Expand your game with this collection of 56 NPCs of various Challenge Ratings, thirteen of which include maps and details of their lairs. Add these NPCs as a side-quest, a main villain, a one-shot, a bounty for easy money, or however else you wish. Written by some of the best-selling authors on the Dungeon Masters Guild and outstanding podcasters, each NPC includes an image, a backstory, motives, flaws, and a stat block. Some even include new magic items!
The witch queens of Irrisen must abdicate their thrones every 100 years when their mother, Baba Yaga, places a new daughter on the throne. But one queen was unwilling to relinquish her rule, and led a doomed rebellion against the Mother of Witches. Afterward, Baba Yaga entombed her wayward daughter in an icy necropolis known as the Veil of Frozen Tears, along with a powerful artifact called the Torc of Kostchtchie, hiding them both far from mortal eyes. Now, almost 500 years later, the tomb has been found, and the race is on to plunder its treasures.
Launching the Unlock the Vault-series, this first installment sees the party search the royal crypt in the ruins of Wellsing for the fabled Shield of Ralfour - An artifact that, initially unknown to the party, also acts as one of the eight keys to break the seal on Aizendore's Vault of Tragic Treasure.
The PCs answer a call for heroes by the Church of Traladara, asking for help in finding an ancient relic- the Shield of Halav. This is located in a lost temple, and the PCs must locate this temple, and brave its dangers to recover the shield before two competing teams from other churches find it first. Part one involves setting up the adventure, doing research, following clues, and discovering the site of the lost temple. Part two; once the site is known (ruins under a modern town) the heroes must travel there and find the entrance. Part three is braving the lost temple, filled with traps, puzzles, and other dangers, to find the missing shield, and then culminating in a climatic showdown with the completing teams.
Strange things are a-slither in Wolfhill House. The first adventure of The Mere of Dead Men Series! Into the Mere From the magazine: Edging along the eastern edge of the Mere is the High Road, a vital and well-traveled route linking Waterdeep to the northern town of Leilon and, north of that, the city of Luskan. Over the past several months, the trade toad between Waterdeep and Leilon has been plagued by monsters from the Mere of Dead Men. Caravans report brutal attacks by lizard men on catoblepas mounts, yuan-ti, gargantuan bullywugs and will o' wisps. Sir Justin Melenikus, a Waterdhavian knight and paladin of Helm, has grown weary of these attacks and offered his services to the city, offering to hire adventurers to deal with the problem. Pgs. 10-27
Deep within the Kraken's Maw, a brutal maelstrom of ocean that devours ships, lies the mysterious Isle of Jade. Long forgotten in the memory of men, the island has served as a bastion for an ancient sect of female Corsairs, but their power is waning and the threat of the outside world is at their shores in the form of a necromancer from Roslof Keep. Now a party has set out from Taux seeking the necromancer. Their course will take them directly into a conflict of high magic, ancient warrior religions, marauding fern goblins, and primordial dinosaurs. Will you take up the challenges presented by the Isle of Jade? When a necromancer steals a maiden of ancient bloodline, the Wizards of the Order of Towers must find a way to get her back. Hiring a merchant lord of Taux to fund a rescue mission the hope is to return her before the dark Wizard can use her to find the legendary White Ship and the key to magic beyond this world. Now the mission is in jeopardy as the adventurers have become stranded on the mysterious Isle of Jade. Braving a dark corruption, nasty native Fern Goblins, and even ancient Amazons, the party will have to stop the corruption before it turns the islands inhabitants and giant reptiles mad. This adventure is formatted to both 1E & 5E gaming rules. Also available in PDF.
People keep asking for "beginner" dungeons. Everyone can name "classic" dungeons - Tomb of Horrors, Barrier Peaks, Ravenloft, etc. - but in order for those adventures to make sense, there needs to be some sort of introduction. It's like all the adventures we have are Bach concertos. People keep writing amazing works of staggering genius, but someone needs to write a book on how to play the piano. I had the same questions, and since I couldn't find anything satisfactory, I decided to write the kind of dungeon I would have loved to find. I wanted to write the best basic OSR dungeon for beginners that I could, and I also wanted to show the design process. If you like this dungeon, please share it, tell people about it, print copies and leave them lying around local game stores, or email this post to friends who have "always wanted to try D&D but don't know where to start". The entire thing is and always will be free.
After a string of successful adventures, you find yourselves reequipping gear in the small community of Tarten. After an unusual currency exchange in the mercantile, the party learns that a group of adventurers had encountered some Goblins possessing old currency belonging to the Co-Tai people. Well, it ain’t grave robbin’ if someone else did for you!
The Heroes are relaxing in an inn when they hear a scream, rushing outside they find that a local merchant has been kidnapped! The merchant's wife saw the assailants drag him into an alley, where the heroes give chase. Following the villains through a maze of natural fissures, tunnels, and ancient ruins they encounter a number of monsters, traps, and puzzles. Eventually they make their way to the kidnappers hideout, where they confront the kidnappers in a final climatic battle to rescue the merchant and uncover a criminal gang.
Every seven years, the elven village of Mellorell hosts the Festival of Life, an opportunity to trade, shop, and celebrate with the folk of nearby lands. But a dark secret that could cost the life of fairgoers draws the heroes into a plot that leads all the way to Hades. The core of the adventure is a short thirteen room lair with grimlock guards, a basilisk pet and Malifustal the Night Hag, who guards a portal to Hades. Pgs. 12-33
In this small side adventure the party will find evidence that one of their members may undergo a quest to be deemed a 'Mithel Company Champion' and as such gain certain powers within the Labyrinth. These special abilities are only known to be had by some of the greatest of company leaders, and they will be very helpful when taking on the final stages of the dungeon. This adventure is formatted to both 1E & 5E gaming rules.
