I’ve always been a fan of Greek mythology when it comes to RPGs – especially with new gamers and kids. The reasons are simple:

• It’s a world everyone understands. “Zeus is angry at us? Got it.”
• There are plenty of opportunities for adventure, including monsters, gods, and epic quests.
• Mythology doesn’t demand a complicated ruleset. You don’t need tons of classes, spells, sanity rules, or detailed combat options to make this genre work.

It’s also a very customizable genre. Want to play up horror? Easy, welcome to the underworld. Want to tilt into politics? So many opportunities with city-states. Like grittier combat? No problem… bronze swords and spears were nasty.

I bet the mass appeal of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey probably comes from many of those same strengths. It’s familiar, it’s epic, and has its own style. Not to mention a great director that gives me a feeling Nolan would be a phenomenal GM… sign me up as a player!

So here’s two loosely-connected Greek myth adventures you can find for FREE on this site, available in multiple game systems (D&D, OSR, GURPS, etc.). If you’re a fan of The Odyssey, Ray Harryhausen, or just epic legends you may want to check these out:

The Honey Tree of Pelion

In The Honey Tree of Pelion, a king’s pride brings disaster upon his people, forcing the heroes on a perilous quest to the legendary slopes of Mount Pelion, where divine honey, impossible labors, and the gods themselves stand between them and salvation. Learn more and download it here.

The Scourge of Triton

In The Scourge of Triton an insult to the god of the sea has condemned Argos to destruction. With only three days to stop a monstrous boar, the heroes race through bustling cities, across storm-tossed seas, and into the Underworld itself in search of the only weapons capable of saving the kingdom. Learn more and download it here.

Together, these adventures evoke the feel of classic Greek mythology: proud kings whose hubris invites divine wrath, impossible quests, memorable monsters, and heroic deeds worthy of an epic poem. They’re written to capture the spirit of The Odyssey and Jason and the Argonauts while remaining fast-paced, easy to run, and full of meaningful choices for the players.

Interestingly, these two make up a trilogy, but I haven’t gotten around to finishing it. If you’ve played in these adventures, let me know in the comments below what you’re experience was. Also, do you have a favorite Greek mythology-set adventure? Let me know in the comments below!

RELATED: From Greece to Rome

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I met Jason Woollard as a mutual fan of RPGs, GURPS, and various other interests. It was only after a few years were we actually able to game together, when I joined his table at GaryCon in his new adventure inspired by Southeast Asian fantasy – Bitter Song of the Black Mangroves. It was a setting I was unfamiliar with, but I happily grabbed a monkey-man smuggler as my character and we had a ton of fun sailing through dark mangroves, dodging dangers, and rescuing a cursed village from an eerie song.

What occurred to me afterwards was that Jason’s adventure was very different than what I would have written myself. The faraway setting was one that never occurred to me, the mystery of the adventure was paced in a new way, and there was a sense of wonder imparted that my own, sometimes more grounded adventures, don’t often achieve. Jason’s adventure stuck in my head more than most adventures do.

So this month, I was inspired to try an experiment. I asked Jason for his detailed adventure notes for Bitter Song of the Black Mangroves and rather than act as an author, I acted as an editor. I took his adventure, reformatted it, added additional detail, and fleshed it out with a few more optional side quests. I think the end result is 95% of what Jason authored, and 5% of my own tweaks. I’m proud that this marks my first collaboration… and the first adventure on this site not authored by me!

Interview with Designer Jason Woollard

In Bitter Song of the Black Mangroves, travelers find themselves stranded in a remote village haunted by a mournful melody. This eerie “Bitter Song” drifts from the mangroves at night, luring innocent villagers into the swamp from which none have ever returned. To save the village, PCs must venture deep into the mist-shrouded forest, brave treacherous tides, and uncover the source of the curse before its sorrow spreads…

I asked Jason a few questions about his own design process:

Q. What inspired you to write this adventure?

Well, I have a bit of a problem. I’m constantly buying new rpg material, scenarios, modules, to read and mine for ideas and inspiration, especially if it’s a Kickstarter! I had supported a system-free book, Reach of the Roach God, a few years ago, and when I got it, the images in the book cast a spell on me. I literally couldn’t find enough of Munkao’s work – and his spinoff, Kala Mandala – and I started writing it that weekend. (JC’s Note: And one Munkao’s Kala Mandala adventures just got nominated for an Ennie!)

Q. What was the hardest part to get right?

I was really concerned with getting the feel of the setting correct. At first I thought it would be done through the places and NPCs, but really, I think it was how I crafted the characters and their individual backgrounds and story hooks. And outside of the adventure itself, the hardest part for me was coming up with a character sheet format that didn’t make GURPS look super complicated and daunting. I try to make the game as accessible as possible.

