Help me knit a story out of random locations

[Pinjata]

Hey guys,

I'll take a module, use its locations, but rename NPCs and replace monsters with monsters of same CR in order to create a whole new adventure for my group. I'd like to present you with places, that are available and if anyone feels like - please knit these places into a short campaign that connects all the places. Region, where things take place are grasslands, but there are occasional forests there too. Here they are:

Place A small standard D&D village

Place B small long-time-ago-abandoned village (some encounters available)

Place C small long-time-ago-abandoned village (some encounters available)

Place D small bandit outpost in a small cave on top of a hill (encounter available, of course. they are bandits after all)

Place E medium-size bandit outpost in a large cave (encounter)

Place F ruined castle, serving as a medium-size bandit outpost (encounter)

Place G an ancient tower, inhabited by a powerful wizard* + his servants (you can fluff wizard, servants too)

Place H a massive underground dungeon (a bunch of random encounters. baddies + deadly flora and fauna)

Place I ruined tower wit a really powerful monster/s* (not really meant to be engaged, a RP oppurtunity)

Place J small dungeon, serving as a bandit outpost (encounter)

Place K forest dwelling of a powerful monster (not really meant to be engaged, a RP oppurtunity)



* these encoutners are deadly

All bandits can be connected. Or not. Feel free to conenct wizard and badass monsters ... whatever, however. I'll appreciate any idea.

thanks

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

Eyeballing this, it looks like the wizard is the BBEG, and the encounter in his tower is the climactic encounter of the campaign. Everything else is bandits, except the dungeon. So that means the wizard has to be connected to the bandits, and the wizard has to be connected to the dungeon. A is your only non-encounter location, so that has to be the adventure's hub. K and I are roleplaying encounters with powerful and potentially hostile beings, so the party needs to either be forced to encounter them (K) or deliberately seek them out (I).

So my flowchart looks something like:

B->A->D=J=E->F->K->(A)->C->H->I->G

Party is on a quest related to the wizard somehow to recover a thing from an abandoned village. Return to hub to discover that bandits have raided it and stolen McGuffins. Party has to recover the McGuffins and should be able to locate information about possible bandit site locations. Each location should give them some piece of intelligence leading to location F and a piece or more of information leading to the wizard being connected to the bandits. Finishing all the locations should lead to the final bandit encounter, which should make explicit the connection between bandits and wizard, the necessity of the players confronting the wizard, and the possible location of the wizard in H. Where H is can best be answered by K, a dangerous resource and an unfriendly one that nonetheless is worth engaging. My thought was a green dragon, but nearly anything will work, provided it's knowledgeable, ancient, and scary enough to maintain ambiguity about whether it'll develop into a combat encounter. K points the party to the hidden entrance to H at C, which is a good place to introduce the party to new and different combat styles by having a monstrous encounter. Locating the entrance leads the party to enter dungeon H; inside H they can obtain further assistance and information from I, a monster that is resentful of the wizard for moving in on its turf. Finally, the party confronts the wizard in his tower and foils his plan.

[Pinjata]

Eyeballing this, it looks like the wizard is the BBEG, and the encounter in his tower is the climactic encounter of the campaign. Everything else is bandits, except the dungeon. So that means the wizard has to be connected to the bandits, and the wizard has to be connected to the dungeon. A is your only non-encounter location, so that has to be the adventure's hub. K and I are roleplaying encounters with powerful and potentially hostile beings, so the party needs to either be forced to encounter them (K) or deliberately seek them out (I).

So my flowchart looks something like:

B->A->D=J=E->F->K->(A)->C->H->I->G

Party is on a quest related to the wizard somehow to recover a thing from an abandoned village. Return to hub to discover that bandits have raided it and stolen McGuffins. Party has to recover the McGuffins and should be able to locate information about possible bandit site locations. Each location should give them some piece of intelligence leading to location F and a piece or more of information leading to the wizard being connected to the bandits. Finishing all the locations should lead to the final bandit encounter, which should make explicit the connection between bandits and wizard, the necessity of the players confronting the wizard, and the possible location of the wizard in H. Where H is can best be answered by K, a dangerous resource and an unfriendly one that nonetheless is worth engaging. My thought was a green dragon, but nearly anything will work, provided it's knowledgeable, ancient, and scary enough to maintain ambiguity about whether it'll develop into a combat encounter. K points the party to the hidden entrance to H at C, which is a good place to introduce the party to new and different combat styles by having a monstrous encounter. Locating the entrance leads the party to enter dungeon H; inside H they can obtain further assistance and information from I, a monster that is resentful of the wizard for moving in on its turf. Finally, the party confronts the wizard in his tower and foils his plan.

edit: Understood everything.

