TABLE OF CONTENTS

Xp and Rewards ...... 3 Adventure Hooks ...... 3 About the Adventure ...... 3 About the Setting ...... 4 About the Villain ...... 4 Playing the NPCs ...... 5 The Narrator ...... 5 Most Importantly ...... 5 Starting Area...... 6 The Training Course...... 6 Combat Time...... 7 NPCs and Easter Eggs ...... 7 The First Quest ...... 7 The First Ally ...... 9 Elemental Apocalypse ...... 12 Outcome #1 ...... 14 Outcome #2...... 14 Outcome #3 ...... 14 Side Quests ...... 14 Save Ryanna’s Little Brother ...... 14 Muster the Elves...... 15 Save the Goblinoids ...... 16 Rewards and Treasure ...... 16 NPC Conversion Table ...... 17 Stat Blocks...... 17 Goblin ...... 17 Stallen...... 17 Urok ...... 18 Hobgoblin ...... 18 Goblin ...... 19 Hobgoblin Captain ...... 19 Clay Golem...... 19 Ylune Swiftarrow ...... 20 Otani ...... 20 Earth Elemental ...... 21 Maps ...... 22 Map A – The Training Course ...... 22 Map B – The Cave in the Mountain ...... 22 Map C – The Top of the Mountain ...... 23 Author Bio ...... 24 Credit and Legalese ...... 24

Sample file

2 In the end, the players will have gained some useful items WELCOME TO 0 - some might even be powerful, in the right situations - and they might just have earned themselves some nter Tutorial Isle – a place of wonder. A place creative uses of different spells. of merriment. A place long since forgotten. Dive into a true tutorial - for both veteran and new players. This one-shot can be ADVENTURE HOOKS E tweaked for either level 1 adventurers or level 7 adventurers - depending on the level of knowledge and You could go about this in many different ways - just experience you and your players have. make sure that the players end up being ‘teleported’ in some way or another to this particular island which can Teleported to a beautiful world, the adventurers must fit into any campaign. However, if you need some save the inhabitants from a mad Elementalist - or die inspiration, you can find two hooks below: trying. The thing is, though, that the inhabitants of the town that the adventurers spawn in, will not let them What just happened? The adventurers might have found leave - until they have completed the tutorial. themselves traveling through the rocky mountainside, snow at their feet, or they might have come upon a large Get ready to face annoyed players as they interact with hill. stone faced NPCs with singular dialogue options, or feed Nevertheless, when they try to mount the hill or their fury as they blast their way through the tutorial - all mountain, they accidentally walk through a portal in an attempt to leave the island that is trying to teach shimmering slightly in the air. They can detect it, if you them how to play. feel like it, but as soon as they try to investigate, they are sucked into its vortex in true ‘you-can’t-escape-this- Inspired by tutorials and the annoyance that players feel plotline’ style. as they go through them in video games, this one-shot is a fun adventure that can be placed in any campaign. Whose went off this time? If you have some Rife with possibilities for misunderstandings and particularly trigger happy, annoying or straight up errors that might or might not make the screen fade to creative magic users, you might opt into this adventure black, this has been created for your players to figure out hook. the puzzle that is Dungeons & Dragons - Some sort of magical occurrence appears within the Tutorial style, and it has plenty of room for laughs ranks of the party (could be a firebolt, eldritch blast, sprinkled throughout. sacred flame or even thunderclap). The adventurers experience its normal effects on the senses except for the Your adventurers will get the chance to: damage. Let them freak out, but if they investigate, let them be • Stand face to face with a sorceress who is not backing sucked in by the vortex-like shimmering portal the has down. And who was once, perhaps, in a very similar been created in the point of origin from the occurrence. situation to yours … Don’t like any of the hooks? That’s fine! Perhaps your players • Battle it out with goblins galore – who all seem could be teleported by the Elementalist herself or thrown hellbent on taking you out, as the good little minions into a dark chasm that turns out to take them to the world! they are. But the townsfolk tell you of another reality, Anything can happen in your world. and perhaps you might end up being heroes, yet.

• Embark on epic side quests with stony-faced NPCs as ABOUT THE ADVENTURE the world crumbles around you, and the sorceress cackles in the distance because her ritual will be Welcome to the world of Etoya! An island of endless complete, and WHY ARE YOU NOT UP THERE, frustration for your players - or endless fun if they take ADVENTURER? some time to learn the tricks of the world. Because they will be able to skip certain of the annoying It is encouraged that players think about their actions parts, thus getting themselves directly into the fray of instead of just barreling head-first into combat other types of puzzles or encounters.

