I’m going to start my ‘reviews’ of random generators here, with the Tome of Adventure Design. After using this, I discovered a recently-released 2nd edition, but I’d already done the leg work with this one, so I guess a disclaimer is that I’ve done this using the 1st edition. On a quick glance at the 2nd edition they’ve tidied it up and added loads of extra bits to make it easier, so I’ll give that a go soon too; but this used the 1st edition.

As mentioned in the previous post, I’m interested in broad-brush strokes randomness; I don’t need individual detail (I’ll be using a tried and tested structure for that) but I do want some ideas to get me going. We’ve got a game of Shadow of the Weird Wizard, Rob Schwalb’s new-ish high fantasy game, booked in in a few weeks – so I thought I’d see what this threw up.

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First, parameters: For this first session, I’m using Novice characters, although they’ll probably be Level 2 in order to give a little bit more flexibility and durability. I need something I can run start to finish in <2 hours, too, as this game is going on the channel. And as a one-shot, I want to keep it simple – maybe a location-based pointcrawl.

It suggests several ways to get your adventure’s overview, depending on choice, so I decided to roll them all and see if I can fit a few together:

Location: Ruined Rift of the Bronze Crown

It’s a cool name, granted – I can use this

Purpose: Crypt-nets

This word association thing is a bit random, but thinking of a rift I’m imagining a big cliff with corpses held by nets that break one by one and march forward as zombies – yeah, that works!

Mission: Bring message to location of priestess (oracle)

This does nothing for me. Ignore.

Villainous Plan: Destroy Good Group – Judge/Jury that Convicted Evil Leader – by Economic sabotage

This has a decent fit to it, and shows why we’d go into this weird crypt.

Pulling that together, I’m imagining an evil warlock who was, in his youth, banished from a village – who’s come back to ruin them, after acquiring a magical crown that lets him open the rift and let loose the corpses buried within. He’s managed to shut down all the trade routes to the village, in the hope that the town will be forced to turn to him for help.

I haven’t thought about setting yet, but one of my pregens is a frog-person, so let’s set this in a hot, fetid swamp. This also makes sense for the village being reliant on trade. The players can be en route, ambushed by enemies – but being heroes, they’ll make it through – and then learn of the villagers’ plight. To mix it up, we can have them ambushed by natural beasts displaced by the rift’s evil energy – I quite like the idea of giant frogs, and Schwalb has me covered with “Gigantic Frog” stats in his bestiary. I’ll probably want another faction involved, and maybe a tribe of the frog-people work well, too. Let’s hope somebody picks that pregen! (Or nobody does, and the party regret it!)

So, the start of a structure – an encounter, a village, and an adventure location – the rift itself. I’ll probably make the rift a 5-room dungeon, as I need to keep this tight – watch out for the future post when I’ll flesh this out more!

So, talking about the Tome itself – I’ve only scratched the surface with it, really, and it’s come up with a session’s worth of activity that has helped me get from zero to (almost) ready to run – I’m impressed! If I’ve got a criticism, it’s that the sheer number of options maybe makes the book feel a bit intimidating – it isn’t immediately clear how to use all of it – but this is really splitting hairs with it!

Have you used random generators like the Tome of Adventure Design to help with adventures? Let me know in the comments.