You favorite adventure location?

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Kardinal Tabbe

Kardinal Tabbe

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Lately I've been interested in small, self-contained adventure locations. The kind of place you can read up on in an hour or so and start gaming. Not a full blown setting and not a full blown scenario, but rather an interesting location with some conflic and a few scenario seeds. A mini-sandbox, if you like. I don't know if there is an widely accepted word for this, but Symbaroum call them adventure landscapes. Examples could be Threshold from BECMI, Apple Lane from Glorantha, Flaming Falcon Inn from Fantasy Hero.

What are your favorite adventure location? Bonus points if it is easy to use in different systems.
 
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Kardinal Tabbe said:
Lately I've been interested in small, self-contained adventure locations. The kind of place you can read up on in an hour or so and start gaming. Not a full blown setting and not a full blown scenario, but rather an interesting location with some conflic and a few scenario seeds. A mini-sandbox, if you like. I don't know if there is an widely accepted word for this, but Symbaroum call them adventure landscapes. Examples could be Threshold from BECMI, Apple Lane from Glorantha, Flaming Falcon Inn from Fantasy Hero.

What are your favorite adventure location? Bonus points if it is easy to use in different systems.
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Can I tout my own horn and recommend the City of Fragrant Pearls, which I think I've posted on the Pub::honkhonk:?

As a bonus, it's written in a systemless format, not the least because I hadn't decided on a system when I started writing it:tongue:!
 
Of course you may! Tout you horn proudly!

A quick search turned up several long threads. You don't have a collected write-up by any chance?
 
Fantasy setting? Zamora from Conan the Barbarian (1982)
Old West setting? Generic Hollywood town
Modern(ish) setting? Pre Giuliani New York or Val Verde
Sci Fi setting? Mos Eisley

(I don’t tend to run prewritten material, these are the adventure locations I will riff off of depending on the game and the players)
 
I've reused Apple Lane a few times, even if just to have an impromptu village map
Although I've done the same thing more recently with the Phandelver map
Both excellent little village settings, with or without their attached scenarios.
 
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Apple Lane and Caves of Chaos(spl?) were the first adventures I've bought, and still have them both, but very badly damaged from over- and misuse. They deserve a special place in my memories.

Edit- Nope, Snakepipe Hollow was the second adventure I have ever bought. Now that's a location! (Ok, more like a dungeon, but hey...)
 
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Kardinal Tabbe said:
Of course you may! Tout you horn proudly!

A quick search turned up several long threads. You don't have a collected write-up by any chance?
Click to expand...
Actually, I wrote it up as a series of status posts on the Pub! Here's the direct link that should take you to the specific place on my profile...:thumbsup:

www.rpgpub.com

AsenRG

www.rpgpub.com www.rpgpub.com

I do have a cleaned-up version as well...somewhere...but I can't access it from here, so you'd have to wait for me to get home tonight::honkhonk:.

However, due to the cleaned-up version and the discussions, I know that it's a bit less than 4k words, and consists of exactly 76 posts:grin:!

So, it should fit right with what you're looking for, since it fits both the "short*" and "self-contained" criteria...:gooselove:


*Some people advocate terseness because of stylistic preferences, I prefer it because it saves me typing:tongue:!
 
I don't quite go for the "adventure landscape" despite Apple Lane being one of my top choices. The thing with Apple Lane is that what I really like it for is The Rainbow Mounds, not so much the rest of it. On the other hand, that IS a smaller dungeon. I've never used it in any other system though...

I do generally like smaller adventures, more because they fit the adventure dynamics of RuneQuest and Cold Iron better.

But the adventures with a significant outdoor component - those can be harder to fit into my campaign.
 
ffilz said:
But the adventures with a significant outdoor component - those can be harder to fit into my campaign.
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...do you mean "without":thumbsup:? I seem to remember you writing that city-based adventures were a problem, so I had assumed you to like more outdoors stuff:shade:!
 
Marvel Super Heroes "Nightmare of Future Past" setting, primarily NYC which has been devastated by the Sentinels war against mutants. It's one of those classic "save the world" scenarios that really challenges players running traumatized superheroes.

1712832330639.jpeg
 
The Velvet Circle & the Hall of Risk from Stormbringer.
Sanctuary from Thieves' World.
Częstochowa in Twilight: 2000.
Davokar in Symbaroum.
And a(n allegedly) real-life tiny gateway community town of Yellowstone Park for Bunnies & Burrows.
 
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AsenRG said:
...do you mean "without":thumbsup:? I seem to remember you writing that city-based adventures were a problem, so I had assumed you to like more outdoors stuff:shade:!
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No I mean that adventures without a significant wilderness part are easier to place into my campaign. This usually means dungeons and small keeps and such. City adventures are also hard to place for the same reasons.

Of course an adventure for the setting I'm using is already placed. So a Gloranthan adventure is easy to use, but I also use non-Gloranthan adventures in my RQ campaign. Blackmarsh doesn't have much in the way of adventures set there (yet)...
 
