Need some inspiration for your next D&D game? Pull an adventure idea straight from the history books—you might be surprised how it goes.
History, contrary to what your dad might tell you, is more than just the Roman Empire and two World Wars. It turns out, there’s a lot of events throughout the ages, across many different cultures. And while yes, your one friend who majored in history might be really sad right now about how “they never listen, they never learn”—history is good for more than just having an almost prophetic sense of what’s coming next.
It’s also great for D&D inspiration. As these adventure ideas based on historical events may well prove. So break out your texts, and let’s open to page “scroll down.”
The Copper Merchant
For this adventure, the players couldbe approached by a beleaguered merchant who has been going through it. He’s been mocked, humiliated, and above all else, treated with contempt. After all, the copper merchant he was contracting with promised to put before his servant copper ingots which were of fine quality. But instead, what happened is he put copper ingots that were not of good quality.
You should know how the story goes from there. But imagine if Nani could have instead hired adventurers to cross enemy territory to find a shady copper merchant and to then try and retrieve either his bag full of money, or some fine quality copper ingots to give to the temple What an adventure that could be. All you have to do is run it.
Spill the Tea
Sometimes you have to cause a little bit of property destruction. Especially if it means striking back at oppressive nobles and tyrannical kings. So why not borrow a little bit of revolutionary history and encourage some chaotic good vandalism while we’re at it.
Maybe a consortium of merchants has been enforcing a monopoly – maybe people are just upset about the taxation of the king in power. Either way, the adventurers could be hired to destroy crates of tea – or if that’s too on the nose, maybe they could dump bags of coffee into the harbor, or burn down casks of oil or carriages or whatever else might be a representation of the nobles’ authority.
Protect the Crop / Pilfer the Potatoes
This is a sort of historical urban legend. But it’s one that echoes throughout many different regions. The story goes something like this, a king (or someone) wanted the peasants to embrace the nutrient dense potato. However, they weren’t exactly on board with this. So what did the enterprising monarch do? Hire some guards to protect a small plot where the common crop was growing.
People being people, the presence of guards makes them think it must be something valuable, and they steal the potatoes however they can. The guards, of course, have been instructed to let this happen. This story has been attributed to many popular rulers, which makes it perfect to steal for an adventure.
You could play this one of two ways. Either the PCs are hired to “protect” this crop. Or they’re hired to steal whatever could be so valuable that it warrants protecting—provided they can get past the guards.
Tulip Mania
What if you could gain or lose a whole fortune based on the acquisition of a rare, beautiful flower? That happened in real life. And you can replicate it in your games of D&D as well. You can run with actual tulips or go for some kind of fantasy nonsense flower or the magical equivalent of a beanie baby; all you really have to do is make up something strange that has captivated the attention of whatever town/city your PCs are in. Then send the players after one of the rare items.
What can make it even more interesting is potentially paying the adventurers in the rare item. Complete a quest? Clear out a dungeon? What if your patron pays you in a magical stuffed animal but tells you it’s worth more than the castle? How will your adventurers handle the rising tide of fortune? Will they be able to cash in before the tide rolls back out?
The Big Boat
This is a much more recent example of “history” but it’s fine because we keep living through so many historical events. Man, do you remember living through precedented times? Do you miss them? I sure do. But you may as well get at least some mileage out of it, so why not look back to one of my favorite events of the last few years, the blockage of the suez canal by the Evergiven, a boat made so big because companies everywhere are so cheap and so shortsighted, that it drove a metaphorical and literal massive boat sized wedge right into the all-too fragile invisible but very global infrastructure that holds aloft the illusion of our isolated, comfortable lives that depend on no one.
For this you could do so many things. You could have a big boat get in everyone’s way and it has to be cleared out. But the boat is full of monsters and is basically a dungeon that the players have to clear out. Or a kingdom could be waiting on the delivery of something important, and the adventurers have to adventure their way onto the boat to retrieve it and take it where it goes. Once again, the big boat is a big dungeon.
Sure, the boss can’t be the embodiment of capitalism, but it’s close enough—the dungeon is capitalism.
History might rhyme but so can your adventures!
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