1p adventure: The Bone Keep

Covered in perpetual mist lies the ruins of a keep, the site of an ancient battle. Who fought, and for what cause, is lost to time, but the ground is thick with broken bones and rusted war-gear that tell of terrible casualties. Reality is thin here, and a sinister presence stalks the ruins. Drawn here by the terror of the ancient massacre, it reaches through from the shadow realm to feed on the souls of the living. To this keep of mist and bone you’ve come, seeking a relic of great power.

Perhaps you can atone for what your own swords have perpetrated, by readying them once again...

The Bone Keep is a small adventure location, heavily inspired by Runehammer. Because of this, the entire keep is designed as a "room" in ICRPG parlance, meaning that it is meant to be played on a board. I've used the D&D adventure grid because I have it and it fits on my table, but you can use whatever. The important thing is just to set up the board so that the characters cannot walk in straight lines between the grove, the central tower and/or the far tower, and that the skull piles are in choke points.

The basic idea of being chased by evil mist while avoiding stepping on undead comes from a room outlined in the Fire & Ice-series. However, unlike in the ice room, the evil mist does not freeze the character but draw them into a mirror world or sorts. The idea is of course to get even more play out of a single board.

Another great Runehammer idea is to provide a location specific but general search table that you roll on no matter if the perception check or referee ruling indicates you "found" something or not. As the entire adventure basically takes place in "combat time" - there is always a threat present - there is a pressure to always perform combat-oriented tasks. By providing a search table you boost the reward for searching, thus gently tilting the risk/reward balance in favor of this non-combat activity in a less arbitrary way than if you were making up rewards on the spot.

You can download the adventure here.

Adventure: Vale of Oblivion

 I took the key elements of The Buried Giant and made them into encounters. To turn them into an adventure, just place the numbers 1 though 16 in any region on your campaign map or use them for a quest. The original setting is mythic Britain, but you can easily reskin it to fit your world.

Encounters 1-16

1. In a shallow pit lives the she-dragon Querig, breathing a pacifying mist that seeps out into the entire region. Her hoard of roman gold is small by dragon standards, yet sizeable for this meagre land. Save or be unable to attack it. Once bloodied, the dragon will gasp for air and suddenly memories of old wrongdoings and suppressed animosities will flood the minds of all nearby characters. If killed, the denizens of the valley will be overcome with murderous rage for seven days and seven nights.

2. The legendary knight Gwain, well past his prime, traveling on the mandate of a long-dead king. The knight is on a perpetual quest to rid the region of monsters, but age has rendered him forgetful, clumsy and lacking in resolve. He is seldom in the right place at the right time, yet he keeps patrolling the roads like he has done for as long as anyone can remember and occasionally kills a beast. Together with a good mood and a genuinely helpful nature this still makes him well liked by the locals.
(The absent-mindedness and clumsiness is an act: the knight's true mission is to protect the dragon).

3. Four orphaned children living in the cottage of their dead parents, herding goats. Each day, the younger siblings bring all gray goats to graze, while the white ones stay behind to be fed poison by the older siblings. The children plan to use the poison-fed goats to kill the dragon and claim its hoard, to revenge the parents that it ate.

4. Reed-elves. They drain life for sustenance and want the weakest member of the party; if s/he is extradited, the rest are free to leave unmolested.

5. A small pond with refreshing water. Skeletons of massacred children litter the shores, barely covered by heather and soil.

6. A Ferryman. For a few pieces of Tin, he offers to row to an enchanted island just of the coast. All passengers must answer three questions truthfully and they must travel in separate boats - the sea is too rough. The ferryman makes no guarantees that passengers will arrive at the same location - considerations of weather and of tide - but surely capable and loving companions can find a way to reunite?

7. A mountain monastery, swarming with birds of prey. Many pilgrims come there to seek advice from the sage Jonus, widely considered the wisest man in the region. The monks keep a monster in the cellar, feeding it dissidents. To absolve themselves from this terrible sin, the monks chain themselves to a grate and offer their naked bodies for the birds to claw and peck.

8-9. Soldiers serving Lord Brennus, standing guard by a bridge [9. crossroads]. A warlike stranger has made a hidden camp nearby; if spotted, he asks the PCs to smuggle him across the bridge. He has nothing to hide, he claims, but prefer not to disturb the Lord's peace or be caught up in the bureaucracies of passing a guard post while being an armed stranger.

10. A cockatrice. It petrifies any humans it encounter with its stare to injects them with poison, after which it crawls away. A petrified victim recovers in 1d6 hours, but any unwed man bitten by the beast must save. On a miss, he becomes obsessed with finding the dragon and live as its guardian and lover; on a hit, it is just a vague yearning.

11. An old crone, bitterly following a man with old-fashioned clothes who has made camp in a ruined villa. She complains that the man tricked her husband into his boat and that now she cannot find him. The crone wails and curses and tries to harass the ferryman into leading her to her husband; but the man maintains his innocence, for he only carries consenting passengers in his boat.

12. Trolls.

13. Two ogres.

14. An elderly couple, slowly traveling form their home in burrow-town to the monastery (7) to seek counsel about a son they haven't seen in years. They have poor eyesight and suffer from mild dementia, but something in their stride suggests a prouder past.

15-16. Two villages: one in burrows (15) dug under a hill, the other built from planks and shielded by a palisade (16). Once, the villages waged war on another but hostilities are now a thing of the past.