I’ve decided I need to design a new adventure. The “announcement” that the next adventure season of D&D will be in Undermountain has fired my imagination. I’d very much like to design a series of short dungeon adventures detailing undiscovered corners of the megadungeon. So, why not?

Okay, the “announcement” didn’t actually say “it’s Undermountain”. It just hinted, very heavily, that Undermountain is next. It’s still inspired me! And, I thought you might want to see the processes I go through when designing an adventure.

The very basics:

• The adventure will be for a single session of 2-4 hours
• It will be for character levels 5-10 (Tier 2), aimed at level 8 characters
• It will be set in Undermountain
• It is for publication on the DMs Guild

Now, I need an idea for the adventure. I’m not afraid to use (and reuse) old tropes, so I’m going with the old classic: It’s a secret tomb. My first thought was to have it of a dwarf, but that one is perhaps too obvious. Let’s make it of a halfling instead. I can’t think of any adventure featuring a halfling tomb, which just means there are 30 I can’t remember.

If I make it the tomb of a halfling cleric of Yondalla, that gives the immediate motivation of retrieving a holy relic from the tomb. Does anyone else want the relic? That gives the possibility of another faction interfering, and more interest than just static encounters.

That said, I don’t want to have the other faction “racing” for the relic.

What happens if I split the other faction into three encounters, as follows?

• An encounter with a lone member keeping watch outside the tomb
• An encounter with the “recovery specialists” looting the tomb
• An encounter with the leader and the rest of their men as the party leave the tomb

That gets most of the way there for a 4-hour session.

The remainder of the session can be taken up with dealing with the threats avoided or not overcome by the recovery specialists.

Hmm: a concept and a basic plan of attack. Next step: choose some threats!