The Basic Adventure Formula: Town to Dungeon

The first thing you’ll hear about creating your first adventure and ongoing campaign is to “start small.” This formula is one way to start small.

A simple way to start a game of DnD is to have 1) A small town on the edge of unknown lands. 2) A nearby dungeon with monsters and treasure. 3) A group of PCs that have just arrived in town, hoping to clear the dungeon of both monsters and treasure.

This is a guide to creating a solid adventure that you can run, not necessarily creating the best D&D adventure ever. The Basic Adventure could easily become the beginning of an ongoing campaign or just a one-shot adventure.

There are 4 Steps to creating a Basic Adventure, with a 5^th Step being recommended but still optional.

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STEP 1 Describe Town

Use three sentences to describe the town. Here’s an example that I stole from somebody on the internet:

Enonia is a town on its last legs, on the edge of retreating civilization. It used to be a crossroads type of town, on the road to the great lost city of Irecia to the east. The unsure Marshal lives in the Keep close to town. 

You want to use these three sentences to describe the current situation for the town and its location. Maybe mention an important NPC. No need to go down a rabbit hole of trying to give it further detail at this point.

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STEP 2 Describe Dungeon

Next, describe the dungeon in three sentences. Here’s another idea I ripped off:

The Dale Woods are home to the crafty kobolds. Any brave hunters from town who dare enter the woods have found entrances to what seems to be a cave system, but none dare go within. Between the Dale Woods and Dark Woods lies the abandoned road to Irecia - with a bridge that crosses over a stream.

You want to make sure to hint at where the dungeon is located, and why the PCs would want to clear it. In this case, it’s near a bridge and some woods. The town views these kobolds as a threat. This is where the PCs are supposed to step in.

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STEP 3 Create the Dungeon.

This is where I buy a cheap adventure PDF and tweak it to fit with the ideas that I have already. Or more likely, I’ll buy the adventure first and then backwards engineer the town and dungeon.

But let’s say you want to create your own dungeon using the one described in Step 2 as inspiration.

In that case, I would use the 5-room-dungeon design. Here’s a full description: The Ultimate Guide to 5 Room Dungeons 

This method is a good way to create a dungeon that’ll keep the players interested. If you want a free sample of the 5 Room Dungeon being created, here's a 15-minute video: Your First Adventure | Running the Game

Because I’m lazy, I’d probably tweak “The Delian Tomb” adventure to fit with the town and dungeon descriptions that we have. You just need to change the Goblins to Kobolds and pick one of the cavern entrances that will lead to the Tomb. Conversely, you can keep the dungeon as created and edit your description.

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STEP 4 Create the Town

You don’t need much detail to create a town initially for a Basic Adventure. Ideally, you’ll spend most of the session(s) adventuring. In the Basic Adventure, the adventure is always outside of town exploring the unknown.

Make sure that this Town is NOT a character’s hometown. Avoiding this will cut down on your workload. Don’t get me wrong, this idea might work in future adventures. But when you’re creating an adventure for the first time, this becomes extra work that takes up mental bandwidth that is better spent on creating a cool adventure for the group, not pages of backstory for one player.

The Town needs two things: A safe place to rest and a quest giver.

In the example we have, a local farmer of Enonia could offer his old barn as place to rest. The quest giver could be the Marshal, and he needs the players to clear out the Kobolds for the safety of his town. You’ll need to create two NPCs, the farmer and the Marshal.

For both NPCs you’ll need a name, a description, and their importance to the adventurers. The farmer’s importance would be offering a safe place to rest. The Marshal would be offering the classic call to adventure, in the Basic Adventure it’s typically “protect our town from this menace.” Other typical calls to adventure could be “save my loved one” or “find this item for me.” If you’ve played Computer RPGs, then these should sound familiar.

You could stop right there, and the Town you need would be complete.

Some other possible town details:

NPCs: For every location that you add, you will also need to create at least one more NPC.

Inn: More comfortable than a barn.

Tavern: A source of rumors about the area.

Church: Healing spells and/or healing potions… for a price.

Smithy: buy/sell/repair weapons and armor.

General Store: Adventure equipment

NPC Side Quests: “There’s a group of bandits hiding in the wilderness and they have my stuff. Can you get my stuff back while you’re out there?”

Complication: “Another group of adventurers just left an hour ago to clear out those Kobold caves.” Maybe the PCs discover this group’s slaughtered remains. Maybe this other group ambushes the party and steals their loot. Maybe they’re the bandits mentioned in the NPC side quest.  

After following steps 1-4, you will have a basic starter adventure ready to run. Here’s another 15-minute video about bringing the adventure to the table: Your First Session | Running the Game

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STEP 5 Random Encounters (Optional)

The Random Encounter Roll provides a dynamic element that brings the location to life and keeps players (and the game) moving. These types of Encounters should always provide a sense of location, usually dangerous, and rarely beneficial.

Using Enonia as the Town and Delian’s Tomb as the dungeon, I would place the Kobold caves two hours travel from town.

The typical check for Random Encounters is DC 18 for a certain amount of game time (10 minutes, 30 minutes, 3 hours, etc.). I would make a DC 18 check for every 30 minutes spent in the wilderness near Enonia. The Tomb would be 2 hours away, so that’s 4 checks if they travel straight there. 7 potential Random Encounters should be enough. For 7 encounters, I would roll 2d4.  

You want to roll two dice because it creates a probability bell curve with numbers near the center of the bell curve occurring more often than the highest/lowest rolls. Anydice.com is a good resource for this.

Here’s the percentage bell curve for rolling a 2D4:

Roll        %

2            6.25      

3            12.50  

4            18.75  

5            25.00  

6            18.75  

7            12.50  

8            6.25    

For the numbers near the center, you want to put encounters that are most likely to occur. For the highest/lowest numbers, you’ll want something rare, perhaps it happens only once.

Random Encounters for the wilderness near the Kobold Caves:

2.   The Judgy Treant. A powerful treant lives in the woods. It is now tracking the party and silently judging them. They will be judged as friends or enemies of the woods. There is no other option. It’ll scare off threatening predators if they’re good or call for a dire wolf and 4 wolves if they’re bad. It’ll avoid direct contact. 

3.  The Wandering Druid. A friendly Druid will provide healing spells if necessary.

4.  Annoying Stirges. 1d4+1 Stirges attack the party.

5.  Typical Wolves. 2d4 Wolves. Rarely aggressive, wolves will usually steer clear of the party.

6.  Dire Wolf. 2 Dire wolves are stalking the party.

7.  Kobold foragers. 4 Kobolds from the caves are foraging for food. These Kobolds are added to the total population found there. They avoid the PCs at all costs. If the PCs are observed traveling towards the caves, they’ll retreat ASAP and try to warn their peeps.

8. Anomalous Zombies. 1d4+2 Zombies stumble upon the party. Clothed in tattered uniforms bearing the symbol of Irecia. This could foreshadow the second dungeon, which is an abandoned temple that’s located further to the east near the ruins of Irecia. Only happens once.