Dungeons and Dragons Quest Ideas

[Sinclair Solutions]

OK, I must admit I'm not sure if this thread belongs in this section of the forums. I was considering the role-playing section, but it doesn't seem to fit there.

Anyways, like the title suggests, I need the help of the Escapists for ideas for Dungeons and Dragons quest ideas.

Let's have some background here: my current group is not very satisfied with our current DM. Admittedly, it's his first time as DM, but his campaign does not fit the feel of the group. We're not very avid players who are more looking for fun, wacky experiences with humorous and memorable characters, but, in the tradition of what he has done with HIS previous DMs, he prefers the more serious, melodramatic, "save the world" fare. That may be fine for other groups, but with us, it doesn't seem to work. We are just bored to tears. After some serious discussions, he has offered me the chance to be the DM for a while.

Here's where I need your help. I need ideas for short, fun, and interesting quests that can be started and finished in the span of one gaming session. If you need help for what I mean, check out the PAX celebrity games with the Penny Arcade guys, Scott Kurtz, and Wil Wheaton. They're short, and allow for a great amount of humor and player creativity. I want people to have fun, but not have to take the entire year to just finish one quest. Also, I want to avoid cliches and the typical fantasy fare. The world can't always be in peril, and the bad guys can't always be comic villains. I firmly believe D&D can be used to create wonderful, varied, and original experiences; and wasting this potential is a disappointment.

So, what are the rules of this thread? Well, nothing really. If you have stories of fun, quick quests, I'd love to hear them. I'll also accept just phrases or one word answers. I mean, to be honest, these are some of the ideas that I have chalked up right now, so I guess these would be a good guide line of what we are looking for.

- A Murder Mystery at a Magic Show (Dead Stage Magican, one of the party members accused of the crime due to bad relationship with the deceased, have to prove member's innocence while finding and capturing the true culprit.)
- A Quest to an Observatory (You look through the scope to see a meteor fall to Earth a few miles away, and finding the meteor is the next mission).
- A Haunted House (Ghosts, Traps, Etc.)
- A Game of Thrones Style Fight For the Throne (the Party is caught in the Middle, they have to decide as a group which leader they want to follow).
- A quest to stop a group of bandits that leads to a interesting proposition from the leader (Sort of like the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly; they rob a town, you claim you killed the leader, and then share the reward money, and then move on to the next town).
- A Heist (Admittedly, only works with Evil or Neutral Characters)
- A Pirate Adventure

That is all I have so far. Feel free to use any of the quests listed in this forum, but I am really looking forward to the ideas you guys present.

 

[Altorin]

Various books contain lists of quest hooks, and they can go a long way to creating interesting quests and adventures, but from my own pocket;

- A strange, hitherto unknown city of dwarves suddenly invades a small human settlement in the foothills of the mountains with the express purpose of securing safe a safe water supply because all of the well water in their city has become like tar.

- A wizard hires the party to kill another wizard, that happens to be a temporal shifted duplicated of the wizard himself. Perhaps it's a time travel experiment gone awry, or perhaps the patron wizard is from the future and attempting to create a grandfather paradox.

- An unconscious Psion is found in the woods outside a town, and monsters attack it, either in an attempt to get the Psion back for one reason or another, or the monsters themselves are created by the comatose Psion. Perhaps through his Psicrystal the party can enter his sleeping mind and sort this mess out (once the town is immediately safe)

- A group of Fire mephits storm a cities "Everburning Pyre" and attempt to summon a fire elemental

 

[Altorin]

- The party is tasked with tracking down an assassin who somehow can change his face. how I'd play it out: Initially it's thought to be a doppelganger or changeling, but in fact, the "assassin" is merely the wielder of a powerful intelligent dagger that jumps from host to host like the ring of power trying to find its way into the hands of a worthy wielder.

- One of the players gets a message that his wealthy father is dead, and he has to go collect an inheritence, but in actuality, ITS A TRAP! And perhaps the father is not dead, and also not at all who the player assumed he was growing up.

- A Paladin challenges a player to a duel over a former evil deed that is not properly atoned for.

- suddenly the cleric's spells stop working and it becomes a quest to find out why: Perhaps the god is dying, or the cleric has accidentally offended him... Probably not a great quest unless the Cleric is in on it from the beginning, certainly don't drop it on him out of nowhere.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

You find an abandoned newborn Ogre baby and have to look after it until you can reunite it with it's parents (or some other mighty mythical creature of whom babysitting would be full of hilarious hijinks).

You have to arrange protection for a village in a very hostile location whose magical defences have recently failed, leaving them open to all the evil beasties. The mayor of the town has given you a limited time (e.g. 5 days) to get the defences up before they abandon their town. You could try and restore the magic defences, build a wall and towers around the settlement, train some heroes to protect the people etc.

