r/DndAdventureWriter May 20 '21

Guide I've made an Adventure Writing Prompts tool with a large collection of prompts I've collected over the past year - settings, high concept premises, goals for players to pursue, villains, encounters of every type, etc.

308 Upvotes

You can see the tool here: https://rpgadventures.io/prompts

Click on text or images to randomize individual prompts, click on the "Randomize All" button to update all the cards.

I hope you will find this app useful!

Edit:


It would be really amazing if you could help me to expand these lists - if you have any ideas for prompts similar to the ones that you see in the app, please leave them in the comments and I will add them to the app. The more prompts we have, the better this app will be.

And let me know if there are some other prompt categories useful for creating adventures that the app is currently missing. Or if you have any other thoughts/feedback/ideas on how I could make this app more useful for you.


For a detailed explanation on how to use this app to create adventures, come read this post. It walks you through the whole adventure writing process with tips, advice, and examples of a completed adventure.

To summarize:

  • Use the Adventure Brainstorming Template to guide you through the adventure creation process. Go through it one section at a time, and establish the key elements of the adventure - interesting premise, the goal the players will pursue, setting and locations they’ll visit, characters they’ll meet, key plot points, and challenges they’ll encounter.
  • Use the prompts app to help you generate ideas. For each section create a list of 3-5 ideas you find interesting, then pick your favorite one, or try to mix and match multiple ideas together into something new. Click on a prompt to generate a new one if the one you got doesn't fit, or if you want a creative challenge - click "Randomize Prompts" once, and commit to creating a story based on the prompts it has generated (that can lead to very interesting and unexpected results).
  • Finally, use the One-Page Adventure Template to combine all the elements you have established into a short outline of an adventure, put it all together into a list of scenes that flow into each other, add up to an interesting story that makes sense. It will be a short summary of everything you have brainstormed, and will give you all the information you need to run the adventure for your players.

Here's an example of a filled-in brainstorming template, and here's an adventure that was made out of it.

You can also read my in-depth guide on coming up with adventure ideas here, see my endless adventure idea generator here, and my adventure writing course where I share everything I know about creating adventures is available here.


r/DndAdventureWriter 1h ago

Earning Money with D&D Contents

Thumbnail
Upvotes

r/DndAdventureWriter 8h ago

I have an idea but I'd like to talk with a few DM's

Thumbnail
1 Upvotes

r/DndAdventureWriter 18h ago

Brainstorm Lore Accurate Races for my Homebrew Nation

0 Upvotes

So I recently got into the lore side of Dnd and I am also big into Spanish/Portuguese history. I am currently building a homebrew nation heavily inspired by 1400's-1600's era Portugal (the southern half) and the Holy Roman Empire (the northern half). The nation is a very large sea-faring territory in between a grand stretching coastline a single humongous mineral/gem rich mountain that stretches above the clouds. The nation is predominately populated by Humans, Minotaurs and Goblinoids (of all kinds). The ruling class are exclusively Blue Dragonkind (Blue Dragons, Blue Dragonborn, Blue Dragonspawn and Blue Kobolds etc).

But I was also looking to expand on the different races that inhabit this nation. What are some lore-accurate or lore-friendly races that could inhabit a nation like this.


r/DndAdventureWriter 23h ago

In Progress: Narrative Help me create an interactive DnD style adventure on TikTok!

Post image
0 Upvotes

r/DndAdventureWriter 1d ago

Brainstorm DnD Homebrew inspiration

Thumbnail
1 Upvotes

r/DndAdventureWriter 2d ago

Brainstorm Which Forgotten Realms city would be the worst place to live as an ordinary person?

Thumbnail
2 Upvotes

r/DndAdventureWriter 2d ago

Chaotic Hitmen/Bounty Hunter Ideas

Thumbnail
1 Upvotes

r/DndAdventureWriter 2d ago

How do DM’s build adventures out of their ideas?

Thumbnail
1 Upvotes

r/DndAdventureWriter 3d ago

Warcraft Delves: Eversong Woods

Thumbnail
homebrewery.naturalcrit.com
1 Upvotes

r/DndAdventureWriter 3d ago

In Progress: Obstacles Ideas for a Wizard Tower Dungeon Crawl

Thumbnail
1 Upvotes

r/DndAdventureWriter 4d ago

By the end of next week, I need to have written a campaign for 2 players that goes from levels 10-15. I haven’t even started yet. Ideas?

