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UnrealSkill
2007-10-10, 06:20 PM
As a new DM for my friends I struggle to find ideas for adventures and quests, does any one have any ideas for quests ect they want to tell me?

Culwch
2007-10-10, 06:34 PM
What game are you playing? D&D? World of Darkness?

What plots do your players enjoy the most? Hack and Slash? Political intrigue? Murder mystery?

Do they insist on the multitude of subplots and twists? Do they mind a more-or-less linear plot, or do they enjoy the story and want to see how it ends?

Lord Tataraus
2007-10-10, 06:41 PM
What is your world like? What are existing conflicts? factions and organizations? Are all archtypes covered (i.e. trapfinder, tank, batman, healbot, etc.)? Misc. info?

Grug
2007-10-10, 07:42 PM
I've found one that's extremely straight forward and can be included in any large (fantasy) city.

A drunken wizard approaches the party in a tavern. He had been travelling for a year and has come back to the city to find that his tower and been taken over by his rival. The city council has done nothing about it due to a high bluff skill of the Rival, so the Party are in need. The wizard explains he has the deed to tower hidden in a secret compartment on the top floor. If the players break in and return it, the Wizard can move back in. In return, he offers a discount on magic items.

This is a useful plot because you can basically put whatever monsters, traps, or puzzles you want on each floor, it is a wizard after all. Just make sure the players can get inside, preferably without the squatter there to avoid law troubles. The tower itself would be guarded against entry from the outside, although if the players think of something truly clever (anything outside just climbing in through a window or smashing down a wall) let them and give an XP bonus. I myself had my party battle a pair of Living golems on a series of catwalks, solve a puzzle about a candle (I can tell you if you want), and face an ethical delimma involving a reluctant construct and a race of super small People excavating his insides. It's a good time waster.

F.L.
2007-10-10, 07:48 PM
Depending on how your PC's backstories are, finding a way to bankrupt them (rebuilding a town, paying for somebody's medical care or ressurection, etc.) is a good way to motivate simple adventures for a start (adventures of the smash and grab variety against the evil monstrous humanoids, naturally).
If possible, you should design some sort of BBEG. I had had an idea of a celestially themed villain who sought to destroy things with solar eclipses, powers over gravity, meteors etc, but I don't think I'll be able to use such a villain in the near future. As such having planetary themed artifacts stolen, regions of land destroyed, keeps and castles torn asunder, could be nuclei for adventures (stopping or investigating any of the above).
You should look through the list of 100 random adventure ideas in the DMG. Combine a few of them into a new adventure, or look through any monstrous manuals you have to construct an adventure of the form "a horde of monster x is causing problems/trying to invade/etc". From there, read up on what the monsters do in general (e.g. hobgoblins form armies, kobolds make traps, illithids eat brains/enslave people) and from there imagine what a clever leader of these monsters would do with time, resources, and imagination. E.g. A tribe of lizardfolk has built a dam, flooded a valley containing a town, and is drowning any townsfolk who try to stop them. They could be secretly under the sway of a disguised cleric of Umberlee who is inflaming their xenophobia to get people drowned so that the cleric can harvest power from drowning. The payoff for this adventure could be magic tridents, nets, more potions than standard, and a folding boat, maybe.