Quick! I need an adventure!

[Gilladian]

I've run dry of ideas. My PCs are lowish level (5th in 5e) and are visiting a fairly civilized area, doing research. While they're there, I just want to find a straightforward adventure I can send them on for 1-3 weeks (we play short, 3 hour sessions) to keep them busy while I create their next biggish adventure that they are currently researching.

So, what prewritten adventure could start in a place of research, lead them to somewhere not too exotic or far-removed, could happen in a fairly civilized area, and would keep them tied up for 6-9 hours of gameplay? I'm even good with something like "you find a magical painting/book/whatever and fall through a gate..." or "the stranger collapses on the monastery steps and begs you to..." as a hook.

I'm completely up for converting from an older ruleset or another similar game system, etc.. but I do want a fairly generic dnd adventure. No SF or oriental adventures or anything TOO weird... but I'd love some suggestions because I'm not seeing the cart for the forest of other things going on in my life right now.

 

[gamerprinter]

If you don't mind the slight conversion, there's The Curse of the Golden Spear trilogy for levels 5, 6, 7 - probably longer than 6-9 hours, though. Its typical classes visiting the far east (analog feudal Japan) to escort a merchant gift to a local lord. It's for the Kaidan setting of Japanese horror (PFRPG). Most of the one-shots are designed for local PCs (samurai and such), but the trilogy is for foreign visitors, which is why I thought it might work.

 

[Jacob Marley]

Check out Fiend's Embrace from Dungeon #121. It is a low-level 3.5 adventure that should be easily convertible to 5e. Essentially, the PCs are hired by a sage to track down an Abyssal magic item. They head out to the "lost" keep, search it, and contend with a rival party who is also seeking the item. I've used this adventure before and my players enjoyed it.

 

[Rune]

I pulled together this collection just for you. Take your pick. They're all excellent.

 

[Gilladian]

Some great ideas here. Thanks! I think I'm going to try to whip the iron DM adventure about the blind cartographer and the trip to the moon into fitting my campaign.

 

[Rune]

Some great ideas here. Thanks! I think I'm going to try to whip the iron DM adventure about the blind cartographer and the trip to the moon into fitting my campaign.

Heh. Yeah. Nemm won the tournament with that one. (Not all of the entries presented in the anthology even won their matches.)

I'd be interested to hear how it plays out.

 

[Gilladian]

I'll post it to my wiki and make the page public so everyone can read it. Hmmm... I wonder if I should have Nemmerle's permission, because I'd like to start by pasting in his outline, and working from there. I'll have to PM him before I post anything...

 

[Rune]

Good luck getting him to respond! He's been pretty much absent from these boards for years. I'm sure crediting him and linking to the original would probably be okay. At one time, in fact, he was pretty keen to spread the IRON DM brand across the interwebs.

But, by all means, go ahead and PM him. He's been gone too long.

 

[Gilladian]

He replied to me today, and gave me his permission (claimed I didn't need it!). So I've started work on it here: http://vishteercampaign.pbworks.com/w/page/97821466/"The King's Nightmares"?securitymsg=true

So, instead of having a nice simple adventure to run as filler, I've given myself a NEW adventure to develop before Saturday!

 

[Rune]

Cool!