Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition is Wizards of the Coast’s latest offering to the D&D line. In this post, we are going to be focusing on utilizing the adventure creation tables provided in the Dungeon Master’s Guide (DMG). More specifically, we will walk through the process of creating an outline for a random dungeon based adventure. Future posts will focus on the other adventure creation tables.

Identifying the Goal

Following the outline provided by the DMG, our first step is to identify the goal of the party. Why are the adventurer’s risking their lives? Are they simply looking for excitement? Was the party hired to retrieve something? Is the party trying to rescue a local town from a marauding pack of orcs that has claimed the dungeon as their home? To figure this out, we simply roll on the provided table. After rolling and consulting the table provided, the result came up as “Acquire Treasure”. It’s a very generic result, but quite fitting for our first adventure!

Identifying the NPCs

Now that we’ve discovered the purpose for our adventurers, we need to start identifying important NPCs for the adventure. To keep it simple, we will simply identify an adventure villain, an adventure ally, and the adventure patron.

Our villain for this adventure is going to be a “Humanoid Cultist”. Not the most exciting result, but another solid choice for our adventure!

Our ally for this adventure is a “Skilled Adventurer”. I find it quite fitting that our ally is someone who can provide words of wisdom to our party as they start out on their first adventure!

Finally, our adventure patron is a “Temple Official”. While not likely to pay our party very well, it is quite fitting our patron is looking to eliminate the cultist threat in the area.

Adventure Introduction

After we identify the important adventure NPCs, we need to figure out a way to introduce the adventure to our party. After rolling and consulting the proper table in the DMG, we find that our party has been ordered to the adventure location by someone they must obey. While this result is a little more difficult to work with, we will figure out a way to flesh this out!

Adventure Climax

Finally, we need to determine the climax of the adventure. Once again, we consult our table in the DMG and find our climax is going to be that the adventurers are betrayed by an ally as they are about to achieve their goal. This is a trope that must be used carefully, but how fitting is it that our adventurers will start their new life by being betrayed!

Adventure Outline – Results

To recap, our current adventure outline is below:

Party Goal – “Acquire Treasure”

Adventure Villain – “Humanoid Cultist”

Adventure Ally – “Skilled Adventurer”

Adventure Patron – “Temple Official”

Adventure Introduction – “An NPC that the adventurers must obey ordered them to the adventure location”

Adventure Climax – “The adventurers are betrayed by an ally as they are about to achieve their goal.”

Now that we have an outline for our adventure, our next task is to flesh out the details required to finish the adventure creation. While our current outline is very bare-bones, it is the solid backbone for our party’s first (and last???) adventure!

In my next post we will cover fleshing out our villain NPC. Until next time, may your dice roll well.

Creating a Random Adventure – The Villain

Creating a Random Adventure – The Villain Pt. 2

Creating A Random Adventure – The Villain Pt. 3