I'd appreciate some ideas for quests for lvl 1 adventuers.
They just came to a small village in middle of nothing. The thing is, they expect to get something heroic, because they play CRPGs a lot.
What are some nice quests for my lvl 1 heroes? Can be silly.
Lost kid's always a good one, could make it combat, could make it investigation depending on how the party wants it.
>>46262113
Do you want plot ideas or module names?
>>46262182
Plot ideas please. I have a bunch of modules stocked up. They are all just pretty "too heroic".
>>46262113
make a red herring quest.
>>everyone in town suggest the group go to the tavern keep because he has hit hard times and tall the villagers are upset since they can't get their drink on.
>> they show up and the tavern keep says he has to shut down his tavern because a vicious hairy monster has taken up residence in his cellar where he keeps the ale and spirits. he's never got a good look at it but it has already killed one of his serving wenches when she went to get a new tankard for a customer and one of the town guards.
>> railroad them into it if you have to with bait quests, "well i have a job for you, but the tavern keeper whos a good friend of mine is having some issues that must be resolved immediately and i'm currently looking for some brave people to help deal with it"
>>get in cellar its full of giant ravenous rats, kill all rats, find large crack in cellar wall big enough for a person to walk through. they go exploring and they find the queen dire rat, pregnant and pissy. kill it go claim award.
>> have entire town cheer for them and have a party to celabrate the heros that brought liquer back to the town. free booze and free wenches all around.
congrats they should get a level or two out this as well as a starting base of operations
>>46262113
We interrupt this program to bring you... Level 1 Adventures, starring Level 1 Party! Raised on CRPGS, they are set off in the middle of nothing by OP the Fag!
But creepy stuff happens in Nothing. It's up to the Party to save their new game!take shit from shows
>>46262113
Local dickbag monsters steal shit and kidnap a child. The stealing shit is actually expected, but the kidnapping is new. Not wanting to fuck up and get the kidnapped individual killed, the townsfolk get the most competent looking individuals in the village (The PCs) to go deal with the problem.The dickbag monsters are under new management by an even bigger dickbag monster. Bigger dickbag monster made the robbery crew kidnap the witness, and now they don't know what the fuck to do. From the moment the dickbag monsters spot the party coming for them, they freak the fuck out.
>>46262208
Meet people at the tavern. Then go to their place for menial tasks that turn into heroic challenges. Establish a reputation.
> The field behind my farm needs pronging.
Giant moles needs resettling
> I need some old furniture carried to market.
Haunted attic - Who you gonna call?
> Bring supplies to my cousin the miner.
Save mining camp from goblin siege or kobold infestation
> Help raise a barn
Settle an old feud or chose a side
> Scout the swamp.
Bring early warning of orcs on warpath and rally village in defense.
>>46262293
Where is the red herring in your idea?
>>46262293
This is so full of dumb, I don't even know where to start.
Keep at it. You'll get better.
>>46262113
Killing rats in your aunts basement. Collecting rare herbs and fight of the sheep that tries to eat them. Bring a basket of food to and old woman who lives in the woods. Test your skills by wrestling with commoners. Slay the goblin that terrorizes the village. That kind of stuff.
Have adventurers stumble upon a war camp. The sargeant there tells them to courier a message to Prince <insert name>. Pay is upon delivery. Distance is 50 miles away via the King's higway. Said not to open sealed message or let it fall into enemy's hand.
By doing this, you get your players to feel they are going to be part of a bigger thing. You can have encounters along the way and have a tweest when they deliver the message.
>>46262113
The senile lord secretly hires the party to protect him from a ghost while he sleeps. Invisible ghost shows up and party kills it. Turns out to be his kid who found some invisibility potions and was pranking his father.
Ya'll are fucking retarded.
Nowadays level 1 D&D characters are fully capable of taking on dungeons full of orcs, kobolds, and goblins without even breaking a sweat. Shit is so fucking easymode these days you can have whole epic save the world campaigns finished before anyone hits level 10.
>>46262293
I don't think you know what a "red herring" is.
I just dropped my characters in a simple job at the beginning: escorts for a trade caravan through a dangerous part of the country. Then I threw a few simple bandit attacks at them.
Then about 2 sessions later they had leveled up a few times and had already gained a reputation with their caravan, gotten to know the surrounding area and were able to do what they pleased once the journey was over. But they had gotten to know several NPCs, and found so many things on that route that they had numerous places they could go after that.
