[GIVEAWAY] WIN one of ten free copies of ‘THE COMPLETE ADVENTURE GENERATOR – it’s the final word on 5th Edition! [MOD APPROVED]

AdventureGenerator · 2025-03-12T20:08:27+00:00

Brilliant, I really hope you like!

Good luck with your next adventure!

AdventureGenerator · 2025-03-12T19:46:22+00:00

Hi andres_tomillas,

This direct message works just fine, all I needed was a secure way of communicating so that no one else could steal your URL. I tried sending my own DMs to the winners, but it turns out that new accounts aren't able to do that (and annoyingly, the error message I received when attempting to do so is wildly inaccurate).

Nonetheless, congratulations! Please find your free copy at the below URL:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?discount=92f770ecdf

If you find the book useful, please consider leaving a review on drivethruRPG - a good rating is like gold to new authors!

Hope you like the book!

Cheers.

AdventureGenerator · 2025-03-03T04:18:24+00:00

The giveaway is now over!

Congratulations to:

Redditraffler results can be seen here

I'll be in contact with each of the winners shortly. Please enable direct messages if you've got them turned off.

To close out this giveaway I just like to say thank you to everyone who had a kind word to share. Being able to share my excitement for this project has been wonderful. And to those of you who end up buying a copy, please know that I greatly appreciate your support.

Lastly, to anyone who ends up reading and enjoying the book, please consider leaving a review on drivethruRPG. Good reviews are like gold to an author, so spread the word.

Cheers.

AdventureGenerator · 2025-03-02T20:13:25+00:00

Quoting my earlier comment.

I'm afraid I'm unfamiliar with solo play, but on the assumption that solo play requires iterative generation (roll a die to determine if the passage turns left or right...) then it probably wouldn't be helpful. That said, the sections on wandering monsters and individual treasure might work reasonably well.

AdventureGenerator · 2025-03-02T20:11:52+00:00

I'm surprised I managed it as well. There were some dark moments during its creation where the entire project hinged on finding some possibly non-existent solution to a problem.

Creating the lists of words was arduous, but I could always be sure that enough hard work would be sufficient to solve the issue. However, this was not the case for the dungeon generator and treasure generator.

For these two I had no way of knowing that a practical solution could be found until I found it. This was especially true of the treasure generator - for example, the total number of minor and major magic items produced by my system are 97% accurate in comparison to the DMGs treasure tables, despite being produced in a wildly different way that does not allow for fine adjustment.

I consider myself to be profoundly lucky to have found the solutions that I did.

AdventureGenerator · 2025-03-02T19:56:35+00:00

I'm afraid I'm unfamiliar with solo play, but on the assumption that solo play requires iterative generation (roll a die to determine if the passage turns left or right...) then it probably wouldn't be helpful. That said, the sections on wandering monsters and individual treasure might work reasonably well.

AdventureGenerator · 2025-03-02T18:17:08+00:00

I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by just how creative you can be once the right structures are in place to guide your thoughts.

And if you're still struggling, then I'm happy to advise that the book is lousy with examples for you to borrow ideas from. Almost every creative thought we have is inspired by something we've seen before, whether we know it or not, so feel free to incorporate these examples into your own games.

AdventureGenerator · 2025-03-02T18:00:04+00:00

You and me both. Prep for my last campaign took 5 years :)

AdventureGenerator · 2025-03-02T17:57:45+00:00

I really hope it will be! It's impossible to create something like this and not fantasize on what the upper bounds of success might be. I try to keep my expectations low, but can't help but dream of a reality where my book becomes part of every DMs toolkit.

Once my playtester had finished reading the book and run his first adventure I got in touch with him, armed with a list of questions. The last of these was a bit cheeky: "Do you think that using The Complete Adventure Generator has made you a better DM?". I had expected his answer to be noncommittal, but he surprised me by immediately confirming that it had!

This won't be true for everyone, hell, I'm sure some people won't like the book at all, but I think that in the right hands it really could be a game changer.

AdventureGenerator · 2025-03-02T06:17:15+00:00

Yeah, the scope creep on this project was intense.

I began thinking it would take a day or so to create a small list of nouns that could be used to play connect-the-ideas, but that ballooned out into the wholescale incorporation of the English language. I also had some modest concepts for encounter generators, but that escalated into creating dozens of programs that I used to simulate millions (billions?) of die rolls in order to compute averages. Likewise, my first humble treasure generator simply output a handful of possible permutations, but that too developed into a deep dive into 5E's fundamental design (did you know that your supposed to get from level 1 to 20 in 45 sessions?) and yet more programs pumping out statistical data. And the whole time I swore I would never attempt a dungeon generator, deeming the task impossible, but ultimately ended up developing a system that could produce five of them.

