DMs: Name your homebrew adventures?

Sometimes there's nothing more evocative to the imagination than a good name for a story/plot/adventure.

Obviously, if you get most of your adventure material from published modules, then there are names inherent to them. But for those DMs that primarily homebrew their adventures, do you bother to come up with names for them? Do you share the names with the players? What are some of your favorites?

I usually add names to my adventures, if only so I can keep things organized in my notes, but they rarely get shared with my face-to-face players; I use them in PbeM and some PbP games (usually as subject libes), but have only recently stated using them in my face-to-face game - and only them, because the game is structured as unrelated one session "jobs", and I use the adventure names as "job postings" for the players to choose from.

Some of my favorites:
The Object of His Affection - break-in to steal an idol that has enthralled a noble
The Last Drop - a hunt for a rare and valuable keg of rum
Heart of Stone - a search for the lost lover of a medusa
Eyes So Blue Can Never Be True - attempt to expose a vampiress to nobility
A Life in the Day - a Jekyll/Hyde-esque hunt for an undead serial killer
The Storyteller - a PbeM adventure, told from the antagonist's PoV, about the heroes thwarting his plans to start a religious schism
The Evil Men Do - attempt to stop a drug manufacturing ring using unusual/supernatural ingredients

I sometimes do this, but it's more of a little bit of an esoteric in-joke or focus for me than it is something that I do with the players.

Also, I tend to name my adventures after 80s songs, Depeche Mode songs, or other such things. For the latter, I've had a "Blasphemous Rumours" and a "Stories of Old"--both for strongly Cthulhu-themed adventures. For the former, I once had an "Everybody's Working For the Weekend" for a race against time scenario, and a "Summer of '69" about a noble who's past indiscretions (particularly during, duh, the summer of 1269 in the setting's calendar) had come back to haunt him and involved the PCs as well.

I usually end up naming my adventures these days.

Our group uses GroupSpaces to organise events. We've found that an event generates more interest if it is given a name and a short but evocative write-up. That is, I'll get more players for "Three Days Out of Ord Mantell" than I will for "Star Wars Saga Edition One-shot".

Which is weird, but kinda cool.

Cor Azer said:

Sometimes there's nothing more evocative to the imagination than a good name for a story/plot/adventure.

Obviously, if you get most of your adventure material from published modules, then there are names inherent to them. But for those DMs that primarily homebrew their adventures, do you bother to come up with names for them? Do you share the names with the players? What are some of your favorites?

Click to expand...

Yes I do, yes I do, and here are a few of my favorite names for some adventures I've run:

Island of the Horrors (the origin point of the clockwork horrors)
Agents of Chaos
The Hill of Skulls
Bile Mountain
Return to Bile Mountain
Revenge on Bile Mountain
Beyond Bile Mountain
Lord Crush Must Die!
City of Cowards
Dam Beavers!
Jam Session
The Asylum of Advanced Mental Treatment

I actually name each session (though some are X part II, X part III, etc) in my records.

Some of my...

• Boots for a Halfling - Halfling hiring the adventure to find an old gift
  [*]Recipe for Beer - Dwarf only quest for a clan's stolen beer recipe
  [*]Collection of Drow Eyes - Drow spy ring
  [*]Silly Little Love Songs of Beholders - It's true, every one wants some one to love and a beholder wants the players to carry love songs to another...
  [*]Bottom of a Spit Bucket - a drunking fool with his hand stuck in one...in hand a figurine that could only come for the lost ruins of Xel-Fallen

My last campaign I named was a 4E 1-30 game we played to completion of the story. I named it "Echoes of Annihilation." I don't remember the name of the last one that I DM'd or if I even thought to name it.

I have a hankering to run a very classic D&D game where all the adventures have names like "Barricades of the Goblin General," "Strand of the Salt Hag," things like that, but mostly I don't run adventures with sufficient structure for them to be named. One-shots, sure, the Hollowfaust "Call of the Carrion Star" was pretty well-received. But in an ongoing campaign I tend to assign names to story arcs once they're done with.

I always name my adventures, and have from the very beginning. I don't usually tell the PCs the name at first (it'd give too much away in some cases), but will during or after the adventure.

A few more of mine:

The Aquan Pyramid
Farenth's Game
Bad Man of the Woods
Grandfather's Bones
The Wyrm's Bayou
Stolen Goods
Halls of the Hammerhead Clan
Campaign of Terror
The Belmax Agenda
Backbiter's Maze
The Mustard Sargasso
Dark Denial in the Delve of the Dwarves! and its sequel:
Deadly Delve into the Dwarven Deep
What's Eating Benjy Peachtree?
Morl's Retreat
A Plague of Serpents