Tome of Adventure Design: Random Adventure Building Series

The Tome of Adventure Design by Matt Finch is a big book of random tables for building fantasy adventures. In this series, I work through it chapter by chapter, rolling dice on camera and connecting the results, to see how far random tables can get you toward a real adventure. Each part has a video and a write-up with what I rolled, how the pieces tie together, and how to use that chapter at your own table.

Who this is for

  • GMs building homebrew adventures or campaigns
  • GMs whose players keep leaving the published adventure behind
  • Anyone who wants a stack of one-shots ready for nights when half the group can’t make it
  • Players of pretty much any fantasy system: Pathfinder 1e and 2e, Tales of the Valiant, Shadowdark, and more. The book is system-neutral.

The series, in order

Each part builds on the one before it, so it’s worth going in order.

  1. Tome of Adventure Design Chapter 1: Rolling Up Adventure Ideas
    Locations, missions, patrons, party motivations, the villain’s plan, and minions. Includes two brothers hiring the party for opposite jobs.
  2. Tome of Adventure Design Chapter 2: Rolling Up Random Monsters
    Five monsters from scratch, including sleep-inducing roaches, mammoth raiders, and a troop of luck-eating baboons.
  3. Tome of Adventure Design Chapter 3, Part 1: Planning a Dungeon
    Deadlines, backstories, clues, and magical symbols. Everything you figure out before you draw a room.
  4. Tome of Adventure Design Chapter 3, Part 2: Mapping the Dungeon
    Rolling the number, size, shape, and layout of rooms, then drawing the map in Dungeon Scrawl.
  5. Tome of Adventure Design Chapter 4: Non-Dungeon Adventures
    Underwater, cities and settlements, the sky, other planes, and the wilderness.

What you’ll need to follow along

  • A copy of the book (links below)
  • Percentile dice, plus a d6. A d1000 roll is just three d10s.
  • One document to dump every result into. The connections show up when it’s all in one place.

How to get the most out of random tables

  • Roll more than you need, then pick the threads you like.
  • Overrule any result that fights your idea. The tables are there to spark ideas, not give orders.
  • Look for results that collide. The best ideas in this series came from two unrelated rolls landing next to each other.
  • Let earlier results steer later rolls. Monsters, backstories, and clues get better when they point back to what you already have.

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.