Here's a little DM-creativity game I sometimes play.
We pick a creature, a circumstance, and a setting. Then we write a 2 sentence scenario and an open question. The trick is, the last letter of the Creature has to be the first letter of the Circumstance and the last letter of the Circumstance has to be the first letter of the Setting.
Example: MindflayeR, Re-animating his lost lovE, in an Estuary.
Hsoo-loosh the younger, distraught over the death of his paramour, Creyen, has recovered her corpse and attempts to raise her from the dead in the brackish waters of an estuary above an sunken Aboleth Temple. Hsoo-loosh is a sorcerer, however, and the ritual to raise the dead is beyond his ability; but that's not stopping him trying. Can the adventurers prevent Hsoo-loosh from carrying out this botched ritual? What horrors will Hsoo-loosh create in his madness?
Pretty decent. My last word was Estuary. So now, you take the Y and come up with a Creature that starts with Y, then a Scenario, then a Setting.
Bonus challenges! A) Don't use a book. B) Don't think about it for more than 5 min (typing for longer is okay).
Yeti, Inciting War, in Rimy Caves.
Frore, the firstborn of the aging and infirmed yeti chieftain, seeks to take leadership from his father in a violation of yeti custom for the purpose of starting a war against the inhabitants of the human settlement of Grimfjord. If he is not stopped, he will gain the support he needs and the powerful yeti clan will sweep over and destroy Grimfjord like an avalanche. Violence by men in dealing with Frore, however, will only bolster Frore's assertion that the Sleetfoot clan cannot peacefully coexist with Grimfjord. Can the adventurers diffuse the situation on Icefloe Mountain? Or will the snow be stained red with blood when the yeti fall upon the lands of men?
"S" is next. Go! 
From S
SuccubuS Serving DrinkS at Sundance Film FestivaL.
Megara thought it would be a glamorous assignment, rubbing elbows with celebrities and stealing the souls of the rich and powerful. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a nightmare: with Paltrow and Jolie showing up, Meg couldn't catch even a stray glance. Barely able to convince craft services that she's a waitress, Meg stalks the film festival looking for any likely marks. Will she turn heads and score big, as is expected of her? Or will she suffer the fate of all failed succubi, and be sentenced to one lifetime as a mortal? (Disgusting!)
Go from L!
Stone Giant, Terrorizing Villagers, in Sweetwater Village
"I am the Great and Powerful ZO! No puny manling can defeat me! *tosses the head of the town champion in the dirt* Bring me 100 fat sheep and your two youngest children for my slaves or I shall crush your village!"
"E' for the next.
See, this is why we can't have nice things. No simultaneous postings.
I claim the 'E'.
Elephant. Trying to fly. Yellowstone Hill.
A young elephant with a vivid imagination pretends to be a fierce dragon and straps on paper wings. He runs to the top of Yellowstone Hill and jumps off. Suppose he really can fly?
"L" next (to make it right with Bawylie's post)
All right, I'll take a stab at it.
Lycanthropes. Subsisting on sheep. Poda's farm.
Poda knows all too well the horrid lives lycanthropes have forced upon them; his very own brother had the disease. But the lycanthropes he's allowed to stay on his farm have nearly exhausted his flock of sheep, he's not sure he'll make enough from wool to last the winter, and they refuse to leave - their appetites having grown exponentially. Can the heroes convince the lycanthropes to move on from the farm? Or will the farm (and eventually the nearby town) be overrun?
M is next!
... I hope.
MummY. Your hometown is being terrorizeD. DungeoN.
Recently many villagers have been mysteriously disappearing near the outskirts of town in the vicinity of an old underground dungeon. Eye witnesses have reported seeing a creature wrapped from head to toe in old yellowish rotting bandages. The creature, although slow, appears to be very powerful, and drags it's victims into the dungeon, never to be seen again. You've been asked to gather together a band of adventurers who are willing to risk their lives to find out what this creature is doing and to locate and rescue any survivors that have been taken.
N is next.....
"N"
Naga. Attack from the clouds. Sky castle.
The naga lord, Sslisskarassh the Sssupressssor, leers down from his drifting palace in the clouds. It has been decades since he has had contact from below. No surface dweller has dared disturb his solitude in some time. But his collection of slaves is dwindling. Without them, who will service and maintain his floating palace? Soon it will be time for him to replenish the ranks. The quaint little village on the horizon looks as good a place as any to start...
"E"
EttiN, Navigating, the Grand CanyoN
Fresh off two deep sleeps, Grog & MorGrog, the ettin, decide(s) it's about time they finally hunt down and eat that tour guide and his mules - the one who keeps brining groups of delicious people down into his lair. Grog believes they should start at the Parks & Recreation offices while MorGrog wants to wait for the your group mid-trail. The debate rages on when the tour guide leads the party close to the stubborn ettin(s). Can they get by without alerting the terrible two? Or will Grog and MorGrog hunt them up oneside and down the other?
