Category Archives: Scenarios

Curse of Vecna and the Creative Method of Asking How Can This Be True?

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As a kid obsessed with roleplaying games, The Space Gamer ranked as my favorite magazine, and their articles where game designers analyzed their creations excited me the most. This article by Steve Jackson on The Fantasy Trip made such an impression that I’ve quoted it several times in my posts. My love of designer’s notes makes writing similar posts for my adventure designs irresistible. This brings me to Curse of Vecna, my second Dungeons & Dragon adventure available on the DMs Guild. This post spoils virtually everything in it.

I run weekly, open games at a local game store. One kid started with fourth edition’s D&D Encounters program, played at my table for years, grew up and went to college. During a return home, he asked to revisit old times with a new adventure for a favorite level-7 character. A night at the game store only gave me 2 hours to fill, just time for an unforgettable hook, a bit of roleplaying, and a showdown versus a boss monster.

For the hook, I remembered playing DDEX03-14 Death on the Wall by Greg Marks and its irresistible hook: Someone fleeing pursuit dumps a pack containing a message on the characters and then drops dead. The mystery behind the hook makes it so compelling. What’s the message and why did someone die to deliver it?

The best hooks include enigmas that raise the players‘ curiosity. I decided on an unexplained message, but instead of killing the messenger, I imagined a sympathetic child unable to read the note that could get him killed. So the adventure starts when 8-year-old Mika hands the party a note that reads, “I poisoned my parents. I am a very wicked boy and I should hang.”

This idea started my most productive creative activity, one called How can this be true? I needed to explain this note.

Some fey creatures relish mischief, so I searched for fey in D&D Beyond and sought something wicked enough to work such a cruel prank. I found the boggle, “the little bogeys of fairy tales,” who “hide under beds and in closets, waiting to frighten and bedevil folk with their mischief.” Better yet, a “child might unintentionally conjure a boggle and see it as a sort of imaginary friend.” Suddenly the note came from a boggle who Mika saw as a funny-looking friend. My roleplaying encounter would feature a meeting with the creature.

But Mika had a real problem with his parents, and since I wanted a good end, they could not actually be poisoned, only sleeping. The boggle turned my imagination to fairy tales, poisoned apples, and magic mirrors. The apple has been done, but what if a mirror captured the parents’ souls, leaving the players to rescue the spirits. I liked the idea, and decided to imagine the details after I found a villain.

For a foe, I turned to my own list of monsters by function and found a mastermind likely to challenge 7th-level characters. I selected the skull lord based on fond memories of battling them and because I fancied my skull lord miniature. This choice was a small misstep. At level 7, skull lords prove very dangerous. I underestimated the skull lord because I selected it while playing lots of D&D with tactical experts. During play, I dropped the creature’s legendary actions to even the match up.

So a skull lord used a magic mirror to capture the parents’ souls, but why? How could that be true? According to Monster Manual lore, skull lords suffered a curse from Vecna. What if this lord could lift its curse by trading places with three new victims? Such an exchange felt like it fit with magic and folklore. It explained why the skull lord might seek the two parents’ souls plus a third. In the final adventure, that third soul becomes Mika’s younger sister Affie.

For the two-hour version, the players met Mika, learned about the skull lord from the boggle, and then went beyond the magic mirror to face the skull lord and rescue the parents’ spirits. I liked the result well enough to plan a 4-hour version for part of a D&D weekend.

I decided to add 2 hours by expanding the skull lord’s lair to a complete dungeon. For this, I took inspiration from Curse of Strahd. In that adventure, the players gather magic items that give them enough of an edge to beat Strahd. In my expanded dungeon, players would learn enough secrets to give them the help they needed to destroy the skull lord. This scheme enabled me to keep the overpowered villain without requiring dramatically more powerful characters. The design also let me use one of five tricks for creating brilliant dungeon maps from Will Doyle. Check number 3, “Give players goals that compel them to explore.”

As I drew the dungeon, I consulted Will‘s five tricks, and sought to use more.

I interpreted number 2, “Show the final room first,” loosely by previewing the players‘ target. I added a way for the players to see the skull lord through the magic mirror before entering the dungeon.

For number 5, “Give each level a distinctive theme,” I imagined the dungeon that traps the parent’s souls as a dark reflection of the world on the other side of the mirror. I put that behind-the-mirror reflection on the Shadowfell and I aimed for a haunted feel. This echoes the upside down on Stranger Things, the show that put the name Vecna into the popular imagination.