Q. Did you ever have a player do something wildly unexpected, so you went back and made changes?

Well, of course, the most wildly unexpected thing a player does is what you actually expect them to do…. and they never do that. But with my adventures, they’re never in a “finished” state, always in a WIP limbo so I run them differently every time. One stand-out player moment was funny though. The party was floating through the swamp, and they spotted the tiger on the bank, crouching to leap onto the boat. I had foreshadowed him several times and the players were pretty concerned. As the tiger leapt, Peleko, the monkey-man character (JC’s favorite!), jumped up into the trees above. The tiger missed the boat entirely and it was snatched out of the air by a huge crocodile! The party sailed onward, leaving poor Peleko stranded above and the other players were too scared to go back. The look on that player’s face was priceless when she realized she was completely left behind!

Q. What did you leave on the cutting room floor? Any encounters or scenes you would have added in?

Probably lots, but since I always run them different each time, I assume it will all make it back in there eventually. Some things I haven’t utilized as much: the villager Toba, which is featured more heavily in this new version; Darsa the healer isn’t visited often; more use of environmental hazards in the mangrove swamps like insect swarms, clinging branches and vines, quicksand, etc; additional instances of the Bitter Song, too. The first time I plastered this the party slept overnight in the village and the Song was heard. They frantically ran around town stopping several villagers from wandering into the mangroves. That was a scene I need to include every time but have often cut for con play because the party is always ready to embark on the quest immediately.

Q. What new adventure are you working on now?

I’m putting the finishing touches on a cyberpunk-ish train heist game. I’ve run it once but it needs a little more fine tuning before GenCon. I’ve also recently written the bulk of a second adventure set in Kala Mandala. That was inspired by our collaboration on this story… and a monster encounter from Dungeon Crawler Carl! It didn’t take much to get my head back into that space, so thank you for that! 

And there you have it. There’s no one “right” way to write and run RPG adventures, and I learned a lot through this collaboration with Jason. If you get a chance to join in one of his games at a convention this summer, do it!

Download Bitter Song of the Black Mangroves for FREE

• Bitter Song of the Black Mangroves (GURPS)
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• Bitter Song of the Black Mangroves (Old School Essentials)
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• Bitter Song of the Black Mangroves – VTT Assets

As always, if you play or run in the adventures here, let me know how it went!

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RELATED: Another voyage on dangerous waters…

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Believe it or not, among the dozens of adventures I’ve written for this site, there is not a single “dungeon adventure.” Sure, there’s many that feature small underground areas, a mini-dungeon or two, or even a trip to the Underworld, but none that are really a pure dungeon adventure.

Which is odd, because I love dungeon adventures, and have reviewed many on my YouTube channel. I have my favorites too, from old-school classics like Keep on the Borderlands and White Plume Mountain, to newer ones like Sailors of the Starless Sea or Trial of the Slime Lord.

But there are a lot of dungeon adventures out there for GMs to grab and play. It’s hard to separate great ones from ones that are mundane or unsurprising. For me, a great dungeon adventure has four qualities:

Great Dungeons Tell a Story

I don’t mean great dungeon adventures have a plot. I mean the dungeon itself tells a story as players adventure into it. It feels alive, has personality, and as the PCs go room from room, they’ll piece together what has happened here. Who built the place? Who was here before them? What was the place actually used for? The more vibrant the story behind the dungeon, the more it will feel alive and unique to your players.

Great Dungeons Have a Perfect Fuel Mix

Dungeons shouldn’t just be places where heroes crawl room to room, killing monsters in each one and grabbing their loot. The battles need to vary – the same tactics should never work twice. Fighting a band of kobolds will not feel the same as fighting a mummy juice elemental!

But more importantly, he best dungeons have a variety of encounters — battles, traps, puzzles, and even opportunities to roleplay. If a dungeon tilts too much in one direction, players learn what to expect, and the dungeon becomes boring. Try to include a variety in your dungeon, and your dungeon becomes better.

Great Dungeons Give GMs Tools

By nature, dungeons are constrained. It’s harder for players to break out from the walls and wreck the GMs adventure! This is probably why a lot of us RPG fans started playing in dungeons before we moved on to wilderness hex crawls or city-based locales. But the reverse is true. The walls of a dungeon constrain GMs, making it harder for them to hurry players along, apply pressure, give hints, or adapt to their group’s playstyle. An A+ dungeon gives the GM those tools, whether it’s a roving band of enemy adventurers, survivors from the last delve, enemies organized into factions, willing to hire the PCs for assassinations, or ghosts that haunt the player. All of these are examples of ways a dungeon adventure gives the GM tools to make the adventure more fun, not just relying on players to control the pacing.

Great Dungeons Have a Big Twist

The best dungeons have a twist, a turn, something that surprises players and makes them remember the dungeon. This is the hardest thing to include! It’s tough to know for sure whether your dungeon has one of these until a few groups have played it. But think about the classics — Tomb of Horrors’ green devil face, White Plume Mountain’s strange menagerie of creatures behind glass, or the room in Tower of the Black Pearl that literally puts the lives of every hero in the realm into the players’ hands. These are encounters that burn into your brain, and cause players to ask each other “what did YOU do when you saw the green devil face?” and compare stories.

If you have all four in your dungeon, congratulations! I want to play in it.