Thumbnail
2 Upvotes

r/DndAdventureWriter 4d ago

Brainstorm Help on world building a dnd campaign

1 Upvotes

I want to make a dnd campaign. Specifically one set in hell. However i don’t want to go for a bogstandard fire and brimstone type hell. I want it to be alive with multiple different areas.

My campaign goes as follows: the players die and get sent to hell. They learn that it is possible to leave hell, but they have to complete a long challenge: defeat the 7 overlords in combat. The 7 overlords are based off of or are the seven deadly sins, and they have dominion of a part of Hell, inspired by their sin. Also, when the overlord is defeated he doesn’t die, only admits defeat and calls the party victors.
Once all the overlords are defeated, they are summoned by the kings of hell to the major city at the center, represented by the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse. Once defeated they can be reincarnated and return to earth.

Also, when they die, they level up to 2, and I want to give each player a hell themed new ability as part of the level up.

It doesn’t really matter, but they level up twice for each overlord. They enter hell at level 2.

For my world, I want to take inspiration from already existing depictions of hell or other worlds of torment (eg Greek underworld).

I want my world to feel alive, and my inspiration in general for this is both the helluva boss and hazbin hotel series.

If you also have any points on plot I’d also appreciate it.

Thank you in advance.


r/DndAdventureWriter 6d ago

D&D Mall One-Shot *NEED IDEAS*

Thumbnail
1 Upvotes

r/DndAdventureWriter 6d ago

First time DM

Thumbnail
2 Upvotes

r/DndAdventureWriter 7d ago

Brainstorm Fantasy wanted posters

Thumbnail
1 Upvotes

r/DndAdventureWriter 7d ago

D&D style campaign

Thumbnail
1 Upvotes

r/DndAdventureWriter 8d ago

Release! We created a tool to better write your DnD stories, manage them, and play with your groups

Thumbnail
gallery
1 Upvotes

Hey everyone!

A friend and I have been working on Dungeon’s Desk for about two years now. It’s a completely free platform built by two fans who wanted a single place to create, play, and manage tabletop RPG campaigns.

One thing we really wanted to get right was keeping the experience separate for everyone at the table. Players and DMs each have their own dedicated interface, so every tool is designed specifically for their role.

With Dungeon’s Desk, you can build worlds, manage monsters, items, shops, books, newspapers, quests, and much more. Players can create their characters and customize their sheets, buy items, track their gold and every resource they have, inventory, and transactions, and play together in real time.

For DMs, the real focus is making sessions easier to run. You can check on your players, manage the entire combat from a single screen in real time: deal damage, apply healing, trigger long rests, update character stats, and keep everything synchronized instantly for every player.

You can create worlds, places, link NPC and items to them and also unlock new items in shops while the session is happening, reveal content only when your players discover it, and control the flow of the campaign without needing to jump between multiple tools or spreadsheets.

There are plenty more features, and even more that we will add in the future, but we’d rather let you explore them than overwhelm you with a huge list. (We’ll attach a few screenshots below, if possibile, to give you an idea of how it works!) If you have any questions, we’d love to answer them here or via the feedback/support bottom we added.

We’re still in the early stages, especially on the esthetic part, and we’re looking for fellow players and DMs who’d like to try it out and give us honest feedback. Every suggestion helps us improve, and we’d genuinely love to build something the community enjoys using.

If it sounds interesting, we’d really appreciate you checking it out:

https://www.dungeonsdesk.com

P.S you can change your language by clicking the top right bottom.

P.S 2: the code of the website is entirely manmade, but the current background image, which is a placeholder for now, and the images on the screenshot (taken from my main campaign which serves to let you understand how the website can be used) are made with AI, but we’ll change it as soon as we can.

Thanks so much for your time, and happy adventuring! ⚔️🐉


r/DndAdventureWriter 9d ago

Release! The world of Mortumus, the MMO my brother and I are building. Every zone here exists because someone in-world is hiding something.

Thumbnail
0 Upvotes

r/DndAdventureWriter 9d ago

Playtest You can't proofread your way to knowing how an adventure plays. I built a way to solo-playtest the one you're writing, tonight.

0 Upvotes

Disclosure first: I built the thing I'm about to describe, so weigh everything accordingly. I make The Endlessness, a solo D&D 5e game with an AI DM that follows the actual rules. Dice rolled in the open, spell slots enforced, the world remembers what you did last session. It just gained a feature that I suspect matters more to this sub than to anyone else, so I came here to share it.

