| Theme | Espionage |
| Espionage adventures are active, grim scenarios involving spying
and perhaps other cloak-and-dagger deeds such as assassination or
rescue. |
| Goal | Gain Money |
| The heroes are intent on acquiring a fee or treasure. If it's a
fee, you may wish to roll again on this page to learn the
patron's goal. If it's a treasure, pay attention to the Settings
section, which will dictate where the treasure is, if not who
owns it. |
| 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 | Throne Room Duel |
| This is set up much like the Scattered Duels, except that you
don't separate the heroes. It's harder to control whom fights who
in this situation... but if it doesn't matter who has the final
duel with the Master Villain, this is a classic climax choice. |
| General Setting | Under the Ground |
| In this variety of adventure, the heroes descend into vast cavern
networks beneath the earth's crust. There, they can encounter
bizarre races and primitive tribes, hitherto-unknown monsters and
strange landscapes. |
| Specific Setting I | 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. |
| 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 | Conqueror |
| This character is moving his army in to take over; that's what he
lives for. He's been the enemy of your characters' nation's
ruler, and has launched a full-scale invasion of your characters'
favorite nation. The heroes have to beat their way through or
elude his hordes of soldiers in order to get at him; better yet,
they might lead their own nation's troops against his and
outthink him in military fashion. |
| 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 | Snivelling Vizier |
| The Vizier is a throne-room villain. Functionally, he's rather
like the Hard-Eyed Advisor, offering tactics and advice to his
master; but he's an ooily, sleazy, cowardly sycophant. He's
usually brilliant in his field of advice but has no combat
abilities. |
| 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 | 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 | Mean Drunk |
| The Mean Drunk works much like the Belligerent Soldier except
that he's not as tough, is of course drunk, and is usually
accompanied by other Mean Drunks. |
| 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 | 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 | 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 | Time Limit |
| Finally, the most obvious condition to place on an adventure is
to give it a time limit. If the Master Villain is going to
conclude his evil spell in only three days, and his citadel is
three hard days' riding away, then the heroes are going to be on
the go all throughout the adventure -- with little time to rest,
plan, gather allies, or anything except get to where they're
going. |
| 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 | Lying Rumor |
| This is the worst and most useful type of red herring -- the
interesting rumor which just happens to be false. In adventures
of this sort, the best Lying Rumor concerns the Master Villain;
it gives the heroes some "important" information about him which
later turns out to be useless. |
| 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.