D&D 5E Help! Creating a D&D 5e one-shot adventure for Saturday!

[SirAntoine]

Just a guess, of course, but I'd say you'll need 1-2 more hours for that.

 

[Kexizzoc]

I'd agree with SirAntoine; that's a lot to pack into 3-4 hours. Particularly if steps 3 and 5 are larger battles. It might work if you make the battle in step 1 a particularly quick one; you could have the assassins/thieves going up against the local forces (off-camera) with only 1 or 2 making it through these defences to threaten the PCs. Although now I'm looking at the time, and I should just be saying that I hope your game went well!!

 

[Quickleaf]

Just about to game in an hour. Took your advice to shorten things. Here's what I'm going with...

1. Gargoyle Attack - 3 gargoyles trying to steal the Elfstone.

2. Investigation/mystery

3. Crystal Caverns exploration (possibly a minor fight, but mostly magic hazards/puzzles)

4. Heart of the Mythal - Lich & Treant combat (the idea is the lich "Baelnorn" is trying to get control of the mythal and in the process restore his soul to his body)

 

[Quickleaf]

Haha, and we've rescheduled for tomorrow night...

Well, now I have time to actually write the adventure!

 

[Quickleaf]

Hey, what kind of magical hazards and exploration stuff can I throw into the Crustal Caverns?

 

[Rhenny]

Hey, what kind of magical hazards and exploration stuff can I throw into the Crustal Caverns?

Just brainstorming:

Icy walls in a cave. They need to smash through one or more to get to a new passage. If they smash the walls they may take damage from icy shards that fly about. Fire might melt it without harm.

Icy chute that they have to keep their balance on, and when they get to the end, they are scattered onto a frozen underground pond. They slide across the pond and if they don't dig into the ice with some object (a weapon, a piton, etc.) they will smash against a wall or slide into a pit.

A (15') chasm that they need to cross, but there is no bridge. They may try to jump, but that's risky. One of the PCs sees a pile of ladders off to one side. When they investigate, they realize that the ladders are just a reflection on the ice. They need to trace the light/reflection through an icy maze. They can map, navigate, spot, or help another, to follow the reflections to the actual pile of ladders. Each round they stay in the ice maze, it gets colder and colder (after the first round...they start to take damage). The DC to get to the pile might be DC 10 and they need to make x successful ability checks based on what they decide to do for the group. The way back out is more difficult DC 15. (If the party decided to mark their trail or leave something on the ground as they journeyed forth, you can make it easier).

Just some quick ideas. Hope they help inspire you. (Hope you get them in time).

 

[Quickleaf]

Thanks for the feedback and ideas!

I ran this for my friends and their 5-year old son and we had a great time Everyone was really impressed how the adventure was self-contained within two evenings but also was really lore and role-play heavy. And they liked the simplicity of the rules and speed of combat, so I may look at playing D&D Next with my main group now.

The basic flow of events covered the introduction, easy combat against gargoyles, investigation, an improvised scene where the PCs consulted the high elves, exploring the crystal caverns (3 rooms: reflective crystal room, easy crysmal combat in resonance crystal room, and floating failed phylactery room), and a hard combat against the Lich and his Blackfoot treant. Probably the highlight was when the gnome cleric was replaced by a mirror doppelgänger in the crystal caves, and the other players had to discover which was real - the reflected image in the crystal or the physical one. All together about 6 hours between two nights for a complete gaming experience that felt like D&D to all of us.

Thumbs up