Great Adventure Structure for your Roleplaying Games
Arguably one of the best parts of any Dungeon Master’s prep in Dungeons and Dragons is the design, creation, and fleshing out of a great and thrilling adventure. This can be a struggle for some DMs, while for others it’s as natural as breathing. Well, I’m not gifted in this respect, so I rely on guides and tools to ensure I put together fun and engaging stories for my players. For this, I scour the books I’ve collected over my 20+ years of D&D. During this search I uncovered a solid bit of advice from one of the most hated versions of the game, Fourth Edition. Join us live as we go into detail on each of these points further on our Youtube Channel.
Good structure makes use of the tenets of good beginnings, middles, and ends.
Hooks
From the beginning, players should want their characters to be involved in the challenge the adventure proposes. The “hook” used to pull the characters into the adventure must be compelling or personal, or both, to the players and their characters. Here is where knowing your players and their characters’ goals pays off. Use that knowledge to make compelling hooks.
Choices
Player and character choices must matter in a good adventure. Not only must they matter, but also in at least a few cases, those choices must be important to an adventure’s end. Your communication skills and information flow become especially important here. You must give the players enough information, even in simple situations, for them to make meaningful decisions.
Challenges
A good adventure provides varied challenges that test the adventurers and stimulate the players. Create different encounters to emphasize attack, defense, skill use, problem-solving, investigation, and roleplaying. Make sure the encounters invite the player behavior you want by drawing out and rewarding that behavior. Know the characters’ capabilities so you can build encounters that test those resources.
Excitement
The tension should build in a good adventure, whether its structure is event-based or setting-based. An event-based adventure focuses on the things the characters do rather than the places they go. A setting-based adventure makes the location the centerpiece for the action.
Climax
Even the simplest adventures should have dramatically decisive moments when crucial knowledge or decisive action pays off, or the villain gets what’s coming to him. A sprawling dungeon complex or a long event-based adventure might have several such instances, with a big payoff at the ultimate end.
A tough fight doesn’t by itself constitute a climactic encounter. The last encounter should be the most fantastic and epic in the adventure. Don’t give the players an exciting encounter on a bridge with swinging blades and goblin archers mounted on worgs, and then let them kill the goblin king alone in a bare cave.
Meaningful Victory
Whatever the goal of the adventure, the characters’ success should be meaningful. Players should care about what happens if they fail.
“It’s (Capes and Crooks) got one of the most fun character creations I’ve ever done!” - Adam DeWees Creator of Majestic Mongoose Gaming Network-
Unearthed Tips and Tricks
Monster: Arctic Gnome Tinkerer
Origin Statblock: Imp CR1
Lost Features: Shapechanger, Devil's Sight, Sting, Invisibility
New Features:
Immunity to Cold damage.
Gnome Cunning. The gnome has advantage on Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma saving throws against magic.
Darkvision out to 60 feet.
Proficiency with Tinker Tools.
Ice Walk. The gone can move across and climb icy surfaces without needing to make an ability check. Additionally, difficult terrain composed of ice or snow doesn't cost it extra movement.
Frostbrand Battleaxe. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target Hit: 7 (1d8 + 3) slashing damage, or (1d10 + 3) slashing damage if use with two hands to make the melee attack plus 7 (2d6) cold damage.
Snowball. Ranged Spell Attack: +5 to hit, range 150 ft., one target. Hit: 10 (3d6) cold damage. If the target is standing in snow or water their movement is reduced by half.
Create Frigid Construct. The arctic gnome targets a pile of snow within 10 feet of it in an unsupplied space and creates a homunculus made of snow that does cold damage instead of poison damage. The construct is under the gnome's control. The gnome can have no more than three constructs under its control at one time.
Encounter: Laughter is “Not” the Best Medicine
Finni, a dwarf priest seeks a group of adventures to recover a powerful artifact stolen from his temple. The item is a gift from the temple’s deity, a staff of healing. Upon tracking down the staff, they find it in the hands of pirates of the Azure Sea. The pirates, led by pirate captain Brine, however, if the party should engage in diplomacy with Brine, the party soon find themselves facing a moral quandary. Nala, Brine’s sister is suffering from cackle fever. Because they were criminals they could not seek help from the temples. So they stole the staff. Unfortunately, Brine’s ignorance won’t save her sister. The staff can only use lesser restoration which can only cure short-term madness, as Nala suffers from indefinite madness, the staff alone isn’t enough.
Magic Item: Candelabra of Candor
Wondrous item, uncommon, (requires attunement)
When all the candles in this eight-armed candelabra of pure gold are lit, it creates a 15-foot radius sphere emanating a zone of truth (as the spell), centered on the candelabra. The effect lasts as long as the candles remain lit (the candles last about eight hours if not extinguished).
Once the candles are extinguished, the effect ends and cannot be used again until the next dusk. New candles can replace the old ones when the old ones are used up, as the magic lies within the candelabra, not the candles.
-The Second Black Dawn 5e Adventure-
Dungeon Master Tip: Campaign Lists
Keep track of what’s going on in your campaign. Keep the story of the adventure and the whole campaign in mind, and keep a list of things that can happen to drive the story forward. If the adventurers decide to wander off to an unexpected place and you end up using one of your prepared maps and some random encounters, pull something off your campaign list to tie the whole excursion into the broader story. This one element tied to the ongoing story makes the players think you had the whole thing planned from the start, no matter how random the encounters seemed!
Player Tip: Don’t be a Dick Sticky Situation
When it comes to combat in DnD some players seek to optimize for pure damage output. This often leaves more tactical aspects of the game. As a Circle of the Moon Druid you can create a particularly powerful tactical combo. Using the fog cloud spell. This pretty much blinds anyone in the area and forces them to attack with disadvantage. If you then shape into a creature with blindsight, such as the giant spider or ice spider queen, you can see within 10 feet with zero problems. This allows you to attack at advantage as well as retreat without provoking opportunity attacks.
Now I’m sure you want to bring the party to your friends, so you could drag one or two enemies out of the fog at a time to your allies who have an action readied as soon as an enemy exits the cloud. You’re welcome.
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Keep your blades sharp and spells prepared heroes!
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