>>46262174
>Lost kid's always a good one, could make it combat
don't be silly, children are at least CR 3
The innkeeper has trouble with roach infestation. Few large roaches (cat-sized), few legitimately dangerous swarms and throngs of normal, lone roaches. Killing the large ones helps a bit, but in the end you need to resort to chemicals. So they can find the apothecary or alchemist and order a roach poison. For extra work the alchemist can send them to collect herbs in the forest and they can meet some wild animals in the meanwhile. They come back with herbs, and the alchemist offers them a wide array of poisons, priced from 0.5 to 25 gp. (this is just a fake choice, the innkeeper should prob refund it after the quest is done). Players apply the poison and wait a day. Tommorow they find out the poison they picked out was a wrong one (you can either assume the alchemist made all poisons badly or they had picked the wrong one due to divine intervention) and mutated the roaches. Bossfight with horse-sized cockroach and maybe a few smaller ones, after killing it the infestation is done. Hand over the gold.
Redneck villager quests.
"My nephew got drunk and got hisself captured by some danged bandits. They don't like me none, 'cause I's too righteous for 'em"
"Look, we're just keeping Dale over there in the cage because he killed one of our hogs and tried to get frisky with a chicken. We might've gone easy on him if he'd done it the other way 'round. Take him, we don't care none"
>>46262754
>>46263447
The "red herring" is that they think they're going to do something interesting, but they just end up hunting rats in a basement.
>>46263538
Yeah, you definitely don't know what a "red herring" is.
>>46262113
Bear harasses the village.
A big, hungry bear.
>>46262113
>they expect something heroic
Fuck 'em.
Give 'em a "Slay a pack of 6 wolves" quest, and when they inevitably get their shit pushed in since 6 wolves is like CR3-4, give them a "Kill rats 1 at a time" quest.
Constantly dangle a "Bust into the hideout of a bunch of bandits who have tons of loot and have kidnapped a bunch of farm girls and who are preventing the Caravan of Party Time from coming to the town" quest in front of them, but make sure they know that it'll be as hard as like TWELVE wolves!
So they'd better get killin' them rats. Gogo
>>46262113
>Take Item X to Location Y
Everytime.
>>46263723
And then, just as the PCs get strong enough to bust the bandit lair, a different group of no-name wandering adventurers roll through, clear the bandit lair, and fuck off before the PCs can meet them, but the Caravan of Party Time throws a party to celebrate how awesome the bandit-lair-clearing no-names are?
>>46263764
Yeah, unless the PCs build their chars well, grind hard to level up instead of wasting time with ARR PEE and IMMERSHUN, and tackle the bandit lair way before they're supposed to.
Then they get loot, fame, wenches, celebration, some plot hooks, and overall a reward for being good adventurers.
There are reports that a local crypt is haunted, is actually inhabited by a lvl 1 alchemist trying and failing to craft invisibility potions
Dire (insert small sized animal here) has taken up residence in a nearby wood and is terrorizing the town. go hunt it down
A cult has sprung up in town with sinister goals, root out the cult members and find out what they are up to, cult is focused on drawing the attention of one of the BBEG's lieutenants.
A recent earthquake has revealed a cave system a mile from town, go investigate it to ensure nothing dangerous will emerge and kill everybody
A notorious gang of bandits cam by last week saying they would sack and raze the town if the Mayor's daughter wasn't wed to their leader by the end of the month.
>The thing is, they expect to get something heroic, because they play CRPGs a lot.
Fuck them? Why is what they expect to do important?
The leg-breaker of a local moneylender drunkenly offers them his cut of the proceeds if they'll go to the local family of troublemakers to collect this months repayment and find out whether they were involved in the recent disappearance of his employer. The moneylender disappeared under a week ago and the leg-breaker strongly suspects their involvement but doesn't trust his own temper enough to verify it himself.
The local law is aware of the leg-breaker's concerns but doesn't share them and are pursuing other avenues of investigation. The family - an extended household of dirt farmers and inter-married siblings - will resist paying with every excuse under the sun (the family member responsible for the accounts is away right now, they already paid this month, etc.) and suggestion of their involvement in the disappearance will result in indignant rage directed at anyone with the gall to impugn their honor.
Possible Outcomes:
A. The moneylender was killed by a relative of the local law and it is being covered up (in this scenario they are looking more closely at the family as potential patsies, but not letting on to the PCs). As things progress they may decide the PCs look like better potential suspects.
B. The leg-breaker killed the moneylender in a spur of the moment murder when he was caught skimming money by demanding larger payments from customers he figured were less likely to dare complain. The moneylender's body is currently hidden in a disused privy in an alley near his house which has been nailed shut. The leg-breaker will follow the PCs and try to use their actions to implicate the family without exposing himself.
C. The moneylender has been kidnapped by a third party who intends to ransom him. When the demand for payment comes in after the PC's initial actions, the family catches wind and will attempt to scoop the ransom money and sour the trade, hoping to rid themselves of their outstanding debt simultaneously.
>>46262113
Local pets and kids have been going missing around the neighborhood.
