Let's make an Adventure I guess: Tome of Adventure Design

From Frog God Games

So late last year I had the impetus to draft up an adventure. Some friends were jonesing for a
one shot, and I had some of my scant free-time free in that busy 1st semester of my college
career. Though I didn’t end up needing it (scheduling conflicts), Lo and behold, I remembered
that I own the wonderful Tome of Adventure Design from Frog God Games. And so I rolled
anyway! Huzzah. Let’s see what we can come up with.

Book One - Starting Point

1-3 Type of Mission: [64] Location

1-6 Location Mission: [8] Assault

1-1A Location: [58] [38] [83] [7] Fertile Edifice of the Scarlet Assassin

1-8 Patrons and Targets: [47] Animal Trainer (unusual animals)

1-9 Patron Motivation: [26] [81] Gain status over spiritual leader

1-10 Hooks and Motivations: [34] [3] Gain forgiveness or pardon for prior actions. A person
offers to trade information about the opportunity in exchange for money

1-11 Master Table of Villainous Plans: [5] Concealment

1-12 Villainous Concealment: [10] [93] Concealing itself from another villain via a secret identity
(learning)

{Note: I decided to roll on Table 1-1A instead of the second half of Table 1-6, since that is more
in-depth and evocative to me than a one word description, and that makes me more interested
in cobbling together an adventure.}

So, what jumps out at me first is that somehow the party came into conflict with someone who
gives a shit about assaulting the Scarlet Assassin. I think most authority figures would be
opposed to the Scarlet Assassin on principle of it being an assassin. Coming into conflict with
the law is absolutely in the purview of any party, so we’ll stick with that for now.

Someone is willing to sell the party this lead, so they would need to be aware of the party’s
need or already be selling it for some other reason. Maybe the assassin has a bounty on their
head? A shady bounty hunter could certainly sell their lead! Maybe the hunt for the Scarlet
Assassin was too intense for them? Maybe this bounty hunter’s party got fucked by the Scarlet
Assassin? I can certainly imagine the sad sack drinking alone, the party approaching to ask
why, and that leading one way or another to getting their lead on the Scarlet Assassin.

This bounty hunter then leads the party to the true patron: an unusual animal trainer, with
spiritual ambition! Weird. What constitutes an “unusual animal” depends on the setting, but
my mind went to standard European hills and forests, so that’s what I’ll assume. Monkeys,
Tigers, Elephants, or maybe odd and magical beasts are definitely foreign to not-europe! I may
roll on the monster tables in this book later to hammer this out. Spirituality and Animals
immediately brings to mind druids, so lets further assume two things: 1) that this patron is a
standard d&d druid and 2) the Scarlet Assassin is a rival or rebelling druid. So this patron of the
party is probably looking to take out the Scarlet Assassin so that they can move up in their
druidic circle.

I can’t shake the visual of a bipedal flower sort of creature, so perhaps a future post will be on
fleshing out the details of the Scarlet Assassin? I’m not sure. Mostly I just want to get this
framework out there, on the blog.

Why would this Scarlet Assassin be concealing itself? And whom is it concealing itself from? I
think its easy to say it is concealing itself from this druidic circle hiring the party. Likely, selling
out druid magic for assassination missions is frowned upon, and it is due for consequences.

What is the Fertile Edifice? I imagine a cave, teeming with moss and life. Sun and moon drip in
through cracks, as the bulk of the cave is close to the surface. Its probably not overtly
dangerous if the Scarlet Assassin didn’t live here, but druid magic can make every blade of
grass a frightening question: Did they recruit this blade? It isn’t, like, a godlike druid or
anything necessarily, but I think playing up some of the weirder druid stuff you see from
Arnold K and real world history would make this a fun dungeon. Throw in some weird animals
or plants to guard the joint and you’ve got a delve!

Why do I keep saying it? I imagine the Scarlet Assassin to be a kind of monstrous humanoid
rose. That’s what immediately sprang to mind when I saw that combination of words, and I'm in!

From Legend of the Cryptids

So, in summary, we have a Druidic Circle willing to pardon the party (or just hire them if you
were to drop this into a game ongoing.) if they destroy the Fertile Edifice that houses this Scarlet
Assassin. If they can kill or otherwise handle the rogue druid too, gravy. All said this probably
took me like 15 mins of rolling and thinking to come up with. I could easily expand on this and
make it into something polished and usable out of a pdf (which I may!) This is pretty fucking loose, but I enjoyed rolling up a situation with this book. I think I agree with
the illustrious Michael Bacon that this book could be the only thing you ever need to run a killer
game. Of course, I’m gonna have more, but I could suffice with just this one! If you’re in the
market for a book bursting with gameable ideas and material, give this a look.