r/DndAdventureWriter

Something I've been thinking about is how to handle Horde and Alliance characters in the same party.

Back in older WoW, the faction divide was much stricter. Playing together across factions simply wasn't really a thing, and depending on when your campaign is set, having an Orc, Human, Forsaken, and Night Elf casually adventuring together could feel very strange from a lore perspective.

Modern WoW is obviously much more flexible about this, with the factions cooperating far more often and cross-faction gameplay becoming increasingly normal.

Of course, the era your campaign takes place in makes a huge difference. A campaign set during the Third War or early WoW might justify much stronger restrictions than one set in the current timeline.

I'm not sure yet how strict I'd want to be. Part of me likes preserving that faction identity and making Horde vs. Alliance actually matter, but at the same time I don't really want to tell someone they can't play the character they're excited about just because another player picked the opposite faction.

How are you planning to handle it in your campaign?

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I’m trying to make a modern world for a dnd campaign. What would be some cool modern gods that I could make shape the world, or atleast some cool story concepts?

I was working on an idea that my players gave me of a BBEG leading an army that involves a war they take part in to fend off their forces. Issue is I realized, I have no damn clue what to actually make the BBEG

I considered a lich leading an undead army but I'm already running a campaign with a lich BBEG currently and want to avoid doing back to back villains that are too similar. I'm not entirely sure what would be a good idea for a villain like this and I'm not too sure where to even start looking to get new ideas

Does anyone have an idea for a monster or even a villain archetype that could work for something like this?

Well met, travelers!

I have finally completed the outline, story beats, characters, maps, plot hooks, puzzles, NPCs and PCs for my first home-brewed one-shot. I am currently in a 5 PC Storm King's Thunder/home-brewed campaign that has been going on for around 4.5 years (every Truesday). I am not the DM and this is the first D&D campaign I've ever participated in.

However, this campaign is coming to a close in November (our DM is having more children, and we are happy for him). With that said, I have been lightly working on my own home-brewed one-shot in an attempt to DM for the first time. I want to give everyone something to look forward to after 5 years of fun. Having children of my own, I have been loosely working on my one-shot every few months while at work.

That being said, I have just about everything written out. I am looking for some feedback on puzzles, fun, balance, or anything else as far as critiques. I'm a little nervous but hoping to iron out some of the details before go-time.

I have the overview of everything in a 9-page word document. If anyone is interested in providing feedback or just reading up for inspiration, I was wondering what the best way to share?

Thank you in advance!

For those interested, here is an overview:

"Party starts in the coastal town of Salthaven. All 5 members of the party were grouped together as part of an Adventurer’s Guild contract. The local chapter Guild Master (Tharun Mudspike) selects and assigns groups based on skill and what the contract requires. The current party is the 3^(rd) such group (the “C” team) to be sent to fulfill this contract. The first two groups have not returned. Residents of Salthaven believe a mysterious island off-shore (Cael’Thalas) is the cause of their problems.

PCs travel by boat across treacherous waters until they arrive on the shores of the island. On the island, the PCs are greeted with strange animal tracks - odd, grotesque – crisscrossing the island. Everything, including the water, is covered with a thick, green fog. On the island lies old, Elven ruins. Just beyond the outer ruins lies an idyllic grove untouched by the decay. At the center of the grove stands a massive brown bear (Ulric Stormthicket). A fight will ensue. Should the party win, Ulric transforms back into a half-elf and begs for his life – he appears to be a druid who's protecting the ruins from further adventurers entering and going to their demise. However, the parties do not know he is a thrall for the BBEG.

Next, the dungeon. Various traps, puzzles, and horror moments, as well as a few magical reward items (if the party find them) to use in the final fight. Ultimately, they get to a stone door at the end of the dungeon, otherwise impassible except for a chalice with a description. Upon making their way through the door to the inner-sanctum, the final fight begins. The BBEG is a necromantic druid (Eryndor Ever‑Damned) twisting life into gruesome, unnatural ways. If Ulric is still with the party at this point, he joins Eryndor’s side (he's a thrall and was purposely leading them to the boss). Eryndor is conducting an evil, necromantic ritual, which lasts 6 rounds. If the fight is not over by then – game over.

Should the parties prevail, they travel back to Salthaven…to find it empty. The ending is “open-ended”, but the truth is that the residents were hallucinations brought about by the thick green fog to invite adventurers to their doom."

An example of one of my puzzles:

The Circle of Binding

Location: A chamber deep in the ruins, shaped like a perfect circle. In the center lies a sealed stone door with no handle, surrounded by seven glowing Elven runes etched into the floor. Each rune pulses with a different color and symbol representing aspects of nature and death.

Puzzle Objective: Players must activate the correct sequence of runes to open the door. The wrong sequence triggers a magical backlash (1d6 necrotic damage).

Each time the Runes are entered incorrectly, the backlash goes up by on additional d6 (to a max of 3d6).

Once completed, a stone hole opens in the floor as a Stone Golem, dusty and overgrown with vines, awakens and begins slowly approaching the group – unbeatable – party must escape/move forward through the hole.

Clue found nearby, etched into a broken tablet, in Elvish:

“In twilight’s hush, the grove once sang, A whisper born on verdant fang.