Turns out there the barkeep at the tavern has an ooze he has been using to clean all the dish wear/get rid of rubbish but its appetite has become bigger than mere table scraps.
https://desustorage.org/tg/thread/45348641
>>46264056
yeah man, fuck your players! How dare they expect to have fun when playing pretend
>There is a cat stuck on a tree! Except it's not a cat, it's a baby dragon.
>In this icy snowy tundra shithole, worried parents find out that their stupid kids went to the frozen lake again.Retrieve them. You are surprised by the amount of eldritch tentacles involved in this plot hook.
>Daylight robbery! Those fuckheads just snatched an innocent woman's coin pouch! You give chase! Plot twist! They were adventurers who wanted to neutralize the Cursed Coins Of Shitty Luck™ before it wreaks havoc on unsuspecting innocents, and there are more in this town! May or may not be true.
>There is a cat stuck on a tree! Except it's not a cat, it's a druid.
>You notice a girl outside the tavern, being weird and staring at you. You go outside to find out she's looking for companions to look for her family heirloom. You find out that it has been taken by some bandits and you attempt to retrieve it. After retrieving it,She betrays you and almost mortally wounds you.
>>46264255
>it's a druid.
Is she hot?
>>46263799
> ARE PEE
> IMURSHUN
> this is what rollfags actually believe
Remember if you say it funny, you invalidate it
>>46264086
I like it
>>46262113
Just play Mouse Guard and give them the OP pic. One Heroic quest done.
>>46262303
top tier suggestion
>>46264342
>she
A local monastery brews lambic. A handful of fairies have been holding parties in the basement, drinking their fill. The monks ask the PCs to convince the fairies to bugger off, one way or another.
>>46262113
Why do you choose level 1 characters if you want something epic?
>>46263538
That's not a red herring, that's a fakeout. A red herring is a false clue introduced during the investigation of a mystery in order to mislead the protagonists.
For example, let's say your characters are investigating a murder. They encounter a man who's acting suspicious, so they decide to spend time investigating this man under the assumption that he's related to the murder. However, it turns out he is acting suspicious because he's guilty of a different, unrelated crime. And while they spent time investigating the red herring, the actual murderer gained a head start.
Learn your narrative techniques, man
>>46262432
is this from that new encyclopedia they released? i really need to get that.
>>46262113
My last GM had a NPC walk us through the town to introduce us, then getting killed in an ambush, springing a micro-adventure of escaping the shitshow, finding the killer, which in turn introduced us to the bigger picture.
>>46262113
>The thing is, they expect to get something heroic, because they play CRPGs a lot.
Heroics isn't a matter of scale, it's a matter of context.
That being said, "small village in the middle of nowhere" is pretty easy to create adventures for, due to it being a classic setting.
-There's the local harvest festival with the creepy undertones(maybe they're sacrificing someone in order to keep the monsters at bay or to satiate the thing in the woods, maybe the local "holy artifact" they're presenting offerings to is actually evil and corrupts them, maybe there's something supernatural in the wine). Always a classic.
-Or maybe one of the villagers wrongly gets accused of being an evil witch after some misfortune affects one of the other villagers. The PCs then have to discover the true cause of the event.
-Ghosts! There's so much you can do with ghosts. Perhaps someone's farm is haunted and it turns out the place was the site of some ancient, bloody battle. The PCs have to either calm the ghost through the use of some Macguffin, or they might trek to an old temple in order to recover a lost banishing ritual or something.
-THE THING IN THE WOODS. THERE IS ALWAYS A THING IN THE WOODS.
>>46262113
Have them investigate the hideout of a long-dead cult deep in the forest. Villagers say that ghastly forms and eerie sounds have been echoing from the cavernous dungeon for a few weeks now, and they're very scared and desperate for adventurers to look into it.
Turn out that the hideout is haunted by the ghosts of knights who destroyed the cult in ages past, but never were laid to rest as they gave their lives to do it. There's a couple of ghosts who will help the players and give them cryptic hints, but won't hesitate to defend themselves if attacked or disrespected, as the long years have driven them quite mad; they only want peace.
Deeper into the dungeon, the players encounter traps and guardians left behind by the cult to guard their inner sanctum that are still operational. The players will also encounter strange red crystals, that a knowledgeable character recognizes as some kind of soulstones, receptacles for the souls of the fallen, trapped so they cannot reach the afterlife.
The dungeon ends in the Inner Sanctum of the cult, where players fight a Spectator or some other guardian entity and recover the bodies of the knights so they can be laid to rest. The red soulstones, however, remain a mystery and it isn't until much later that it is revealed that the cult was actually trying to keep souls from reaching the afterlife and feeding some horrific Chtonian creature that lurks between the planes and devours the dead to gain strength, and without this cult has bloated and grown to consume even gods themselves.
>>46262113
IN OD&D tradition, everyone who is not a supernatural hero is 1 HD. So an example of a level 1 story arc would be "all of human history".
