Welcome to today's #WorldbuildingWednesday post! Today, we return to the city of Modnae to look at how we can further flesh this location out with some fun adventure hooks! For those of you new to this series, I'm @oblivioncubed. In this series of posts, I break down what Worldbuilding means to me, how I build a setting, why I choose to build what I do, and hopefully provide you some inspiration to use in your Worldbuilding.
My world - Trothguard - is a setting I've created as a catch-all location for any tabletop RPG games I run, so everything I build is filtered through a lens of 'how will this improve the game for myself and my players?'.
Locations in TTRPGs would be fairly pointless without something to do there. Which is where today's topic comes into play: Adventure Hooks!
We touched on this briefly in the last #WorldbuildingWednesday post, but I thought that I'd expand on how we can turn Modnae into more than a one-trick-pony by adding some more adventure hooks. For anyone following along, some of these hooks are not going to be a surprise - I hinted at many of them in the last post.
If you're not familiar with TTRPGs you may be wondering what an adventure hook actually is - and, as the name implies, it's a way to hook your player's interest and drive them towards an adventure that you have prepared. "Goblins are attacking the town!", "There's treasure over there!", and "The mayor wants to pay you to do something!" are all pretty common adventure hooks.
Creating Adventure Hooks
When you're creating adventure hooks, there are two ways to approach it as far as I see it. First, you can build an adventure hook into your city for content you already have prepared. This would include settings and quests that maybe had been prepared for another city but were never used, or pre-built content from other creators, or stuff you steal out of published modules for whatever game you're running.
Hooking in Existing Content
Creating adventure hooks for things you've already got ready or for content you're using from other sources is definitely easier and faster than building a custom adventure hook and its associated adventure. In this case, you can basically just think of an interesting and brief way to tie the adventure into your city, and you're good to go. As an example, I could easily lift The Toymaker's Shop by @derekvonzarovich and plop it into my city and run it. Some adventure hooks are included, we know who the main NPCs are for this location, and we have a map to put in front of our players (or to reference ourselves if you're not running maps).
With something like this, at most you might have to tweak the adventure hook to really target your players, grab some stats for a few bad-guys, and make up a couple of names. For extra bonus points, adding in some way to relate this location and adventure to your over-arching story helps it feel like this was all planned ahead of time... even if you just grabbed it the same moment the players said "Let's go shopping". This applies to both setting-agnostic supplemental content like that made by Elven Tower or dozens of others, as well as setting-specific published adventures. If you like a map or an entire quest from an existing adventure... take it, change some names, add an adventure hook specific to your setting, and run it.
Making your own Adventure Hooks
The second approach is what we're going to focus on for this blog, and it is to build your adventure and its adventure hooks specific to the area you're in. In this case, the city of Modnae.
The worldbuilding we did last time for our city provides us a ton of different potential adventure hooks. Just from stuff we made up about the city itself, we have the following adventure hooks ready and waiting for us:
- Recent spats between the two competing transport guilds have escalated into full-on brawls several times over the last month, and someone needs to put a stop to the escalating conflict before it boils over.
- An giant centipede has gone berserk and broken out of containment. In its frenzied state, it's a danger to the population, and it must be recaptured or killed before it does more harm.
- Members of a previously unknown Myconid colony have recently been coming to the surface and preying on eggs and newly hatched Giant Centipedes. They need to be stopped before they cause issues with the supply of available Giant Centipedes. The Breeder's Guild is paying a hefty reward for results.
- A cave-in has trapped some of the townsfolk underground, and players need to rescue them. (Optionally, if the players are using the transport, you could also drop a cave-in on them).
These examples are some solid hooks that are relevant to the setting and play off of the elements already present in this location. Additionally, each one serves as a way to deepen the worldbuilding for this city. They are seeds that we will grow into adventures, and those adventures in turn will provide an avenue for building up the details of the city by giving us a chance to show our worldbuilding instead of just telling the players.
Our ideal result from each of our adventure hooks is twofold: First, we want to provide a fun session for our friends/players in our game. Second, we want this adventure to deepen our player's understanding of the world and its characters. Our adventures - and the hooks that bring our players to them - should reinforce the verisimilitude we've talked about so many times.
As an example of how these adventure hooks can provide us a chance to give our players worldbuilding context, lets look at each of them.