The 99 Devils

This month, I return to one of the first genres I visited on this site, “Arabian Nights Fantasy”. In The 99 Devils of Uzrah’s Palace, the PCs learn that a great pirate is planning to distribute his vast wealth among the survivors of his crew over the years. He picked a hard-to-find spot — old ruins on a faraway island. Hoping to trick him into thinking they once sailed with him, they visit the rendezvous point and enter the ruins… not knowing that the location the old pirate picked was once a palace haunted by a capricious djinn.

Along the way, the players will learn the history of these ruins and the sorcerer who once built it. They’ll face battles, ambushes, traps, weird magic, pirate survivors, and more. And I included several ways GMs can push and pull the players around — crocodile men cultists who have their own motivation for being inside the ruins, a sneaky wizard who has been teleporting in and out of the ruins for his own purposes, and a lesser djinn who just wants to keep the place clean and free of dust.

And the twist? The PCs can discover a monkey surrounded in a time bubble from when the palace was still new. If they’re clever, they can use the monkey to “unwind” time in some places, reverting ceiling collapses or opening now-locked doors. RPG rule #19 – nobody doesn’t have fun with a monkey!

As always, the adventure is free, includes pregenerated characters, fun handouts, and more. Enjoy!

Get The 99 Devils of Uzrah’s Palace for FREE here!

• The 99 Devils of Uzrah’s Palace (GURPS)
• The 99 Devils of Uzrah’s Palace (GURPS) – Printer Friendly
• The 99 Devils of Uzrah’s Palace (Shadowdark)
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Related: The Third Hall of Uzrah

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Random encounters have been part of RPGs ever since the beginning. Every dungeon had its carefully designed rooms, but the real threats were the rolls on the wandering monsters table that could disrupt a party’s rest or surprise players at a bad time.

Random encounters fell away from roleplaying for many years, but have surged back in popularity with the Old School Renaissance. At Gencon last year, at least 30 minutes of a fun Pirate Borg game was driven through fun and crazy tables as we pirates partied at a Caribbean tavern.

Despite my fondness for them, very few of my adventures on this site feature random encounters. So this month, I decided to change that, with the gonzo post-apocalyptic adventure, Railgun Road.

(Longtime readers may remember that Railgun Road was one of my great unfinished projects… well, I went back to it and got it out. Take that, Winds of Winter.)

Starting with the Structure

I always define the goal of an adventure first. The best adventures make it clear to players what their objective is in the first 15 minutes. Railgun Road gives it to the players immediately — their town was hit hard by the Rust Pact gang, three gang leaders took their most valuable stuff and then spread out across the desert. This is a vengeance quest. Track down the gang leaders, kill them, get their stuff back. Classic wasteland survival plot.

With three gang leaders spread out, I needed encounters that served different purposes. The players needed clues where to find the gang leaders. The players started with minimal equipment, so they needed better equipment. The wasteland is dangerous, so I also wanted players to encounter weird and deadly inhabitants that would make the adventure memorable.

I knew with such an open ended goal – “track down the baddies and kill ’em” – players would go about this very differently than I imagined. If I put in a strict order of events, well, it would likely get ruined by a bunch of survival-oriented players with motorcycles at their disposal. This problem is what jammed me up for so long writing this adventure.

But after running a bunch of Dungeon Crawl Classics adventures, I found my inner OSR soul and organized the entire adventure around random encounters. But there was a method behind my madness.

• Traveling on-the-road meant there were 6 random encounters to find. But they would always give players a clue to the whereabouts of the next gang leader. This way, players would never get stuck. I left it up to the GM as to which clues led where, as it really doesn’t matter the order in which players track down the bad guys.
• Traveling offroad meant there were 6 additional random encounters that really highlighted the crazy setting I wanted, and usually gave the players better equipment. Traveling offroad was necessary to find two of the three gang leaders too.
• Finally, I included some specific locations that the players would want to visit. Supply outposts, weird wasteland oracles, radiation zones, etc. Critically these set pieces would help the players feel like the adventure wasn’t entirely random, and that where they chose to go mattered. This solved the problem I observed in my otherwise-fun Pirate Borg adventure. Once the GM is rolling on random tables a lot, it starts to feel that way.

Random Encounters Change How You Write

I think building an adventure around random encounters not only adds unpredictability to the players, but writing it becomes a more freeform exercise. I could really pour a lot of creativity into each encounter, not really worrying how it connected the previous one. Each encounter is its own mini-adventure, and players and GMs alike will absolutely improvise the connective tissue.

For example, when I ran it with my group, they started building their own conspiracy theories on how weird mechanical donkeys wandering the wasteland connected their crazy theories that a frozen yogurt machine had become sentient. This wasn’t in the adventure as written, but crazy conspiracy theories really make a post-apocalyptic adventure!

Get Railgun Road for FREE here:

In Railgun Road, Vagrant Town has been attacked, and three ruthless gang leaders have escaped into the wasteland. These raiders fled with the town’s most precious possessions: a half-full gasoline truck, a crate of rocket launchers, and the governor’s beloved 33-year-old dog, Immortal Normal. The Bossduke of the town recruits a group of survivors to hunt them down. Across a hundred-mile range filled with sand squirmers, radioactive meteors, and bizarre mechanized relics, players must navigate an open-ended sandbox to reclaim their town’s stolen future.

