Hey, all! I finally have a basic structure for the adventure made, and thought I would share the fruits of my labor with you. I know most don’t have the concentration necessary to read something this long, but you may or may not get a kick out of it.

Characters start in town, hear that the lady of the manor needs help. They talk to her, and she hires them to find her husband, dead or alive. They go find him in a cave filled with orcs, where their chief, if questioned, tells them that they captured him as tribute to the Ogre chieftain that threatens to ransack them.

Another opportunity for information arises when bandits ambush them on the way back; one of them is carrying a message to kill them, written by someone by the name of Grak, in Water’s Edge.

If the lord is brought back to the manor, the lady rewards them, but the lord has something else on his mind. He takes them aside and says he went into the woods to meet his mistress and run away with her, but was captured by a scouting party from the orcs. Now, he offers to pay them a hefty sum to make his mistress disappear.

Another avenue is that the characters go to find the ogre chieftain. In order to find the ogre’s lair, they can either Gather Information from travelers in the town, or they can pay the local sage to spend a few days researching it.

When and if they find the ogre’s lair, whether they manage to kill him or not, a mysterious stranger appears outside the cave and reveals that he’s been watching them since they got back to town with the lord, and offers them an opportunity: to come with him to the main city of Renthar, and gain employment from the Adventurer’s Guild.

If they accept and kill the lord’s mistress, a witness comes forward the next day and alerts the guard, throwing them in jail. However, if they decide to tell the lady, she has one of two reactions. If they don’t have evidence, she has them thrown in jail for implicating her husband. If they have evidence, she enters a fit of rage, kills her husband, and then herself in the realization of her mistake. In the commotion, guards come in to find the characters standing over the dead lord and lady, and throw them in jail to be hung the next day.

Whether they succeed or fail to produce evidence of the lord’s unfaithfulness, the characters are visited by a stranger in the night at the jail who offers them an opportunity, due to seeing their work clearing out the orcs and the ogre chieftain: he will spring them free if the characters wish to come with him, and work for the Adventurer’s Guild in the main city of Renthar.

Constructive criticism is appreciated! I know it is somewhat cliche, but at least its not just straight-up hack n’ slash, because my characters have asked for SOMEthing that leads into RPing.