The King is having problems producing an heir, so your mighty band of warriors have been drafted in by the court apothecary-ist person to deal with his... little... problem.
Que lots of weird fetch quests to get crazy ingredients for fertility potions (how does one aquire the tears of a cyclops or the cheese from a virgin goat that has been passed over the altarstone of an ancient holy Henge during a full moon. Weird crap and rituals like that.
Oh, you'll also have to convince the King to do these things as well, because he doesn't believe in any of that nonsense, and if his wife fails to conceive after a reasonable time, he'll cut all your groups' privates off and nail them to the gates of the city.

You are shipwrecked on a hostile, unknown island, with no supplies except maybe a random object or two per character. You have to survive the strange, unknown plants and wildlife, work out what plants and animals are safe to eat, what areas are safe to sleep in, and there are strange overgrown deserted ruins that you can explore full of hieroglyphics and picture engravings, from which you can piece together the story of the last inhabitants of this island, and most importantly, find out what destroyed them, before it finds you!

Your group are helping a local wizard perform a very difficult and powerful time manipulation spelle. A rival wizard creates a lightening storm over the area the spell is happening, ripping holes in time and space and bringing a whole bunch of soldiers and people from alternate universes into your world, you are thrown back by the blast, and by the time you've recovered the soldiers have fled.
This is basically an excuse for inserting any historical or fictional soldiers into your game for you to hunt down and return to their own universe (by killing them, because it totally works that way.)

 

[Punch You]

Wait, are we talking about D&D or Dragon Quest?

 

[Altorin]

You are shipwrecked on a hostile, unknown island, with no supplies except maybe a random object or two per character. You have to survive the strange, unknown plants and wildlife, work out what plants and animals are safe to eat, what areas are safe to sleep in, and there are strange overgrown deserted ruins that you can explore full of hieroglyphics and picture engravings, from which you can piece together the story of the last inhabitants of this island, and most importantly, find out what destroyed them, before it finds you!

Add in a hatch for both groans and AWESOME GOOD TIMES

in fact, inspiring an island adventure after Lost actually doesn't seem like a particularly bad idea. if you add in actual sci-fi elements, it could either completely break the game, or be the best freaking game ever.

 

[Sinclair Solutions]

Wait, are we talking about D&D or Dragon Quest?

Dungeons and Dragons.

And these suggestions are FANTASTIC! Thank you so much!

And I agree, a LOST campaign could either be absolutely amazing, or an exercise in frustration.

 

[DoPo]

OK, here you go: kill a god. No need to rush it. Seriously, I saw a group decide that was their objective after their first session. They wanted to eventually kill a god, any god, just for kicks. They even made plans - they'll go get some allies and stuff, so by level 20-ish, they should be able to take one on. Well, it's not short but it should motivate the platers to go through the games.

Also: the characters hear that a town has problems with the kobolds (or goblins or something weak-ish or of appropriate level) who are in a nearby mine (keep the knowledge at around this level). Turns out, the kobolds are on strike and refuse to work for the town because they demand a pay raise (or, I dunno, they may want to be fed a cow, whatever floats your boat). The players are then stuck with negotiating.

 

[Altorin]

- during an undead encounter, the players hear singing and end up tracking down a Death Knight whos eternal curse is that he must sorrowfully sing every evil act he ever committed, and only when at least one single person has heard every single act, his curse will be lifted. Perhaps during his chorus, he goes into an aggressive mode and attacks the players, but then returns to a calm sorrowful state for each verse until finally after finishing his song, he falls apart into a pile of bones

- A necromancer purchases a prison "As is", including all prisoners for a large amount of money and then uses the prisoners in his experiments. When I ran it, it played like a survival horror game and included a flesh golem and a living rogue who does the necromancer's bidding for unknown reasons.

- A recurring family of gnomes is always seeking eachother. Each campaign or adventure may have a different gnome of the same family, always looking for eachother, always one step behind.

- An ogre disrupts a druid ritual and the druids demand a blood sacrifice either from the ogre or a member of the town watch in charge of patrolling the mountains where the ogre came from.

 

[Patrick Coker]

I have been DM for about a month and a half now. One of my crazier sessions was the players walk into an open field where a rainbow appears and drops a pot in front of them. Then the leprechaun appears and accuses them of stealing the gold inside. Then they go to find the person who did steal it thinking its another clan of leprechauns. When its a 3rd party. And its fun if they decide to keep the gold instead of returning it, because one of my players was a rogue he kept it, and was taking damage once a day until he returned it. and he couldnt figure out why he was taking damage forever.