Captured! While trekking across a trackless wasteland, your stalwart band has fallen into the clutches of a nefarious gang of desert raiders. Imprisoned in a subterranean chamber, you are bereft of all of your equipment and magic items, save for a few tattered loincloths. But as chance would have it, an opportunity to escape the cell presents itself. To escape, you must head deeper into an ancient sealed tomb, armed with nothing but your wits and anything you can find along the way. Getting to the surface is just one of many challenges, as you still need to recover your precious equipment, and flee the Lost Oasis, which is surrounded by an inhospitable sea of solid glass!
While exploring an uncharted island inhabited by sinister, otherworldly entities, the PCs are confronted with the ultimate dilemma: will they stop at nothing to uncover the forbidden secrets of an earlier age... or will they consign that ancient lore to be forever forgotten in the mists of time? Arriving at the correct choice may not be so trivial as it seems... A 5th-6th level adventure for An entire island to explore, with mysteries to solve and NPCs to interact with Challenging investigations and devilish enigmas Full-color art and beautiful handouts (even in digital format for online play) to engage the PCs Five new fearsome monsters ready to use in any campaign New feats and spells
Unearthed Adventures Volume I is a collection of six professionally written one-page adventures for Fifth Edition Dungeons and Dragons. They are designed to be modular, they can be tossed into an ongoing RPG campaign or run as a single adventure. They're easily expanded upon to fit every DM's playstyle. Published by Crit Academy
"I can’t stand to lose again..." The small farming village of Devil’s Run is about to have its yearly pumpkin festival. Unbeknownst to many, Old Pete Barker, a pumpkin farmer of many years, was having difficulty growing his pumpkins. Pete doesn’t have an ample water source, unlike Molly Simms, his primary rival for the festival's coveted largest pumpkin award, whose farm lays near a stream. Fixated on winning the grand prize, Old Pete made a deal with a dark force, the Feeder of Desires, but the deed cost him and the village dearly. “Plant me in the ground and I will make you strong." Peter Barker's body transformed into a vine-like creature with a jack-o-lantern head, and he now ‘waters’ his thriving pumpkin fields with the blood of kidnapped villagers, binding them below the earth while the pumpkin vines burrow into their flesh and feed. These vines have started to enter the town, creating pumpkin-vine creatures which snatch villagers and drag them to his underground lair. Will the adventurers save the village of Devil's Run and put a stop to Pete's pumpkin-patched plots? Let the Pumpkin Festival Commence! ►2– to 4–hour adventure for three to five characters ►Scalable for 3rd—7th level (optimized for 5th) ►5 beautifully mapped areas for your adventurers to explore ►7 new monster stat blocks, including the Pumpkin Terror, Vine Hound, and pumpkin-headed Pete Barker himself! ►Ripe for Halloween, Thanksgiving, or Fall adventuring! PDF Purchaser Bonuses ►HDR map files for each area (both gridded and gridless) ►Virtual Tabletop Tokens for the monsters Also for Roll20 and Foundry VTT
Far3 – Xiomara’s Globe puts the players inside a glass ball, owned by a strange enchantress. Once stuck inside their transparent prison, the players must search for a way out. The cursed fortress inside the globe has quite a few dangers to be overcome before an escape is even possible! One version of play was recently featured on The Bard's Podcast (Soundcloud).
A level 1–3 dungeon adventure by Giuseppe Rotondo. The secret workshop of a long-dead jeweler-magician is now open, as his grandson wants the place finally cleared of all dangers. What treasures might remain within, and what might be watching over them? This adventure combines classic dungeon crawl elements with the intrigue of uncovering a magician’s legacy, making it a rich experience for both new and seasoned players. For Old-School Essentials (OSE) Included as one of four adventures in "Old-School Essentials Adventure Anthology 1"
Alkenstar, City of Smog, is a bastion of civilization in the magic-warped region known as the Mana Wastes. Its ingenious citizens survive in the treacherous Spellscar Desert with the help of canny inventions like guns and clockwork automatons, but now their construct protectors have begun to run amok within the city. It falls to the PCs to venture beyond the city walls to find the source of their strange behavior.
This is an adventure for a party of level 4-6 designed to showcase a number of newly created Oozes in the Beyond the Black Pudding compendium. The party is brought in to help figure out what to do about a giant ooze that is threatening to engulf a small town. They discover that it is being called by a magical beacon somewhere nearby, and by following a small ooze they are able to find where the signal is coming from. It turns out to have been set off by The Visionary, an intelligent Vitreous Humor (a kind of ooze beholder) with dreams of power who discovered it in an ancient temple to Juiblex. Unfortunately, having turned it on, The Visionary had no idea how to turn it off again and is now barricaded in the depths of the temple, assaulted by oozes on all sides.
Welcome to the Cage, friend. You'll want to watch your back in Sigil - it seems every cutter here's got a way to peel a clueless basher, and you're no exception. Besides, there's something happening down in the Hive that's got the factions in an uproar, and word is you're the cutter to look into it. Barmies and bubbers have been waking up in the Dead Book, but they haven't been staying there. They've been returning to Sigil with minds restored, telling tales of the Eternal Boundary. But the air's turning foul here in the Cage, and there'll be blood spilled soon if someone doesn't learn the dark of things, an quick! The Eternal Boundary is a Planescape adventure for a party of four to six characters of 1st to 5th levels. Players are introduced to the city of Sigil - the Cage, as some call it. Inside this crossroads to the planes, a sinister plot unfolds, leading the heroes into the most dangerous and desperate part of town - the ramshackle slum known as the Hive. Do your player characters have what it takes to confront the Eternal Boundary - and pass beyond?