Are you prepared to set off on an adventure? With my extensive experience as both a player and a dungeon master, I know how important it is to keep your world dynamic and engaging, especially when players take unexpected detours. As a DM, I’ve often found myself scrambling to create meaningful side quests on the spot, struggling to balance spontaneity with depth. That’s why I designed this collection of side quests called Wayward Letters.
I'm thrilled to present my latest creation - The Sea Tyrant
Explore a one-page side quests designed to deliver memorable gaming moments. The adventure begins with a classic, familiar scenarios but quickly transforms into a distinctive and engaging story.
Each part introduces a compelling dilemma, leaving players with countless ways to navigate and resolve. This format fosters creativity and adaptability, ensuring every session feels fresh and dynamic.
The adventure will include:
2 Maps
A in world Letter handout that ties in with the adventure
A Lore and Mythology piece
The One-shot is designed to include:
Background: The Background section provides the foundation for the side quest, offering the key details and context needed to understand the scenario. This serves as the groundwork for the story, immersing you in the world and setting the stage for the adventure to unfold.
Plot Hook: The Plot Hook introduces the element that draws the players into the quest. Whether it’s an unexpected event, a mysterious occurrence, or a direct call to action, this is the moment that sparks curiosity and motivates the party to get involved.
Quest Giver: The Quest Giver is the person, creature, or object that directs the players toward the adventure. This could be an NPC with a story to tell, a cryptic message, or an encounter that sets them on their path. It’s the trigger that sets the quest in motion.
Location: The Location outlines where the adventure takes place, highlighting distinctive features that encourage exploration and engagement. It describes a setting so compelling that players are eager to delve into its secrets and discover what lies within.
Challenge: The Challenges define the obstacles, puzzles, or enemies the players must face to complete the quest. This is the core trial of the adventure, crafted to be engaging and memorable, pushing the players to think creatively and work together.
Secrets and Treasure: Secrets and Treasure add layers of intrigue to the quest, offering hidden discoveries or subtle hints that deepen the story. These elements enrich the experience with surprises, twists, or even connections to larger plots, making each quest feel dynamic and unpredictable.
Wayward Letters are real letters mailed to you giving you a fresh fantasy letter, with a corresponding one-shot adventure, a map, some stickers, and a piece of Scottish lore or mythology, all neatly packaged in a wax sealed letter.
The Letter
For GMs These letters are written to give you inspiration and to be used as a prop in game that you can hand to your players as a piece of evidence, or background ahead of their next quest. The letters will take a different shape with each edition where they can be a simple letter, field notes, or a journal entry...the creative possibilities are endless.
For Players If you simply play TTRPGs these letters can serve as character back story or as lore for your next character for play at the table. It can be a prop that you keep to share with another player or even hand off to your Game Master to give them a prop for future play to add into the game. Also, if you are comfortable with solo-rpgs these letters will come with a related one-shot and map that can be played in your solo adventures.
The One-shot
The corresponding one-shot and map will be written to be able to be pick up and play and will be one to two pages long, depending on encounters and any creature stat-blocks required. I will try to keep the writing, "system free", so it can be incorporated into the RPG you are playing, but where necessary I will be using 5/5.5E to give rules on Difficulty Checks, etc. I also want to ensure the difficulty of the one-shot is scalable or not necessarily 'set', so these one-shots will be more about setting up the adventures, characters, lore, with encounters and situations proposed for you the GM to decide and use.
The adventure and letter in this image are June's letter are not the final product for July!!!
The design principle for these maps are they should be pick up and play and should fit neatly onto a A4 sheet of paper. Some will be in full color and others will be a more classical black and white dungeon style found in rule books. The aesthetic for that months letter will be decided in line with what works best for the adventure.
Please note this months letter will have additional maps for the lower ship levels.
For the last few years I've run Top Table Productions, publishing TTRPG supplements funded by thousands of backers across more than fifteen successful campaigns. Recently, I’ve felt the pull to return to creating physical items: things people can hold, use, and experience at the table.
Wayward Letters is a smaller, more personal project that’s been living in my notebooks for the past year.
It all started with a question: what if the world-building I love came to you in the post, one letter at a time?
Now, I’m finally bringing Wayward Letters to life.
100% Human Made
I write, edit and design the letters, one-shots, maps and lore. The wonderful artwork is all created by my amazing friend Nate who you can find on Instagram: @closeenoughnate
