Adventure Hook

Today’s Hook: Monster/Magic Item grab bag Talk about getting into your character… On this very special “double sized” episode, the Adventure Hook guys take the premise of using random charts to structure an adventure, and go totally crazy with it to actually create the background of the character that Rob will be playing in the new actual-play 2nd Edition D&D Dark Sun campaign series that Aaron will be running soon… and which will (once again) be created in collaboration with Red Moon Roleplaying! From random encounter charts, to old skool magic item tables… from wild talent lists to simple flips of a coin, the Adventure Hook guys take inspiratiuon from all manner of random material, and weave it together with the anthropological, near-exhaustive Dark Sun source material to shape the details of the brutal background of Rob’s mantis-man telepath PC, the Thri-kreen Psionicist: Mma'ak-qhari of the Kanoko• Pack.  And of course, what character creation for an Aaron game would be complete with first consulting h

Today’s Hook: A new power enhancing (instantly level 20 for a minute) drug has made its way into the streets and is causing people to rampage and then drop dead...(Rhys Brown on Facebook) Talk about having drug problems… On this very special Halloween episode, the Adventure Hook guys endeavor to make your darkest dreams of running a game based on horror movie tropes into a waking nightmare by enlisting the aid of horror GM extraordinaire Mattiaz Fredricksson (of the Red Moon Roleplaying podcast) to bring his particularly dark imagination fully to bear upon this creepiest of RPG hooks… And it should come as little surprise that things almost immediately take a turn towards the Cthulhu Mythos! From a secure military installation working on a secret project to harness the powers of “The Color” (Out of Space?) to an MK Ultra style program utilizing a variation of Dr. Herbert West’s eerie supernatural drug which transform its users into invincible undead slasher maniacs and sets them on a rampaging kill

A long hiatus and there's reason to believe Maybe this season will be better than the last I can't remember the last hook that you read as you were leavin' Now the shows go by so fast.   Yes, Rob and I had to take quite a hiatus this years.  But we're back and ready to get back down to business! Story business!

Today’s Hook: An amateur wizard experimenting with planar travel in his house inadvertently damages the boundaries between planes, causing various other planes to begin intruding into our own. (Craig A. Butler). Talk about having boundary issues… This episode, the Adventure Hook guys take a number of different approaches when brainstorming up various explorations for this classic conundrum of the fantasy world… that is, pesky invading entities from other dimensions! But… who is truly invading who? From the City of Sigil, the 16 Gate Towns of the Outlands, and the weirdest spot in the Astral Plane imaginable, to the Rivers of the Dead, the Mists of Ravenloft, and (naturally) all the way to the Miskatonic Valley of Massachusetts… there is no realm in all the multiverse immune to the visitations of your co-hosts’ imaginations! Rob looks to Golemoro’s Mansion and the Cult of the Machine God from his Blackspire homebrew setting to draw inspiration for a “Macrocosm Manor”… a home whose attic may stretch into

Today’s Hook: The party awakens from a dream that starts coming true, but everyone’s dream ended differently. (Game Hook #403 by Critical Dice on Instagram) What’s that? Rob finally starts winning initiative again and we suddenly get treated to yetanotherepisode about dreams? Who knew restoring the Rightful Order to the Universe would carry such consequences..? Or bring forth such a treasure of a #newadventurehook! For not only did the Adventure Hook guys have this über-interesting idea to work with, but this episode sports a number of firsts, included the first really-and-truly start-to-finish fleshed out beats of a complete adventure… as well as featuring the brand new resource it was created with… Introducing: “The Plot Device”! And this episode the guys use its skeleton of a mind-map in all sorts of different ways… from the simple beats of an old skool Five-Room Dungeon, to plotting out an epic adventure of various storylines all running parallel, or even imagining multiple possible timelines and h

