Help me, I need a pre-written adventure

[Eldan]

I have, relatively successfully, played a Skype game for about two years now. Not always with the same group. Most of the original players were replaced quickly until I found a stable group, but we have been the same for over a year now, weekly games.

A while ago, we finished Harbinger House. The players travelled the planes, solved a mystery, escaped an insane cult, fled a cursed city with no exits, navigated a haunted house full of magical madmen and supernatural dangers, stopped the murder of a good man, the birth of a new god of murder and fear, the fall of the heart of Sigil's power into the Abyss and escaped the Lady's wrath. They unravelled the machinations of a mysterious succubus and her army of demons.

At level five.

It was awesome.

Now, however, I have hit a total blockade. I don't know what to do with my group after this. For the last two weeks, I have sent them on what basically amounts to a linear side-quest, that is not even fully planned out. I don't know what will happen when they come to the end. It seems to me my players are losing interest as well, and I fear it. I don't want to lose this group, we had a steady and good game for two years.

But I can't write adventures to save my own life. I can't. I suck at it. I could never, ever, in all my years as a DM, get a coherent plot together. So I turn to pre-written adventures. I have trailed tons of them, and none seem the least bit appealing to me.

So, help me playground, you are my only hope.

I need an adventure that fulfills the following conditions. Some are my own, some are necessary for the campaign, some are from asking the players. Some are more important than others, I can convert.


The essential:
-Light on the combat, heavy on the story. A battle here or there is fine, but we all don't enjoy them much. One or maybe two short ones in a four or five hour evening is enough.
-Mystery. My player want this, I want this. A story that is not clear from the beginning. Motives that are unexpected. Twists that no one sees coming. I can improvise this to a degree, but I'd rather have an adventure that works with this.
-A memorable bad guy. This is so, so, so essential. I had to rewrite Harbinger House rather massively to make Sougad memorable, I'd rather have a good one from the start here. At least one with a motivation that makes sense in context and goes beyond moustache-twirling evil or world domination.

The useful:
-Mid level. There's a bit of leeway here, but the players have finally gotten out of the lowest levels and they want to enjoy their feeling of power a bit, I think.
-Exploration. If I can send them into an exotic place or two, all the better.
-Weird. We have played Planescape, up to now. If I can somehow leverage this into it, all the better. Alternatively, we have talked about setting this in my own Etherworld setting, which is also plenty unusual.

Edit: I should also explain why I'm putting this into the general forum and not 3E. I can convert pretty much anything. I don't need rules, I need a story. Feel free to recommend adventures from anywhere, I'll adapt if I like it.

[Daemonhawk]

You might want to try a sort of "seeping of the planes" ordeal. Basically, several different planes begin crossing over one another, slowly combining elements of each plane to create a new one. You could have the BBEG be behind this. Sorry if this doesn't work, just an idea.

[Hylas]

There's always my random idea table you can try.

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Roll as many d100s as you want (start with 2 and roll more to add complexity to an idea.)
If you roll a ____ your next roll! (Adjective ______) that means roll again and add that modifier to the next roll.

