D&D adventures are really only constrained by the imagination of the DM who dreams up and runs them. With the right frame of mind and the right imagination, nearly anything is possible. But sometimes, all DMs find themselves in a creative rut. The idea well runs dry, and all that flows from your pen is yet another goblin-infested cave that has been bothering the local villagers. There’s nothing wrong with goblin-infested caves, of course, but after a while, everyone involved might be starting to crave some variety. And kill too many goblins, especially as you get higher in level, and it just looks mean.

Part of the issue might be that the DM hasn’t thought about all the possible adventure types. Maybe they’ve been sticking to dungeon crawls, or maybe they’ve been trying to go for a lot of intrigue-based adventures, and when their intrigue feels stale, they fall back on a goblin-cave. So, to perhaps help the idea wheels turn, and to try and stop you running out of ideas in the future, here are four types of adventure that can be run, and some tips for them.

The following types of adventures will be discussed:

• Dungeon Crawl
• Intrigue
• Event
• Exploration

Dungeon Crawl

An old classic, the dungeon crawl was the first type of D&D adventure designed. Literally in a dungeon as well, the one built below Castle Greyhawk. And it’s a classic for a reason. It can be as simple as you like. A dungeon could just be a few rooms below a castle with monsters and traps, or a dungeon could be a flooded cave built by a Wizard where gravity works in unconventional ways and half the rooms are are full of poison smog.

As complex as the dungeon’s contents and traps can be, a dungeon crawl will still often be simpler in outright design than other types of adventures, given the likely fewer number of NPCs involved and the relatively low number of potential outcomes compared to other types of adventures. To a lot of DMs this is an advantage, reducing the amount of prep time needed, and likely getting the most bang for your buck in terms of the prep time to play time ratio.

If you want the quintessential D&D experience, a Dungeon Crawl is the way to go.

Published Example: White Plume Mountain, Tales From the Yawning Portal.

Some tips:

• Keep It Fresh: Dungeon Crawls are, by and large, simpler than other adventure types, but that doesn’t mean they have to lack originality. A goblin-cave is alright once in a while, but there are so many interesting locales you can use in a Dungeon Crawl. A long-abandoned College of Magic. A corrupted forest in the Feywild. The still-running automated forges of a long-dead Artificer. Never be afraid to try something out-there with your setting
• Have It Make Sense: So, you’ve chosen a cool locale. When you build the dungeon, have things make sense for that locale. There’s a great story in the front of Curse of Strahd about the writer having a vampire standing in a room of a dungeon otherwise full of Kobolds, and it stuck out like a sore thumb. Wherever your dungeon crawl is, every enemy and trap should be influenced by that choice.
• Multiple Solutions: Dungeon Crawls often require less improvisation on the part of the DM than many other types of adventure, but a trap many DMs often fall into is having only one solution to their puzzle or trap, and the game slows to a crawl when the PCs fail to discover it. Have multiple solutions possible, and I would even recommend allowing a player’s solution to be ‘correct’ as long as it’s clever and makes sense, even if you didn’t plan for it.

Intrigue

City nobles meet in the shadows. Cults form away from the eyes of city watchmen. Money changes hands and throats are cut. Intrigue-based adventures can be an excellent change of pace in a D&D campaign, and their intricate nature and wide range of possibility can leave your players with fond memories for years to come. When done well, an intrigue adventure could be run with five different parties, and end up with five entirely different sequences of events.

Intrigue adventures are personally some of my favourite to run. At their core, they need a mystery. That is a component about as essential to an intrigue adventure as a dungeon is to a dungeon crawl. There needs to be a mystery, and the PCs need to want to solve it. This mystery can be as simple as a murder at a dinner party, or as complex as a shadowy cult maneuvering its members into the royal court for an elaborate coup played out across three cities. Typically, creating an intrigue-based adventure is different to other types of adventure, and it can be far more time-consuming. You don’t write a list of rooms and the obstacles within, instead you typically write the situation, and the NPCs, their allegiances, how they know each other, and what they want. There can be more to it, but that tends to be the basics.

It can take some practise to develop a clever mystery, and to get the balance of clues right so it’s solvable but not obvious, but with a bit of practise, you can have a mystery to put Agatha Christie to shame. Okay, maybe not that good, but it can be pretty good.

Published Example: Most of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist

Some tips:

• Improvise: Typically, what you have planned to actually happen should consist of one or two set-pieces (because we always come up with those, let’s be honest). Instead, I tend to have an idea of what will happen if the PCs don’t get involved. And then improvise and react (in-character as the NPCs) to the actions of the PCs to try and keep their plans together and, eventually, deal with the PCs. Rigid plans won’t help you much here.
• Leave Multiple Clues: PCs are blessed with the ability to do almost everything except what the DM expects, and if they don’t find the clues you expect them to, the game can slow to a crawl. So err on the side of too many clues, in too many places, than on too few. And have a variety in the types of clue for your mysteries. Have paper trails, from letters written from one person to another. Have human clues, such as a non-committed underling who could be paid to talk, or someone key in the intrigue who likes to drink and is a blabbermouth. Have physical evidence, like scraps of torn clothing, discarded murder weapons. Have rumours about people’s motives. Just, a lot of clues are ideal, trust me.
• Include Third Parties: If you’re going for a more simple mystery, this might not be necessary, but in the vein of nearly every detective novel of all time, there should be people not involved with the mystery itself, but who have secrets of their own. The drug-addicted nobleman. The corrupt watch sergeant who isn’t part of the mystery, but worries the PCs might dig up evidence of his corruption in their investigation. Somebody at court who wants to murder somebody else at court for their own reasons. Not only does it make the mystery more alive, but it adds in some false leads.
• Use False Leads Wisely: Red herrings are nigh-essential for anything but the most simple of intrigue-based adventures, but they should be managed carefully. It’s easy to feel like a session has been wasted if the PCs spend four hours going for an angle that turns out to be pointless. So with false leads, have them in some way give a clue (or several, see tip 2) to the overall mystery. The falsely suspected person has some information regarding the mystery. That dagger is not the murder weapon, but it was used by an unknown person at court to defend themselves against a similar attack. Something like that, and even the most false of false leads will feel somewhat rewarding to follow.

