DMs, Share your Favorite "Out of the Ordinary" Adventures

[Shiv]

Every so often, I like to shake things up and throw my players into an "out of the ordinary" adventure.

Here are some of my favorite "out of the ordinary" adventures from my past campaigns. All of these are adventures that I dreamt up.

Shared Dream - In my most recent campaign, there was a PC who had prophetic dreams. Twice during the campaign, I had the PCs engage with her in a shared dream. These adventures took place outside of the real world, in the "dreamscape." Through these adventures, I provided the players, as a group, with clues about what was coming up in the "real world" story. In one of the shared dreams, the PCs traveled to the location of the final, big battle, learning about the trials they would face when they finally got to the end of the story, but then having the final "real" version of the story vary slightly (dream metaphors and all that), keeping them on their toes.

Adventure in a PC's Mind - I once had a psionic PC in my game who had a "mind vault" as part of his backstory. This mind vault was, essentially, a psionic wondrous item that was installed in him via psychic surgery as part of his backstory. The vault was supposed to be triggered when he got close to a particular bad guy, unleashing a psionic assassin that had been "psionically jarred" within the PC's mind. They never got close to this particular bad guy and the psionic PC developed debilitating headaches. When the headaches became too much for him, the group found a way to enter his mind and travel through a landscape made up of his memories, abilities, and beliefs in search of the mind vault. Eventually, they got to the vault, faced the psionic assassin themselves, killed him (in the psionic PCs mind), and relieved the headaches of the psionic PC.

The Fairy Tale Island - In a sea-going campaign, the PCs were part of the crew of a ship traveling across a large ocean. At one point, the ship was (magically) halted near an island. They were informed by a pixie from the island that they were invited to dine with the Queen of the Island and that, once they had dined with her, their ship would be released. The PCs went to the island and were immediately transformed into "child versions" of themselves. I wrote up simplified versions of each PC character sheet, with "kid stuff" substituted for their normal gear and abilities. For example, the pistoleer PC had popguns, the cleric PC had mudpies that she could feed to her friends to heal them, and fighter-types had wooden swords. They had to travel to the queen's castle, coming upon encounters that were twisted versions of various fairy tales and nursery rhymes, including Little Red Riding Hood, The Frog Prinice, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, and Three Little Pigs. When they got to the queen's castle, they had to solve an extended riddle based on Sing a Song of Sixpence. Once they managed to get the king to leave his "counting house" and return to his queen, they were allowed to leave the island on their ship.

So...

Please share with us your favorite "out of the ordinary" adventures. These can be adventures of your own devising or published modules that you had fun with.

Throw some ideas out there and inspire our fellow DMs.

 

[Evilhalfling]

Whats in his pockets? - One of the PCs had a magic robe, left to him by a (vanished, wizard) uncle. It gained powers as he gained levels, first granting a reistance bonus, then becoming a robe of useful items, then getting a pocket that functioned like a bag of holding.

During one of the changes the whole party got sucked into literally a pocket diminsion, where they had encounters with all the stuff one normally finds in a robe of usefull items, much of it inexplicitly animated, huge size or hostile.

The consquences were fun as well. The player was inconistant, so at times the PC would vanish into his own pockets, leaving a small inside-out cloth pouch for the others to carry around. A female PC barbarian became deathly afraid of the robe after that adventure and would seek cover whenever he reached into a pocket. When she left the game it seemed only fitting for her to get trapped forever in a pocket. The player agreed that it was a truly terrible, and fitting end.

Ship of Dreams I had another that was a etheral plane/dream quest to retrieve a artifact-sword stolen from the PCs by githyanki pirates in a flying ship built by mondrons (who were trying to retrieve the ship) This was a despratation move after half the group failed to show in the middle of a more important quest. The sword turned out to to still be in the same room they left it in, only with an invisiblity spell on it. All engineered by an intelligent artifact in they were also keeping. Its amazing how far they trusted something that identified itself as the "Orb of Lies" IMC Artifact = plot hook.

 

[roguerouge]

I've done a comic side quest based on "Noises Off!" I'm doing an "Tristan and Isolde" backstage murder mystery. My finale of Dungeon's Seige of the Spider Eaters featured a beat the clock surgery on a spider implanted with a spider eater's eggs while the PC's luck goddess battled Lamashtu, the goddess of monstrous births, in the background.

A DM once had us magically transplanted into a wizard academy's cleaning golems and we had to take over the academy in these relatively powerless forms. Another DM had us play the mooks that were going to die in a one shot to let us know what was happening "back home," which was a great use of a cut scene.