This video kicked my mental juices into full gear. Here is the adventure hook I’ve generated from the same four cards... I’ll work with my players to determine why their 1st level characters are in a walled port town in a desert region of my game world. A hundred miles of road-less sand lays to the east and west, and it’s a good sixty miles north up a dry riverbed to reach Foxhall, a wizard’s keep at the foot of the red mountains. Perhaps some of their characters will be locals, or maybe they’re adventures from far-away lands. They could even be sailors on a ship in port. The point is that they don’t need to know one another at the start of the session. 1st Encounter: After everyone tells me where there character is in or near town I’ll start the session by describing shouting and bells ringing. Everyone in the street is pointing up at an aerial battle between a dragon and ten bird-folk. Several of the bird-folk are killed by the dragon, and plummet to the ground. After a while the great beast’s wings are damaged, and it is driven to the beach a short distance from town. The players have the opportunity to join in on the battle if they desire, or they can wait until the bird-folk and some locals are victorious over the dragon. 2nd Encounter: Regardless of their participation in the battle, after the dragon is defeated the characters will have the opportunity to interact with the town’s leaders and the surviving bird-folk. To make the encounter a little more interesting the bird-folk’s translators were the first to die in the combat. While the remaining bird-folk all understand common the remaining bird-folk can only say the following words: Yes, No, Not, Help, Teach, Make, Know, Home, Hurt, Good, Bad, Up, Down, North, South, East, West, Fly, Walk, Have, Give, See, Sleep, Eat, Drink, Say, Get, Us, You, and Dragon. NPCs / Objectives: The bird-folk seek to negotiate with the town. They claim ownership of the dead dragon’s body but only insist on keeping the dragon skull and claws. They would also like the town to provide funeral pyres for their dead and care for their wounded until they’re able to travel to Foxhall. Magical healing can speed their recovery, but new flight feathers will have to be re-grown naturally before two of the survivors will be able to fly again. A promise of an escort to Foxhall for the grounded bird-folk would be an optimal outcome, as it would allow the healthy bird-folk leave immediately to insure that their home in the mountains is safe. The official town leader is a governor appointed by a distant city. A thin middle-aged man who dresses more like a tradesman than a nobleman, Governor Wexnor’s badge of office is a plain brass crown which he chooses to carry in one hand rather than put it on his head. Wexnor is a pushover who does nothing without “advice” from the town’s two priestesses: Lady Derya Hakan and Kay Lampwright. Hakan is an elderly human who, if you didn’t know better, you’d label as the town’s crazy cat lady. Lampwright is a beardless dwarf female with the cutest face and friendless smile anyone has ever seen. While they worship different gods the two are of like mind. Lampwright proposes that the dragon scales be used to create a magic covering for the town’s gates. Hakan wants the dragon’s heart sent to Foxhall, where she believes the Wizard Peak Hornharken can use it to complete the construction of an Iron Golem he’s been working on for years. Flynnder Almsgiver, head of the local merchant’s guild, does not agree with any of these plans. Instead, he argues that the Bird-folk should surrender all of the dragon parts to the merchants of the town. One of the dead bird-folk, when he fell from the sky, destroyed Mornwell the Fishmonger’s stall in the marketplace and another crashed into the chicken coops of Simber Cornwall. Almsgiver himself lost three goblin servants. The poor things feared for their lives, of course, and abandoned their duties, running off into the desert when they saw the combat above. If the characters agree to carry the dragon heart and escort the two injured bird-folk to Foxhall the town provide them with several pack animals to carry water and tents for use on the journey. 3rd Encounter: On the second day of travel the characters will encounter a force of nomadic Goblins wearing tattered dragon scale armor and carrying dragon scale shields. Having learned of the dragon’s defeat, the war party is traveling down the dry river bed toward the town. Their goal is to infiltrate the town and steal dragon scales, which they covet. Oh… this is longer than I’d intended to write...
Story telling is the easy part for me. I'm terrible at coming up with good names for places and sometimes an NPC in a fantasy-setting. The story or flavor text in my cards has been an excellent source for me to create proper nouns for my world. Even inspirational of creating derivative names from the text. Thank you for this video.
After watching your video, I decided to try it myself. I picked out 4 somewhat random cards from my small collection. I've pulled Massive Raid, Knight of Infamy, Sapphire Drake and Temple of Plenty. With that I was able to come up with a large side quest, or maybe even an addition to the main plot. A Massive Raid conducted by the Knights of Infamy, the main purpose of this raid was to capture the Sapphire Drake which was protected inside the Temple of Plenty. With that, i have already got many ideas on how to advance through this story. Thanks for the advice man, I am definitely going to use this trick whenever I get stuck with creating my campaign.