Get it here for GURPS and Wasteland Degenerates, which is a fun Mad Max-themed OSR RPG built off the bones of Mork Borg and CY_BORG!

• Railgun Road (GURPS)
• Railgun Road (GURPS) – Printer Friendly
• Railgun Road (Wasteland Degenerates / CY_BORG / OSR)
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• Railgun Road – VTT Tokens, Assets, and Videos

Related: Hacking a Cyberpunk Structure

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Every year I check and see which of the free one-shot TTRPG adventures on this site gets the most eyeballs. Obviously, it’s hard to tell how many plays each one gets (which is why I ask you to tell me!), but it’s clear some adventures are more popular than others.

This year it was a slower year for me with only 3 adventures published (although one, as you’ll see below, was a short campaign so that should count as something, right?). But I’m already well-underway on a new one in a brand new genre – a genre filled with fire and blood – so stay tuned!

Based purely on downloads, this year’s top five adventures were:

5. Thrusher Manor

Haunted houses are classic settings and work equally well in almost every RPG. I’ve played great haunted houses in Call of Cthulhu, D&D, Warhammer, and even Traveller. Thrusher Manor is a twisted and complex haunted house set in the Caribbean of the 1680s. Here, an exiled duke retreated to a private island where hedonism, black magic, and vice ran rampant. Years later, when contact with this island is lost, the PCs are sent to find out what exactly happened to the estate’s infamous guests…. Get it here or watch the video overview.

4. The Siren’s Citadel

Arrr, there be pirates in the top five… again! This isn’t terribly surprising since my most popular video on YouTube is all about building great pirate adventures and making sure they feel different from typical medieval fantasy games. And The Siren’s Citadel is a true, swashbuckling adventure, unique in that the entire plot spins around a romantic competition, and players can entirely use their wits, brains, and retorts, to win the day (or just draw swords and have at it). Get it here or watch the video overview.

3. Crown of Fetters

Okay, it’s not escaping me that ALL three of my pirate adventures are ending up on this list again. The polar opposite of the previous adventure, A Crown of Fetters is dark, terrifying, and dreamlike…. all originating from the fact that it’s a loose, spiritual reboot of an old Ravenloft module. A Crown of Fetters traps the players on a doomed, cursed ship and challenges them with vengeful ghosts, hateful pirate hunters, and worse. Get it here or watch the review of the original inspiration.

2. Gotham ’39

One of this year’s adventures crashes into the top 5. After watching HBO’s The Penguin, I was inspired to write a gritty, noir-ish thriller set in Gotham City. In Gotham ’39, the players aren’t superheroes, they’re just ordinary citizens who are drawn into a tangled mystery involving gangsters, underworld kingpins, and a new villain who claims to have discovered something unnatural. Gotham ’39 was one of the adventures I ran at Gencon this year, and the table had a great time unraveling this epic mystery… no help from Batman required! Get it here or watch the video overview.

1. The Beast of Black Keep

I’ve played some giant campaigns in my time (Enemy Within, I’m looking at you) but I always find that I have the best time with short campaigns… adventures that are nicely connected, allow for character growth, but are short enough that your players will actually see the finale after five or six sessions. The Beast of Black Keep is the first short campaign on this website, and challenges a group of heroes to venture into the cursed Black Woods to recover a missing duke. Deeply seeped in old tales and folkloric fantasy, The Beast of Black Keep features an open-ended sandbox for your players to explore. Get it here.

And more coming…

Have you played any of these adventures? Or do you have a different favorite adventure here? Will 1980s adventures make a comeback next year with the big Stranger Things finale? Let me know in the comments below!

Related: Favorite Adventures from Five Years Ago

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This month, I explore a genre I have not spent a lot of time with — Victorian horror!

Most of my horror gaming has happened in the 1920s, the default setting for Call of Cthulhu. The 1880s never pulled me into its dark embrace, but the excellent new edition of Cthulhu by Gaslight inspired me to take a Jack-the-Ripper-like-stab at writing my own adventure in this period.

In this month’s adventure, An Opera Unceasing, the Paris Opera’s audience and performers vanish without explanation in the midst of a new premiere. The authorities are baffled, and the investigators are called in to help solve the mystery before the city plunges into fear and rumor.

I spent a lot of time researching the “rules” of Victorian horror, trying to figure out how to really separate a gaslight adventure from a more modern one. I emerged with some interesting results.

4 Tips for Gaslight Horror

1. Ground the Supernatural in a Dramatic Societal Failure. Victorian horror is most effective when chaos breaches established order. This approach is faithful to Victorian novels, which consistently place horror amid refinement and progress rather than in the gutters. So don’t begin your gaslight horror with a murder in a dark alley – begin it with a murder in a dark alley outside a prestigious gentleman’s club in London. In An Opera Unceasing, the adventure opens with an inexplicable vanishing at the height of propriety – the opera. The disappearance does more than shock, it also imperils the stability of Parisian high society itself, elevating the mystery into a matter of public dread and private panic.