N!
NothiC. Comic storE. Everytown, USA.
A nothic named Thaad is banished to an alternate dimension as punishment for his crimes against a large noteworthy kingdom. He is transferred to a little, everyday, normal town in the USA in this other dimension. Deciding to try to get on the straight and narrow, he finds a small comic and game shop, eats the owner, then pretends to be the owner hoping nobody will notice.
The regular patrons of the shop notice something different about the owner, but can't quite place it. As reports of the customers dying by rotting to death after the "owner" has stared at them when making a purchase begin to circulate, your friends ask you to help them find out what has changed recently at the shop. Will you accept their request for aide?
A...
Abarth The Manic. Conflict with a god. Darkdale Moor.
Abarth the Manic, a half-crazed necromancer, has succeeded in creating an immortal toad in his tower on Darkdale Moor. Granfos, the god of amphibians and bookshelves, is angered by this and has inflicted a plague of giant frogs upon the land. Can the giant frogs be prevented from swallowing everything?
R next
(edit - Ninja'd - fixed)
alienux wrote:
BoldItalic wrote:
Ok, this one is totally off the wall, but seemed like a fun bit to throw out there in case anyone was looking for something unexpected or different. 
Going with the 'R' from BoldItalic...
Rust Monster Swarm, Magic Gone Wrong, Gedren's Point
Thanks to a Wizard's botched magical experiment on a Rust Monster, there is now a large swarm of Rust Monster clones (plus the original) swarming through the local countryside in a ravenous feeding frenzy. (Somewhere between 25 - 40 of them).
Each time one of the Rust Monster clones is killed, a new one 'spawns' to take its place! The characters have two options to defeat the swarm:
1.) Undo the Wizard's botched magical experiment.
OR
2.) Manage to find the original Rust Monster among the swarm running all over the place and destroy it, thus ending the swarm's ability to spawn new/replacement Rust Monsters.
bawylie suggested that I add this pic to the entry for an extra bit of fun, so here it is.
Who wants to try out the letter 'T'?
The TarrasquE, EvolveS, at San RamoN.
Deep beneath the Catedral de San Ramon, site of its last defeat, the Tarrasque slumbers. Unbeknown to any, it undergoes transformations upon its defeat, so that on it's next awakening, it will not fall as it did before. What terrifying new power or immunity will it gain? Can the players discover the secret transformation beneath Catedral de San Ramon in time to warn the monks within of the Tarrasques imminent rise?
Coolest thread I've seen in a long, long time. 10/10 would read again.
Coolest thread I've seen in a long, long time. 10/10 would read again.
BoldItalic wrote:
Nightmare. Enigma. Alleyway.
You awoke suddenly in the night having had a disturbing dream wherein a faceless man in a blue robe was demanding the answer to a strange question and growing increasingly angry at your inability to tell him. Next morning, whilst walking along an unfamiliar alleyway, you see the very same faceless being, in broad daylight, coming out of a house carrying a spinning wheel. What does it all mean?
'Y' next
Yyrthak, kamakazi-dive, eel farm
Long and bitter is the emnity between Shreeeyak, the great yyrthak of Mount Oroborus, and the eel farmers of Yug, the city beneath the twisted mountain. For more than a decade, the giant fatty eels raised in the pens of Yug drew Shreeyak and her young to the farms. The farmers stayed clear of the pens at these times, and while they lost some stock, some kind of unspoken and precarious detente seemed to have been reached. Then, just a few weeks ago, the brood of Shreeeyak begain attacking the farmers of Yug in a fierce and suicidal fashion, diving from the sky like stukas, blasting the town with waves of devasting sound before diving into the heart of the city and fighting to the death. What could have brought the wrath of Yyrthak down upon the town of Yug? Is it the strange, two headed eels that have appeared only this springs in the waters of Roundabout River? Does the recent arrival of the mysterious, mute wizard known as the Silent Singer have anything to do with it? Or can the answer only be found in the mist shrouded heights of twisted mountain itself?
M is next.
YES! Thank you demon_idol for the 'M'!
Another one that could be considered off the wall, but I like it.
Medusa, All She Wants Is Love, Emerald Caverns
Lyrra the Medusa has a problem. She is very lonely and looking for love, but it is very hard to keep an 'interactive' partner around when everyone keeps turning to stone! Rather than give up, Lyrra has decided to enact a plan (using a magical mask) so that she can disguise herself and begin a search for a prospective love interest.
Will she be successful in her search for love? Will 'people' she encounters along the way be helpful, not care one way or the other, or be hostile to her? If nothing else, will she actually make new friends/allies along the way?
Notes
1.) Lyrra is not particular about whether the individual is male or female when it comes to her new love interest.
