Buy Me a CoffeeRandom Adventure Generator
| Theme | Espionage |
| Espionage adventures are active, grim scenarios involving spying and perhaps other cloak-and-dagger deeds such as assassination or rescue. | |
| 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 | 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 | 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 | 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 | Ruins |
| These can be the ruins of some ancient civilization, an abandoned temple or castle, incomprehensible blocks of stone arranged by ancient gods, etc. They can be magical or normal, inhabited by normal animals or by monsters, centers of magic or just tumbled-down buildings. | |
| 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 | 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 | 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. | |
| 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 | Assassin Monster |
| This mosnter, at some time in the adventure, is sent by the Master Villain to attack one or more heroes when they're at their most vulnerable -- asleep, enjoying themselves, etc. Usually, the Assassin Monster attacks, but the hero, though injured, is able to hold it off long enough for his friends to respond to his shouts. The Assassin Monster is usually killed by his friends, who can then speculate on who sent it and why. | |
| 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 | 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 | Comet's Progress |
| Events during the adventure may be enlivened by a large and menacing comet which appears in the night sky for several days during the scenario; the locals take it for an omen of doom. The comet may be the result of magic being used by the Master Villain, or the comet's appearance can pertain to an old legend involving the Master Villain. | |
| Secret Weakness | Secret Embarrassment |
| Finally, the villain may have some aberration or secret shame that will force him to flee when he is confronted with it. It could be something as simple as the fact that his nose is too big, or that he is a small and nebbishly wizard pretending to be some vast, powerful demonic power. When his shame is revealed, he is too humiliated to continue; this is a good option for comedy adventures. | |
| Special Condition | Magic Doesn't Work Right |
| If the adventure is taking place on an alternate plane, then that plane's magic works oddly or not at all. (A spellcaster will find that just making himself useful is a challenge when none of his spells works.) | |
| 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 | Villain Accompanies Party |
| In this distressing situation, the Master Villain, in disguise or his secret identity, accompanies the heroes for much of their quest. He gets to know them, learns their strengths and weaknesses, learns their plans, and just as soon as it's most efficient for him, he thwarts their current plans and leaves. Alternatively, the Master Villain might be with the heroes all along, up to the very end; the heroes know that one of their companions is the villain, and the whole thrust of the story is finding out who he is. This is the whole purpose of most Mystery-type adventures. |
Based upon tables from the Dungeon Master's Design Kit by TSR, Inc.