Any ideas what would be cool McGuffins?

[sky red hunter]

Here's what i'm thinking, the wizard tower (Place G) has tunnels underneath that lead to the massive underground dungeon (Place H), the deadly flora and fauna inside are part of his experiments. These experiments led to the destruction/abandonment of the local village (Place B), the wizard has employed a group of bandits to patrol the abandoned village and keep any of the locals from returning or from potential adventurers interrupting his plans, the bandits are encamped in a ruined castle that was part of the village (Place F).

(Place A) is actually the newly founded community of people that were attacked and chased out of another mining based settlement (Place C). The bandits have now taken up residence in the mine and are looting it for all its worth (Place D). The bandits uncovered a sunken ruin in the mine, an abandoned underground settlement, the settlement is dominated by huge tower (Place I) which houses a great evil, whatever resides inside might be willing to discuss a deal with the adventurers to rid their lair of the noisy and bothersome bandits who have to traverse the settlement to get to the ore veins they greedily seek.

A rival bandit group to the ones in the mine are located in a dwarven ruin (Place J) and dearly want to rob their enemies of their riches taken from the mines.....the reason why is that they are in servitude to a dragon/lich/vampire (Place K) that lives in the forest surrounding the entrance to the dwarven ruins, and this 'master' wishes for more riches for ( insert reason )

meanwhile another bandit group (Place E) has been overrun with undead and is now a potential death trap, the caves its located in has several small tunnels that wind and twist and are full of giant spiders etc but do link to both the settlement under the mine and also to the massive cavern under the wizards tower.

Idea is that the party can discover info on each of the factions and their desires/wants/plans and possibly play them off each other or take them all out one by one or even help one group to take out another in exchange for reward, all totally open to the adventuring parties decisions.

Hope this makes sense and helps.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

edit: Understood everything.

Any ideas what would be cool McGuffins?

The point of McGuffins is that it doesn't matter so much what they are, so I'd look at what monsters you'd like to use for the forest and tower encounters, then work from there. Maybe your forest encounter is actually with a troop of githyanki and your underground tower is home to a mind flayer, so your McGuffins for the initial quest are fragments of a silver sword, and they return to the village to find the bandits have stolen the remaining fragments kept hidden in the chapel.

I think they should be part of a whole, so they can anticipate bringing them together into a whole, and so the wizard has an incentive to seek them out if they get lazy or disinterested.

[Pinjata]

Hope this makes sense and helps.

It does. I really appreciate the effort.

@QuickLyRaiNbow

nice addon. :)

[Pinjata]

@QuickLyRaiNbow

Made a masterful rendition of a plan:

https://ibb.co/fO2Y1x

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

Ha! I like it. Figure out your two scary noncombat monsters, find the common theme and apply that to your wizard and you'll have something interesting and cohesive.

[Nidgit]

A similar outline:

Party enters the area at Town A, Ruined Town B, or potentially Outpost D. After a brief fight with bandits, they make their way to Town A to stay, learn more about the area, and stock up. Villagers will mention frequent bandit raids and kidnappings but lack the coin to pay the party adequately to deal with them. They'll explain that Ruins B was more recently abandoned to consolidate the two towns for better defense, but with minimal success. The party may also receive a minor side quest to retrieve some keepsake from Ruins B. They'll also hear rumors about Ruins C, Wizard Tower G, Ruined Tower I, and Mysterious Forest Dweller K. Lastly, they'll mention that a few villagers left to try and fight the bandits a week ago and ask for news if the party finds them.

The party should make their way back to Ruins B or Dungeon J, where after their encounter there they discover some magical item that needs appraisal. Searching any bandit bodies will also reveal some insignia of their gang. Heading back to Town A, villagers will mention that the wizard at Tower G is really the only person in the area capable of divining the item's powers. If the party hasn't clashed with the bandits yet, have them fend off a raid here. Later, with a cool magical artifact in hand, the party should be able to persuade the wizard's servants and guards to let them in to speak with him (lowers social DC).