1. Rats
2. Sewers
3. Bandits
4. Orcs
5. Cultists
6. Animal cruelty
7. Unrest in the slums
8. Spiders
9. Strange Dreams
10. Underground Lake
11. Other species are invading/invasive
12. Time Anomaly
13. Forests
14. Role Reversal of next roll - (fire breathing princess with a dragon hostage) (Reversed ____)
15. Treacherous King’s advisor
16. Wizard’s pocket dimension
17. Earthquakes?!?
18. Tavern
19. Explode the next roll! (Exploding ______)
20. Haunted House
21. Unfaithful Servant
22. Necromancer
23. Swamps
24. Chef
25. Sealed away in Crystals your next roll! (Crystalized _____)
26. Merchant Caravan
27. Confidence game
28. Espionage
29. Guild of Thieves
30. Assassination Attempt
31. Kidnapping
32. Townsfolk acting strange
33. Gypsies
34. Military Invasion
35. Ancient plots
36. Dragons
37. Desert
38. Alchemists
39. Long lost power source
40. Out of control weather
41. Slave traders
42. The astral plane
43. Meteorites
44. Vampires
45. Cursed your next roll! (Cursed ____)
46. Werewolves
47. Buried treasure
48. Ghosts
49. Blustery mountains
50. Maps
51. Religious Conflict
52. Tunnels
53. Ancient ruins
54. Racism
55. Evil Twin
56. Blacksmith
57. Illegal shipment
58. Corrupt bureaucracy
59. Woman seeking help
60. Venerated weapons
61. Angry Dwarves
62. Paladins
63. Poachers
64. In need of rescue your next roll! (captured ______)
65. Undead (Undead _____)
66. Very heavy rain
67. “Deserted” island
68. Brain leeches
69. Lich
70. Blackmail
71. The Grim Reaper
72. Missing livestock/shop stock
73. Your next roll is being supplied with weapons! (Armed ____)
74. Ogres
75. Unholy half-breed not meant to exist
76. Exciting new show in town
77. A wandering bard
78. No one can remember your next roll! (Amnesia _____)
79. Fight Club
80. At the Capitol
81. A Prostitute
82. Snakes
83. Trapped Catacombs
84. Flooded your next roll! (they probably need your help!)
85. Martial Law
86. A noble
87. Famine
88. Corrupted by wild magic
89. People are missing
90. A budding religion
91. Revolt / Rebellion
92. Trusting innkeeper
93. Shadow creatures
94. Rural town
95. Marriage (alt. Marriage between ______ and ______) if you’re feeling saucy
96. An exciting invention
97. Owls
98. A construction site
99. An avalanche
100. A volcano

By Hylas and Tiffy

I'll demonstrate its use (feel free to use the idea I come up with if you want).
Rolls - 09, 22, and 92, which is strange dreams, necromancers, and a trusting innkeeper. And I saw you liked a mystery so I'll try to sprinkle that in.

Our story starts off with a town having strange dreams of death and rebirth, of long lost ones coming back and replacing the new, and of time slowing down. A novice necromancer has bought several months of time at an inn. The dwarf inn keeper is pretty trusting and never bothers him and keeps nosy travelers away from him. After all, someone with that much coin to spend is someone worth keeping around. Then one day...

roll - 48 - ghosts

The dreams start becoming real. At first they were merely images, sounds, or vague feelings, but then the dreams started becoming more tangible. Those who dreamed of riches were suddenly well off while those who dreamed of being a hero found themselves with masterwork arms and armor. At first this seemed like a great miracle, but when dead pets started arriving and undead vampires and boogeymen began taking refuge in the town, the dream suddenly became a nightmare. Why are dreams and nightmares becoming real? What does the novice necromancer have to do with this? Will our heroes survive?

So some ideas you can have is that the necromancer either intentionally or by accident worked out a spell that could pluck things from the plane of dreams. However some things went horribly wrong. He can't get out of the dream realm and the power is beginning to spread to the rest of the town and if left alone will spread out further and eventually take over the material realm. The adventurers could have to go into the plane of dreams to find and stop him, but he'll have grown in power so creative thinking might need to be done.

[Eldan]

Hm. Maybe I wasn't clear. I don't need plot ideas. I can generate plot ideas.

I need an adventure. A pre-written one. I can improvise my way around a decent plotline, but I can not write a plot that works, even if I have all the ideas in the world. I have a beginning, I have an end, I have random ideas in between, but I can never manage to move hte players from the beginning to the end in a way that does not end with everyone getting frustrated.

[Daemonhawk]

You should retitle the thread, "Help, I need a pre-written adventure!"

[toapat]

Hm. Maybe I wasn't clear. I don't need plot ideas. I can generate plot ideas.

I need an adventure. A pre-written one. I can improvise my way around a decent plotline, but I can not write a plot that works, even if I have all the ideas in the world. I have a beginning, I have an end, I have random ideas in between, but I can never manage to move hte players from the beginning to the end in a way that does not end with everyone getting frustrated.

up front, it would help to know a bit more about the game itself, besides the fact that a non-combat combat intensive campaign would also do better with an idea of the kind of mystery you would feel best would continue the story

[Eldan]

I talked to the players, and we may even start over the campaign entirely.

However, given that this is Sigil and Planescape, I can dump them into pretty much anything.

The party consists of. Hm. Well, they are weird.

Christopher, a Xenotheurge (one who uses the power of the far realm). Mad though not cripplingly so. Loves shapeshifting and mind control. He wants to help people, primarily, though his idea of help may be strange. Dislikes killing. His long-term goal is opening an asylum for the insane.

