It could also be an opportunity for XP to help level up a new player or give the DM a great way to drop a useful (or necessary) magic item into a storyline without it feeling too forced or convenient. This could be when a player is absent and the group wishes to not proceed with the larger story. Instead, I’m wanting to create a mini-quest… a small adventure that I could possibly insert into a larger campaign. I’m making the assumption that you (and I) have already created the “world” our players’ characters will inhabit based on info found in Chapter 1… and you’ve defined the style of play and fantasy setting (see pages 34-41 for these types of discussion) and maybe even walked your way through the tables that help setup some cataclysmic event and the key players (good and bad) that will make up your campaigns’ ultimate story arc. I’ll still pull as much as possible from the offerings of the DMG, so even if I ignore a random roll I’ll still select from the other options in a table unless it just plain doesn’t make sense. In those instances, I’ll let you know when I’ve decided to ignore the dice and making a non-random decision.

So, that said, what you’ll find below is my attempt at creating a simple little adventure using (as often as possible) the new 5e DMG tables and charts… and deviating where I find a dice roll doesn’t make sense. Any DM who has tried to craft a random dungeon or adventure knows that you often have to ignore the dice and go with what’s favorable for the developing story. But rolling dice isn’t going to give you a complete, out-of-the-box gaming experience. If you’ve examined the new DMG, you know there are some really amazing tables in the book that use random die rolls for certain decisions - villains, NPCs, and even dungeon layouts can all be created somewhat using nothing more than a die roll consulting a table. My goal here is to create that framework and try to avoid going too deep into the nitty-gritty details that can either be made on-the-fly during gameplay or after the framework has “stewed” a little in my head. Any experienced DM will tell you, however, that a good adventure will often require some (or a LOT of) tinkering once you’ve created the skeleton framework. (I wasn’t really know for season-spanning campaign-style adventures that would go on and on… and I don’t think my players had the attention span for that either.)Īfter finishing up with the 5e DMG, I thought it might be fun to try and create a mini-adventure using the new book’s content. Frequently, we wouldn’t have all that much time to play, so I often found myself creating short adventures that could be completed in 2-3 hours or over just a couple of sessions. And have some fun, obviously.īack during my AD&D days, I was always creating adventures for my players. Well… it’s time to put the book to the test. Earlier this week, I wrote about the newly released 5th edition Dungeon Master’s Guide and how much I had enjoyed reading through it and uncovering some great tools for creating custom campaigns and adventures.

Dmg encounter building