#quick dungeon

The Sword of MacGuffins

A Quick One-Shot Dungeon

I ran this for some friends on Dorkly’s Twitch channel in about 90 minutes. I ran it using Dungeon World, but it should be easy in your fantasy game of choice. 

During character creation, I told the players that they were seeking a legendary magic sword, and I let them tell me why they wanted it. You could do the same, or come up with your own reason. 

I also told them that somebody else was also looking for the sword, and they told me it was another character’s brother. This was good to have in my back pocket if I needed to inject some excitement, but you don’t need to use it if you don’t want to. 

I then let them tell me what the legends say guards the sword. They chose a manticore. This easy to do on the fly in Dungeon World, but you can pick a puzzle or whatever in advance in D&D if you want. 

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1. A square, dimly lit room with a door on the other side. In the middle of the room, on a platform, sleeps an Ogre. The key to the door is on a rope necklace around his neck. 

2. A long hallway. There’s a large, ornate door on the other end. It’s locked. Near the door is a statue of a woman - she’s holding her hands out. She used to be holding an orb - if the orb is returned, the doors will slowly lurch open. There’s a door to the West. There’s a crack in the East wall that a medium sized creature can squeeze through with some effort. 

3. A party of goblin adventurers have holed up in this old crypt, distraught. They’re more afraid of the party, and aren’t interested in fighting. They came into the ruins through Area 4, looking for treasure. They found the statue in Area 2, and took the orb that she was holding (causing the ornate doors to slam shut). They got into a scuffle with the kobolds in Area 5, who stole the orb. The goblins are hatching a plan to get it back, and welcome the characters help. If the PCs are friendly, the goblins are cool with them using the orb to open the door -- but they want it back! 

4. The goblins came in from these caverns. There’s a ladder somewhere leading down deeper into the caves. The party can escape the dungeon here if they didn’t kill the Ogre in Area 1 and don’t want to deal with it. You could throw an ooze or a mimic or something in these caves if you’re overdue for some action. 

5. There’s a small society of Kobolds living in the caves around the ruins. The caves are probably bigger than this map suggests. There are a handful of traps and makeshift alarms set -- If the PC’s set off a trap, a hunting party of kobolds will quickly greet them and attack if they have an advantage. 

6. Kobold Camp. The kobolds will recognize that the PC’s will chew them up in a straight on fight - so they’ll only attack if they have an advantage over them, like having them tied up in traps. If they do sense an advantage, they’ll attack like cannibalistic chaos monsters. They’ve already given the orb to their “god” in Area 7 as tribute. The kobolds say that they’re welcome to see if their god will loan the orb to them for their quest. 

7. A small underground lake where a Giant Octopus Creature dwells. The orb that belongs to the statue in Area 2 is glowing green in the middle of the lake. An underwater tunnel to the North probably leads to another section of the cave, if you want. 

8. A large worship chamber for the Sword. The is a large fissure to the North that is too far to leap across. A statue has crumbled over the gap, creating a very dicey “bridge” that the PCs will have to cross with care. If there is a guardian, it’s up to you where it is or how it presents itself to the PCs. It could also be fun to have hoards of undead arise from the fissure when the PCs take the sword. 

You can also have the rivals for the sword appear at this time and have an all-out brawl. 

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Maybe this will be of some use to you! Like I said, I recently ran this on Twitch, if you want to see how it went down for me. It ended up much different than I intended!