Then came the tears, the ocean’s sigh, It carved the stone, it split sky.

Beneath the weight of silent years, The brittle truth of death appears.

It dances red with hunger deep, Consuming all it dares to keep.

Unyielding heart in silence laid, It bears the weight that time has made.

Threads unseen in shadow spun, Binding fate where none can run.

She watches cold from heights unknown, A silver eye where dreams have flown.

The Runes (in correct order):

Leaf

Droplet

Bone

Flame

Stone

Web

Moon

An example of one of my traps:

Whispers of the Forgotten

Trigger: Entering a narrow hallway lined with cracked Elven murals and paintings.

Effect: A haunting whisper fills the corridor. Each character must make a DC 12 Wisdom save or become frightened for 1 minute. While frightened, they see illusions of the missing adventuring parties begging for help.

Twist: If a frightened character touches or attacks a mural, they are pulled into a psychic vision and must succeed a DC 12 Intelligence save or take 2d6 psychic damage.

Some of my custom-made maps (using Inkarnate):

The grove

The inner sanctum

Treacherous waters

The dock

The shore

Hi there,

I'm writing down an adventure for my party, and while putting down the cornerstones I realized I want to write this as a novel as well.

Now the tricky bit, I would like to write first the adventure and then, using some of what happens, put together the novel.

I generally write down the end of the campaigns, with afterwards and what happened to the characters, but this would be a different type of effort since I want to put down all the lore, present side characters and other plots that players might not live/play but witness indirectly.

Did somebody go through something like this, and wants to share the experience?

What helped?

What didn't help?

What should I avoid?

I'm looking for tips and lessons learned :)

Thanks in advance!

Egon

Not necessarily the strongest or most iconic boss, but the one whose mechanics you think would translate into the most fun D&D encounter.

There are so many fights in WoW with mechanics that could become really interesting legendary actions, lair actions, environmental hazards, or different phases at the table.

Which boss would you choose, and what part of the fight would you most want to see translated into D&D?

For me, it would probably be Deathwing. I love the idea of the fight featuring some unique mechanics: battling across his body while flying through the sky, destroying his armor plates, surviving everything happening around, before being able to face him in a final encounter on the ground.

I’ve always liked encounters that force players to think outside the box instead of just standing in place and trading attacks, and Deathwing feels perfect for that kind of fight.

I have tried to come up with some story ideas for my third book. The main plot is the characters driving across the US in modern day and it is a world similar to DnD. I want to have the characters encountering random little adventures as they progress through the story and I need a bit of help coming up with ideas for what they would encounter in small town America. I already have a few ideas for what they would encounter in the wilderness like dinosaur stampedes, fey and getting falsely accused by talking animals for littering and brought before a court in the forest. But the only really weird thing I can think of for a random town encounter is that they get captured by a cult that makes up an entire small town and will be sacrificed to a kraken the town worships. But that's not really enough for me. I can think of plenty of small town horror stuff but not really small town fantasy stuff. The only other random encounter I have that feels fantasy Americana is a vampire trucker that the characters stumble upon randomly in an old gas station. Any ideas would be fantastic.

I've been working on connecting a series of previously published adventures into one continuous campaign, and I'm finding that the individual adventures are actually the easy part. The difficult part is everything between them. Each adventure was originally written to work independently, so characters, factions, locations, and consequences don't necessarily carry naturally into the next one.

I don't want to rewrite the adventures themselves just to manufacture continuity. My preference is to preserve the published adventures as much as possible and build the connective material between them.

The approaches I've been considering include:

• developing recurring NPCs who can naturally appear across multiple adventures;
• consequences from one adventure becoming background conditions in another;
• factions remembering what the party has done;
• short interludes between published adventures;
• rumors and foreshadowing that establish future locations before they're needed;
• allowing unresolved relationships to survive beyond the adventure where they originated.

The danger is going too far and creating so much connective material that the original adventures become secondary to the new campaign structure. For people who've stitched separate adventures or modules into a longer campaign:

What techniques made the campaign feel genuinely continuous without requiring you to rewrite the adventures themselves?

Heroes of the Fifth Confluence, away with you.

Everyone else: I'm coming up onto the highest level adventure I've ever run. The nineteenth level party has just entered Everlost, Orcus' tower lair in the Abyss. The goal is to find and kill Orcus for good, and I expect them to be successful at this. (tier 4 is something else...)

I have solid plans for a climactic battle with Orcus himself stop the tower, but I've come in search of ideas to make the dungeon beforehand more memorable and exciting. For me as DM and for all the players succeeding here will mean taking characters level 1-20 for the first time, so I want it to feel truly epic.

Other than that it is a tower and Orcus holds court at the top, the party knows nothing about what to expect inside. But here are a few important developments from the campaign, for context:

- Orcus has been successful in his ambitions to become a minor deity as well as Demon Lord. His domains are blood, truesight, and the inevitability of death.

- The wand of Orcus was just destroyed, so despite his power Orcus is on the back foot at the moment. He knows the party is coming for him and might be feeling cornered and desperate. He is past holding power in reserve.

Thanks in advance for any feedback provided!