Hook, Line & Sinker – Fantasy Role Playing Games

This edition of Hook, Line & Sinker will focus on adventure ideas for fantasy role playing games.  As I came up with them, I was basing them off of my experiences with Dungeons & Dragons, but they are suitable for any fantasy role playing game.

Idea # 1

Hook – The adventurers are sitting in the inn in a town when they hear the story that a medusa has taken up residence in the ruins of a long dead wizard’s home.   A young child who was turned to stone was found in a field close by the swamp where the wizard’s house is.

Line – The town council asks the adventurers to look into the rumors and kill the medusa for them.  They will pay them a small amount of gold to do it.

Sinker – The rumor is not entirely correct.  There is no medusa in the swamp.  The thing that turned the child to stone was a cockatrice.  The wizard kept a flight of 3 of them as pets and for security to keep people away from his home.  Food has grown scarce around the ruins of the wizard’s home so the cockatrice have been looking for food closer to the town.  Make sure to provide the players the ability to turn anybody who has been turned to stone back to flesh by having a few stone to flesh potions available to them.

Idea #2

Hook – The party comes across a caravan that looks like it has just been attacked by bandits.

Line – The caravan indeed has been attacked but the only thing that was taken was the teenage daughter of the local baron on her way to be married.  The caravan master asks for the party’s help in recovering the young woman promising that the baron will reward them for their help.

Sinker – The young woman was not kidnapped by bandits, but was actually taken by the son of another local noble whom she is in love with.  The young man is rescuing his love from a marriage of state that the young woman wants no part of.  The two hope to escape to the lands of a neighboring land and get married themselves.  To complicate matters there has been a feud between the two families that has been going on for generations and their fathers hate one another.  Will the players drag the daughter back to be married to someone she does not love, help the young lovers get away for their own marriage of love, or will there be a Romeo and Juliet ending to the story?

Idea #3

Hook – The apprentice of a wizard who has befriended the players in the past bursts into the party’s camp one night and collapse.

Line – Once the players are able to revive him, the apprentice tells the players that the wizard has been taken captive.  A group of evil wizards need information from the good wizard in order to complete a spell that will cause all magic to stop working in a twenty mile radius.  After the spell is cast no one with magic can enter the area and any one that participates in the ritual will not be affected by the spell and will retain their magical powers and abilities.

Sinker – One of the evil wizards did kidnap the good wizard, but the apprentice is actually working with him.  One of the players has an object that is important to the ritual.  The apprentice’s job is to lead the players into a trap set by the evil wizard and his minions so they can get the object.  If the apprentice can get his hands on the object before then so much the better.