2.) This presents an opportunity to have what would have normally been a Lawful Evil 'individual' deviate outside the alignment norms for their race just to add an unexpected twist (and perhaps character ally?) to an adventure and/or campaign. Perhaps Neutral or Chaotic Good for example.
Who wants to play with the letter 'S'?
Stone Golem. Mother's Disapproval. Longrock.
Roddy the stone golem is in love with Lyrra the medusa and thinks her snakes are just cute. But Roddy's mom Beryl disapproves and thinks he should settle down with a nice Stonish girl like Jessica Pebblewitz over Longrock way. What should Roddy do?
K(obolds) next
BoldItalic wrote:
From K
KoboldS Seek the Maltese FalcoN in New AmsterdaM.
Legends tell of a powerful artifact, The Maltese Falcon, capable of transforming from mere statue into a Roc-construct. With the power to soar far above the heads of enemies and immune to small arms fire, such an artificer will turn the tide of the Great War. Otto Von Bismarck has dispatched a group of his Vainglorious Roughnecks to New Amsterdam to recover the Falcon for Alemania. Meanwhile, Fatty Ironscale, the Kobold thief plans to steal the shiny artifact from the New Amsterdam Museum "(It's so shiny! And in a museum! This is it, boys, the Big Score!"), having learned of the expensive trinket from a talkative pawn broker and Fence. Will Bismarck's Vainglorious Roughnecks claim the Maltese Falcon and put Alemania over the top to win the Great War? Will Fatty Ironscale beat them to the punch? And what interest does the Pawn Broker have?
M!
Here is one for the 'M' left by bawylie.
Merfolk, Kidnapped Fisherpeople, Eriden Cove
Some of the local fisherpeople have suddenly disappeared! The only thing that has been found so far are the empty boats which drifted to shore during the evening hours of the day they disappeared. (You could go with 10 - 15 for the number of people who have disappeared.)
Unknown to the townsfolk of Eriden Cove, the fisherpeople have been taken captive by a tribe of Merfolk that live nearby. Why? A group of individuals recently raided the Merfolk's underwater temple and stole the large glowing tear-shaped crystals that adorned the temple and sacred religious items from the temple's altar. The Merfolk are extremely upset and blame the townsfolk of Eriden Cove for the theft. They intend to hold the fisherpeople as hostages in a special air-filled underwater cavern until the stolen items are returned.
Can the characters, who happen to be conveniently staying at the local inn, determine what happened to the fisherpeople? Once they discover what happened to them, can they find the individuals responsible for the theft and return the stolen items? Assume that the guilty individuals are still in town at the moment (you can decide if they are local people or 'travellers' to suit your campaign). If you like, you could also add tension/pressure to the characters' search by having the thieves preparing to leave town (especially when they hear about the kidnapped fisherpeople)!
Bonus Mini-Quest: If the characters manage to recover the stolen items and return them to the Merfolk, can they negotiate a peace treaty between the townsfolk of Eriden Cove and the Merfolk tribe so that there is a lasting peace between the two groups?
Who wants to try out the letter 'E'?
Ettercap, potion-making, ghetto.
Apparently in the so-called "monster quarter" of a certain city is an old, shaggy shopkeep who milks all manner of arachnids to mix miraculous tonics and tinctures. If you don't see him when you walk in, check the ceiling. Apparently the wild specimen milked for a special batch of potion 538 wasn't the glacier tarantula as believed but a mutant albino "long-legged lady" and the recall on them hasn't been smooth. Also some domestic but expensive specimens have gone missing. Also one of them is a polymorphed acquaintance from a past adventure. Also not all potions have been confirmed to work similarly on all humanoid types, but effects are guaranteed!
Next: O
Dreamstryder wrote:
Otyugh, Hellspawn on the run, Necropolis
The otyughs of Viala descend from the semi-liquefied humans of the maggot-field basins in the Abyss. Most do not retain any knowledge of this, but Masher had an epiphany while dredging across bas-relief floors in the necropolis Phawrys, suddenly connecting the dots of the tale told in stone carvings beneath her track. Armed with the forbidden knowledge, she has taken up court in the necropolis, leading a missionary sect of otyughs and oozes, holding her own against insurgent demon assassins that want her eliminated.
Next letter is S.
- Vargtass
Sphinx. "X marks the spot". Temple of Karnak.
In the Temple of Karnak there is a massive stone door leading to a treasure vault deep inside a cliff. Opening the door requires that some or all of 35 bas-relief heiroglyphic symbols are pressed in the right order to spell out a pass-phrase. A sphinx will speak the pass-phrase if a riddle is answered correctly. The answer is "X marks the spot.". But what is the riddle?
Akeisha wrote:
Awesome thread. BTW, this game is called shiritori in Japanese.
Time to have some fun with the letter 'E' left by Dreamstryder...
