A Road On a Hill; A Forest in a Valley
Link.
Something may go amiss in a sacred forest as the players pass by.
Style: A side quest. Exploration and investigation.
How To Use It: Make the road one the players go back and forth on a lot, let them see things changing. The actual inciting incident is up to you. They'll probe further if they want to.
Link.
Dragons are bees, gold is pollen. Kobolds stole the town's treasure to feed their queen.
Style: Dungeon, investigation.
How To Use It: Makes for a good one shot. Map the caves on hex paper if you're desperate for maps. (Btw this is still the most popular post of all time on this blog? People like the bees.)
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Link to Part One.
Link to Part Two.
A fly-thru diner sits on a lonely moon; nearby, a crashed spaceship is infested with bugs, aliens, untended house plants and a bunch of very odd demons.
Style: Dungeon delving for treasure and exploration, overwhelming odds.
How To Use It: Serves as a great bridge into space fantasy. Best over multiple sessions, making several trips into the dungeon. Play up the NPCs: especially Gramps, Nadia and the archdemons, but also the visitors and astral anomalies.
Link.
Monkeys, forest spirits and wooden priests watch a folk hero while he sleeps, tired of magnanimity.
Style: Maze-ish dungeon, focus on non-violence.
How to Use It: Works as a one-shot or the start of a campaign. Encourage creative thinking - don't send 'em in guns blazing. The crossword thing means the prep is done for you.
Link.
A coastal region. Colonial rule with murmurings of criminal insurgency. Wave giants, pterodactyls, salt skaters, lion people, antlion people, pirates, the boogeyman, ancient ruins, a massive staircase, the fabled Crab King, ghosts, goats and two types of mermaid.
Style: Hexmap. Bare bones.
How to Use It: I ran it as-is, Graverobbers works well but it can go high fantasy too. There's sea, mountains, grassland and multiple desert types so most dungeons you might want to add will fit.
Link.
A secluded town of mutants hide their shame.
Style: Investigation and interaction.
How to Use It: Written for Journeylands but would fit anywhere weird enough. Not much to it - the town is a secret to uncover, with the reward for uncovering it being knowledge and fictional positioning, so it only really works in the context of a larger world.
Link.
The ruined jungle hideout of a drug lord. Snot sloths, skeleton staff and a race for glory.
Style: Short dungeon crawl.
How to Use It: Rewrite the ending if you're not using Journeylands, the rest is pretty self-explanatory.
Link.
A god crashed into the ground. Now his guts are a desert, home to a city of fabric and nomadic earwig riders. Find his head, mine his brains and plant his teeth to grow magic castles.
Style: Small area, exploration.
How to Use It: Pop it on a map somewhere. Another weird place for your players to go and check out if they're interested.
Link.
A cosy autumnal village misses their witch. Do her chores while she's away.
Style: Small-scale exploration and problem solving.
How to Use It: One shot, or a good low-stakes quest. Good if you want to reward players who think creatively and like investigating.
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Here's to next year x
Hot damn, man, you've been productive!
ReplyDeleteIt's easy for me to feel like I haven't been productive enough, so it's nice seeing everything laid out like this. More next year!
DeleteHoly hell! So much consistent goodness! Some people are mostly meh with moments of usefulness. Not here, that's for sure. Now I just need to get people on the moon somehow...
ReplyDeleteVery kind of you to say so :)
DeleteGive them an item that will teleport them, as a group, to "somewhere safe and far away" - be explicit that it's an instant escape they can use whenever, just don't say where to.
When they get there describe the blank landscape, then the black sky, then the Earth rising above... Then end the session.
That's off the top of my head idk