For number 4, “Make the dungeon a puzzle,” I turned to my idea notebook of dungeon tricks and found one that fit the creepy tone. I had imagined a tyrant who had punished murdered rivals by wiring their corpses up like scarecrows as a demonstration of power and revenge. (I would later learn of a real-life ruler who did something similar.) In my idea, each corpse lacks an essential piece, like the mule’s head that once topped the body labeled as “willful.” As the party finds and returns the missing pieces, the dead tell secrets. To explain what makes the dead chatty, I again asked, “How can this be true?” The answer came from Vecna’s rival the Raven Queen. In death, all secrets belong to the Raven Queen, and she can arm the party with secrets that help win victory.

Not all the dungeon’s tricks come from one post. To Jaquays the dungeon, I added cave-ins and shafts connecting the two levels and the surface. Plus, I filled the rooms with interactive features and things to figure out.

To develop this adventure, I ran it four times, then playtesters helped me perfect it. Nine other DMs ran the adventure and shared their results. Their experience and feedback forged a better adventure than the one I drafted.

Curse of Vecna makes a great level 8-10 one shot and also works as a side-quest that fits easily into a campaign. So grab a copy for yourself or as a gift for your favorite dungeon master.

Battle Walker From the Abyss and Why I Took a High Dive Into the Shallow End of the D&D Pool

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For my first DMs Guild adventure, I turned a rough start into a high dive into the shallow end of the D&D pool. Don’t try this at home. Read on for the story, but first I’m excited to introduce Battle Walker From the Abyss, my fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons adventure for 17th to 20th level characters. In the adventure, a wizard’s simulacrum asks for help stopping his demon-corrupted original from gaining a walking weapon capable of leveling cities. The quest takes characters across the Abyss, from the market town of Broken Reach, to the demon goddess Zuggtmoy’s fungal plane, and then to a confrontation in an iron fortress over a lake of molten iron. The adventure mixes roleplaying and senses-shattering combat encounters in a plane-hopping mission that tests epic level characters. It typically takes 6-8 hours to play.

The adventure’s rough start came when I opted to create an entry for the D&D Adventurers League open design call for potential tier 4 adventure authors. I wrote about creating for tier 4 and shared my entry. However, my entry failed to interest the judges. When I played my submitted encounter, I learned that it overreached. Blame that on the same creative mindset that leads a player to write a 12-page backstory for new character. For a one shot.

As I created my entry, I imagined it as the slam-bang start to an adventure, which led me to weigh the encounter with details that went nowhere outside my imagination. I suspect the result felt cluttered. Later playtesting also revealed that the encounter included too many moving parts, distractions that I trimmed from the final version.

My encounter featured a magic gate tunneling from a ruined city down to the Abyss—a fantastic location appropriate for legendary heroes. I hoped the setting would create a sense of wonder while enabling mighty characters to flaunt their abilities, but the location proved hard to visualize without an abstract map. The final version includes a map.

The Adventures League team probably needed new tier 4 authors for two reasons:

  • Tier 4 adventures can prove difficult to write, especially for a random party of league characters. A table might include all martial types or all spellcasters with wish. Accounting for the possibilities means more work for authors. I’ve learned this first hand.
  • Very few D&D players participate in such high-level games. Data from D&D Beyond suggests that 90% of Dungeons & Dragons games stop by level 10. That means level-17-and-up adventures sell far less to comparable low-level outings.

Despite the lack of interest in my encounter, despite the extra effort, and despite the slight rewards of creating a tier 4 adventure for sale, I pressed on to create a complete adventure. More work for fewer sales? Sign me up! Why? Because once I started the story behind the encounter, my imagination failed to let it go. You’re a D&D fan; you know how that goes.

I love the plane-shifting heroics of tier 4. At the highest levels, Dungeons & Dragons lets super-powered characters travel otherworldly realms and battle threats that approach the power of gods. That grand scale lets dungeon masters enjoy the fun of stretching our imaginations’ unlimited special effects budgets, and of pitting the characters against any threat we can dream while feeling confident the players will win.

Battle Walker From the Abyss captures all that, plus a bard’s tale that some playtesters said provided the best part of the adventure. Plus color digital battle maps for some legendary locations.

As for the rough edges in that one encounter, they’re gone. Credit feedback from more than 30 playtesters for a far better adventure than I drafted.