2. Double-down on the Era’s Rigid Social Hierarchy. The late 19th century is known for a very rigid social structure. This element makes the period unique from others. Weave this into your players’ investigation! To solve a mystery, PCs should have to navigate diverse settings and personalities from all manners of societies, forcing them to change tactics as they go. In An Opera Unceasing, I move the players all across the social hierarchy, forcing them to deal with servants, workers, lazy gentlemen, and the richest of magnates, in a variety of settings poor and wealthy. And as a GM, I really enforced this and had dramatic reactions to roleplaying that was not taking into account social status…. forcing my players to really think about clues are gathered. A servant with low social status should have to get a clue in a very different way than a wealthy lady of society. (GURPS GMs, use those Status reaction modifiers!)

3. Erode the Mind. Madness is in the center of Victorian literature. It’s something an ordered society feared. Emphasize this! Exposure to the unknown should degrade the PCs’ mental fortitude, not just threaten their lives. In my adventure, I reinforced the horror with weird nightmares that chipped away at the PCs’ sanity or could threaten to grant obsessions or unnatural knowledge… things the PCs most certainly did not want.

4. “Industrial-level” Cruelties. The Victorian era was well-known for its grinding industrial evil, as well as workers’ fears of being exploited. I used this and decided that to make the horror feel earned, the evil artifact at the center of the adventure should demand maximum depravity from the antagonist. I invented an artifact that not only did terrible things to people — casting them into a universe of utter terror — but also was fueled by a man’s callous cruelty. This not only helped highlight my antagonist’s vileness, but created new opportunities for horror when the players discover that his ambition had no limits.

What are some of your favorite gaslight horror adventures? Let me know in the comments below.

Get An Opera Unceasing FREE here…

During the premiere of La Demoiselle aux Lanternes, the Paris Opera’s audience and performers vanished without explanation, plunging the city into fear and rumor. Drawn into the mystery, you must navigate the salons, streets, and shadows of 1879 Paris, where wealth, obsession, and forbidden knowledge intertwine… before the echoes of the opera draw you into something far worse than silence.

• An Opera Unceasing (GURPS Horror)
• An Opera Unceasing (GURPS Horror) – Printer Friendly
• An Opera Unceasing (Call of Cthulhu: Cthulhu by Gaslight)
• An Opera Unceasing (Call of Cthulhu: Cthulhu by Gaslight) – Printer Friendly
• An Opera Unceasing – VTT Tokens & Assets

Related: From 1870s horror to 1970s horror…

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I learned a big lesson writing this month’s free adventure! Mood changes everything.

Coming off of Gotham ’39, a noir adventure filled with twists, interconnected families, and dark secrets, I yearned to move on to something simpler. Good GMs know when to pull back and do something different for their players (and they’re own sanity).

I picked an old adventure I had written ages ago, back when I was running weekly games for my friends and I didn’t have the time to create detailed scenarios. The adventure, “Ogre Prince,” was a simple one — the PCs were hired by a princess to hunt down three ogres in the nearby forest, one of which was her transformed brother. There were a few woodland encounters along the way, a big battle at the end, and if the PCs were smart, they wouldn’t accidentally kill the brother.

Beware – A New Mood Changes Everything

To keep it creatively interesting for me to re-adapt this adventure, I decided to change the mood. While I think the original adventure was set in the Forgotten Realms, I decided to shift to a dark folkloric feel. After all, the PCs are traveling into a haunted woods to find the cursed scion, and a dark folkloric mood is perfect for such a task. I had fun years ago writing the dark medieval Lands of the Dark Wicche adventure. Or, maybe I’ve just been inspired by too many Vaesen games!

Little did I know that that one decision would radically change everything — the story, the characters, the monsters, and the length of the adventure. The switch to dark folklore made massive changes to the adventure structure, including:

• In folklore, people get lost in the woods. Therefore, rather than a few linear encounters, the forest became a sprawling place, a sandbox with many, many possible encounters, both set ones and random ones.
• In folklore, whispered rumors build the world. The world of folklore is built on rumors: whispered half-truths about ogres with visions, druids who vanish in bark, and witches who turn into red-haired seductresses. Rumors are better than exposition. Folklore leaves the truth muddy—and tastier for players to uncover. Therefore, my forest needed lots of secrets, rumors, and familial relationships that were kept buried.
• In folklore, safety is rare. Characters in old stories are almost never directly helpful. This required a host of gray-shaded NPCs into the adventure, where trust, like treasure, must be earned. One of my players commented, “no one seems to like us here.” And that’s exactly what I was going for.
• In folklore, there is weirdness. Authentic folklore has weird parts, parts that are inexplicable or defy reason. Therefore, the forest in this adventure needed more magic — a sunken manor, a section of the forest with a split personality, dark elves spending decades looking for shattered bits of a statue for no apparent reason.

The list could go on. But the lesson here is that one change to an adventure’s mood made massive changes to the entire adventure, where now, other than the setup, it’s 95% different than the “Ogre Prince” that I started with.

And as a result, it took me MUCH longer than I anticipated to finish and run!

The First 1Shot Campaign!

