Buy Me a CoffeeRandom Adventure Generator
| 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 | 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 | Old Enemy |
| This is a straightforward story hook; the hero learns that his oldest enemy is back and is very active in the campaign, up to something. The hero will naturally want to investigate and will walk right into the story. | |
| 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 | Chase to Ground |
| First, you have the Heroes Chasing the Villain. The villain, after a series of encounters with the heroes, is running to safety, to some place where he can acquire more power, or to somehwere he can accomplish some dread purpose such as assassination or mass murder. The heroes chase him, have to deal with the obstacles he leaves behind, and finally catch up to him before or just as he reaches his goal. Here, we have the final duel between the villains forces and the heroes. Second, you have the Villain Chasing the Heroes. Often, in a story like this, the heroes have found out how to defeat the villain -- such as getting to a particular temple and conducting a particular ritual. The villain chases them all through their quest, catching up to them just as they're commenciing their ritual; they must, with heroic effort, conclude the ritual while suffering his attacks. Third, you have the Master Villain's Sudden Escape Attempt. This takes place in adventures where the Master Villain's identity is unknown until the end. His identity is revealed and he makes a sudden bolt for freedom; the heroes give chase. This usually results in a dangerous foot-chase through nasty terrain -- such as across rooftops, through the dungeons, or across an active battlefield. | |
| 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 | Classic Dungeon |
| This would be the standard monster-filled labyrinth; perhaps it's a nesting ground for the master villain's monster troops. | |
| Specific Setting II | Craftsman's Quarter |
| This can occur in either the shop of the master craftsman of a palace or manor, or the guild-area of a city. | |
| Master Villain | Advance Agent |
| This villain is the vanguard of some sort of invastion; often, he is trying to open up a portal to a dimension full of trapped demons and evil gods. | |
| Minor Villain I | Hard-Eyed Advisor |
| This is the sort of villain whom the heroes see in the Master Villain's throne room. He's hard-eyed and scary; life means nothing to him and he enjoys killing. He's also a good advisor to his master. | |
| Minor Villain II | Avenger |
| This character is much like the Master Villain of the same name, but he's not in charge of all this villainy, and he's definitely an enemy of one of the player-characters. You'll have to decide who he is and why he hates one of the heroes; he could be anything from a recurring villain to someone who simply lost a fight to the hero once. | |
| Ally/Neutral | Ingenue in Distress |
| The heroes must protect some defenseless young innocent who is in danger from the villains. This person, perhaps the sheltered son or daughter of a nobleman or merchant, has no abilities at all but is sweet, charming, and in great need of help. | |
| 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 | Demolition Zone |
| In this classic deathtrap, the heroes are placed (usually bound and weaponless) in some building or area just as it's due to be destroyed. | |
| Chase | Special Terrain |
| You can make any chase more memorable by having it take place in a setting to which it is utterly unsuited. For instance, horse chases are fine and dramatic when they take place through the forest, out in the open plains, or along a road -- but they become diabolical when they take place inside the Royal Palace or in dangerous, labrynthine, treacherous catacombs. | |
| 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 | 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 | 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 | 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 | Heroes Must Work with Villain |
| If they have to work for the villain, it's due to some hold he has over them -- probably, he's kidnapped one of their NPCs and will kill this person if his demands aren't met. Put the heroes through the encounter where they have to do something they are loathe to do, such as sack and pillage a temple, before they have the opportunity to retrieve their friend. |
Based upon tables from the Dungeon Master's Design Kit by TSR, Inc.