Simple modules
Thee can be used if you have a free hour or so (real time, not in game) and don’t want to finish early or start the next part of the campaign until next session.
Pestering Boar
A very aggressive boar is running rampant in the nearby woods. It poses a threat to hunters and gatherers trying to harvest game and mushrooms. The tavern keep already has plans to cook it up in celebration for getting rid of the pest.
Players can track and kill it or set a trap for it. There is a bonus for killing it with an arrow to the heart with streamers in the town’s colors tied to the arrow.
Collect a mcguffin
kill spiders in a cave for their venom, penalize players for smashing them with a blunt weapon and destroying their venom sacs.
kill boars for their tusks
Someone lost a ring in the woods. You need to retrieve it. The PCs escort the person while retracing his steps. The party is attacked by whatever is appropriate while searching. If the attacker is a boar this can lead to the pestering boar quest.
Some effort required
Less straightforward quests that can have multiple endings or require some pre-planning from the DM or players. Expect these to last 1 session.
Acquiring a free home
The town’s sorcerer moved our years ago and his tower still stands vacant at the edge of town. You can have it for yourself but you have to evict the pests that have moved in. NPC enemies can be goblins, robbers, kobolds, whatever is level and location appropriate.
The tower stands 4 stories tall with a flat roof. The bottom floor has 4 barred windows and one entrance. The second floor has 2 windows, one of which is broken. The third and fourth floor have one window each which can be left open for sneaky ingress. There is a cellar hatch on the roof that covers access from the 4th floor. Enemies are mostly congregated on the lower 2 floors with a stronger mini boss on the 4th floor.
Players can choose to charge in or wait for an opportune time to sneak in while enemies are unaware (at night while sleeping, during the day for nocturnal enemies, or after the NPC party leaves to go raiding/foraging the PCs can sneak in and lie in wait after setting traps. gnolls and kobolds will leave traps in the building. The window sills and roof parapet can hold a grappling hook that would allow a rogue to climb up and scout or kill off sleeping enemies.
Revenge for a wayward woman
The city’s guard captain was cuckolded by a man with a silver tongue. He wants something done about it but doesn’t want rumors getting out. Players need to quietly make him disappear either by running him out of the city or showing him just how beautiful the city’s water features are from the bed of the canal, so to speak.
Due debts
A man owes a large gambling debt. The den boss knows that he came into some money recently but still isn’t paying up. Simply roughing him up for his coin purse wont do and killing him means not being able to recover the money. Players need to find out where the money is stashed and get it for the den boss one way or another.
The DM can also tie this into another quest from the man that owes the debt. Paying off his debt could be an option that leads to another quest with a higher reward or could make the debtor’s quest much easier.
Advanced modules
Quests that will probably take more than one session and will definitely require more planning. I try my best to break them up into parts (for example: planning a heist, executing, and then fencing stolen goods)
Stealing business plans
A rich man is hosting a party at his mansion for the city’s elite. His rival wants you to steal some documents from his personal study on an upper floor.
Players will have a few days to move about the city to gather information to make a quiet ingress. Here is some of the information they can learn and how they can use it:
At the brothel it is learned that he will be hiring entertainers. Players can find a way to get on the list of entertainers.
Players can find which butchers and food vendors are catering the party. With how big the order is these businesses would be more than willing to hire temporary help for delivering and serving.
Players can find who holds the gust list and secretly add themselves to the list or bribe/extort him for admission. They could also impersonate someone they knew was going, although they’d have to make sure that person was not attending somehow.
PCs can hire someone to grab the documents when they are dropped out of the window instead of trying to sneak them out.
PCs will have to gain entrance to the party and then while there sneak up to the upper floors which are lightly guarded until they find the study and retrieve the documents. Afterwards they will have to escape with them.
The route that PCs take to get into the party influences how much free access they have to the mansion. a caterer would only have access to the first floor and cellar (which would be easier to egress from rather than the front door). A party goer would only have access to the first floor but instead of getting in trouble on the upper floors like a caterer would, they could have “gotten lost looking for the latrine” and be shoo’d downstairs with a warning. Entertainers could be given a changing room upstairs but would get into much more trouble if found on the third floor where the goal is.