DMs: Name your homebrew adventures?

[The Shaman]

I don't create or run adventurers per se, but I do name my campaigns or con games; my three most recent campaigns are Le Ballet de l'Acier (The Dance of Steel) for my Flashing Blades campaign, Cold Warriors for a Top Secret campaign, and Let's Go Space Truckin'! for a Traveller campaign, and I ran a Boot Hill game, Promise City Apocalypse, for a con this past summer.

For Le Ballet, I keep adventure logs recording each game-night's action, and each of these gets a name, usually taken from a quotation; they don't qualify as 'adventure titles' because they describe events which happened in the past.

• "Life During Wartime" (title of the eponymous Talking Heads song)
• "Gallant Madness" ("All cities are mad: but the madness is gallant. All cities are beautiful: but the beauty is grim." - Christopher Morley)
• "The Instruments of Darkness" ("The instruments of darkness tell us truths" – William Shakespeare)
• "No Hunting Like the Hunting of Man" ("There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter." – Ernest Hemingway)
• "A Thousand Friends" ("He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare,/And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere." - Ali ibn-Abi-Talib)
• "Best-laid Schemes" ("The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men/Gang aft agley" - Robert Browning)
• "A Hard Place to Leave" ("Paris is a hard place to leave" - Willa Cather)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I've been running play by post games for years, so they all get names, for the thread titles, if nothing else. Here they are, in order:

1. Into the Woods
2. A Meeting in the Woods
3. Little Hamlet in the Big Woods
(#4 was a story written by the players about their characters as children, called Once Upon a Time.)
5. Abbey in the Woods
6. Beneath Blackberry Ridge (a conversion of Goodman Games' The Dragonfiend Pact)
(#7 is another player story: The Shadows of Kem House.)
8. The Dark Waters of Moss Pond
9. The Shadow of the Great Tower
10. Flavivirus the Black
11. The Night Cliffs
12. Night's Dark Terrors
13. The Voyage of the Melann
14. Vilustuminen the White
15. Fiddler's Green (a conversion of Death in Freeport)
16. Ra'ad the Blue
17. Shore Leave
18. The Lost Temple of Tiamat
19. Red Sky at Morning (a conversion of Terror in Freeport)
20. Gax the Green
21. Hurricane Season (a conversion of Madness in Freeport)
(The campaign finale, not started yet) 22. The Town Where Heroes are Born

As you might guess, the campaign split in two back in adventure #3, with fugitives from imperial justice eventually ending up in Freeport, while the good guys have been on a quest to collect dragon scales (although they've only met one dragon, Ra'ad the Blue, and bargained with him) to try a counter-ritual to stop the local kobolds from summoning an aspect of Tiamat to wipe out their barony.

Lots of homages in there in the titles, even if they amuse only me.

 

[SteelDraco]

No, I've never named adventures, though campaigns will typically have a name based on the overall idea. This is just for my organization, usually. I'm currently running Deadwood Winter, for example - a Deadlands game set in Deadwood with wendigo and Ithaqua cultists as the main villain group. The names aren't very evocative.

 

[Smoss]

When doing PBeM and PBIM games I named campaign arcs. I also name my homebrew modules. I have few of those remaining around, just my new modules for my latest setting and RPG setting.

The intro adventure "The Horror in Horatius Hall" - based on the format of the classic adventure "Jacob's Well" from Dragon #43... A murder mystery in a small location on the edge of civilization...

And the full size module I am currently working on - "Best Served Cold" - A tale of revenge and elemental cold with a lot of fun set pieces...

Smoss

 

[Dykstrav]

Yeah, I name my adventures, if for nothing else than to help keep them straight in my notes and imagination. I generally think of it as the episode titles for a TV show rather than as published adventure titles, however. Perhaps a published adventure spanning three or more levels would be roughly analogous to a "season," since I name each session.

Here's the current titles for the adventures I've ran so far in my current campaign, using the Pathfinder rules and set in Greyhawk... With expanded loglines, but no spoilers.

