BookTenTiger
He / Him
There's a book my son loved called 'The Skull' by Jon Klassen.
It's a folk tale in which a girl runs away from home to a castle where she befriends a talking skull. The only problem is that every night a headless skeleton comes to the castle, trying to capture the skull.
I thought this would be a fun premise for a one-shot adventure! I've been generating some ideas of how to structure this as a D&D game.
I think it needs to start with an inciting event outside the castle. Maybe the characters have been pursued by enemies, or maybe they have followed a dangerous beast there. Something to draw them to the castle.
The Skull can be a friendly and intriguing NPC. In the book you learn he used to be a human who lived in the castle, but you don't know any more than that.
Maybe the skull used to be a baron who was well known for both his intellectual pursuits and his greed? He was cursed at some point and in his death his spirit separated. His intellect came to live in his skull and his greed inhabited his body.
There could be some kind of treasure hidden in the castle that the headless skeleton wants, but cannot access without the skull. The skull agrees to give the treasure to the characters if they help defeat the headless skeleton.
Now of course any fight in which the players have time to prepare an ambush is going to be a push over, so there needs to be some extra twists to this adventure.
What do you think could happen during or after the ambush? How else can I flesh out the bones of this adventure idea?
(Let's say it's a 3rd-level adventure.)
It's a folk tale in which a girl runs away from home to a castle where she befriends a talking skull. The only problem is that every night a headless skeleton comes to the castle, trying to capture the skull.
I thought this would be a fun premise for a one-shot adventure! I've been generating some ideas of how to structure this as a D&D game.
I think it needs to start with an inciting event outside the castle. Maybe the characters have been pursued by enemies, or maybe they have followed a dangerous beast there. Something to draw them to the castle.
The Skull can be a friendly and intriguing NPC. In the book you learn he used to be a human who lived in the castle, but you don't know any more than that.
Maybe the skull used to be a baron who was well known for both his intellectual pursuits and his greed? He was cursed at some point and in his death his spirit separated. His intellect came to live in his skull and his greed inhabited his body.
There could be some kind of treasure hidden in the castle that the headless skeleton wants, but cannot access without the skull. The skull agrees to give the treasure to the characters if they help defeat the headless skeleton.
Now of course any fight in which the players have time to prepare an ambush is going to be a push over, so there needs to be some extra twists to this adventure.
What do you think could happen during or after the ambush? How else can I flesh out the bones of this adventure idea?
(Let's say it's a 3rd-level adventure.)