Kardinal Tabbe said:
Of course you may! Tout you horn proudly!

A quick search turned up several long threads. You don't have a collected write-up by any chance?
Click to expand...
That should be it:thumbsup:.
 

Attachments

  • City of Fragrant Pearls Wuxia Sandbox by AsenRG.pdf
    101.3 KB · Views: 5
Dorastor in Glorantha is my favourite setting, followed by Prax in Glorantha, and Sherwood Forest in Alternate Earth. I'd love to play in an Ertugrul Resurrection setting, with Turks, Templars, Mongols, and Byzantines.
 
The ones written by me of course! (Shameless self promotion follows)

Expanded town of Blasingdell from The Forge of Fury (dnd5, silver bestseller):

www.dmsguild.com

The Forge of Fury: EXPANDED - Dungeon Masters Guild | Dungeon Masters Guild

The Forge of Fury: EXPANDED - One of the best D&D adventures ever written, The Forge of Fury by Richard Baker can become the heart of an entire ca
www.dmsguild.com www.dmsguild.com

Original town of Fourwell (dnd3.5, copper bestseller):

DriveThruRPG

www.drivethrurpg.com www.drivethrurpg.com

Write-up of the city of Fernmagh in the Scarred Lands (dnd5, copper bestseller):

DriveThruRPG

www.drivethrurpg.com www.drivethrurpg.com

World of Darkness Tyne and Wear UK county (V:tM):

DriveThruRPG

www.drivethrurpg.com www.drivethrurpg.com

Expanded Zinda from Radiant Citadel (dnd5):

www.dmsguild.com

Expanded Citadel: ZINDA! - Dungeon Masters Guild | Dungeon Masters Guild

Expanded Citadel: ZINDA! - This supplement builds on the contents presented in Journeys through the Radiant Citadel book, expanding in particular t
www.dmsguild.com www.dmsguild.com
 
The Lost City d&d module B4 if you are willing to extend and work with the city under the pyramid.
It's quick start as all the initial stuff is fully detailed and the vague stuff is the later phase of the adventure.

For most campaigns I would take elements of published adventures and locations and drop them into my own background.

For example, in cyberpunk I used elements of Night City in my own city (Birmingham).
 
rogersm said:
I'm surprised nobody said Cyberpunk 2020's Night City. No choombas in this forum?

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Night City is fantastic because it's a jungle. You have from megacorps as apex predators vying for territory all the way down to bottom feeder gangs. Nobody is good or bad; everybody is engaging in one of the Fs: fight, flight, feast, fornicate. Scavengers aren't going after you because they are evil. They are predators adapted to survive on cyberware, and you turn out to be nutrient-rich prey.

Now for something more limited, I really liked this free one-page derelict: https://mattumland.itch.io/cascading-failure An old spaceship, with rotating areas with gravity, a zero-g spine, a crazed cannibal, and the whole thing is imploding. Good stuff for a tense session.
 
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DornKratz said:
Night City is fantastic because it's a jungle. You have from megacorps as apex predators vying for territory all the way down to bottom feeder gangs. Nobody is good or bad; everybody is engaging in one of the Fs: fight, flight, feast, fornicate. Scavengers aren't going after you because they are evil. They are predators adapted to survive on cyberware, and you turn out to be nutrient-rich prey.

Now for something more limited, I really liked this free one-page derelict: https://mattumland.itch.io/cascading-failure An old spaceship, with rotating areas with gravity, a zero-g spine, a crazed cannibal, and the whole thing is imploding. Good stuff for a tense session.
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You forgot the fifth f, "fence":shock:?
 
Mankcam said:
I've reused Apple Lane a few times, even if just to have an impromptu village map
Although I've done the same thing more recently with the Phandelver map
Both excellent little village settings, with or without their attached scenarios.
Click to expand...
Do you mean Phandalin in the 5E Essentials kit? I ran that for some kids, and it was a solid little mini-campaign.
 
The Spinward Marches the way it was presented in Twilight's Peak or the Kinunir in Classic days. "Situations" rather than modules - rumour tables the players can get drawn into if they want as they wander around. The one thing they could have given us more of is the conflict. They went the boardgame route with a major great-power war breaking out, but what we needed - or rather what I wanted - was more subtle conflicts between nobles, corporations, and other factions. The Traveller Adventure has a bit of this, but in a much more linear, railroady way.
 
Here are a few more locations.

Out In the Black for the Serenity RPG has a nice space mining town called Frisco.

All of the Forbidden Lands campaign books have villages with strange backgrounds and people in.
Though their larger environments are a kludge, the individual locations can be excellent.

Sprawl Sites for 1st ed Shadowrun has loads of little snippets and locations that can be dropped into any cyberpunk setting.
 
I used to like small city/large village, or even small village/keep homebase. I'm more into a megacity these days with guilds, factions, intrigue, social dynamics. Allied with certain conceits to have "mega-dungeons" (yes plural) on hand.
 
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