If they're interested in the Transport Guild brawls, we get a great opportunity to showcase the different groups, as well as provide a look at the political and economical sides of Modnae. The fun for the players is self-evident here. A 'Gangs of New York' style brawl between two factions is a ton of fun, and this hook can be provided directly (with players literally seeing - or participating in - the brawl as it unfolds around them) or indirectly (via talk in town leading to a quest-giver).
If they were interested in the Myconid colony, we get to provide a better look at just how integral our Giant Centipedes are to the entire city by having players directly interact with the Breeder's Guild. As a bonus, we have a chance here to put the players near baby giant centipedes, and with any baby creatures, that's a great moment for us to really play on those heart-strings and make them love our creation. For players, this provides an opportunity to fight Myconid and do some spelunking underground caverns. Both the semi-uncommon monster and the underground adventure can be tons of fun.
If they're interested in a frenzied Giant Centipede, we are handed a great opportunity to showcase the city's laws around not harming the creatures. We can use our NPCs to show the lengths they'll go to just to not harm them, and that's going to help make those laws feel real. The fun for the players here is just the chance to face this creature. Do they try and capture it? Do they risk breaking the law to kill it?
Lastly, if we follow the cave-in hook, we're provided the chance to showcase the transport system and the caves that run under the city. We get a chance to see just how huge of an impact a disruption in the transit makes. The fun for the players here is that it provides a chance for our adventurers to feel like Heroes in truth. Rescuing stranded villagers from a dire situation? Pretty great way to earn the rapport of the city's inhabitants (and a hefty reward).
When you're creating your own Adventure Hooks some things to consider or keep in mind are:
- What elements of your worldbuilding can you use?
- What are your players (and, to a lesser degree, the Player Characters) interested in and motivated by?
- A good adventure hook should provide a clear directive. "Save the blacksmith's son/daughter and return them home", "Kill the bandits in the nearby cave for a reward", "Steal the arbiter's magic scepter for the local Thieves Guild".
Now that we have an idea of how we could incorporate existing content into our worlds or how to build our own, the next thing to discuss is how to actually use these adventure hooks.
Using your Adventure Hooks
When it comes to actually using these, there's really no right or wrong way to provide these to the players. As we see in the examples we looked at, sometimes you can simply have an adventure hook unfold in real-time around the players. Other times, maybe you want to have an NPC provide the details. Another option is to have the hook transferred to the players through an inanimate object like a town bulletin board, a newspaper, or even something like a torn scrap of paper.
Keep in mind that being in the event may mean they take actions that will necessitate further consequences. In the case of our brawl example, if they used weapons and killed or injured a citizen this might mean they're now going to have some fun times with the law.
If you provide them the information through an NPC, or several NPCs, they're going to likely barter for their reward, and attempt to pry out as much detailed information as they can, so decide what amount of detail is known beforehand, and set a min/max reward.
If you provide it through some inanimate means, you're likely going to need to either have it fairly well detailed OR have several clues and hints that all tie back to the adventure hook.
You can even have an inanimate object lead to an NPC who clarifies the situation further, and then have the players end up being directly involved in the adventure hook event!
One other thing to consider is when to use your hooks. This is going to be dependant on the type of game you run and your players. I find that it's nice to have hooks available at the end of each session where you've finished a quest (while still leaving room for players to have some downtime activities like idle shopping or visiting known NPCs that they like). Having the hook at the end of the session lets you prepare the adventure before the next time your group meets up.
If you find yourself starting a session without an adventure already lined up, this is a GREAT time to use a pre-prepared adventure. If you don't have a prepared adventure, this is a great chance to toss in a bit of travel and some random encounters prior to reaching a new location.
With all that said - this feels to me like a good place to wrap this post up. Next #WorldbuildingWednesday we will look at how to take these Adventure Hooks, and truly grow that seed into a fully fleshed out adventure. We'll pick one or two of our adventure hooks and grow that seed into its final form - a viable quest to run at your table!
If you are interested in seeing a particular adventure hook come to life, let me know in the comments.
Thank you, and see you all next time!
Thank you for reading today's #WorldbuildingWednesday! I hope this has provided you with some inspiration!
If there's something else you'd like to ask me about, please do so! I will make every effort to answer it next Wednesday.
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