I've gotta be honest- I am a huge mtg nerd and I never made the connection to putting them into inspiration for my sessions. This will be remarkably useful. Thanks!
I really love this, my players have turned off the beaten path more than a couple... hundred times. So I need really quick, innovative ways to make side content. This idea is pure gold, i used this method once and my players had a blast! Plus it saved me a lot of brain power and helped me get threw the initial writer's block. So I had to come back and comment this: if your a DM and your players love ignoring the big picture; this is an amazing and effective way to get the creative mind going to produce good, fun, and in-depth content
There was an article in a magazine YEARS ago on how to convert MtG cards into characters. A 1/1 with first strike would be a level 2 rogue with Improved Initiative for instance.. It was a cool idea.
Surfing goblins' lieutenant could be a mage or a spell caster of some kind. He could cast gusts of winds to move the dunes, so the goblins could catch the wave :P
With the same cards, I got the alternative idea that you're bringing the dragons down from the skies with the help of the birdfolk and forcing him into the domain of the sand goblins. So now, instead of serving the dragon, the goblins have basically learnt sand surfing to escape from the dragon who usually is too lazy/slow to catch up to sand surfers. They're waiting for an opportunity to get back at the dragon, whilst the birdfolk just want the dragon gone because they hunt dragons. The party can learn about the dragon, the birdfolk, and the goblins from various sources if they try, and can then try to contact these parties directly to carve out a deal. The party then has the chance to either try to sneak through the dragon's lair alone, or to lure him out and fight him alone, or to draw him out, have a standoff alongside birdfolk, or just have the birdfolk and sand goblins do most of the work whilst they coordinate the whole thing. Just my twist on what I saw :)
Awesome idea! Just another reason to buy booster packs (thanks a lot!) The art and flavor text is what first attracted me to Magic the Gathering. I will definitely be using this approach. Again, excellent video, Matt!
That's actually a pretty cool idea. I play magic but when I do, I go more for mechanics & card interaction. I also am Dm, St etc.. I'm surprised this hadn't occurred to me prior, so thank you for this cool idea
I really like this idea. I have tried something similar with the Call of Cthulhu LCG cards, it's n almost never ending source of sites, characters and ideas. Brilliant stuff as always from afistfulofdice!
Excellent ! Giving a "Dune" feeling to your adventure immediately came to my mind -- Spice giving immortality in the Dragon's lair, Fremen with wings, Harkonnen's goblins... ;-)
Just want to say a big thanks to you for this vid... liked and subbed. I have just tried this, using your method, and it worked awesome, from the 4 cards I picked I hashed out a nice sequence of events that work well with each other.
This is so genius. Getting emotional. I'm a big Magic player myself. Definitely going to do this! Game store, take my money! *runs to game store for boosters*
Great idea and video! Thanks Matt. BTW I picked up the core books for 3.5 ( as that was the last version my pc's and I played ) hope you don't mind but I am stealing this awesome idea to run as my first d&d session in 15 year's. ..lol. Feels good to be back. I'm super excited for my Sat. Game! Thanks for sharing this and your awesome inspiration. \m/ P.s. I can't wait for more vids of one on one campaign. Cheers!
I recently did this, though with a different fantasy game. Fair warning, random cards can lead to strange adventures. I made a campaign that included suicide-bomber goblin brothers, leading a serpent monster through a maze with magic jewelry, and a "fight club" that involved a guy with a clam for a head.
The PC's at a festival in the desert and shield surfing is a main event. The PC's have a race using dexterity checks to maneuver and the winner of the race gets some gold.
As a new DM these videos are extremely helpful for me and I want to thank you very much for making them! If you do not mind, I have a quick question I really hope you can cover; In my campaign I am making I want to introduce two things: a new 'pirate' class and VERY old-fashioned guns. do you have any ideas on how I should go about creating these two things, making them fair and evenly balanced compared to the other weapons/classes?
Pathfinder's Gunslinger class is a good starting point to work from. Guns are a hard thing to balance though, and even Pathfinder didn't do it the best that it could have. Just make sure your players understand that you might tweak stats session by session, and that they are okay with that.
Powder guns are covered in D&D5 DMG. Here in France, a beginners' oriented RPG based on D&D 3.5 OGL called "Chroniques Oubliées" (Forgotten Chronicles) has an Harquebusier class and has a cool rule to simulate hazard of using guns in a fantasy setting. Whenever you make an attack roll, you also roll another d20 called the Powder Die. If the same number comes on both dice, the attack is a failure, the powder does not detonate. If the Powder Die is a 1, it explodes in the gun, the PC takes 1d6 damage and the gun is unusable for the rest of the encounter. If both dice are 1, the PC takes 2d6 damage and the gun is destroyed and cannot be repaired.
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