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Dare: The Glittering Reef:
“While the dragon may long be dead, there’s more than one predator in these waters. You best be quick if you wish to claim your prize.“
Setup: Generations ago the crystal clear waters of the Ildathan coast ran red with blood, as a terrible archdrake terrorized the trade routes and savaged any merchant ship it caught eyes on. Known to locals as Hullraker, this beast would use its powerful claws to crack open the body of ships to gorge itself on sailors and treasure alike.
While its a myth that dragons eat gold, they do sometimes devour valuable objects to spit up into their hordes later. This habbit would eventually lead to the drake’s defeat, as a group of clever pirates tired of the drake’s meddling caste a series of golden cannonballs, then hollowed them out and filled them with black powder, and an alchemical compound that would ignite after being exposed to the drake’s insides for some length of time. Loading up a dummy ship with their deadly decoys and piles of coin as bait, they watched in glee as the drake’s belly exploded mid air, showering the sea with golden shrapnel and sending Hullraker plunging into the reef below.
The Challenge: Since the time of its death, treasure hunters have paddled out to the glimmering reef in the hopes of reclaiming a portion of the dragons last, fatal meal. Having stripped most of the upper reef clear of coins. Now after years of plundering only the strongest of divers can make it down to the dark, shark infested shelf of the reef where the dragon’s bones and the bulk of its treasure remains. Tradition is that each diver only takes a single coin, and while one gold piece isn’t much to an adventure, a “drowned queen” (one of the particular printing of coins the pirates used for the bulk of their bait) is a mighty prize among sailors and other folk of the sea, said to confer the luck and cunning of the pirates that took Hullraker down.
Adventure: The Clockmaker’s Daughter
Setup: a generation ago you couldn’t visit a battlefield or costume ball without seeing one of Markus Relvolo’s marvelous clockwork soldiers. Originally a humble craftsman commissioned to create a single artificial guardsman for a noble’s estate, master Relvolo’s creation was so impressive that soon everyone, including the crown, wanted their own unsleeping guardians. The riches rolled in, Relvolo was given a workshop and a royal commission, and soon his soldiers became emblematic of the nation’s formidable strength and forward thinking industry.
The problem with clockwork soldiers is that however complex the mechanisms that drive their actions, they lack the common sense the gods gave to even the most brickheaded guard, being incapable of making judgement calls outside of their strict programming. It was this strictness that led one of Relvolo’s creations to publicly and grusomely execute a trespasser on its owner’s estate. Nevermind the fact that the trespasser was a child who’d wandered from the public gardens, or that the murder happened right in front of said child’s mother, or that the noble had apparently been so protective of their front lawn they’d turned property defense to “extreme prejudice” in the clockwork’s decision making protocols.
The scandal spread over the kingdom overnight, and by the next morning, Markus Relvolo and his creations were kicked to the curb, retroactively made monsters for the crime of another and dying in penniless infamy.
Adventure Hooks:
Where once they guarded palaces and temples, today most of Relvolo’s machines are consigned to the scrapheap. a paltry few were de-armed and sold as cheap labor, though most often they do backroom work, or pull night soil carts as even the lowest of the low does not want to be seen employing child-murdering machine. Poorly maintained these constructs are likely to go haywire, fulfilling their seemingly banal tasks with disastrous compliance. The party may encounter an axewielding clockwork that having finished making firewood out of its assigned log pile has moved on to the walls of the surrounding houses.
Heedless of their infamy, Criminals have no qualms about using these lethal automata, as their unquestioning lethality makes them Ideal muscle for those gangs capable of retaining a skilled salvage mechanic. What’s more, their ubiquity in the urban scrapheap makes them ideal boobytraps, indistinguishable from any of the other dozen clockwork hulks an unwary intruder might have passed that day.
Inheriting her father’s masterful skill and withering social stigma, Viola Relvolo, has worked her way out of squalor and is intent on redeeming her father’s legacy. Life on the streets has given Viola no qualms about working with outlaws, and already she’s begun to weave her underworld contacts into the tentative foundations of a criminal syndicate reliant on her brilliance. Unsatisfied with simply resurrecting her father’s creations, she labors to increase their thinking ability and reasoning, all the while equipping her criminal patrons with upgraded clockworks.
Adventure: Anarchy in the Royal Archives
Synopsis: If your party wants that critical piece of lore, they’ll have to help a gnomish librarian oust the malevolent presence that’s taken up residence among his shelves.
Setup: Royal lorekeeper Nizburt Incunabulum has maintained a library in the capital since before the ascension of the dynasty that would grant him the title. For nearly three centuries Incunabulum has been a minor but steadying influence on the politics of the realm, as to weather threats that might destabilize a kingdom, rulers rely on the knowledge and histories of his archive to provide a solid foundation. Codes of laws, ethics, and philosophy can guide the ruler in making just decisions, while chronicles of past disasters and scientific progress can lead their kingdom out of any crisis.