The adventure is meant to provide your players with some fun and unique challenges that are more often seen in XP AND REWARDS video games than in TTRPGs. Therefore, there will also be

focus on dragging some of the tropes into this adventure. As this is meant to be a tutorial, this one-shot suggests rewarding the players with a gained level at the end. This The background of the adventure centers itself on Etoya, would make them either reach 2nd or 8th level, Samplea magical wonder of a place thatfile has been infested with a depending on their starting points. power-hungry woman named Otani.

Quickly rising to power by force, she enthralled the However, if you feel like they deserve more or less, you goblins in the mountain by channeling a Charm Person are welcome to make changes to this. You could also spell into a magical artifact capable of widening its effects award them with XP from the individual encounters if to all goblinoids. that is to be preferred.

That also means that any and all goblinoids within the party must make a saving throw equal to the DC found

3 later in this adventure (Page 20) if they wish to not She searched, commanding the goblins to raid the nearby become charmed by Otani. towns for scrolls, tomes, anything that could bring her power. When Otani stumbled upon the passage about the The townspeople know that Otani is building something elemental planes, she knew this was it. And so began her big, and they’ve seen spurts of thunder, spouts of water, plan ... bursts of fire, and arrays of earth bursting from the ground.

In truth, she’s planning to carve rifts from the material plane and into the elemental ones, causing mayhem as pure elemental mayhem descends upon the world. She is arrogant and thinks herself above the rest of the mere ‘mortals’ with power enough to climb to the top, she believes that she would be able to control the elements in the midst of the chaos, reaping the benefits of a torn world that would submit to her.

ABOUT THE SETTING

The setting will be on Etoya, an island within empty space with miles and miles and miles of wild and wicked sea around it acting as a wall for the players. If they go too far from the area of the island, have them walk into an invisible wall, and then have a booming voice (the Narrator) say ‘You are not yet equipped to go there’.

Etoya is lush, filled with underbrush and forests, but also made up of sandy beaches and stinging sun. In the middle of Etoya is a mountain in which the Elementalist resides, and the players will only be able to get to this mountain at the very end of the adventure, as otherwise, the same invisible wall and Narrator will stop them.

The forests are inhabited by wood elves, their wary eyes following the strangers that pass through, and below the mountains, the goblins used to live. Now enslaved by Otani the Elementalist, they live in eternal fear within the palaces atop the mountains, forced to labor away at the monuments and ores that Otani wants built or extracted.

Within the city that the players arrive in, they find both humans, elves of all kinds, orcs, tieflings, goliaths and other races. The world is diverse, even within this area, and there are no races that others would be wary of. The only threat is the Elementalist.

ABOUT THE VILLAIN

Otani was brought to the town a while back - wandering in the same way that the players did. Back then, however, it was a mad barbarian who scoured the land for his next kill, leaving a trail of ashes and bones in his wake.

Managing to avoid him until she grew in power, she finally went to face him. And found him … weaker than anticipated. Beaten by her power, he begged for mercy, and sheSample relished in his pleas - before finishing him up. file Then she went around the island, revered for her actions. But it could never be enough to sate her.

So she sought out the mountains - sought out the people whom she had always known as lesser where she came from - and forced them to do her bidding with her powerful magic. Even that wasn’t enough.

4 PLAYING THE NPCS

This part would usually be the part where you are told how to give the NPCs as best nuance as possible, all the while keeping on track to the story. Perhaps you were looking for some more depth, perhaps you needed a little bit of backstory.

Well forget about all that.

Here, you will learn how to play these NPCs as stiffly as possible, keeping them on track to their coding. Each NPC will have a few sentences and a basic description of their background. No personality will be mentioned, but if you feel like it, you can make them sassy, sadistic, or perhaps happy-go- lucky.

THE NARRATOR

The Narrator will accompany the adventurers during the course of this one-shot - whether that is through ominously narrating the next part of the story as the players walk into a trap, or dramatically discuss the death of the poor creature that they killed.

You can make the Narrator full of sass or as deadpan as you like, but it is suggested that while the players might find the Narrator annoying, it should not work against them. They are the protagonists of the story, and such, the Narrator will always be interested in them winning in the end.

The Narrator can pop in at random times, and it will freely converse with the players as the only character to do so other than Otani.

There are very few places in which the Narrator has been mentioned - this is because it is completely up to you to feature the disembodied voice as you please - and leaving it out all together is also perfectly fine.

MOST IMPORTANTLY

The most important part of the adventure is to have fun. Keep an eye out for your players - they should find the irritation and annoyance to be something to laugh about, not something that gives them insurmountable amounts of frustration that they cannot get past. If that’s the case, you might want to put more focus on the events, develop the NPCs a little or even make the tutorial parts into more puzzle-like challenges for the players. Sample file

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