You can upload your own adventure, the draft PDF, the DOCX, the zip of loose notes, and it reads what you wrote and builds a private, playable world out of it. Your locations, your NPCs, your factions, your quests. Then you roll a character and walk through your own adventure as a player.

The reason I think this belongs here: an adventure reads one way and plays another, and no amount of rereading closes that gap. Does the opening hook actually hook? Is there enough for players to find in act two, or does it sag? Is the clue you think is obvious actually findable? Those answers only exist at a table, and a table is the one thing a work in progress almost never gets. Playing your own draft is humbling in a very specific, very useful way.

Honest limits so nobody is surprised. It runs everything as 5e, whatever you wrote for. It's an adaptation, not a recital: it keeps your places, people, and plot, and improvises connective tissue the way a human DM runs a module they've read but don't have memorized. And it builds a sharper world from drafts that say what things are, even in one line. Notes that open with "Karvos is a port city held by the Ashen League" give it far more to work with than notes that assume the reader already knows, and half-finished drafts always assume the reader already knows.

The business part, said plainly: uploads are on the paid plans, one or three imports a month at $9.99/$24.99, because reading a whole document is the most expensive thing the game does. The free tier is the full game on the built-in worlds, 20 turns a day, no card, and it's the right way to decide whether the DM is good enough to be trusted with your draft before you pay anything. And this goes without saying: your draft is private to you and never shared with any other player or even with us. It lives on your account only.

https://theendlessness.com

If you run a work in progress through it, I genuinely want to hear what it got wrong about your adventure. That's the feedback that shapes where this goes!


r/DndAdventureWriter 11d ago

Hel's Severance, a powerful scaling item inspired by Norse mythology | Mythological Items

Thumbnail gallery
8 Upvotes

r/DndAdventureWriter 11d ago

In Progress: Narrative Looking for some feedback on a homebrew D&D campaign

2 Upvotes

As the title suggests, I'm looking for someone to look over my notes and give me some feedback on a D&D campaign I'm currently planning. Specifically, I need a fresh set of eyes to see if there are any glaring plot holes, logical leaps, or narrative contradictions that I've completely missed. This is just for my own personal table use, not for publishing.

About the game: The setting is a small island nation nestled deep within Toril's Trackless Sea. It features its own unique history, factions, pantheon, and even a few custom ancestries and sub-classes for the players to choose from. The core plot revolves around the party trying to stop a deranged evil mage who has targeted them directly. They'll have to figure out why they're doing this and track them down to stop their machinations. (Keeping details vague here just in case my future players find this thread.)

Unfortunately, I can't offer much in return except, hopefully, a bit of entertainment as you dive into the intricacies of a brand-new homebrew setting. But as the old adage goes: it doesn't hurt to ask.

Hit me up if you're interested in taking a look and I'll send you the link to my G-Docs.

And as always, thank you so much for your time.


r/DndAdventureWriter 13d ago

Release! Harvester (CR 10) - A Rural Undead Horror That Reaps More Than Crops

Thumbnail gallery
7 Upvotes

r/DndAdventureWriter 13d ago

Throne of Glass inspired DnD campagne, first book

Thumbnail
2 Upvotes

r/DndAdventureWriter 14d ago

Release! A collection of campaign materials!

2 Upvotes

I have been compiling and building on a MASSIVE expanse for my players and myself to enjoy. It has been years in the making, but we're now starting our fourth homebrew campaign, and I wanted to share all of that with anyone who may be looking for inspiration or a fresh take. All of this is completely free, so don't expect anything behind a paywall or nothing like that. I have four large documents and more maps than I can count (literally over 100), that can be used in full or in part for any campaigns a DM may want to run. Everything is compiled on my website (I am an author, but this isn't an attempt to sell my books, I just love the game so a part of my website is DnD related). Each of the documents comes with a detailed storyline, and all of the locations have the important bits of information labeled underneath. You can find everything here:

https://authorlewismcdonald.com/dungeons-and-dragons-stuff/

I would love to know what you guys think about the material, and if anyone uses it, please let me know your experiences! It would be cool to hear how a story went from someone else's perspective!

*edit*

I fixed the problem with the maps!, They now show up on the documents themselves so you no longer have to make a profile to see them. Sorry about that!