Here is one monster you likely never expected! ;)
Note: The Earthquake Beetle is from the BECMI supplement book 'AC9 - Creature Catalogue' (full BECMI stats and description in the pic below).
Earthquake Beetle, Eerie Tremors and Earthquakes, Southhaven
The townsfolk of Southhaven are on edge after a week of unsettling terror, missing livestock, and even a missing farmer!
All week long there have been random earthquakes (during the daytime and at nighttime) that are localised to 'small' areas and seem to 'change locations' with some frequency.
The only thing the townsfolk are sure about at the moment is that the earthquakes and missing livestock have occurred in the same locations.
What the townsfolk are not aware of is that they have been 'visited' by a rare underground creature known as an Earthquake Beetle! This rare creature appears to be a mix of beetle, spider, and black dragon all rolled into one (at 100 feet in length).
The Earthquake Beetle has come to the surface due to hunger and found a bountiful hunting ground, thus it has continued to remain in the area rather than return to its underground home.
Can the characters find the source of the earthquakes and solve the mystery of the missing livestock and farmer? Will they be able to defeat this terror from the depths or will they be its next meal?
Note: I have tried to improve the quality of the pic, but this is as good as I could get it to turn out. I also hope there are no problems with posting the complete entry from an older book like this. If there is, I can easily remove the pic from this post...
Ok, someone gets to play with the letter 'N' now!
I really liked this blast from the past! Excellent creature. Here goes on N, a homage to an old illustration that stuck in my mind:
Nightmare, Escaping the Hag Coven, Nunatak
Forced into servitude, you carefully plot your escape from the forbidding nunatak home of a coven of night hags. How will you make it back to the coast, beset by haunting dreams, scryed upon by the night hags, and chased by their minions or the hags themselves on the back of a magnificent nightmare, over the barren glacier or through the icy tunnels of glacial torrents? Perhaps by stealing the fastest beast around ...?
- Vargtass
Regin_Vargtass wrote:
Akeisha wrote:
Regin_Vargtass wrote:
Elementals; Sowing chaos and wild magic; Crystal Gardens of the Forest Gnomes.
Deep in our enchanted forests lies a crystalline grove, this unusual and magical location has been tended by the secretive forest gnomes for centuries till a malicious sprite used the latent magic to open a portal to the elemental realms. Now elementals of all four elemental planes are competing to transform the grove and the surrounding forest including our gnome village into a prime material representation of their home.
Akeisha wrote:
iserith wrote:
Ok, picking up on the 'S' left by Arawn76...
Special Note: This adventure idea is based on the premise that these Harpies are far more intelligent than the ones featured in the final D&D Next play packet.
Seductive Harpies, Seeking Slaves, Sorcerer's Wood
A group of Harpies living deep in the Sorcerer's Wood is getting ready to hatch a clutch of eggs and decided that having some slaves to serve them during this time is a wonderful idea. They have made plans and preparations, ready to chain the new slaves up and lead them away once they have charmed them with their singing.
The Harpies have begun discretely patrolling the section of the Queen's Road that runs alongside the Sorcerer's Wood. The traffic through here is fairly regular and promises to deliver some prime slaves for the Harpies.
At the moment, five individuals who were travelling alone (2 were paired up) have been charmed and led away into captivity. One of the travellers was a well-known Cleric who was expected to arrive in the nearby town of Baywynne two days ago. Her failure to arrive has the local populace concerned and led the town council to ask the characters to investigate.
Will the characters be able to find clues that will lead them to the missing people and the Harpies' secret lair deep in the Sorcerer's Wood? Can they survive the other dangers that lurk deep in the woods? Or worst case scenario, will the characters end up serving the Harpies as well?
Alright, someone gets to have fun with the letter 'D' now!
"D"
Dragons. Singing. Gorge.
The humble town of Gorge Peak sufferes through a terrible Summer season every dozen years. This coming year will be one of them. For these trying times are the result of the dragons of Winterspine Mountain flying down into the gorge, below the town, and conducting their mating rituals. They bellow and sing into all hours for near the entirety of Summer, filling the valley with their incessant noise. Won't anyone put an end to this so the townsfolk can get some rest?
"E"
ChrisCarlson wrote:
Ettin. Nostalgia. Ale-house.
Bithel was in the Five Crowns Tavern getting fighting drunk on cheap ale, singing a maudlin song called "The Ettin Grove" whilst at the same time reminiscing about the good old days when the only rule about orgies was "count the heads and divide by two". A mail-clad paladin walked into the bar and tut-tutted, glaring disapprovingly at him. Bithel stopped singing and shouted at the paladin "Hey, two-heads, are you looking for a fight?"
'E' again
Exaulted Effreet. Transports hapless adventures to Sandstone Ziggurat of Earth.
A poorly worded wish leaves the adventures trap in an ancient sandstone ziggurat that resides on the plane of fire and sand.
next: "H"