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star trek enemy within evil kirk

D&D Ideas — Turn Anything Into an Adventure

Real World Adventure Hooks for D&D -- the White Grung
What is Alkemancy? An overview of Deep Magic: Alkemancy by Kobold Press
Welcome once again to the weekly Nerdarchy Newsletter. This week’s topic, turning anything into a D&D adventure, was inspired by the Quest Givers and their Kickstarter The North Road, a system agnostic adventure. You can check it out here. We even had DM Scotty on for our weekly live chat. You can get the Nerdarchy Newsletter delivered to your inbox each week, along with updates and info on how to game with Nerdarchy, by signing up here.

Recent videos

Delving Dave’s Dungeon

Why reinvent the wheel? Adapting your favorite stories as D&D adventures for your players is one of the easiest ways to come up with material for game night. But that isn’t the only place you can draw inspiration from. One of my favorite things Nerdarchy has created was junkyard harpies from one of our Terrible Terrain videos – The Junkyard and Junkyard Harpies | Terrible Terrain of Dungeons and Dragons.
The inspiration for this video was me listening to a talk radio show called Car Talk. One of the hosts said, “Don’t let those junkyard harpies get you.” I just knew that needed to be a thing. You never know where inspiration will take your imagination. Don’t be afraid to follow weird ideas down different rabbit holes.

From Ted’s Head

Inspiration for a campaign, a session or even a character background can come from anywhere. The trick is to just see it so I am going to hopefully give you some examples that will inspire your games and show you how my crazy brain works from the recent happenings of my life.

Yesterday I was out with my family and we happen to have a Disney selection of songs coming from the car radio. As the little mice sang about Cinderella my brain ran through some aspects of the movie. Instead of three fairy godmothers coming to see her what if Cinderella was darker? What if out of the darkness, while she sat and cried, a voice began speaking. It was one she had never heard before. It was dark, deep and made promises. Did it offer her revenge on the way her family treated her? Did it offer her a way to use magic to make the prince see her or fall in love? What if the story of Cinderella was a story of a character who was a warlock? That could be your backstory. All from just listening to a silly song and seeing how it could apply to the wonderful game of Dungeons & Dragons. Anytime supernatural power is involved you can look to several classes and begin your tale there. Taking the same story of Cinderella she could easily be a cleric, druid, paladin or sorcerer as well as the aforementioned warlock. Each incident of her gaining power would alter the story only a little but it is fun to think about.

star trek enemy within evil kirk

Stay calm and avoid transporter malfunctions.

A short time ago my wife and I were watching Star Trek. The original series has finally made its way on to my watch list. Previously I had been not planning on watching it but nevertheless here I am. While watching there was an episode that had a transporter accident, Captain Kirk gets essentially cloned as aspects of his personality are removed from him and entered into the new version.

We do not have transporters in Dungeons & Dragons but we do not have teleportation magic. So you could replicate the situation of the episode but the cause was just a spell at the wrong time or wrong location. Whether chaos magic was infused, a trickery god was involved or even some rare reagent works poorly during the casting of the spell.

But why stop there? If you pay attention to the things we talk about in our world, chaos storms occasionally happen and they, well, cause chaos. What if teleportation magic cast near a chaos storm could cause something like this? What if it made not just a copy of one creature teleporting but combined them? Now the big question, where does the new creature appear? Does it come out where the teleportation magic originates or its point of destination?

I gave you the way I came up with a backstory and the potential for an encounter or a session, maybe more, but what about an entire campaign? These get easier as there are plenty of books, movies, TV shows and daily life that can offer up some great inspiration.

And technically my next example happens to come from all of the above. The idea is still in the infantile stages of development, as it is something I might run the kids through. But my kids love Pokemon. I am not a fan. Maybe because at its core I see it as kids beating little creatures up and forcing them to fight seems a bit cruel to me, who knows. But they love the idea of pets. Hopefully I do not have to tell you what Pokemon is. But I also spoke with an artist who is in development of his own lore called spell warriors. With the craze of Pokemon-like things this one speaks to me the most. You have magical spirits with the ability to grant powers to those they work with. Taking this a step farther I have begun thinking how I would use this.

The creatures could be alive and interact with the heroes who are made like any other D&D character, so the game is no different. However there is a slight power creep if you want to use these creatures. I figured I would make a generic creature template and make some alterations based on the type of element. I would link them to the damage types of magic that D&D allows. Powers could scale offensively and defensively though a user could have a creature inhabiting themselves or their weapon. So at the lowest level their weapon attacks could cause an additional d4 of their element in damage or reduce damage of that element by a like amount on themselves or another with their reaction, though they would lose the resistance until the start of their next turn.

Just a few thoughts on the idea. Would you like to see me expand upon this idea? Did it inspire you and show you how I took one idea and with a simple twist made it into a D&D thing?