Superstes, a chaotic outsider of unknown composition who lost his memory. He may or may not be an Eladrin, Slaad or Demon in disguise, though he doesn't know himself. He has anger issues and is the group's melee warrior and meatshield.

Jenny. She is an orphan girl who was given Beholder eyes by a mad mage. Rather timid, and trigger happy with her sleep rays if anything scares her, which is often. She is learning a more varied array of shapeshifting.

The ghoul. An undead frenzy barbarian with climbing, scent and regeneration to help him out. Weird, really. He is so quiet and often strange during sessions that after a year, I still haven't figured out what this character actually wants, though he says he's happy to play along and just not say much.


So, I need a pre-written adventure, of pretty much any system and level that throws the players into a situation where they have to figure out what is going on. Political intrigue, mysterious crimes, strange phenomena, murder mystery, underworld gang-fighting... any of these or something similar, really, and we have done a bit of each. What I really need is a guideline, that has a solid start, an interesting end, an antagonist with a good motivation, and most importantly, a defined way for the players to get from the beginning to the end.

I can improvise my way around a plotline, once I have it. My problem is coming up with the actual plotline. Whenever I try to come up with an adventure on my own, it ends with the characters stranded somewhere in the middle of nowhere, with no clues as to what they could do next and me, myself, also rather confused.

[Rama]

Hm. Maybe I wasn't clear. I don't need plot ideas. I can generate plot ideas.

Do you have a specific idea or couple of ideas you like? Perhaps we can flesh them out and create an adventure out of it.

That could be a fun group exercise too.

[Knaight]

You could always steal the plot wholesale from a novel. If you use a space opera novel and re-frame it all as fantasy, this probably won't even get noticed, which works out well. There might still be a few articles floating around on how to do this, but the ones I can think of are on a website that went defunct a while ago, so I have no links.

[Manly Man]

I think Tomb of Horrors was written in 3.5 as an adventure fit for folks around level nine.

[Eldan]

Do you have a specific idea or couple of ideas you like? Perhaps we can flesh them out and create an adventure out of it.

That could be a fun group exercise too.

Could be tried. Currently, we are in the middle of a side-quest. The players have tricked a band of gnollish weapon smugglers into giving them their goods, pretending they were sent to bring them to their customer (said customer was a beholder mafia boss. He's thoroughly dead now and his organisation rooted out very cleanly).
Said goods, amongst various worthless weaponry, contained a magical Scythed that belonged to an avatar of the god Nerull. It's a legacy weapon modelled remotely after the Caput Mortis from WoL.
At the moment, they need to find a Greyhawkish deity of death to bless the weapon and unlock the first tier of its powers. They have decided to visit Wee Jas, as they thought her the least murderous, even though she is highly lawful and they are pretty much all highly chaotic.
To find her, a friend of theirs who has a scholar of dimensional phenomena organised a position in a caravan of warmachine scavengers (who, for camouflage reasons, had all polymorphed themselves into beasts of burden) that went into the third layer of Acheron. They need to get to the fourth layer.

As it stands, at the moment, they had a rather boring trek across the third layer. To make it a bit more interesting, I threw a Rakshasa at them. The Rakshasa is in position of a magical airship disguised as a perpetual storm cloud. They have successfully entered the ship and negotiated with the Rakshasa, who scared away the caravan. He has agreed to bring them to the fourth layer of Acheron, in exchange for payment. The payment is done and the contracts are signed.

So, my problem. What do I do now? The trek across Acheron was utterly boring and basically a waste of game time, as I didn't know what to do with it. The fourth layer might be promising, though I have no idea what to do with that either. Or what would happen if they found Wee Jas' realm. What the Godess would demand from them. I don't want to throw random encounters in here, combat tends to get boring over Skype, and I'm not good at describing it.

Honestly, this situation is so thoroughly borked, I'm thinking of just scrapping this campaign and starting over with a new one in a different setting. I'm all out of ideas. The last session where most of this happened was rather dull.

[Rama]

The first thing that jumps out at me from that is: how do (supposedly fairly random) weapon smugglers have something as powerful and specialized as a scythe from the avatar of a death god?

