1000 Unique Adventure Hooks

[Drawmack]

We have all played the tride and true adventures 100's of times. Those hooks are not what I'm looking for here. I want hooks that will keep the players talking for years. Those hooks that you see once in a lifetime that make you remember the adventure forever.

I'll start.

1) I miss my wife, go find your mother. (Spoken by a crystal orb that is the possession of an orphan)

2) We must find Guldar. (Spoken by a sword that has never spoken before)

3) You wake up in a different inn then you went to sleep in and all your bodies feel different to you. (Everyone please pass your character sheet to the right.)

Alright, lets go.

 

[Henry]

4) The porcupine wanders up to you, sniffs your foot, and says, "will you help me?"

5) You find a young beautiful maiden beating the daylights out of an orc with a club. The orc is yelling for help.

6) A mysterious wizard is trying to sell a bejewelled staff in the town square, for 1 copper piece.

 

[MerakSpielman]

7 - (along the lines of the interesting reversals) a group of kobolds come into the local adventurer's tavern, seeking help fending off viscious human villagers who keep raiding their warrens in the nearby hills. They detect as good.

8 - The adventurers wake up stripped of all their possessions (even clothing) and lying in a ditch on the side of the road. Perhaps they are also in another kingdom and don't speak the local language. Works great for a good-aligned party that won't steal new clothes.

9 - The heroes, having recently become rather famous, are suddenly unknown strangers. Everybody swears that they have never heard of them before and has no memory of even the problems that the adventurers solved. All the equipment that the characters gained from these adventures either does or does not still exist (depending on the slant you want to take). The characters also soon realize that there is a huge tower/castle on the hill overlooking the city/village that wasn't there before.

 

[zyzzyr]

10 - You're sitting down having a drink at the inn....

When, all of a sudden, the stew in your plate begins to shake and move. It jumps up, grabs a mug of thunderstones, and does the lambada across the table. The waitress comes out, only now she is covered in fur with pink and purple polka dots. The roof of the inn melts away, only to reveal the ocean and fish above you. The other patrons become fluorescent bicycles and perform a trick bike show. A giraffe swims down to you and opens its stomach, only to reveal the tarrasque, who cries when he sees you. The temple attached to your chest, which for some reason you hadn't noticed before, whispers to you: "I don't think you should have eaten that."

 

[CrazyMage]

10 - You're sitting down having a drink at the inn....

When, all of a sudden, the stew in your plate begins to shake and move. It jumps up, grabs a mug of thunderstones, and does the lambada across the table. The waitress comes out, only now she is covered in fur with pink and purple polka dots. The roof of the inn melts away, only to reveal the ocean and fish above you. The other patrons become fluorescent bicycles and perform a trick bike show. A giraffe swims down to you and opens its stomach, only to reveal the tarrasque, who cries when he sees you. The temple attached to your chest, which for some reason you hadn't noticed before, whispers to you: "I don't think you should have eaten that."

Wow, it's like your reading my campaign notes!

 

[MerakSpielman]

Wow, it's like your reading my campaign notes!

Or like those scenes in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy where they turn on the Infinite Improbability Drive.

 

[Rel]

For a one-shot adventure I ran at our annual New Year's Eve beach trip, I did the following:

The party is sitting at an inn, celebrating their latest adventure success. The door opens and they turn to see who it is...and everything goes black.

Next thing they know, it is cold and something wet is on thier skin.

What has happened is this: The person entering the inn was a medusa and they were turned to stone. 12 years have passed and it is now winter (which is why it turned cold all of a sudden). They have been transformed back to flesh by the mayor of the town they once aided (the town where the inn was located). He has spent the last several years trying to amass enough money to have them permenantly transformed back to flesh, but he has failed.

All he could manage was to acquire enough money to buy a salve that turns them to flesh for one week (which is why their skin is wet). But if they can drink an elixir made from the blood of the "Stone Lord" (the medusa), the change to flesh will be permenant. So, they must find the medusa, kill him and drink his blood.

The problem is that in the dozen years that have passed, the "Stone Lord" has managed to overthrow the entire region and set himself up as dictator. He lives a couple of days away in a fortress.

To further complicate matters, the "statues" of the party were left at the inn as a display of what happens to those who would oppose the will of the Stone Lord. When they go missing, word will get back to the Stone Lord fairly quickly and he will be prepared for them.


This turned out to be great fun as an adventure because the party was on a tight timetable and had to keep moving forward (which is what I want when I'm running a one shot). They were immediately faced with the dilemma of heading for the fortress with all due haste or trying to kill the garrison of bugbears that the Stone Lord had stationed at the town to keep them from sending word about their "escape".

 

[Orias]

A full-grown, bearded, grey-haired dwarf wearing nothing but a diaper & a bonnet, while holding a rattle, approaches the party & says "Whhhhhhhaaaaaaaaa! I want my mommy!", a procedes to soil himself. Throughout the adventure the dwarf repeatedly asks to be burped & changed.

 

[jasper]

13. A bandit challenges the fighter to death. He throws the fight. When the deathblow is struck the bandit hands the fighter his sword and thanks him.

Note sword has a spell of ownership on it. Who ever touch next is the true owner. The sword will stick to the character hand or body when draw and will not let go back in a sheath. A remove curse wills temporary nullify this. If they get rid of the sword, it will follow the player.

Sword Ego??
Powers
Locate owner Will DC 20 cast on passersby. If fail save and person is going in direction of owner. The passerby will pick up the sword and carry it toward the owner. When passerby is no longer going toward owner, he will drop it.
Nat 20 when drawn. For the first swing.
Curse When drawn it must kill something humanoid, or will refused to be return to sheath. Also the number of Nat 20 decreases with each new owner.
So first guy got 100 draws of nat 20, the second got 99 etc.
Also after the final draw, on the next drawing of the sword the death curse starts. The sword will remain in hand but the user now has a –20 to hit.

Yes I stole this straight out of “The Misenchanted sword”

 

[Orias]

The party is invited by the tarrasque to a dinner party in his new mansion. When the party arrives, they are greated by a tarrasque wearing a tux. He welcomes the party in, & feeds the m a great meal. After dinner he explains to the party that he did not have them over just for dinner. He had heard about their adventuring powress, & asks them to remove all the rats from his mansion. These rats happen to be three foot tall tarrasques wearing Mickey Mouse hats.