Three Sad Wizards

My 7-year old son Mathijs is eager to play D&D, so he sent an e-mail to my players group asking if they wanted to play. He sent me an e-mail asking if I could “provide the map”.

At first I thought I could run a part of Castle Verge or some other adventure I had already lying around, but then it occurred to me I better play something with a little less necrotic mutations, virginal sacrifice, and prostitutes than I normally run. So I decided to write something new, more suitable for a 7-year old but hopefully, still cool.

The adventure “Three Sad Wizards” consists of three mini-dungeons:

Bymen the Botanomancer (plant mage) lives in a little shack in a garden with beautiful flowers. But when he experimented with fertilizer potions brewed by Ermard the Entomomancer, the plants grew bigger and more dangerous than expected. Now terrible carnivorous plants grow in the garden: Archer bushes, strangleweed, vampire roses, and more make the garden unsafe.

Ermard the Entomomancer (insect mage) has many rare specimens of insects and arachnids in his underground laboratory. However, unkown to him, one of his giant spiders was really an arachnea. She has opened all the cages and now all the insects are running free in the house: Giant centipedes, a crab spider, beetle swarms and more. And there’s the aranea: a beautiful woman called Andrea.

Ostal the Ornithomancer (bird mage) lives in a tower. His birds somehow escaped out of their cages. Most of the flew away to freedom, with the exception of an axe beak, that roams the corridors of the tower. Unknown to Ostal, the birds were set free by an Evil Doppelganger of Lessie, his apprentice. Lessie looked into a mirror of opposition, and was set prisoner by Evil Lessie. When the Player Characters come to the tower expecting to fight birds, they will have to pass traps and Evil Lessie’s wand of wonder in a Home Alone scenario.

I found it more difficult to write an all-ages adventure than I anticipated. But in the end, I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out. I like the concept of three mini-dungeons the Player Characters can visit in any order, or not-at-all, if they don’t want to. There’s a little village, which I’ll give a bit of detail, and in the forest in which Ermard’s dungeon is located there are a few beast lairs.

All-in-all it’s one of the more complete adventure’s I have written. After we have played it, I’ll probably flesh it out a bit and put a pdf up on my blog.