The thought that comes to mind is someone building up forces and weaponry to challenge some heavies in the cosmos. If not the gods themselves, then at least some of the major players. But to keep it from pinging on anyone's radar, they're routing shipments through unobtrusive sources; like your gnoll smugglers and the beholder mafia boss front.

Unfortunately, said smugglers are now in too many pieces to spill their guts (metaphorically since the literal version has already been accomplished) on who their employer is. So they're at square one, needing to figure out (A) who is behind this, (B) what their ultimate goal is, (C) what else they've managed to get their hands on/recovering said items, and (D) how the hell they're going to prevent it.

For purposes of the immediate future, the Rakshasa could be another in the employ of the individual(s) behind it all, and has been dispatched to get the scythe back. Thus the guide could be leading them into a rather nasty trap...

How's that sound as a starting point for plotting?

[toapat]

*interesting short summery not relevant to my point*

The Planeswalker series of M:TG is doing wonders with the entire story.

basically, Choose at least 3 big players you like. Prefferably not gods.

have each player running multiple factions. MTG has at least 5 factions, DnD it would make sense to have at least 4.

if you scrap the current campaign, start out having the party converge on some macguffin (Ala in The Purifying Fire Chandra's theft of Ugin's scroll of Ghostfire)

if you dont scrap the current campaign, have them have to track down the macguffin, possibly have each party member approached separately by a different faction.

The Macguffin is a map and artifact of plot advancement, but nothing that should make sense to the players alone. (IE, its a scroll of DBF, but written in cypher and points to a rift which leads to a plane of fire. (Not the elemental plane of fire))

[Kaww]

I would recommend 'Expedition to castle Ravenloft'. Like most published adventures it has quite a bit of encounters, but you could skip most of them without a problem. The plot could easily pass as a mystery, but this depends on your presentation. Spoiler for those that are playing or that don't GM or think they might play this scenario:

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You could make Strahd insane or you can make him the 'good guy'. As in the person that helps them around the village, pays the PCs expenses and helps them with information. There is a really good twist when you present him in this way. If you want it even more memorable play the game in Ravenloft campaign setting and watch your players go nuts.

[Hallavast]

I think Tomb of Horrors was written in 3.5 as an adventure fit for folks around level nine.

You're evil.

It was written well before 3rd edition by Gygax. Presumably in a maniacal fit of psychopathic vengeance.

It is where mid-level PCs go to die.

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I ran this as a 1-shot joke on Halloween one year. The paladin was crushed to death in the first deathtrap. The rogue got ripped apart in one round by the statue monster in the 3rd room. The idiot druid stuck his arm in the sphere of annihilation in the first hallway, and after all this, the wizard said "**** this" and fled. People wonder why high level wizards are always "mad". This is why.

[Manly Man]

You're evil.

It was written well before 3rd edition by Gygax. Presumably in a maniacal fit of psychopathic vengeance.

It is where mid-level PCs go to die.

Spoiler

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I ran this as a 1-shot joke on Halloween one year. The paladin was crushed to death in the first deathtrap. The rogue got ripped apart in one round by the statue monster in the 3rd room. The idiot druid stuck his arm in the sphere of annihilation in the first hallway, and after all this, the wizard said "**** this" and fled. People wonder why high level wizards are always "mad". This is why.

Hey, he was asking for fun adventures. He should just tell the players to make a copy of their characters before they play.

And I know that Gygax had written it long before. I think it was because all of his players kept complaining that his modules were too easy; I was mostly just talking about when they'd remade it.

[Eldan]

The first thing that jumps out at me from that is: how do (supposedly fairly random) weapon smugglers have something as powerful and specialized as a scythe from the avatar of a death god?

The thought that comes to mind is someone building up forces and weaponry to challenge some heavies in the cosmos. If not the gods themselves, then at least some of the major players. But to keep it from pinging on anyone's radar, they're routing shipments through unobtrusive sources; like your gnoll smugglers and the beholder mafia boss front.

Unfortunately, said smugglers are now in too many pieces to spill their guts (metaphorically since the literal version has already been accomplished) on who their employer is. So they're at square one, needing to figure out (A) who is behind this, (B) what their ultimate goal is, (C) what else they've managed to get their hands on/recovering said items, and (D) how the hell they're going to prevent it.

For purposes of the immediate future, the Rakshasa could be another in the employ of the individual(s) behind it all, and has been dispatched to get the scythe back. Thus the guide could be leading them into a rather nasty trap...