Today’s Hook: The sleeping dragon god is going insane, and projecting his/her dreams into all of his/her clerics. (by Bert Schmid @cubfinder) Dreams? Madness? Religion? Dragons??? It’s like this idea was tailor made for the Adventure Hook guys… Now, while you could arguably say many of the #newadventurehook ideas are actually exactly that, this pitch was again totally just right up their alley. So, while it would seem to be just the sort of story idea that lends itself to the Lovecraftian, the guys (admittedly additionally) first veer their imaginations off into some other much more uncommon territory indeed… By dreaming of Cockaigne..! If you’re unfamiliar with this rather obscure bit of medieval conceptualization, fear not..! For this episode you’ll be treated to a not-so-brief briefing on some the principle ideas surrounding this rather anarchist peasant fantasy.  From an earthly paradise populated by roasted fauna keen on their own consumption, or literal rivers flowing with wine, to the pilgrim hobo’

Today’s Hook: (Critical Fail!) An army of orcs and goblins invade! Oh muh Gerd!!! The Dice Gods must not be pleased with Aaron’s ten-in-a-row streak of winning initiative, for they punished him at the end of last show with Adventure Hook’s historic second Critical Fail episode..! Burdened with the tired trope of the invading humanoid army, the guys breathe new life into this been there, done that idea… By setting the scenario in ancient Rome..? Putting a fresh spin on this backbone for a classic campaign scenario, the Adventure Hook guys invite you to a magical fey-touched version of Romano-Britain, where the clashes of culture can get downright monstrous… literally as well as figuratively… From imagining threatening tribes of blue-faced pixie Picts, goblin Caledonian wolf-riders, and even frost giant barbarians straight from Jötunheim… to the second generation half-orc soldiers stationed in defense of the Roman Empire against these mobs of Scot gobs… things are assuredly going to get terribly mes

Today’s Hook: The strange folk who live in a mirror realm under the pond have been trying to coax surface-dwellers to visit. Every visitor has returned so far, but some return changed. (by Varnished Truths  @varnished_truth) One episode into Season Three, and while Foresight may be 2020, already the guys just can’t seem to help falling back into their old habits, can they..? As once again they put a Lovecraftian spin on this#newadventurehook idea to ultimately take things to their mostsquamous conclusions… Just not right away… Because throughout this entire episode your intrepid hosts give you the listener a full-on mental download of all matter of frighteningly useful bits of lore, certain to make your loved ones suspect you’ve been replaced by the fairies… or worse… Rob takes you back and forth along many mysterious paths of actual fairy folklore… as well as the fates that befall such unfortunate humans so “taken away” (and include a few of his own concepts around even more “Laws of the Fae”) to inspir

Today's Hook: A seamstress once sewed with such passion that her enchanted works became heirlooms that passed down their blessing (or curses) to the families that inherit them. Many covet them (submitted by Jenny Randle) Merry Christmas and Happy Yule! Going home for Christmas can be stressful enough without the added pressures of great great great grandma's cursed Advent Calendar! At least it'll distract from Uncle Joe's annual political tirades.  Will your overly large family discover the spirit of generosity this season or become consumed by greed as mysterious gifts are bestowed from The Yuletide Heirloom? Banter topic: chit chattin' and catchin' up Notes and Links: Betty's Tearoom Christmas Dislpay  Victorian Farm Christmas Special  Voldemort's Grave in Greyfriar's Cemetery   William McGonagall: the worst writer in the English Language    Music by Kevin MacLeod of Incompetech.com made available for use under the Creative Commons By Attribution 4.0 License. Adventure Meme

Today’s Hook: A shock melting of a glacier sends the party riding a flood wave into an ancient ruin. (by Hjalmar Nordén of @RedMoon_RPG) This episode of Adventure Hook will be of little surprise to those familiar with past shows, as the guys waste no time showing their love of Lovecraft by combining the themes of the Cthulhu Mythos with those of a much less existential threat:  Climate change… Whether envisioning a secret corporate artic drilling facility built on behalf of Arkham Oil to extract some ancient eldritch goo from beneath a newly melted ice shelf… or a post-apocalyptic solarpunk sea/state-walled world where the risen oceans are now fraught with unimaginable dangers for the burgeoning ship-city societies… Aaron and Rob still rarely stray far from the corrupting influences of the Great Old Ones when crafting the details of this episode. In all honesty, both Cthulhu and out of control climate change are ultimately about the slow creep of impending inescapable doom… but of the two, global war