(Side note: I find it funny that even the people who bitch that D&D isn't gritty and realistic enough bitch that getting stabbed with a dagger is lethal at 1 HD.)
>>46263538
>they think they're going to do something interesting
>tavern keep tells them something hairy is in the cellar
>the party concludes within 0.001 seconds that it's rats in the cellar, a few of them think, "No, our GM wouldn't give us such an obvious 'rats in the tavern cellar' job!"
>haha joke's on you, you're just slaying rats in a cellar, finding a secret crawlspace, and killing the queen dire rat :^)
Total red herring, bro!!
You could have the village elder/ someone important to the town fall ill and need medicine. Problem is there have been bandits/wild dogs/wolves around and they need someone tough to go and get it. From there the players would have to find the plant and fend off some low level guys. Could also do some sleuthing trying to find the plant/someone who took the plant.
> The past two days I heard some scratching in the basement. Now a whole sack of grain has been eaten out from under me! I think I have rats
And you want us to go kill them.
> What, like with swords? That's ridiculous. I hired an exterminator to ferret them out and lay down some traps. He says he can't bake the poison into pellets until he collects bitter sorrow weed, about five fresh plants.
And you want us to collect weeds?
> Shut up and listen. The weeds are his problem. But the drunk fool says he's not coming by until he has cash in hand though, and he lives all the way in the woods.
And you want us to walk the money over to him?
>I'm not letting you touch my coin! Besides, I already sent the boy around to his place. He was supposed to be back hours ago. I think he's being held up by that gang of ten hooligan kids. Someone'll have to teach them som respect someday soon.
So, beating up ten kids....
> Huh?
Is that the job you have for us?
> What? No. I want you to kill me wife and make it look like an accident.
>>46262113
Two words:
BEER RUN.
they have to travel to the Halfling brewery on the bad side of town to get (X) kegs for the bartender before tomorrow.
Thugs, hooligans, drunkards, goblins, and a beer elemental all want said kegs.
>>46270008
And then you can have the players roll against the temptation of drinking the beer themselves.
>>46269793
The wild dogs ARE the bandits!
>Claw/Claw/Shortsword
>The Doggands are flanking you!
>The bandit fleader readies his scimitar
>>46269909
I'm about to DM for the first time for my 12 year old brother (his first TTRPG) and I think I'll use this. As soon as he interrupts that's the mission he'll be going on.
>>46262113
I will be also creating quest for 1st level characters, so I thought about implementing something like this.
>Characters will came to town/village, and spot inkeeper who is talking to 2 guards.
>He is talking about some problems, that someone is stealing his provisions from his basement.
>But guards still insist, that its impossible to steal some crates or barrels from his basement, and take them all out without anyone noticing, so they think that he is talking some bullshit.
Now, you just need your players, to take some interest in this. The inkeeper will show them where this basement is, and where is he storing his provisions. He will tel them, that they stocked him up just yesterday, but today tommorow, all his new stuff is gone. Yes, only new stuff. And it happened like this also a week ago. And there also can happen some false robbery for confusing the players...
So, whats going on? Players can search for hidden entrances to his basement, but there is nothing, and there is only a single key, to the doors from basement, but, inkeeper is always wearing that around his neck, and the doors are not damaged.
There is plenty of things you can think about "how this can happen" but I have this:
Players should notice, that in the corridor to his basement, there is a picture on the wall, where is the inkeeper, and someone who looks like his daughter, but they cant see this daughter around his house. And this picture, is a little askew, so inkeeper will put this picture to straight position with those words: "Oh, again? Maybe I did brush over it again." and also, there is a vase on the table, which one character will break. And can be costly vase, and inkeeper could want some repayment for it, but its not important.
>>46271705
Also, there should be one event before they visit this village, with his daughter from the picture. Maybe she did had some trouble in the woods, and players did helped her, so she suggested this village to them?
Ok, about that mystery...
If players will visit this inkeeper second day, they can notice that vase is alright, and picture is again askew. A reason for this is, that his house, is actually under a time spell, which stopped his house in time, so, any changes which are made in his house (including his new provisions) are negated over night.
And the reason for this is his daughter. She had some fight with him, and now she lives in the woods. But she still likes her father, and she noticed, that someone wants to frame her father from some stuff. Maybe murder, or robbery, and this badguy, is hiding this evidence in these crates. And she has some device, which can revert time like this on some location, she found that in the woods. And this device, is actually teasure, from near tomb, where some skeleton king is sleeping, and he will want this device back.
So, there you have four problems for your players and one dungeon. Solving mystery, finding the badguy, protect daughter, and return artifact.
>>46271721
>>46271705
What the fuck am I reading?
>>46269729
>not making them turn off the rat faucet in the basement
