Friend with a Dark Secret |
| This Minor Villain is like the character of the same name from the Allies and Neutrals section. However, the heroes find out early on that he's really working for the Master Villain. He may not wish to be helping the villains; his family may be held hostage, or he may just be too frightened of the villain or otherwise weak-willed to refuse. Alternatively, he could actually be evil now. | |
| Minor Villain II | Single-Minded Soldier |
| This most trustworthy of villain minions is the experienced, competent, persistent soldier -- a field-trained officer who serves the villain with military precision. He is usually encountered in the field as leader of the villain's field operations. He is not encountered directly until the middle of or the latter part of the adventure; until then, the heroes encounter only his subordinates. | |
| Ally/Neutral | Grumpy Old Professional |
| Again, the heroes need an expert in a certain field -- this time a craft or art, such as blacksmithing, engineering, horse-training, or whatever. The only or best professional they can find is an aged expert. He's grumpy, cranky, and sharp-tongued; he constantly complains about the food, the weather, his companions, the decline in skill of his co-workers since he was a young man, the road conditions, the rotten pay he's receiving, and so on. | |
| Monster Encounter | Terrain Monster |
| Don't forget the simple run-in with the animal belonging to the terrain where the heroes are: Every type of wilderness has its predators and big, nasty herbivores. | |
| Character Encounter | Old Friend at the Wrong Time |
| When the heroes are trying to sneak through a guardpost, citadel, or city where they can't afford to be recognized, one of the characters' old friends recognizes him and loudly renews their acquaintance in full view of the guards looking for the characters. This usually leads to an exciting chase as the heroes must escape. | |
| 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 | Element |
| The Master Villain can be banished, dispelled, killed, or otherwise defeated by some of element or item. The Master Villain tries to get rid of all the examples of this element in his vicinity; he doesn't let his minions carry it or bring it into his presence. But he's not stupid; he doesn't announce to the world what his weakness is. He tries to hide his concern within another command. If he's allergic to red roses, for instance, he orders all "things of beauty" destroyed within miles of his abode. | |
| Special Condition | Omnipresent Observer |
| If a wizard, demigod or god has forced the heroes to undertake this quest, he may be with them continually -- in spirit. He can't help them, but does magically watch everything they do. And when they do something he doesn't like, he tells them about it -- loudly and nastily. (This is distressing when they're trying to break into a fortress or sneak through enemy lines.) | |
| 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 | Extraneous Details |
| When giving the heroes details on their enemy -- for instance, details they are learning from investigations and readings -- you can give them just a few details too many. This may prompt the heroes to investigate the "extra" (i.e., irrelevant) details in addition to the relevant onces, thus losing them valuable time. | |
| 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. |
Based upon tables from the Dungeon Master's Design Kit by TSR, Inc.