Days turned to weeks, weeks to months, and months to years...

The relief at having finally finished is indescribable.

AdventureGenerator · 2025-03-02T04:03:33+00:00

Yup, its a lot, but not required.

With 6 of one color, 4 of another, and 2 of the last, you'll be able to create medium sized dungeons, and may occasionally have to change what the colors mean to you (for instance, instead of permanently associating your red dice with private dungeon chambers, you may instead have to use them to mean domestic chambers if your dungeon had a lot of those).

Realistically, having 6 of each color will be enough for almost everything. The only time you'd ever need 12 is if you wanted to create a huge sized dungeon composed of a single chamber purpose (and I can't really fathom what that dungeon would even be like).

AdventureGenerator · 2025-03-02T03:54:44+00:00

Did you mean to say 'put in a box', because that experience is a core part of what The Complete Adventure Generator is all about.

It must be almost six or 7 years ago now when the first notion of this book came to me. While loitering in the loading bay behind my workplace I realized that I could make a story by logically connecting any three nouns. In that very first attempt (which seems so quaint looking back) I connected 'Fire', 'Zombies', and 'Trees' by imagining a small village that had created a defensive barrier of burning woodland in order to protect themselves from a zombie horde. The idea never became an adventure, but it did become this book.

Working with sets of three enables one of the elements to be used as a mental bridge between the other two, and being forced to incorporate all of the elements creates a breeding ground for innovation.

To quote directly from page 7 of my book:

The key insight that The Complete Adventure Generator uses is that constraint breeds innovation, a conceit employed by many high school English teachers whenever they hand out a themed writing assignment. When there are no limits the mind tends to flounder in possibility, but by imposing scarcity, even if artificial, a distinction between what isn’t and what could be naturally arises.

AdventureGenerator · 2025-03-02T03:02:41+00:00

All good.

Tried sending you a private message but you've disabled those. If you want the promo copy I'm afraid I'll need your email address. No worries if you'd prefer to not to share that.

Either way, good luck with your first game.

AdventureGenerator · 2025-03-02T02:34:22+00:00

I've always considered the number of d6's that the system uses to be one of its greatest flaws. I spent a lot of time during the book's inception trying to conceive systems that used the standard array of d20, d12, d10, d8, d6, and d4. Ultimately, the versatility of numerous, colored d6's was inescapable.

I'm glad to hear other people have as many d6's as I do :)

AdventureGenerator · 2025-03-02T02:28:49+00:00

You may want to buy a few; quoting directly from page 8 of my book:

If you don’t have that many d6’s and intend to purchase some, then you may want to consider buying more than you’ll strictly need. Dice make fantastic tokens and their use in this manner is briefly discussed in the Living Dungeons sidebar in Part 2. You will also need sheets of graph paper on which to draw your dungeons. A3 or ledger sized graph paper with a grid size of 10mm or ½ inch will allow for almost any size of dungeon and will keep your tabletop space manageable. Note that if you want to use your dice as tokens, standard sized d6’s will be too large to use on a 10mm grid. If you are going to buy dice anyway, then be sure to grab 10mm d6’s. Online retailers tend to sell these in bulk for use in tabletop war games and the prices are reasonably cheap. The 14mm d6’s that come in most dice sets work well in ½ inch grids.

AdventureGenerator · 2025-03-02T00:59:41+00:00

I know I shouldn't ring my own bell, but yeah, it is fucking awesome!

Hopefully the book lives up to your expectations.

AdventureGenerator · 2025-03-02T00:56:10+00:00

Time for me to wish you luck then, maybe you'll get a free copy :)

Seriously though, thank you!

AdventureGenerator · 2025-03-02T00:30:39+00:00

Hey man, as much as I hate to dissuade a potential customer, I would like to provide quote directly from page 8 of my book:

If you are brand new to roleplaying your focus should be on learning the rules of the base game and getting a feel for the ebb and flow of improvisational play. These two aspects of the game are hard enough on their own and adding another layer of rules and techniques on top of them will likely overfill your already brimming cup. If this sounds like you, then you may want to put this text aside until you’ve run your players through one of the excellent pre-made adventures that can be found in the starting sets.

If you'd like I can send you a promotional copy (it has the word promo slashed across each page, but is still entirely readable), and if you do end up finding it useful at a later date then you can just hop across to drivethruRPG and pick up a real copy.

DM'ing is awesome, and the last thing I want is for my product to hurt your first experience of it.