How's that sound as a starting point for plotting?

The smugglers came from an entirely unrelated side-plot in a pre-written adventure originally, they just provided a nice diversion. The interesting thing, however, is that they originally came from Acheron, though I'm not sure the players remember that, it was a long, long time ago.

Acheron has the advantage that it is, amongst many other things, the plane where discarded and broken weaponry ends up in literally endless heaps of wreckage. The assumption would probably be that someone unearthed the Scythe there. The Avatar was slain, his weapon lost, it ended up on Thuldanin.

The Rakshasa could be connected to this, that's a good point. Now, the question is, really, what should he do to them in the immediate future? He promised and signed a contract that he'd take them down one layer.

Of course, the fourth layer of Acheron is particularly nasty: no solid ground and a perpetual blizzard made of very sharp shards of Styx ice, which not only flay the unprotected alive, but also take away your memories. The party got themselves armoured suits and breathing apparatuses already, from a friendly artificer.

[EccentricCircle]

From a Resource point of view heres a link to WOTC's archive of free 3.x modules. I've not played many of the adventures on that list, so have no idea if any of them would suit, but there are quite a lot, so if nothing else you should be able to pilfer ideas.
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x...030530b&page=1

[DonEsteban]

You should have a look at The Great Modron March. Matches many of your requirements. Modrons and horror and plane-hopping and fun... Actually a collection of 11 adventures for all levels. And its successor Dead Gods.

Tales from the Infinite Staircase. Loosely linked adventures you can drop off at any point.

[Rama]

The smugglers came from an entirely unrelated side-plot in a pre-written adventure originally, they just provided a nice diversion. The interesting thing, however, is that they originally came from Acheron, though I'm not sure the players remember that, it was a long, long time ago.

Acheron has the advantage that it is, amongst many other things, the plane where discarded and broken weaponry ends up in literally endless heaps of wreckage. The assumption would probably be that someone unearthed the Scythe there. The Avatar was slain, his weapon lost, it ended up on Thuldanin.

The Rakshasa could be connected to this, that's a good point. Now, the question is, really, what should he do to them in the immediate future? He promised and signed a contract that he'd take them down one layer.

Of course, the fourth layer of Acheron is particularly nasty: no solid ground and a perpetual blizzard made of very sharp shards of Styx ice, which not only flay the unprotected alive, but also take away your memories. The party got themselves armoured suits and breathing apparatuses already, from a friendly artificer.

Rakshasa: He promised to take them down one layer. Did he promise to safeguard them while they're there, or that he would guarantee their return? Unless they built some significant safeguards into the contract it should be easily manipulated, and even if they did there's probably a loophole that can be exploited. Worst case I'd expect he should be able to sail into the ambush and then just not take part for either side.

But if he can do more, and we assume the weapon is the goal: take the players down to the level as agreed, sabotage breathing apparatuses if the opportunity presents to make them less effective, toss them overboard and sail away laughing with a death-god avatar's weapon of power.

PCs, stranded. Escaping would be a small adventure on its own (thinking on that but nothing jumps to immediate mind - deal with an efreet or some such for safe passage in exchange for favors? not a great idea, but eh), then they have an enemy to hunt down for revenge as well as whoever wants the scythe so badly. I kinda like the idea that someone is mining Acheron for lost weapons of power - less risky and draws much less notice than taking them from the hands of their living masters, and just as powerful.

[Eldan]

Actually, after thinking a bit, I had an idea where I can sort of marry the entire weapon thing into the Great Modron March.

As they arrive at Wee Jas' domain, everyone is in preparation for war. As a goddess of witchcraft and death, the Ruby Lady had a premonition that a powerful entity of law would die. (She doesn't tell this to the adventurers).

Luckily, a band of entirely uncomfortable and chaotic adventurers show up at her door with a powerful weapon and ask her for a favour. So she sends them to Automata to observe.

Gives them a bit of an incentive to go along with the plot. And I can throw in attempts from various factions at getting the weapon.

Now I need a resolution to this Rakshasa plot. Stranding them a layer down, plus sabotage, is a good idea. Now I just need a way for them to get out.

Edit: not even sure I should keep this plot secret. I'm reasonably sure at least some of my players know how Dead Gods ends, if not the details.