The adventure makes a great tier 4 one shot and also works as a side-quest that fits easily into a high-level campaign. So grab a copy for yourself or as a gift for your favorite dungeon master.

Related: All the Troubles That Can Make High-Level D&D a Bitch To Run, and How To Solve Them

Making High-Level D&D Click: Advice from Alan Patrick, the DM Who Has Run More Tier 4 Than Anyone

Challenging High-level Characters Without Breaking the Dungeon Master

Making a Tier 4 D&D Encounter for Characters Who Play Like Superheroes

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Dungeons & Dragons tier 4 spans levels 17 through 20, where wizards can cast wish. When I read class abilities in that range, I think, Well, that’s overpowered. And then I think, They can cast wish. If the party plays like the Justice League, then the design hit the right note. (See The Obvious Innovation in Fifth-edition Dungeons & Dragons That No Designer Saw Before and The Dungeons & Dragons spells Gary Gygax never meant for players.)

I’ve played dungeon crawls at levels 17+ and felt surprised by how much the delve felt like ordinary D&D. I’ve also played T4 encounters where everyone flew dragons to battle in the stratosphere and T4 encounters where the party faced off against the mad mage Halaster mounted on a flying tarrasque. Want to guess whether those open encounters proved more memorable than the dungeon crawl? (Hint: Yes.)

So the tier 4 adventure design open call from D&D Adventurers League got me thinking. How would I answer such a call?

Part of the challenge—and fun—comes from the call’s limits. These restraints include a limit to 500 words or fewer with no maps. No doubt these limits aim for two goals: (a) to spare the time of whoever evaluates the submissions and (b) to test writers’ ability to follow directions. The rules also limit submissions to 1 page, but 500 words take less than a page. For example, the 1-page encounter in the sample document takes 662 words.

When I think T4 adventures, I think of events that cap a multi-year campaign with a final showdown with Orcus, Tiamat, or a similar arch-foe. But Adventures League sessions start and end within 4 hours, which leaves little build up for, “Orcus attacks!” This led me to imagine situations where an epic party might be drawn into a conflict that fits a convention slot. My encounter hints at that conflict. Also, I opted for a starting encounter to avoid something as potentially bewildering as tuning into the last 15 minutes of a movie. I agree with Sly Flourish on the importance of starting strong.

In the City State of the Invincible Overlord (1977), a loan shark could summon Orcus to deal with folks who miss payments, so a sudden attack by the demon lord has a early precedent. See Two weird D&D questions no one asks anymore, answered by the City State of the Invincible Overlord.

For tier 4, I prefer to leave the prime material plane. Adventures set in a place like the Abyss feel like a better match for legendary heroes. Besides, the outer planes bring the most suitable foes for the tier. But the rules limit encounters to the Forgotten Realms. Rather than quibbling that the Realms setting includes the Abyss, I thought back to a Lore You Should Know segment on a Dragon Talk podcast episode that fired my imagination. Adam Lee describes the fallen cities of ancient Netheril and the mythallar’s that tapped enough magic of the weave to levitate cities. What if some evil sought a mythallar to power some scheme? Unlike a plain McGuffin, I could use that raw magic to justify some big special effects. Tier 4 merits heavy use of the imagination’s unlimited special effects budget.

Remember all those mighty abilities that make tier 4 characters play like superheroes? These characters commonly fly, run on walls, teleport, and so on. If you drop such a party in a room where two sides trade damage, nobody gets to flaunt their amazing powers. You want battles atop boulders buoyed on rising lava in an erupting volcano. (Maybe next time.) With lesser characters, such a battlefield might risk incinerating heroes, but the tier 4 heroes can cope with every peril you imagine, and then leave you wondering how to dial the difficulty above easy. I aimed for medium difficulty, but I suspect I barely landed easy. Blame it on just 500 words of threats.

For my fantastic location, I opted for a magic gate tunneling from a ruined city to the Abyss. I hoped for a site that forced characters to use their abilities while still being run theater of the mind—although an abstract map would offer greater clarity. Just draw a big tube with 2 circles and 2 lines and tick off 15-foot increments like a measuring cup. Cross it with 2 lines for the fallen towers. Ambitious DMs could unroll the tube onto a flat battlemap. Very ambitious DMs could model it in 3 dimensions.

Selecting monsters at this tier poses a challenge because so few stand a chance in the big leagues. Fewer still work in groups and even the mightiest solo monsters struggle against groups of adventurers. For example, when I ran a solo tarrasque against a level-20 party, I needed to give D&D’s mightiest monster maximum hit points to hold up. For my encounter location, my foes needed to fly.

