Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Adventure Creation

Tonight I did a in-house bookstore night where I push the table in another corner of the room and set up like I was at the bookstore.  I need to do this every so often to help me focus and it allows me to write without getting distracted for a few hours. 

Tonight I started with a blank state.  No map or plan.  So I grabbed +Richard LeBlanc's d30 DM Companion and his d30 Sandbox Companion  turned to random tables in the DM Companion and then did a few rolls on the adventure tables in the Sandbox Companion.  Here's what I came up with.

  • Treasure Finding Potion requires the imbiber to consume 3x the food and drink for the next week.  Used, but tweaked the side effect.  See the adventure for the new version.
  • Wooden coffer trapped with a magic symbol that does 3d4 damage of frost damage and the target is slowed for the rest of the day.  Kept it as is.  I added the slow affect.
  • Hobgoblins (5d4) = 12  If the patrols are used I think there are 16 total hobgoblins
  • Stirges (5d4) = 17  I went with 13 stirges.
  • Gnolls (3d6) = 12   I dropped the total to a single gnoll.
  • Trigger: Vision  Dropped.  I tried to write it as a vision, but it sucked.
  • Major Goal: Investigate Location  Not the major goal, but just a needed aspect.
  • Obstacle: Aquire Knowledge  In an indirect way this is the major goal.  The potion grants this.
  • Location: Ruins  Kept, love me some ruins. 
  • Location Feature: Chapel  Kept, love me some ruin chapels.
  • Phenomena: Shadows  Dropped.  Just didn't fit in with what I wanted to do. 
  • Villain Goal: Greed  To be determined.  This will end up being at least a two part adventure.
  • Artifact/Relic: Potion of Treasure Finding  Used.  I like the slant I used for this one. 
 So this was the seed of the adventure I wrote.  I liked having the adventure revolve around getting an item, but not just an item, but rather a tool for something bigger with a side effect when used.  Now of course I did not use everything exactly as rolled, but it helped guide the writing.

While I didn't have a map I put the chapel in some barren hills, party encounters a patrol of hobgoblins before reaching the chapel.  There are two ways to enter the chapel, through the tunnel which is infest with a nest of stirges or through the chapel itself where more hobgoblins await.  The chapel itself is made of a single room above ground, and then two room underground, a basement and a well room where the goal, the treasure find potion is kept.  

When I write an adventure I usually write it three, four times.  I had three false starts with this one until I settled on my current version.  I will draw the map and edit to become one of my micro-adventures.  Here is the raw copy of the adventure.  I very pleased the way it turned out.


Suggest a title and maybe you'll get a copy of the adventure when I'm done.

11 comments:

  1. A well-made mini adventure! A title for it? Hmmm... "Treasures for everyone!" :p

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sounds like it will be both a lot of fun to play as well as run. How about: "A Glutton for Treasure" or "Starving for Treasure"

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sounds like it will be both a lot of fun to play as well as run. How about: "A Glutton for Treasure" or "Starving for Treasure"

    ReplyDelete
  4. "Ruined Chapel of the Coveted Elixir"

    ReplyDelete
  5. Mystery of the chapel: one treasure to rule them all

    ReplyDelete
  6. My suggestions: "Broken Chapel of the Vestiges"

    (chosen to give the chapel itself a hint of its past and perhaps a link to the treasure-finding... maybe it was chapel to the patron saint of lost treasures?)

    Nice clear adventure and an excellent example of using random tables to generate something new. It still baffles me why so few 'official' adventures, old or new, have the same ease of utility as the OSR.

    ReplyDelete
  7. "The Insatiable Hunger"

    (for treasure or for food)

    ReplyDelete
  8. "On the Slow Road to Glory": incorporates the travel through the hills, a hint that the potion will point to something more glorious than a mundane treasure (and that the players, keeping and needing the potion for a follow-on adventure, will need to adventure further to get there), and the tiniest nod to the effects of the trap.

    Oh, how I love random tables.

    ReplyDelete