The wizard should be crusty and asocial with little interest in the well-being of commoners, but by no means overtly evil. Some of his servants are friendly and courteous, but many of the guards are big ugly mercs. The wizard will be interested in the item they found and impressed by the party's victory(s) over the bandits. He explains that they've given him troubles and even stolen some of his manuscripts and magical objects, then offers to pay the party to eliminate the bandits in Dungeon J, Outpost D, and Fort F and retrieve his stuff. He will make no mention of the Cave E bandits.

Once the party has cleared Fort F, they should find a journal railing against that "wicked old man in his tower," as well as the remains of the villagers who tried to attack the bandits. There should be no signs of kidnapping or slave trade in the bandit chief's journal or around any of the three bandit camps. The party should feel compelled to return to Town A to relate the news of the killed villagers and give them some valueless but sentimental keepsakes they found on the bodies, perhaps hoping for a reward.

If the party is at Town A after the bandits have been supposedly eliminated, another raid should take place and some villagers kidnapped. This can happen while the party is there or before they arrive, if you expect them to leave quickly. Importantly, these kidnapping bandits should be better equipped and lack the insignia of the other group. If the party tracks them down, they'll find the bandits of Cave E. Once those bandits are defeated, the party will find giant stone doors magically sealed at the back of the cave, though with signs they have perhaps opened recently. The party should also find a teleportation circle.

Regardless of when the party returns to Tower G, the wizard should eagerly greet them, pay them well, and congratulate them for their work. If the party brings up anything suspicious pertaining to the wizard, he will feign ignorance and hastily dismiss them. He then proceeds to give them a new task: eliminate the sinister dragon of Tower I. He'll explain that the dragon once destroyed Ruins C (honest) and that he fears the beast will attack him or the good folk of Town A (less honest). He sends with you some of his guards to help deal with the dragon because it's very dangerous.

To get to Tower I, the augmented party should first pass through Ruins C. If they asked about it back in Town A, they'll have heard that the town that used to be here wasn't exactly a moral place. The party can encounter a hag or banshee here which, if talked to, will confirm that Ruins C was home to a lot of bad ****. The villagers of Town A were afraid of the dragon, but the hag/banshee can suggest that the dragon may have been right to destroy Ruins C.

At Tower I, the party will encounter an Adult Metallic Dragon, potentially a Bronze. Knowledge of dragons and any dialogue mid- or pre-fight should cement that this dragon is probably the good one here. The guards will futiley attempt to kill both the party and the dragon once this realization takes place and should be easily dealt with. The party can then chat with the dragon to find out more and gain its aid. If the party for some reason decides to kill the dragon with the help of the guards, the guards should immediately attack the exhausted party once the dragon is dead.

At this point, the party can put together the pieces and while the dragon characterizes the wizard as callous, devious, and definitely up to something. If the party mentions missing villagers, the dragon instantly concludes the wizard is the culprit and offers to join the party's assault on Tower G. The dragon will also mention Dungeon H and muse that the wizard's scheme's might be related to it. If the party can mention the sealed stone doors, the dragon will grow more confident that the two are related.

The party at this point should be eager to wreck this wizard's face. If the dragon is with them, it will try to literally tear Tower G apart brick by brick. Make it epic. The wizard should use the teleportation circle in his room to bail once it's clear the fight is going against him. If the dragon is dead or otherwise didn't come, the wizard and some of his servants should be absent from Tower G at the time of the attack. In the aftermath, the party can find ledgers, magic circles, and journals confirming the wizard's guilt and explaining his interest in Dungeon H. They'll also find a magic key used to unlock the stone doors. The dragon bids the party good luck in pursuing the wizard, but if the party feels like it they can negotiate with the dragon to provide some much-needed protection for Town A.

In the last act, the party unlocks the stone doors at the back of Cave E, defeating the bandits there if they haven't doesn't so already, and descends into Dungeon H. They find the rest of the kidnapped villagers there being used as slaves and experiments by the wizard and more of his mercenaries and servants. He's been researching the ancient dwarven magics that created Dungeon H and attempting to complete some nefarious ritual using a lost artifact. The party frees the villagers, defeats the mercs, navigates the dangers of Dungeon H to chase down the wizard, and finally defeats him.

Forest Dwelling K is home to a Guardian Naga or Beholder, depending on how hostile you want to make it. It serves as something of a lorekeeper. Visiting it and successfully negotiating with it for information can reveal the story of the dragon, the ancient Dungeon H below ground, and potentially even some of the wizard's misdeeds. It can also serve as a quest giver for eliminating bandits (particularly Cave E bandits) or fighting the wizard and his servants, if you feel like it.