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Tome of Adventure Design Chapter 1: Rolling Up Adventure Ideas

If you’re the kind of GM who likes rolling dice and seeing what falls out, the Tome of Adventure Design by Matt Finch was made for you. It’s a thick book of random tables for building adventures, and in this series I’m working through it one chapter at a time to see if I can roll my way to a full adventure. Maybe a whole campaign.

Chapter 1 covers the bones of an adventure: where it happens, what the job is, who’s paying, why the party would care, and what the villain is up to. Here’s what I rolled and how the pieces started to connect.

This is part 1 of 5 in my Tome of Adventure Design series.

Who this book is for

I recommend this book to any GM who builds homebrew campaigns, runs a party that keeps wandering off the path of a published adventure, or wants a stack of one-shots ready to go. My group plays one-shots when not everyone can make it to a session, and this book is great for that.

It’s system neutral. Pathfinder 1e or 2e, Tales of the Valiant, Shadowdark, pretty much any fantasy game works. The tables lean hard into fantasy, though, so if you’re running Deadlands or Call of Cthulhu you’ll have to squint a bit.

Locations: four words, a lot of ideas

The location tables have four columns. You roll percentile dice on each one for a descriptor, a structure, and two features, then smash the words together. There are two of these tables, so I rolled two locations from each:

  • The Invulnerable Palace of the Bronze Statue
  • The Demonic Bastion of the Cabalistic Chanter
  • The Fabrication Castle of the Deceitful Spirits
  • The Horrid Hall of the Scarlet God

Four words can be enough to get going. The palace made me think of a bronze golem ruling the place. The Horrid Hall of the Scarlet God made me think of a blood god’s temple built for sacrifice.

What’s the place used for now?

The next set of tables tells you what a location is being used for today, which isn’t always what it was built for. Maybe the Scarlet God’s followers were wiped out years ago and the hall has a new job. I rolled a winter gallery, a witching separator, a death harvester, and a fossil moat.

I have no idea what a witching separator is. That’s the point. The table forces you to decide, and whatever you come up with is yours. The death harvester fits the Horrid Hall a little too well.

Missions, patrons, and motivations

Missions come next. You roll a mission type, then roll on that type’s own table for the details. I rolled six:

  1. Incriminate or frame an agent of a deity
  2. Reinforce a castle
  3. Plan and execute a criminal conspiracy
  4. Prevent a murder or attempted murder
  5. Destroy the results of a criminal conspiracy
  6. Sabotage an archaeological dig

Then you roll who’s hiring the party (a d1000 table), and why they want the job done. My patrons were a pirate captain, a gambler with a lucky charm, an undertaker, a poor minstrel, a teamster, and a wizard working on a commissioned task.

This is where it got fun. The undertaker wants one of his parents dead. The minstrel wants to protect a parent’s reputation. So what if they’re brothers? The barkeep tells the party the Jones brothers are hiring, and whichever brother they meet first decides which side they’re on. Same maps, same stat blocks, two completely different adventures. I would never have come up with that on my own.

The wizard who wants the dig sabotaged could tie back to the fossil moat around the Horrid Hall. Maybe he’s trying to keep the Scarlet God’s cult from coming back. Or maybe he’s a blood mage who doesn’t want anyone hauling away the pieces that give the temple its power.

Why would the party care?

Every mission also gets a reason for the characters to take it, plus how they heard about it. A few of mine:

  • Useful information, from a pirate captain who just pulled into port and won’t talk until they do him a favor
  • Better movement (think boots of speed or faster travel), picked up from a rumor in a tavern
  • Help with travel, like a teleport or a planar gate, offered by an employer who contacts them directly
  • Forgiveness or a pardon for something they did before
  • Learning a dead language, with someone offering to sell them a contact who can read it

The villain’s plan and minions

The villain tables start with the plan, not the villain. You figure out who they are later. I rolled four plans:

  • Desecration by trickery: impersonate a messenger, call the priests away to an emergency conclave, then take over the empty holy site
  • Subversion: steer people toward a friendly-looking temple that secretly serves an evil god
  • Conversion through demonic gifts
  • Gain favor with a bigger villain by breaking it out of prison

That last one means my villain isn’t the top dog. They’re a lieutenant trying to spring the real boss.

Then the minions. A barbarian leader who’s stronger than the villain but sticks around for food and shelter. A city official whose face nobody can remember, working as the villain’s advisor. A maimed warrior who’s been lied to about what the villain is really doing. And a simple peasant who lives by a strict code of honor and follows the villain because the villain once saved his life.

How to use chapter 1 at your table

  • Roll more than you need. I rolled four locations and six missions knowing I’d throw most of them out.
  • Overrule anything that doesn’t fit. The tables are there to spark ideas, not give orders.
  • Look for results that collide. The undertaker and the minstrel were separate rolls until I put them in the same family.
  • Keep everything in one document. Later chapters build on these results, and the connections show up when it’s all in one place.

Video chapters

Get the book

Tome of Adventure Design (Revised) by Matt Finch is available as a PDF on DriveThruRPG, or in hardcover and PDF straight from Mythmere Games.

The DriveThruRPG link is an affiliate link. If you buy through it, I get a small reward at no extra cost to you.

The rest of the series

Until next time, roll well, my friends.