How unfortunate is it that in the hour when the realm is in most in need of his knowledge, Nizbut seems to have fallen prey some terrible and befuddling curse.
It started, as it always does in a library, with the books. Often they’d be out of order, or stacked in piles in disused corners, or simply missing for long periods of time, just when Nizburt had need of them. Then it was the creeping chill, an unseasonable intrusion that slowly developed into a pervasive mist that seemed to coalesce in the least traveled parts of the archive and spread outwards. Most of these Nizburt could excuse as minor inconveniences, that was before the rooms started rearranging.
Now the archivist is fighting a losing battle against chaos: climbing pillars of misplaced books in an attempt to return single volumes to their proper spot, or leaving string and chalk markings behind to attempt to circumvent the library’s shifting floorplan. The librarian is sure something is tormenting him, personally, but has been unable to investigate the source of this haunting with his priority of keeping the books safe.
Adventure hooks:
The party are minor members of the castle staff, royal family, or even Nizburt’s assistants, and thier first adventure together involves ridding the archives of it’s curse and rescuing the old man from being buried allive by his own precious tomes.
A more experienced group of players may gain access to the archives as reward for their great deeds. A great honor on the surface, but one that turns out to be a hollow prize when it turns out the chaos in the library has been going on for years and the librarian hasn’t been seen for just as long. Really this was yet another royal mission, as if the players wish to claim the archive’s benefits, they’ll have to do the work themselves of excoriating the curse.
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D&D adventure premises inspired by stupid bear puns
Premise: a bear is the only witness to a crime; the party must convince the local druid to awaken it so it can testify. Adventure title: Bear Witness
Premise: the party must escort the king’s valuable pet bear through hostile territory. Adventure title: Bear With Me
Premise: the party must retrieve a cache of powerful enchanted weapons from the lair of an enormous owlbear that’s somehow figured out how to use them. Adventure title: Bear Arms
Premise: a psychic werebear is telepathically possessing townsfolk and forcing them to commit crimes. Adventure title: Bear in Mind
Premise: a charlatan at the summer fair is attempting to sell trained bears as domestic helpers; events proceed as expected. Adventure title: Bear Market
Premise: the party must investigate the reported appearance of a great golden bear that the local temple believes to be an omen from their god. Adventure title: Cross to Bear
This is a system for dnd adventures I made that’s been successful at keeping a greater number of friends in the loop who can’t play all at the same time who all have adult lives and jobs to keep up with so schedules rarely line up.
Welcome to the University Corcyra Isle! One could even call it a Multiuniversity. The university is led by a proud gynosphinx, has a drider librarian, a medical doctor tired of stitching young wizards back together, and more.
Players make a character with at least 2 levels of wizard so they have a school of magic they focus on. Upon finishing their entrance exams they are given:
-2 Health Potions -A pearl of power -A driftglobe -An extra spellbook
There is a course catalogue depicting the multitude of courses players can take ranging from CREA 101: Mimic Safety, to ABJU 101: Circles and Wards, to PLNR 101: Echoes in the Shadowfell. Players vote on what class (what session) they want to take next.
Sphinxes (as lair actions) can take themselves and up to 7 other creatures through space and time letting your sphinx Ms Frizzle take them to the heavens, hells, and everywhere in between. You can even revisit important historical events in your campaign world.
One shots are two parters, so if a player can’t make it or has to drop canonically they have to go back to school to study. This makes it so players can drop in and out as necessary.
The loot system is what makes all this work with this many people. It uses a Milestone progression system. Every one shot is a Milestone, and it takes a set number of Milestones to level up every four levels or so (lvl2 is 1 Milestone, but lvl6 is 3 Milestones). The system also uses Down Days, days spent studying as loot. You can spend down days to do anything: make magic item, learn new spells, learn new proficiencies, even learn class abilities, but most importantly gain Milestones. If you aren’t able to play in the one shot you gain 5 down days, the exact amount you need to gain 1 Milestone so you can keep with the “campaign”’s progression if the session was full.
Loot distribution looks like this:
-1 Milestone -3 Down Days (for playing in the one shot) -Grant of 60 Gold -Your choice of one of the following:
A spell scroll (usable as a free spell above your level or can be added to your spellbook regardless of class) of: Ray of Sickness/Silence/Speak with Dead
OR
A magic item from the following list: Potion of Greater Healing/Eversmoking Bottle/Pipes of Haunting/Crawling Hand
Players may select the same loot options if they wish to (but they haven’t yet).
That’s the system! The idea is it keeps everyone involved session to session, makes inspiration for sessions through the courses that are two parters so dm planning is biweekly, and allows for people to jump in or drop even midsession. D&D has been a great way to keep my friends together, and this system is born in that spirit.