"What Happens in Hardby..." A novice priest of Rao is missing after a night out on the town for one last fling before taking his formal vows.

"The Priest's Challenge." Undead threaten a remote village with a priest too old and feeble to engage them. The characters must help his newly-ordained replacement come into his own and help the older priest pass the torch during the crisis.

"Squaring the Circle." The characters seek to recover a magical scepter plundered from a tomb by unscrupulous adventurers--a scepter they need to prevent the rise of an ancient lich from the era of Vecna. They recover an artifact, one of the tablets of Aradros, dating from this bygone time.

"A Contest of Principles." Slavers in Hardby try to escape after their plot to kidnap a young noble--traveling in secret as a simple priest--was uncovered by adventurers.

"Dead, for a Ducat, Dead!" The Free City of Greyhawk is ravaged by rats and sickness, perpetuated by a sect of Incabulos-worshipping goblins.

"The Leeches." A band of halfling rogues known as the leeches are trading contraband with sinister magicians and mysterious cultists.

"Eyes of the Past." The Tolenov estate, just outside of the Free City of Greyhawk, is troubled by mysterious events and aberrant creatures. The characters recover the lens of Aradros, which allow the tablets to be deciphered.

"Into the Mistmarsh." The characters travel into the Mistmarsh in search of one of the fabled tablets of Aradros.

"The Demon's Heart." The characters battle troglodyte worshippers of Demogorgon in a hidden ziggorat and the caves beneath. They recover the second tablet of Aradros.

"The Sapphire Point Incident." The character seek the counsel of gnomes at a remote outpost and discover that it has been attacked by the Fist of Hextor--a bloody crusade intent on establishing a new state of Hextor-worshippers in the Abbor-Alz.

 

[Edgewood]

Current campaign in Morvia:

The Legacy of Domichronius

 

[Zelda Themelin]

Past time I use to name every session I played. And some names were really weird, but I don't have my old notes here so I just have newer stuff.

Chains of Darkness - whole campaing (with session names)
In the Beginning
Dark Birds of Ill Omen
What can little magic do aka love spell gone horrible wrong
In the Tower of Grief
Library of Namers
Duel and Lady
Satarchian letters
Truth and Journey
Empire of Jade
The Scourge starts
Ships of Destruction
Forest of Voices
Hero's arms
Simple Sea-trip
Finding spark of light in a land of darkness
Amotius's second temptation, Into the Tower of Corruption
Last Fight of Tyrant, Amotius's last temptation


Some adventure names from long campaing
I was supposed to run Temple of Elemental evil, but it turned
down so boring I did something else instead

Quest for Iselda
Dogeon’s tales
Nine lifes
Circlet of demonic beauty
Find Pelors Priest Harrek
Wolf of Evernight
Find Wizard Dearogt
Find Tigers thirth eye
"Beast is back” ”I dont want to be here, send me back"
Prophet of Earth
Hand that Rocks the Cradle
Isle of Mists
Orb of Silver Death
Song of Silence
Most Evil

Night of Dissolution (yes included that adventure too)

Oathbound game (no other names)

Days of Chaos and Harmony (just finished)

Demon's Fate (new campaign)

 

[was]

i usually dont name them

 

[Crothian]

I'm currently running Star wars and we played through "The Lianna Legacy" for the first seven weeks and now we are onto "Kashyyyk Catalyst".

 

[RedTonic]

I used to name all of my adventures things that (at least I thought) were fun. My favorite is still "The Ministry of Love" (two PCs visit the scene of the murder of their student who had been confined to a criminal asylum for supers after a sudden attack of cannibalism, and discover that one of their allies has been imprisoned there under the alias of a villain).

In my current campaign, I haven't really been naming my adventures, but I still like my campaign name (Logos: The Golden Path--I have a storyhour up here, actually). I may get around to actually naming the adventures... Eventually.