From the Nerditor’s Desk

If you’re a regular reader of the Nerdarchy Newsletter, you’ve probably noticed how often I point to the fifth edition Dungeon Master’s Guide as a source for just about every topic we choose. And because D&D adventures are the platform for engagement in every session we play, it’s no surprise the DMG has an abundance of material about them. Chapter 3: Creating Adventures, starts with the perfect definition of an adventure, and tells us everything we need to know for turning anything into a D&D adventure.

“Fundamentally, adventures are stories. An adventure shares many of the features of a novel, a movie, an issue of a comic, or an episode of a TV show. Comic series and serialized TV dramas are particularly good comparisons, because of the way individual adventures are limited in scope but blend together to create a larger narrative. If an adventure is a single issue or episode, a campaign is the series as a whole.”

When we sit down to play D&D, we’re collaborating to create stories. And in that regard, it’s easy to turn anything into an adventure. As a Dungeon Master, we’re not even limited by the content in any official D&D source or all of the third party stuff out there — we can insert literally anything we can imagine!

If the party spends the entire session shopping around town, that’s an adventure. If the group travels from one place to another, that’s an adventure. Researching in a library, plying their skills and proficiencies, planning what they aim to do when they get to the adventure location — all adventures in and of themselves.

Whatever grand designs take place behind the scenes, from void dragons plotting to invade the prime material plane from beyond space and time to warring factions scheming to secure a half million in gold, during play the adventure — the story — emerging is that of the player characters.

My favorite example of turning anything into a D&D adventure is the Ingest Quest live stream game I ran a while back. When the players and I got together to discuss what kind of campaign they’d like to play in a Spelljammer-esque setting, I had a few ideas in mind including the 2nd edition AD&D module Under the Dark Fist. But while we were talking, several of the players kept bringing up the idea of food. What kind of food did people in fantasy space eat? Since a few of the characters were unusual species like a spider-person and an insectoid-person, how would other creatures react to their particular tastes?

I shifted gears and asked the players if they’d be interested in a cuisine-related campaign. The party would be the crew for a traveling food show, and visit exotic locales throughout the crystal spheres in search of fantastical foods. Each adventure featured strange foods, and exploring them was fraught with the same kinds of danger, drama and treasure as any other D&D campaign.

Matt Colville advocates turning anything into D&D adventures, too. One of the early story arcs in MCDM’s Chain of Acheron campaign was adapted from the Star Trek episode “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” for example, and he often encourages DMs to incorporate things you think are neat into your adventures.

D&D adventures, and in fact all stories, are driven by conflict and resolution. It’s important to note that conflict does not equal combat, though. Taking a closer look at what I mentioned earlier, you can see turning anything into a D&D adventure doesn’t take too much work.

A session spent shopping can certainly include conflict. Maybe the characters, flush with wealth from their last perilous quest, find their money isn’t accepted in the big city where they hope to load up on equipment. It could be coinage from a kingdom at odds with where they’re at, or bearing a stamp of a dark empire fallen centuries ago. They could find the places they wish to shop in restricted parts of town, and they’re prevented from entering. Perhaps the party’s enemies — possibly secret enemies who they don’t even know about yet — intimidate shopkeepers into not engaging in commerce with them.

Traveling is absolutely an adventure. I take a lot of walks through the huge park system where I live, and it can get strenuous even walking on paths up and down through hills and valleys. Now imagine I’m wearing 65 lb. plate armor, with weapons strapped on and a heavy pack. A lot more difficult than a stroll in the park, right? Along the way I have to stop several times to fight for my life against mundane creatures like bears and wolves, or more frightening versions of normal critters like giant scorpions, or monstrosities like owlbears, or a freakin’ dragon! Passing through farmlands, all of a sudden those creepy scarecrows are animating and attacking you, leaving behind occult symbols burned into the ground when they’re destroyed (one of the encounters in our Out of the Box product).

Gaining access to the library for research could be an adventure, and the information uncovered within likewise. The characters could learn more than they bargained for. Maybe they discover the fighter’s family has an ancient link to the throne. Maybe a wizard hid a glyph inside one of the books, and whoever triggers it is affected by a geas spell. Or a hapless visitor to the library triggers and explosive rune. Who put the glyphs there, and why?

The trick to turning anything into a D&D adventure is to listen to the players and reward their immersion and engagement with the campaign world. This kind of collaboration is a big part of how the campaign ideas you had become the memorable stories everyone shares. You don’t have to railroad characters towards the plots you planned, because they’ll drive the story forward. The conflicts you present to them — the challenging stuff that happens — put the players in control of the resolution. And when you know your setting, and embrace your ability as a DM to insert problems at any time that make sense in the context of the campaign world, you’ll find that even the most mundane activities become storytelling opportunities.

Until next time, stay nerdy

— Nerdarchy Team

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