Thanks to that one tweak, The Beast of Black Keep is the biggest 1ShotAdventure I will have released. In fact, I’m going to call it the first 1Shot short campaign! It will likely take groups ~5 sessions to complete this one. This length seems to match some recent surveys of gamers RPG habits, too, where most campaigns begin and end in under 8 sessions.

This is also the first adventure I will have released for Shadowdark, a system I’ve been enjoying recently to replay some old TSR adventures I never got around to trying. But you GURPS fans will find a lot to like too, as it unveils a new section of Yrth’s horrifying Blackwoods.

I’m curious if any of you have done this before — take an existing adventure, change the mood, and end up with something totally different? Or did I just go down my own haunted rabbit hole with this one?

Get The Beast of Black Keep FREE here:

Enter the cursed Blackwoods, where a vanished duke may not be as gone—or as human—as they say. Amidst twisted trees strange creatures barter in riddles, a witch trades secrets for organs, and a monstrous plot brews to shatter the peace of the northern towns.

• The Beast of Black Keep (GURPS Fantasy)
• The Beast of Black Keep (GURPS Fantasy) – Printer Friendly
• The Beast of Black Keep (Shadowdark)
• The Beast of Black Keep (Shadowdark) – Printer Friendly
• The Beast of Black Keep – VTT Assets
• The Beast of Black Keep – Complete Map Collection by Stefan Leng

Related: Historical folklore

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Years ago a common criticism of Call of Cthulhu‘s investigative adventures was “if the players fail a single Spot Hidden roll to find a clue, the adventure is over.”

I think that’s mostly a lazy critique. It’s like saying if your D&D players never find the dungeon, the adventure is over.

But there is some truth behind it. Some RPGs, especially horror ones like Call of Cthulhu or Vaesen, lean heavily on investigative adventures. Unlike a typical fantasy adventure, like a dungeon or an epic quest, investigative adventures are written more like the outlines of a TV episode. These adventures are designed to feel more like the source material they are emulating, like a good horror story or a Sherlock Holmes adventure. They have plots, backstories, characters with relationships, twists, and clues. Lots of clues.

Clues can make or break investigative adventures. Ideally, clues will appear, provoke thought and debate, create more options for players, and then move the game along towards an epic ending. But placing clues is an art. Unlike a troll guarding a door, a clue can easily be missed!

And, one person’s “that was so obvious” clue is another player’s “oh my God how would you expect me to ever find that?!” one. Your players’ abilities to find and put clues together can vary a lot!

I played in a game once where we were trying to solve a murder. We missed the one clue in a garbage can — no one thought to look — and we spent an hour touring various nearby diners, gyms, and libraries and never found a single plot hook. Yes, the GM gave us agency to miss clues and do what we wanted, but no, we didn’t feel like we were making any progress. Bad GMing? Probably. Bad adventure writing? Definitely yes.

But if clues are too obvious, the adventure feels linear. If you examine a crime scene and find threatening note from the neighbor in the victim’s pocket, well, you’re 100% going to visit that neighbor next. There’s little agency there, either.

Gotham City in 1939…

This month’s adventure is Gotham ’39 – The Mirror Eternal, a pulp noir mystery set in the 1930s of Gotham City. The investigators aren’t caped crusaders —they’re skilled but ordinary investigators, fighting against corruption and crime with luck, wit, and determination.

Gotham ’39 features both linear sections and open-ended ones, which I think is a strong way to build an investigative adventure. The adventure starts with a murder, one the PCs witness. The superstitious mob boss Santo Cassamento is gunned down at a nightclub, and something weird is going on with his body. There are a few scattered clues, but more importantly, the PCs soon find themselves blackmailed and told to meet at a secret location later that night… or else.

It took me forever to place clues in this adventure. I used lots of player feedback and even technology (thank you Notebook LM!) to constantly place, replace, and rethink clues. Where was Batman when I needed him?

But in the end, I think it worked, and players will navigate this adventure feeling both smart and like they have real agency. So, here’s my best advice to placing clues in your RPG adventure:

Use Different Types of Clues

Very aware that players have different relationships with clue-finding, I made sure to use lots of different types of clues:

Physical evidence. These clues are the typical ones — paper in desk drawers, shards of glass in a mobster’s pocket, photographs in a safe. Some are hidden and some are obvious. I also like to reinforce physical clues with handouts, which gives your thoughtful players something to look at and feel as they are putting the mystery together.

Witness testimony. There are a lot of NPCs in Gotham ’39, and I doubt most groups will encounter half of them. But I made sure that every NPC possesses a clue… if the PCs can pull it out of them. Of course, finding these clues requires the right combinations of diplomacy, fast-talking, and intimidation. By hiding clues behind NPCs with big personalities, roleplayers and social skill-loving players have ways to move the adventure forward.

Research. Some players love the part of the mystery where they hit the library. I intentionally added a library for those players who like to bias towards research when they get stuck. Generally, my library clues overlapped with other clues, but provided more detail. Sure, you could hear a reporter tell how the Beretti crime family once blew up a building, but the library gave you more details on it.

Contacts. I made sure that the PCs started the game with a few contacts. In GURPS, this is easy because there’s literally a Contacts advantage which lets you reach out and ask for advice. But even with other RPGs, give your PCs a few key contacts at the beginning — an old newspaper editor friend, fellow Jazz musicians, whatever.

