Other adventure types than Dungeon Crawling

[GrumpyOldMan]

The Earl's Progress

For a long 'escort duty' scenario I'd recommend The Earl's Progress. It's a free download, you'll find it here:

http://www.lythia.com/category/downloads/adventures/

For a short mystery, and an introduction to Hârn then you could look at A Shower of Silver at the same site.

However this is low-key medieval stuff, not an elemental powered airship to be seen.

 

[Woas]

See I was the other way around. For the longest time I've been trying to set up adventures and quests that aren't strict dungeons but involve negotiation, stealth and guile. Recently though the players (and me a bit too) are getting tired and irksome with trying to talk and sneak and generally don't doing things that involve Dungeons or Dragons and could really use some mindless, wholesale slaughter of inferior monsters.

So I think for next game I'll just drop a book-bag full of published dungeons on the table and say, "Pick one and lets rock n' roll."

 

[Pierson_Lowgal]

Bring person or item from location A to location B
Investigate a Person, Place or event (crime)
Solve a Mystery
Breakup a Criminal Organization
Defend a location, anything from a fort to a playhouse, either with foreknowledge of the attack or not
Negotiate a quarrel between groups

My memory is awfully hazy, but I think the second edition modules were not dungeon heavy. The planescape stuff, in particular, usually had a lot of non-combat encounters. Four from Cormyr, which at least used to be available free on a part of Wizard's site has a mystery adventure.

 

[diaglo]

politics. it is in most every single movie about adventuring. the politics of getting backing/sponsors for an expedition. the politics of choosing who to support. what of their weakness to help cover up or hide. and being the strong arm of the politicos you backed. or the guy in the middle playing one against the other until they figure you out and band together to kill you.

religion. church warfare or conversion of the masses. or gaining tithes and writs or artifacts. why do you choose the religion you choose. again this is ingrained in stuff. awaking old gods or foiling cults or being a cultist or holy crusader

death and taxes. two things in life that are guaranteed. transporting or collecting the taxes. or fighting the tax collectors for the poor and oppressed. while avoiding death in the process. or maybe you are dog the bounty hunter bringing criminals to justice on the end of a noose. hang em high.

warfare. stuck behind enemy lines in a war you don't belong in on either side. getting pressed into service. or fleeing or helping refugees to flee.

 

[Oryan77]

I just finished running Beast of Burden from Dungeon mag #100. It involved a very good encounter on the back of a 100 foot tall reptilian creature. The bad guys had a fort built on it's back and you had to infiltrate the fort.

I ran the old 2e adventure Sea of Blood which I thought was a very good underwater city adventure involving an underwater gladiator arena scenario and an encounter where you have to swim inside the belly of a giant fish. I thought it was a good adventure.

I've also done the undead pirate ship scenario which was fun (Maiden Voyage).

 

[kenobi65]

my player love "defend the castle" type of adventure.
its like you have to defend some location: village, house, fortress, bridge..

I've done the "Seven Samurai / Magnificent Seven" concept a few times, in various systems. It's always proven to be a lot of fun for the players. They get some time to brainstorm and come up with diabolical ways to defend the town, and then get to have a big knock-down battle across different fronts.

 

[Ingolf]

I framed one of my player's characters for murder once.

In the middle of a conversation with a minor noble from the character's home area, said noble suddenly began coughing and died clutching at his throat. Everyone in the room saw the PC hand the noble a glass of wine shortly before this happened, and everyone knew there was bad blood between the two of them.

Surrendering to the authorities would have lead to a quick trial with predictable results, so the PCs fled the scene after a brief scuffle with the nobleman's guard. The one accused of murder was able to find a patron powerful enough to keep his neck out of the noose for the moment, and they began an investigation. After some intimidation and diplomacy and a little skulduggery they were able to determine that his Lordship had been poisoned with a two-part toxin; one part in the food and one in the wine. This explained why none of the other people in the room (who also drank the wine) were killed.

More clues were unearthed, eventually pointing to the captain of the dead noble's guard. He was well known to be an unacknowledged bastard son, but as the dead nobleman had no heir he expected to be acknowledged and confirmed as his successor. Alas for his ambitions, it turned out the dead man was about to announce his betrothal to a young (and presumably fertile) member of a powerful noble family. The bastard saw his inheritance slipping away and decided to take drastic measures.

Once the PCs figured this out (a process that involved Speak with Dead and a midnight Invisible Stalker ambush in the rain-slick streets) they were able to find corroborating evidence (documents acknowledging the murderer as the dead man's son and naming him as his heir, essentially removing the taint of bastardy) all that was left was to present this information to the magistrate. Role-playing the trial was a lot of fun but also a bit of a pain in my neck as I had to take on a lot of roles in rapid-fire, in retrospect I wish I could have recruited a few outsiders, but anyway -

When all was said and done, the murderer demanded trial by combat, and the PC originally accused of murder managed to defeat him by the skin of his teeth. It made for a great and dramatic conclusion. My players all loved it.

 

[SomebodyInteresting]

I had my characters run a war scene once...
in a battle between Celestial and Demonic forces.

They were really low level (about 5 or 6), so a lot of the adventure was "OH GOD MARILITH DON'T GET SPOTTED!"
"Ooh, lone Dretch! Kill it!"
"Help the Hound Archons break the Demonic siege machine!"
"Run away!!!!"

And then the rest of that campaign was all about evading the demons and bringing back an old, retired hero who was rumored to have the power to close the portal. Turned out the retired hero was a demigod who has been hanging out on the planet for hundreds of years and they had to convince him to come help them.

Healthy mix of demon-slaying, survival, and diplomatic adventuring.