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Tome of Adventure Design Chapter 4: Non-Dungeon Adventures

Not every adventure happens underground. Chapter 4 of the Tome of Adventure Design gets the party out of the dungeon with tables for five other kinds of adventure locations: underwater, cities and settlements, the sky, other planes, and the wilderness. In this video I roll through each one.

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

Why leave the dungeon?

Dungeons are easy to run because the walls do a lot of the work. Players can only go where the corridors go. Outside, that structure disappears, and it’s easy for a city or a forest to turn into a big empty map with nothing to do. Chapter 4’s tables fill that space with things to find and problems to solve, so an open location still feels like an adventure.

Underwater

Underwater adventures change everything about how a party operates. Breathing, moving, fighting, even talking all get harder. That ties right back to a table from chapter 3, where one of my tactical situations was an area where you need magic or gear to breathe. If the party has water breathing and the enemies don’t, the whole encounter flips.

Cities and settlements

This is the biggest section in the video, and for good reason. Cities are where most campaigns spend a lot of their time, and they’re hard to make interesting without a plan. The settlement tables help you build a place with its own character, so the next town the party walks into isn’t just another inn, another blacksmith, and another quest board.

A lot of the chapter 1 results live here naturally. The pirate captain who just docked, the gambler with the lucky charm, the Jones brothers and their family problem. They all need a town to live in.

Aerial

Floating castles, cloud cities, sky ships, a giant’s home above the clouds. Aerial adventures come with a built-in hazard: falling. They also put flying and movement abilities front and center, which is handy, since several of the rewards I rolled in chapters 1 and 3 were new ways to move and travel.

Planar

The planar tables are for adventures that leave the material world. The poison elemental from chapter 2 came from the plane of poison, and it’s plotting against old enemies back home. A planar adventure is one way to follow that thread to wherever it leads.

Wilderness

Wilderness adventures are about the journey as much as the destination: travel, terrain, weather, and whatever lives out there. The tables give the trip between towns and dungeons something to do besides “you travel for three days.”

Pulling it together

That’s where the series stands so far. At this point I have a document stuffed with locations, missions, patrons, a villain’s plan, minions, five monsters, a dungeon backstory, clues, symbols, a map, and now a handful of places outside the dungeon. The next step is picking the threads that fit together and turning them into an actual adventure you can run.

Tips for non-dungeon adventures

  • Give open locations a few fixed points: landmarks, people, and problems the party will run into no matter which way they go.
  • Reuse your earlier rolls. Patrons and minions from chapter 1 make good city residents.
  • Let the environment be the challenge. Water, height, and weather can matter as much as any monster.
  • Keep the ticking clock from chapter 3. Open maps slow things down unless something is pushing the party forward.

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.