D&D General Write a Plot Hook that's a terrible pun designed to earn groans and thrown dice.

[TiwazTyrsfist]

What is says on the box. I'll start.

Eberron Specific
In a remote location suitable to your overall campaign (Xendrick, the Mournland, where ever) a Powerful Manifest Zone tied to Irian has been found.

An important Dragonmarked Heir of one of the great houses has led an expedition force to study the Zone, and discovered that at the center of the zone, 1830 feet in the air, is what seems to be a permanent stable portal to The Eternal Day.

The party has been hired to escort a supply delivery to her camp. It quickly becomes apparent that the 'supplies' are enchanted building materials and master builders and carpenters from across the five nations.

It seems she's having them build a staircase wide enough for ten men to walk abreast, up to the level of the portal.
Adventurers from across the land are converging on the area escorting all these shipments, because she's throwing money at this hand over fist.

She knows that all that glitters is gold.
And she,
is buying
a Stairway
To Heaven.

 

[Richards]

I wrote an adventure where the PCs were hired as additional security for a nobleman's daughter's sweet 16 party. She had recently had an encounter with a young druid who wanted her to be his wife (after having just seen her the once), and she had her half-orc bodyguards beat him up and toss him in the gutter, calling him a "gutter rat." She didn't want him showing up at the party and making a scene, hence the PCs' involvement.

The druid, however, had been plotting his revenge. He crafted a pipe of the sewers so he could sneak into the party disguised as one of the musicians (it was a costume party - that helped) and summon swarms of "gutter rats" to attack her guests. However, he was plagued with thoughts of the young woman - whose name was Bunnihilde (her father called her "Bunni") - during the construction of the magic pipes, so instead of summoning rats it accidentally summoned bunnies.

The day of the party, the PCs were on watch when all of a sudden there was screaming from the outside patio - hundreds of rabbits were pouring out of the forest and attacking the guests. Besides the normal bunnies, there were also a few dire rabbits, a jackalope, and even an al-mi'raj. The PCs fought off the rabbits (and rabbitlike creatures), discovered the druid who was responsible, and captured him for the nobleman.

The name of the adventure? "Bad Hare Day."

Johnathan

 

[Shiroiken]

This isn't mine, but I remember it as hilariously bad. The party is trying to locate a powerful mage (for whatever reason), and the only source of information they have is clues found in the grand library in the capital city. The library is sorted and protected by magic; the books/scrolls cannot be removed or damaged. The only person that's ever around is a stodgy old man who seems to go out of his way to disrupt the party's efforts (the party will likely believe he's a librarian). Eventually the party will threaten or even attack the old man (especially if they realize he's not a librarian), and when they do he transforms into a dragon and attack. Since the books are magically protected, you don't have to worry about collateral damage.

After the party defeats the dragon, the mage appears before them saying "so, you've defeated my book wyrm..." The rest of the adventure is based on why the party needed to find the mage.

 

[Lanefan]

In a previous campaign I ran two adventures, a couple of years apart.

The first was the last in an embedded adventure series within the campaign, where the party had to find an invisible staircase up to a mansion suspended a few hundred feet in the air, and deal with (but hopefully not kill too many of) the transformed occupants - servants had become vampires, the lady of the house had become a lich, etc. - while doing what was required to restore the house back to normal and put it back where it belonged.

The second was an attempt to retrieve the soul of a PC that, on his death, the goddess Hel had stolen to add to her collection. Normal revival effects wouldn't and couldn't work, so they had to find a way to in effect walk in to Niflheim, bargain with Hel, and then get the soul out again.

And of course these two adventures were called:

Stairway to Heaven
Highway to Hel

Right near the end of the same campaign I ran three adventures back-to-back:

The first was a simple foray into the Coldwood Forest to find out what was going on in there; during this adventure they managed to seriously piss off some Githi.

The second was a simple mission against a Dracolich, adapted from the adventure at the back of the 3e FR setting hardcover book.

The third was dealing with the Githi who attacked the party's home base in retaliation for what happened in the forest. And so we have:

Coldwood Menace
Attack of the Bones
Revenge of the Gith

 

[ronaldsf]

I don't know if you've seen this but this has been circulating. Some good ones here:

D&D Adventure Premises Inspired by Stupid Bear Puns Premise a Bear Is the Only Witness to a Crime the Party Must Convince the Local Druid to Awaken It So It Can Testify Adventure Title Bear Witness Premise the Party Must Escort the King's Valuable Pe

D&D adventure premises inspired by stupid bear puns Premise: a bear is the only witness to a crime, the party must convince the local druid to awaken it so it can testify. Adventure title: Bear Witness . Premise: the party must escort the king's valuable pet bear through hostile...

me.me

 

[Umbran]

I played through three years of steampunk Victorian campaign larp, only to find that one of the maim plots was the fact that one of the British royalty had had his brain put in a jar, and had gone rather mad. Yep, the entire game was a setup for a "Prince Albert in a can" joke.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Citizens of Waterdeep are being abducted, disappearing without a trace. It turns out that they are being pulled into the Astral Plane and enslaved by the Githyanki. They use a magical device in their abductions, called the Gith-Yanky.

 

[TiwazTyrsfist]

Citizens of Waterdeep are being abducted, disappearing without a trace. It turns out that they are being pulled into the Astral Plane and enslaved by the Githyanki. They use a magical device in their abductions, called the Gith-Yanky.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! (good job)

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

Faced with an incursion of mindflayers into their dimension, the PCs must go on a perilous quest to locate a source of the fabled neuronic substance known only as "Vitamin Psy." After procuring a quantity of the psionic nutritional supplement, the party must then somehow administer it to the army of sickly brain-sucking Illithids and restore them to their much more benign Healthythid form.

 

[Tony Vargas]

So, the party encounter a wrecked spelljammer, and the lone, dying occupant says "Tell Her it's under the Sign of the Star..." before expiring.

For a while, they keep coming back to this cryptic clue, and find out more about the person - an immortal foot-soldier in the Dawn War - who gave it too them, as they retrace the circuitous journey his vessel had made, and figure out that they're looking for the equivalent of Pandora's Box. Long story short, it turns out to be in an Fey observatory, hidden in one of a set of apparatuses that calculate trigonometric functions.