One of my favorite things about Tiny Dungeon 2e is located smack dab in the center of the book. It’s not a rule or a player option, but rather a small section, only three pages long. It’s an adventure generator written by Jason Ismael that includes five tables with all of the necessary seeds to create an adventure with the roll of a few dice. Each adventure prompt is generated using the following basic structure: “The Adventurers must VERB the NOUN in the PLACE, while dealing with a HINDRANCE and opposing the ANTAGONIST.” The verb, noun, place, hindrance, and antagonist are randomly generated from their respective tables and plugged into the spot, giving you a fully functional, if bare bones adventure hook that can be great for a pick-up game at a convention or a night when your plot has gone off the rails due to player actions and you need something for them to do. Each table has 36 options, so you’re sure to get something at least a little bit different each time you do this. I’ve rolled up a couple of adventure hooks below that I’ll flesh into a small story in an attempt to show off just how robust the generator can actually be.
The Adventurers must take the fey from the graveyard, while dealing with a betrayal and opposing the necromancer.
This one seems like a simple retrieval mission, and the fact that a necromancer and a graveyard showed up in the same prompt makes this very easy to put together. A fey lord has hired the Adventurers to rescue his daughter who has been taken captive by a vile necromancer for some dark purpose. They must fight their way through the spellcaster’s undead guards to reach the crypt at the center of the ancient graveyard he makes his home only to find that there is no one to rescue. The fey lord has been working with the necromancer to finish a particular ritual, and the Adventurers are meant to be the final sacrifices. They have to contend with not one, but two dark spellcasters who are on their home turf. Can they survive?
The Adventurers must overcome a scribe in the subterranean city, while dealing with a kidnapping and opposing the spy.
This one is a little bit on the odd side. At first none of the plot points really seem to go together. But after looking at it a little bit (and being a bit liberal with some of the terms), you can put together a session where the Adventurers are attempting to defeat an opponent through words instead of through action. Their patron and teacher is a noted newsman who is capable of bringing in the news from outside of the mountain to the people who live underneath it. But there are political factions in the realm that would like nothing more than to see things destabilize and foment some action against the actual peace-loving goblins that make their home in the nearby forest. They have done this by bringing in a noted firebrand and propagandist, and also by kidnapping the patron’s children. The Adventurers must rescue their patron’s offspring while stopping their hometown from getting into a needless battle. All the while, they have to figure out who they can trust and who they cannot in this city beneath the mountain.
The Adventurers must secure a traveler in the enemy territory, while dealing with the weather and opposing the invasion.
Like the first one, this plot seems ready made right from the get-go and really only needs a little bit of fine-tuning. For over a century, a brutal war has dragged on between two enemy kingdoms. At this point, no one living remembers the reason the fighting started in the first place, but still the fighting continues as a matter of course and inertia. Entire generations of people have been shattered by the fighting, and still more and more young people are asked to give their health and their lives for king and country. There have been reports of a man seen traveling through the battlefields. The kingdom’s sages and oracles claim that if the reports are true, his appearance could change the tide of the war. The Adventurers have been tasked to find him and bring him back to the capital. The adventure starts as they have finally found him. The only problem is that he is currently journeying through a battlefield that is far behind enemy lines, and there are two gathering storms on the horizon. The enemy’s forces are gathering for another brutal stab at your defenses. The second is an actual storm that threatens to flood the plains you are on if you can’t get out fast enough.
Ben Erickson