Redundant, Redundant Clues

I always make sure that two similar clues are placed at two different locations. In Gotham ’39, for example, the PCs can find a copy of a ritual page which is key to understanding what’s going on. But the ritual page can be found in three different locations, because they were owned by three individuals. This means missing a clue isn’t a big deal… it will likely be found later.

Clues Should Have Consequences

Some clues trigger strong reactions from some key NPCs. This makes finding clues feel less ordinary, and more exciting, or even dangerous. For example, there are two smuggling rings in Gotham. If the PCs disturb either of them (which is highly likely!), the bloodthirsty smuggler kingpin will come after them for vengeance. When the world reacts to clue-finding, it feels more real.

Secret Clues

I placed some difficult-to-find clues that will reward players who comb over every detail, but won’t stop the investigation if not found. For example, in one location there’s a hidden safe. If the PCs find it, they can find photographic evidence that will take down a mobster. This can give them a huge advantage in the investigation, but if they don’t find it, that’s okay, they’ll have to just find a different mobster to influence.

A Tangled Web… Conventions Ahead!

Despite all of this careful placement, I’m 100% positive I missed things, and that there are potential dead-ends or hiccups in this adventure. I’m planning to run it at Gencon 2025 this year, so I have a few more months to iron out the details. If you get a chance to run it ahead of that convention, let me know in the comments below how your group fared!

Also, this was the first adventure I wrote where I used Google’s Notebook LM as an editing assistant. I regularly uploaded alpha versions of the adventure and asked it to find plot holes, build timelines, look for dead ends, and spot all the spelling and grammar mistakes. The AI didn’t write anything for me, but it was really great to have a tool that helped me hone an adventure before I bring it to the table. And I had a blast listening to its podcast output, which let me find even more errors, when the “hosts” talked about a character motivation that was simply not true. If you want, you can listen to it here, which gives a nice overview of the adventure in about 15 minutes.

Get Gotham ’39 – The Mirror Eternal FREE here:

Powerful mob families are tangled up in something dark—something they don’t understand. The whispers say they are summoning a demon, but the truth is stranger. As the players dig deeper, the bodies pile up, the lies get thicker, and a new villain steps from Gotham’s shadows.

• Gotham ’39 (Batman: Gotham City Chronicles RPG)
• Gotham ’39 (Batman: Gotham City Chronicles RPG) – Printer Friendly
• Gotham ’39 (GURPS Pulp Noir)
• Gotham ’39 (GURPS Pulp Noir) – Printer Friendly
• Gotham ’39 (Pulp Call of Cthulhu)
• Gotham ’39 (Pulp Call of Cthulhu) – Printer Friendly
• Gotham ’39 – VTT Assets

Related: More Obvious Superheroes

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The post Placing Clues is Hard – Gotham ’39 appeared first on 1Shot Adventures.

Every year I try to sus which of the free one-shot TTRPG adventures on this site gets the most eyeballs. Obviously, it’s hard to tell how many plays each one gets (which is why I ask you to tell me!), but it’s clear some adventures are more popular than others.

Based purely on downloads, this year’s top five adventures were:

5. The Warlock’s Tunnel

While Harry Potter isn’t the draw it used to be (unless maybe HBO revitalizes it), its wizarding school setting makes for a wonderful introduction to RPGs for players young and old. It’s familiar, is centered around mysteries and danger, and everyone loves playing kids. In The Warlock’s Tunnel, players go on a search for a missing student only to end up discovering evil located in the very foundations of Hogwarts. Get it here or watch the video overview.

4. The Siren’s Citadel

Arrr, there be pirates in the top five! This isn’t terribly surprising since my most popular video on YouTube is all about building great pirate adventures and making sure they feel different from typical D&D games. And The Siren’s Citadel is a true, pirate adventure, unique in that the entire plot spins around a romantic competition, and players can entirely use their wits, brains, and retorts, to win the day (or just draw swords and have at it). Get it here or watch the video overview.

3. A Crown of Fetters

More pirates? Geez. Everyone loves pirates this year. But whereas The Siren’s Citadel is an adventure filled with light-heartedness and swashbuckling, A Crown of Fetters is gloomy, gothic, and filled with pirate terror. A spiritual reboot of an old Ravenloft module, A Crown of Fetters traps the players on a cursed ship and makes them deal with ghosts, vengeful undead, and worse. Get it here or watch the review of the original inspiration.

2. St. Cecilia’s Blasphemous Bordello

There’s something’s special about old west horror… an era where only a revolver, a good hat, and ol’ fashioned guts is the only thing preventin’ yer doom. In this adventure, a truly bizarre and grotesque murder has happened in a reformed bordello. With the sheriff out of town, the PCs are the only ones that solve this unusual mystery. Soon, they discover the existence of a dark supernatural entity created through the town’s anger and shame…. Get it here or watch the video overview.

