Draconic Prologue Quests
Added 2022-10-17 17:57:42 +0000 UTC
“Wait, why are we here again?” That’s a question no Dungeon Master wants to hear. It means your adventure has a weak hook. To fix this, during your session zero character creation, you need a solid prologue quest to unify the party and point them in the right direction.
In the new D&D Starter Set, what’s your party’s reason for adventuring? As written, the module provides each character with separate reasons for traveling to the island.
- The cleric is investigating visions of impending doom emanating from the island.
- The fighter is looking for guidance in their path to fulfilling their heroic destiny.
- The paladin is on a pilgrimage to the cloister to contemplate their place in the world.
- The rogue is tracking the guild member who reportedly stole a fortune.
- The wizard is searching for hidden magical knowledge rumoured to be at the observatory.
Although some of these hooks are great, with five different motivations pulling the party in five different directions, it could muddy the story’s focus and make the adventure unnecessarily confusing.
This is guide to crafting your own adventure hook and dragon-themed prologue quest with three juicy examples: The Honored One, The Bloodfire Crisis and The Famine of the Black Drakes.
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Comments
I like some of these ideas and will be using the dragon egg one as a plot hook, but I feel like they're generally much better as narrative framings than actual quests to run (though I do like how you seeded bits of the adventure into these). Just tell your players "hey, this is the situation" and then start the campaign off of that.
Joshua Crouch
2023-10-04 09:26:08 +0000 UTCMy family wanted me to hosta DND game, which led me to looking into DOSI. I've done a lot of studying and I'm actually looking forward to DM'ing this with some modifications. Thanks a lot for the inspiration
JustRenderin
2023-07-26 18:08:19 +0000 UTC