I settled on yugoloths. They fly and the type boasts a number of other advantages: I can team spell slingers and martial types to match with the varied powers of the party. Plus, their nature as mercenaries make them an easy fit for an adventure. Monsters who challenge characters in multiple ways give players more chances to exercise their characters’ abilities. The nycoloths bring innate spellcasting and that makes me concerned that so many abilities could mire a DM in too many choices and layer too much magic on the battlefield. At this level, even “shock troops” feature suites of abilities.

My encounter’s last ingredient comes from an anthropomorphic fox bent on using the party for revenge. I added Rusty for two reasons:

  • His presence lures characters into the pit when good sense might keep them outside.
  • He adds more opportunities for interaction to the encounter.

For a look at my encounter, see the draft PDF and an updated version based on feedback.

Related: Side trek for Storm King’s Thunder: To Steal a Primordial
Side trek for Storm King’s Thunder: The Giant Ship

Side trek for Storm King’s Thunder: To Steal a Primordial

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At the Dwarven stronghold of Gauntlgrym, a trapped primordial called Maegera the Dawn Titan fires the forges. In Storm King’s Thunder, a party of drow raids the forges to steal the godling. If the player characters happen to visit Gauntlgrym, they gain a chance to foil the theft.

The description of Gauntlgrym in Out of the Abyss reveals the primordial’s tremendous power, but the struggle for the creature lacks gravity. Player characters just happen to stumble across 8 drow in a hallway. A couple of rounds of combat thwarts the caper.

If drow enter a dwarven stronghold and sieze a primordial from the forge, surely they made a better plan than the encounter suggests. Also, foiling the theft of a primordial merits at least a set-piece encounter, if not a full session of adventure.

This side trek expands the raid at Gauntlgrym. I aimed to make the drow more cunning, and the players’ interference more memorable.

For the drow, I plotted their scheme like players would if they had similar resources and powers. Now instead just killing unprepared drow in a hall, players feel like they match wits with a cunning foe. The drow and shadow demons get a chance to use stealth and spellcraft, forcing players to use their wits.

This trek integrates two potential encounters from the wandering monster tables in Gauntlgrym chapter of Out of the Abyss.

The tricky part of reimagining this scenario came as I worked to arrange the pieces so the scenario can play differently depending on the players’ strategy. Still, the events likely lead to a big confontration in the crypts.

In the original encounter, the lack of setup makes the drow seem random. In a dwarven fortress, they seem very random. After the battle, the players learn the plot, but now that it has failed, the details seem less importatant. If you run the original, you should hope that the players give the event little thought, because their success rests on a wildly coincidental meeting.

The new scenario sets up the drow scheme in advance and shows the stakes. The sudden chill in Gauntlgrym lends some weight to the theft.

This scenario should challenge 8th-level characters.

Also, my spell checker wanted to spell doppelgänger with umlauts. I went with it because everything is more metal with umlauts.

Download: To Steal a Primordial

Side trek for Storm King’s Thunder: The Giant Ship

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Chapter 3 of the Dungeons & Dragons adventure Storm King’s Thunder encourages characters to roam the Savage Frontier, completing quests and facing warring giants. As written, the section could to become a grind, with long marches interrupted by routine encounters. However, the content leads dungeon masters to enliven the journeys with their own ideas.

Lately, I’ve embellished my own sessions by building on the characters, monsters, and treasure featured in the book to create side treks.

Frost Giant’s Ship

This post shares one of my mini-adventures, The Giant Ship. Although this side trek expands on the suggested encounter for Helms Hold (p.91), you can also plant a hook at any time the characters travel the coast. This episode aims to bring problem solving, roleplaying, and more flavor to what might otherwise be a routine battle.

Characters at levels 5-10 gain access to abilities like flight and invisibility. The giant ship in this trek poses a rescue problem that such PCs can now solve. I tried to contrive a scenario that invites several strategies. I love when players face a dilemma that lets me sit back while they scheme.

As a battle, this final encounter should challenge a party of 7th-level characters. But because they characters probably won’t face another battle on the same day, they can win against the foes.

The scenario’s format shows my effort to make details easy to spot at a glance. I did not create this trek to be read and set aside; I created it to be played at the table.

Please tell me how the trek played at your table.

Download: Side Trek for Storm King’s Thunder.