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 | Win War |
| In this adventure or set of adventures, the characters become part of an army -- a force assaulting another kingdom, perhaps, or an army defending one realm from another. | |
| Story Hook | Legend and Rumor |
| In this classic story hook, the hero stumbles across some new or long-forgotten knowledge that promises great treasure or gain. | |
| Plot | Accumulation of Elements |
| In this sort of plot, the heroes have to go from place to place -- perhaps covering very little area like a city, perhaps roaming the known world -- and accumulate elements to be used against the Master Villain. These elements may be clues, pieces of an artifact, evidence, or allies. | |
| Climax | Prevented Deed |
| Here, the heroes have been defeated -- captured by the Master Villain, or so thoroughly cut up by his minions that all believe them to be dead. And the heroes have learned, from the bragging of the villain, loose talk of his minions, or examination of clues, what is the crucial event of his master plan. In any case, the battered and bruised heroes must race to this site and have their final confrontation with the villain, bursting in on him and his minions just as the knife or final word or key is poised, and prevent the awful deed from taking place -- and, incidentally, defeat the master villain and minions who beat them previously. | |
| 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 | Demi-human Community |
| In wilderness areas, this will be a large community of demi-humans -- elves, dwarves, halflings, whatever -- or intelligent nonhumans such as orcs. If your action is taking place in a city, this could be a hidden community (such as a secret underground dwarf community) or a section of the city inhabited mostly by demi-humans. | |
| 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 | Avenger |
| This villain seeks to avenge some wrong he thinks he's suffered. He may be right; he may have suffered a wrong, and this makes him a little more sympathetic than villains who are purely evil. The Avenger uses his organization -- thugs and bribed officials -- to get at the one who wronged him, and will want either to duel (singly) the one who wronged him, or to put the wrongdoer in a deathtrap. | |
| Minor Villain I | Coward |
| This character is an ordinary grunt minion of the Master Villain, but he's a coward. He's deathly afraid of the Villain and the heroes. He's best used when you plan to have the heroes captured; by his mannerisms, you can make it clear to them that this fellow is a coward and they will begin to work on him psychologically. | |
| 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 | Arrogant Snob |
| For some reason, the heroes have to accompany or escort an arrogant nobleman or craftsmaster. They can't afford to abandon or kill this person; he or she may be their employer, an expert on the place they're going to, one of their relatives, or a relative of the royal family. And this person makes their life hell with sniping comments, haughtiness, and other unbearable traits. | |
| 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 | Inquisitive Official |
| Some local authority has noticed the characters' presence and it makes her curious. She snoops around asking questions all the time. She may be a city guardsman or special agent of the ruler, but (functionally) she's a police lieutenant, asking the rong questions at the wrong time; the heroes have to work around her, sneaking where normally they'd be able to work in the open. | |
| 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 | Birthmark |
| One of the heroes has a birthmark that pertains to the adventure in some way. He may have a birthmark identical to some NPC -- for instance, some person endangered by the Master Villain. This mystery can give the hero his reason to become involved. Alternatively, his birthmark may mark him as a hero fulfilling 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 | 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 | Friend Quandry |
| At a critical point in the story, one of the campaign's NPCs makes an impossible demand of one of the heroes. | |
| 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 | NPC Turns Traitor |
| He may alert the 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 upon tables from the Dungeon Master's Design Kit by TSR, Inc.