1. Amethyst Reign

I never would have thought a cyberpunk adventure would take the crown! But I guess all those folks asking for cyberpunk over the years were right. In this adventure, a gang leader finds out his girl was stolen by the celebrity musician Amethyst, so he hires dozens of street toughs, wannabe gangsters, and legit assassins to kill the star before the release of his big new album. Get it here.

And more coming…

Have you played any of these adventures? Or do you have a different favorite adventure here? If so, let me know in the comments below!

Related: Spooky One-shot Adventures

The post Top One Shot Adventures – 2024 Edition appeared first on 1Shot Adventures.

This month, I revisit mythological Greece with The Scourge of Triton, an adventure designed for newer players. (This must be a theme this month, as I recently posted a video on the best starter adventures for Call of Cthulhu!).

There’s lots of debate about what makes a great starter adventure. Veteran roleplayers like myself probably started with big sandboxes like Keep on the Borderlands where there were few rails, and you were one 20’x20′ square room away from getting murdered by a horde of angry kobolds.

Over the years, as roleplaying evolved, so did starter adventures. Star Wars Tatooine Manhunt threw the players an interesting and complex story to deal with, set in a very-large, very-familiar setting, with very-familiar characters. Notably, Tatooine Manhunt maintained the deadliness. For a Star Wars adventure, surviving this one took some effort!

Call of Cthulhu takes a different approach. Edge of Darkness, one of its most iconic starter adventures, has a solid story, but tries to strike a balance between a sandbox and a linear adventure. There’s a small location to investigate– a creepy old farmhouse — but the adventure gives players a handful of other locations and characters to investigate before they get to that farmhouse. Edge of Darkness does a great job of showcasing Call of Cthulhu‘s clue-filled investigations, social elements, and deadly occult foes. Sure, not everyone may survive this one, but hey, it’s Call of Cthulhu.

And finally other starter adventures take a completely different approach. Most of Dungeons & Dragons’ introductory adventures, like the well-written Lost Mines of Phandelver, aren’t dangerous at all. But instead they set out more to teach the players about the rules and cooperation vs. throw any real challenge at the players (at least compared to some of those older adventures). And Phandelver has both linear sections as well as a small, open-ended section when players enter town.

So do any of these “great starter adventures” have anything in common? Believe it or not, yes.

The Three Rules of Great Starter Adventures

• Great Starter Adventures are Familiar. Newer players are learning mechanics and a new setting, so it’s important to keep the core of an adventure familiar to them. Whether it’s Keep’s “dangerous caves”, Star Wars’ Tatooine, or Cthulhu’s abandoned farmhouse, those are all places easy to imagine. Players immediately get the dynamics, they are quickly immersed, know what’s risky or not, and can improvise faster when they understand the setting.
• They have clear challenges and obstacles from the beginning. All of those adventures spell out the challenge in the first few minutes. Keep has a dangerous cave that desperately needs clearing out, Tatooine Manhunt has a rebel operative that has to be found ASAP, and the mystery-filled old farmhouse is introduced by a sick old man right away. And the bad guys are obvious too. No one is going to mistake an orc or someone that looks exactly like IG-88 as a good guy.
• They can be standalone… or kick off a campaign. Many GMs make the mistake of inventing overly complex campaigns before running their first session. With new players, you never know if they’ll like the game to come back for more. All of these adventures do a nice job of working in one session – even if you don’t get through the whole thing – but still give the group lots of options to continue into a short campaign. These adventures do a wonderful job building in hooks and suggesting there’s a bigger world…

And even though all of these adventures are designed for new players, they have enough complexity and robustness for veteran players to enjoy. Veterans can politic and pit gangs of monsters against each other in the Keep’s Caves of Chaos. There’s a whole world of smugglers and villains to manipulate in Tatooine Manhunt, plus plenty of dangling plot threads. And Edge of Darkness has so many ways to approach the danger in the farmhouse, that no game will play out the same way. Good beginner adventure does not mean bad expert adventure.

The Scourge of Triton

And so this month’s free adventure is The Scourge of Triton. In this adventure, a feckless king angers Triton, and now the god of the deep is threatening to unleash a massive boar on the kingdom unless forty teens are sacrificed to the god. To stop the boar, the PCs must adventure into its home — the underworld — and across the sea to find weapons capable of defeating it.

Obviously, ancient Greece is a familiar setting. And Triton’s curse happens in the earliest moments of the adventure, giving the players a clear problem to deal with. And while the adventure can be concluded in one session, I purposes included lots of plot hooks that give the players options if they want to continue playing in this world, as well as threads and threats that the GM can include to make the adventure less linear and give more experience players more agency (treacherous Spartans FTW).

What are your favorite starter adventures for any game system? Let me know in the comments below.

Get THE SCOURGE OF TRITON here for free:

• The Scourge of Triton (GURPS Greece)
• The Scourge of Triton (GURPS Greece) – Printer Friendly
• The Scourge of Triton (Old School Essentials)
• The Scourge of Triton (Old School Essentials) – Printer Friendly
• The Scourge of Triton – VTT Tokens & Assets

Related: The Honey Tree of Pelion – Another Ancient Greek Adventure

The post Great Starter Adventures – The Scourge of Triton appeared first on 1Shot Adventures.