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View Full Version : DM Help The Ultimate DM Quest Compendium



Kafana
2014-11-08, 07:33 AM
I'm not sure if something like this already exists, but what I would like is to form an ultimate, structured, side quest compendium for the lazy DM. The goal is to have a vast compendium categorized by certain parameters so that you may find the ideal quest for your party's current situation. Sometimes your party has gone off rails in such a way that you really didn't expect, and you need to buy some time until the session ends. Perhaps you just need a filler side quest or encounter so that you can build up some tension towards the culminating current main quest. Perhaps you've just hit a dry spell with your creativity and looking at some of these quests can give you ideas how to think of something similar for your campaign.

The idea is for the inspired community to submit their entries and I'll periodically add them to the main posts (and refine them in case someone's English isn't great). I'm not sure about the structure yet completely so feel free to add your suggestions on what an entry should have. For starters I'll put some attributes that first come to mind. Try to keep the quest as generic as possible (so that it may be inserted into as many situations as possible), but also specific enough for it to actually have some flavor.

One last important note: These are not published adventures, so no need to go too much into detail. While I realize there are published adventures which have as few as two encounters, the whole idea here is to have a quick reference with short descriptions so that a DM may find something fast, read it in a few minutes and adapt it to his situation as fast as possible. The quests could just be detailed encoutners, having no more than a single treasure item and encounter in them, with hardly any story.


The starting trigger, location, encounters, treasure and end condition fields can have one or more Alternative fields.

Title: Primarily a way to identify the quests for the community here. D&D isn't really a video game, so the title doesn't matter ingame.
Synopsis: A brief statement which should immediately give the searching DM an idea weather the quest will interest him or not, effectively saving him time when this compendium grows in size.
Party level: The ideal party level (if you use alternative encounters and treasure you can note more ideal levels in brackets (e.g. "Party level: 3 (6, 9)"). Write your alternative encounters logically (Encounter 1 is for the 3rd level party, Encounter 1A for the 6th, and Encounter 1B for the 9th).
Starting trigger: An NPC or situation which will introduce the party to the quest.
Location: The ideal setting where a quest should take place.
Description: The full text of the quest without going into statistics (details about encounters and treasure). You should mention that the party will have the first encounter, or find the third treasure with a search check against DC X, but the statistics should be writen below for easy lookup.
Encounter X: Zero or more fields (for 2 encounters we'll have Encounter 1 and Encounter 2) that list the creatures and books where the monsters are defined. In case of alternative encoutners, add A, B, C and so on at the end of the name (e.g. Encounter 1A).
Treasure X: Lists the treasure the party could find. The condition under which the treasure is found should be listed in the description.
End condition: Specifies when the quest ends and what is the outcome of the particular condition.
Future use: An optional field which should suggest some ways to reference this quest in further adventures. It could be major, it could be minor.


Anyway, I hope to see some interesting entries and please feel free to give suggestions.

Kafana
2014-11-08, 07:34 AM
Reserved for future quests.

Kafana
2014-11-08, 07:35 AM
Reserved for future quests 2.

Kafana
2014-11-08, 07:37 AM
Reserved for future quests 3.

Kafana
2014-11-08, 07:59 AM
Reserved for future quests 4.