Exploration

Exploration is allegedly the third pillar of D&D 5th Edition, and it is rather woefully under-acknowledged. Only one class has many features that interact with this pillar, and the Ranger isn’t exactly the most beloved class in 5th Edition (whether its reputation is deserved or not), and the rules as written don’t tend towards much in the way of exciting adventure. So, you typically need to go a bit outside the PHB and DMG rules to make an exploration-based adventure fun, but it’s entirely possible.

Personally, although I’ve not often run them, I try and avoid using getting lost as a potential hazard in an exploration-based adventure. All it really serves to do is slow things down, and it’s easily avoided by something as simple as a Ranger in your party. Instead, rather than the players not knowing where they are, they don’t know exactly where the thing they’re looking for is. Be it a city, a person, or a MacGuffin, they only have a rough estimate of its location. This style can also have some overlap with Intrigue, as mentioned above, due to using clues to narrow down its location, if not find it exactly.

For a different kind of challenge, and to engage in one of the lesser-used parts of 5e gameplay, try an exploration-based adventure. Have the PCs have to find the lair of the BBEG amongst miles and miles of wilderness or desert or arctic frost.

Published Example: The middle section of Tomb of Annihilation.

Some tips:

• Use the Environment: Part of the fun of an exploration-based adventure is that they can offer a wider range of obstacles, including more natural ones, than you might find in a Dungeon. Cliffs, extreme heat, extreme cold, predators, alternate routes, rivers, etc. There’s so much to use. One of the more notable encounters my party had was against a ravine they wanted to cross with their wagons, without losing a day or so by traveling to the nearest bridge. They made it across, but not unscathed, and it used more resources than a random fight would have.
• Reward Wrong Turns: Chances are, the PCs aren’t going to make a beeline directly for the thing they’re looking for first time. They’ll have to go through some places before that, and they’ll probably make a few wrong turns. Have some fun things in these areas. An abandoned cave once inhabited by a hermit wizard. A village where the people have been slaughtered and replaced with undead. A magical pool that helps and harms in equal measure when drunk. It depends on the fantasy of your world, of course, but you have the chance to include some really interesting things for the PCs to chance across.
• Beware Too Few Encounters: 5th Edition is balanced around 6-8 Medium encounters per day. Now, that’s often not reached, but a lot of people still try and aim for 3-4 encounters a day. This can be harder in wilderness travel, because even if you include non-combat encounters, it can feel a lot like throwing filler at your players, and take up a lot of time, especially as exploration is likely to take several days. One possible solution I’ve seen is to use the ‘gritty resting’ rules when traveling, due to the worse conditions on the road, where a short rest takes 8 hours, and a long rest takes several days. That way, the encounters can be spread out over the exploration without throwing dozens at your PCs.

Event

As said before, an event-based adventure can overlap with any of other other categories. Aside from the example given above, perhaps the mystery surrounding an intrigue-based adventure is a group with a goal, such as overthrowing the king, and investigation is needed to root them out before they can manage it. Perhaps an ancient magical artefact is about to spew eldritch corruption into the land, and the PCs must explore to find a similar artefact that will stop it doing that.

Published Example: The Feast of Saint Andral, Curse of Strahd.

Some Tips:

• Have a Time Limit: As much as we wish they would, villains don’t sit around and twirl their moustaches until the heroes get close. Instead, if the heroes are trying to stop an event before it comes to pass, set a time limit for when it will come to pass and stick to it. Seeing the PCs motivated to get things done quickly can add an edge to their decision making, and it’s often great to see them rise to the challenge.
• Have Consequences For Failure: Although, of course, ideally the PCs will succeed and have their preferred version of events come to pass, it’s possible they won’t always. They could be too slow, they could spend too long chasing false leads, or just flat-out lose a crucial fight. If that is the case, I would recommend having the villains succeed, and have some pre-planned consequences from that (and of course, modify them if it makes sense based on the PCs actions). This can lead to further adventures down the line where PCs look to make things right.
• Improvise: Returning from intrigue-based adventures. While the villain in an event-based adventure may have more specific and immediate goals than an intrigue-based villain (in an intrigue-based game, the goal could be as simple as ‘keep my cult a secret’), they should still be upsettable by the PCs in other ways than just flat-out stopped, typically at the climax of the adventure. Be willing to adapt to any changes in the situation that your PCs cause. Hell, if you and your villain are clever enough, these changes in circumstance could work in the villain’s favour.

Hopefully these examples of adventure types have been helpful, as have the tips within. Of course, these four adventure types are not the only ones in existence, and they’re not mutually exclusive. Besides event-based adventures typically using another type of adventure for their main content, it’s entirely possible to blend the others. Exploring to find the BBEG’s base, and then crawling right on through. Intrigue to learn of a secret location, and then exploring to find it. Your imagination is the limit. Don’t let it be much of one.

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