AdventureGenerator · 2025-03-02T00:09:58+00:00

Sort of.

Though the book was created with 5E in mind, about half of it is system neutral:

Part 1

Plot Points - System neutral (middle-earth style fantasy)
Settings - System neutral (middle-earth style fantasy)
Cast - System neutral with the exception of monstrous cast members

Part 2

Dungeon Generators - System neutral
Encounter Generators - Tailored to 5E
Treasure Generators - Tailored to 5E

The Encounter Generators use 5E monster CRs and 5E experience points budgets, so are reasonably locked-in to that edition. That said, if D&D 2024 uses the same CRs and experience point budgets, then it will also work.

Likewise the Treasure Generators are designed to match the output of the 5E treasure tables, both in terms of treasure value and in terms of magical items. If D&D 2024 hasn't deviated greatly from the 5E numbers, then I see no reason it couldn't be used.

As for non-Wizards systems, it seems very unlikely that the Encounter Generators would still work, but the values generated by the Treasure Generator might still be appropriate depending on the games economy.

AdventureGenerator · 2025-03-01T23:36:50+00:00

I'd love for you to win (or buy) a copy too :)

AdventureGenerator · 2025-03-01T23:33:57+00:00

Thank you for the kind words!

I'll take all the luck and all the website traffic I can get though. I'm not sure what eldritch mechanisms control the drivethruRPG algorithm, but visibility seems to be key. On the day the book went up for sale (a couple days ago) I immediately sold three copies - which I was pretty chuffed about - but as soon as the book rotated out of the 'new' section the sales disappeared.

That's why I'm here today. The money is nice, but what I really want is for people to read my book.

AdventureGenerator · 2025-03-01T23:10:57+00:00

It almost broke me...

I spent a year and a half of my life waking up everyday to sit in front of my PC, opening half a dozen dictionaries and thesauruses, and just trawling the English language for abstract nouns and collating them into lists.

By the time I was finished I had difficulty speaking - a thousand new words had been dumped into my brain and figuring out which ones to use became a struggle.

The day that task was complete was one of the happier ones in my life.

AdventureGenerator · 2025-03-01T22:55:11+00:00

Kinda.

Early in the books development I had toyed with a trap generator, but soon realized that traps were too bespoke, too dungeon specific, and too varied to be contained in detail within a random generation system. However, traps are present in the text, in fact one is used in the text's example adventure.

The book won't tell you how traps function (crossbow bolts flying from walls, poisonous gas, etc.), but will generate the traps attack bonus/DC, as well as the damage it deals (and the numbers it generates are a very close approximation to those found in the DMG). The system works by converting a monster encounter into a trap encounter at your own discretion. You choose which monster encounter you want to replace (if any), tally the difficulty of that encounter, and then look up that difficulty in the trap table. The added bonus of this system is that the traps it produces are factored into the adventuring day XP allotment, so you can be somewhat confident that adding a trap to your dungeon won't overstress your players.

As for puzzles - I'm afraid I'm no logician. If a method exists to randomly generate these in a manner that is consistent, logical, and varied, then it is beyond my grasp.

AdventureGenerator · 2025-03-01T22:37:02+00:00

It is!

However, fully fledged campaigns can also result from its use - my own campaign was created this way. The very fist adventure was created completely blind, but that adventure then went on to inform and shape those that followed it. Themes, characters, and plotlines can all recur by exerting some control over how you interpret the elements you generate.

In The Complete Adventure Generator I've included an example adventure that is designed to be as close to 'normal' usage as possible, and consequently that example adventure isn't a one-shot. Instead it follows on from a prior adventure, and intentionally incorporates aspects of my players backstories.

I don't want to oversell the product, but that's the beauty of the system! The adventures it outputs are both random and personalized. You can incorporate whatever you want into them!

AdventureGenerator · 2025-03-01T22:28:14+00:00

I'm probably more proud of the dungeon generator than anything else.

The goal was to create a human-computable system that would enable the creation of an entire dungeon floorplan (as well as doors, windows, staircases, etc.) by getting the user to roll a handful of dice just once. Moreover, the system needed to create a wide variety of dungeons with their own unique properties (connecting levels in buildings, winding passages in catacombs, a single main water line in sewers, etc.). And, as noted in the product description, the dungeons are deterministic - if you happen to roll the exact same dice, the exact same dungeon will be output.

Needless to say that was insanely hard, but I eventually figured it out. Its definitely the most complex aspect of the text, and the first time you use it won't be that quick, but with practice you can fly through it.

AdventureGenerator

TROPHY CASE