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The Jungle Island of Loot, Part 1

January 14, 2015 by The Chatty DM

If you’ve been reading my recent posts, you know we managed to create new D&D characters and the basis of a campaign settings in less than two hours. When we were done everyone was ready to go, excited to see how the game would go.

I dove right into it and grabbed the setting’s index cards into a stack. As I was thinking about a likely starting point for the game, I unconsciously started to shuffle the cards.

This gave me an idea…

Why don’t I randomly generate an adventure by drawing cards?

So I did and drew the following:

  • Volcanic Island
  • Lovecraftian Ruins
  • Ereborn’s most notorious fence

Like playing Tarot, the cards helped kick start my creativity by helping me make connections.

Since Redbeard, the dwarven pirate-turned-monk had a trusted relationship with the fence, I set the scene for an exploration-based quest. The fence hired them to mount an expedition to the huge volcanic island and recover riches from the ancient ruins found on them. As simple quest went, it was perfect.

She supplied a small ship, enough food and water for two weeks and, as Ereborn law required, an accountant hireling to document all salvage obtained and calculate the obligatory 40% taxes.

The PCs knew each other from previous adventures (I stopped doing tavern scenes years ago) and were ready to go, if a bit wary of dealing with a NPC bean counter.

 

And there it was, I had enough to start an adventure.

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Filed Under: Musings of the Chatty DM Tagged With: D&D, DM, dungeon mastering, Dungeons and Dragons, Game Mastering, GM, Role Playing Games, roleplaying games

About the Author

  • The Chatty DM

    The Chatty DM is the "nom de plume" of gamer geek Philippe-Antoine Menard. He has been a GM for over 40 years. An award-winning RPG blogger, game designer, and scriptwriter at Ubisoft. He squats a corner of Critical Hits he affectionately calls "Musings of the Chatty DM." (Email Phil or follow him on Twitter.)

    Email: chattydm@critical-hits.comWeb: https://critical-hits.com//category/chattydm/

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