Build Easy D&D Adventures from Twisted Fairy Tales | Grim Hollow | Dark Fantasy | Horror 5e

[@anthonyambrose7830]

I was just plotting a good old cursed royal family for my first pathfinder game. This is perfect

[@ZonagonsBlackKnight]

I suppose you can sprinkle some of the Fey mischief you mentioned in the Robin Hood Campaign. Troll Bridges, Cursed Nobles, and Big Bad Wolves in the midst of a political struggle between a tyrant lord and a disgraced noble would be even more intense! You could even have the two opposing sides make pacts with the Summer and Winter Courts of the Fey, making them both the pawns of an even larger game of chess between the Queens of said Courts. Now THAT would be epic.

[@GhostfireGaming]

Love those ideas! A lot of side quest and mystic intrigue potential.

[@wokeshrub4996]

I like the idea these are all encounters that can take play in the Charnault Kingdom. Awesome ideas!

[@TheBottegaChannel]

Last year, I ran a relatively realistic low magic D&D campaign centered in an area of what could be considered Willachia ( old school Romania/ Transylvania), bear the Austrio- Hungarian and Northern Italian borders. The characters had to figure out how to defeat a version of an Ulfhidinn ( wolf version of a Berserker) who was transformed by a mountian Hag into an actual werewolf that layed siege to a keep the players took refrence in. Along the way, I sprinkled in lore from Norse, Roman, Gaulic and Anglo-saxon lore about lycanthropy and how various tales intermingled into one big picture. One of those tales was " Three little pigs", and when the Bard's player found out that the Werewolf was terrifying them by quoting a nursery rhyme after a successful lire check about Folktales, he humorously kicked himself out of frustration for not seeing it. 😂

[@MarxMayhem]

So what I'm getting is, potential world quests are: * Geppetto, an Artificer who wanted to create "lifelike" automatons, creates the first Warforged "Pinocchio". * The exploration of the New World is a way to introduce Wood Elves. * Give your 7-man all-dwarf party a pretty female NPC to protect from an evil witch.

[@yurimiyama9825]

The third one feels a bit heavy handed and too specific to drop into a regular campaign but I think it could be hell of fun with the right players LOL.

[@michaeljpastor]

make it 7 dwarven women and a handsome lad and they're 'henpecking' him in the dwarven way like the geico 'we've got aunts' commercial @@yurimiyama9825

[@eesedesesesrdtsuperjoshuab7907]

This is such a cool idea, I love hearing these classic tales twisted to fit the dark fantasy world of grim hollow, it’s such good inspiration

[@GhostfireGaming]

I’m glad you like them! 😄

[@fredericgagnon8205]

I'm running a three part campain involving three witches: Ursula the sea hag, Grimhild (snow white) the green hag and Elsa the bheur hag. A devil made a deal with the three sisters and now he wants to reclaim is due. He uses a party of adventurers to stop the hags to kidnap children and eat them to make more witches. The first part takes place in a coastal city and is a mixt of the Little mermaid and Pied piper of Hamelin. The second part takes place in a haunted forest and is a mixt of Snow White and the Blair witch project. The third part takes place on the snowy mountain and is a mixt of Frozen and the Alive movie. The bheur hag is the closest to get her pregnancy done and the players have to stop the dark ritual. If each of them are vanquished, the three witches's fool souls merge together in some kind of coven horror and rot in damnation in Hell (final boss level).

[@mikecarson7769]

Nice work with the themes and inspiration . . . i might go one step more to encourage Players to create characters based on twisted version of fairy tale characters

[@trikepilot101]

There was an old Basic D&D module called "The Palace of the Silver Princess." It takes some adaptation to run in the more recent editions but it has some nice fairytale tropes.

[@Chop0240]

I love all Ghostfire Gaming videos!

[@Putrefax]

So one of my players wanted to have the Traveller as a patron, and is playing a pretty close allegory of Jester from CR. So i did a complete 180, and made my version of the Traveller essentially an archfae based on Peter Pan. Complete with the abducting vulnerable children to use as pawns in a constant deadly game against another archfae that will probably look like a pirate. I can't wait to see how they are going to react to it.

[@CrashCraftLabs]

ok the like button sptlight was clever lol so i hit it. also subd this was a great vid

[@LoneWolffanwriter]

Spectacular video, man! Definitely want to use the twist on Three Little Pigs in my next one-shot or mini-campaign. Just the background lore makes it so enticing. Keep up the great work!

[@GhostfireGaming]

Thanks so much! 😄

[@LoneWolffanwriter]

No problem! Just re-discovered this video and am looking to insert the Big Bad Wolf into my current game.

[@xreaperxiii]

One villain I've used several times is the Tooth Fairy. A night hag who paves the path to her cottage with children's teeth taken from her victims. In some instances the children are dead. In some she has them under mind control and has replaced their teeth with sharp metal fangs and the children act as minions, forcing the players to make a moral choice about dealing with the children.

[@gregorygreenwood-nimmo4954]

Not a fairy tale per se, but I have long thought you could have all kinds of fun re-purposing the folk horror movie Pumpkinhead for a D&D campaign. The set up might be that there is a legend in the area where the adventure is set of a witch who grants vengeance to those who truly believe they are entitled to it, but at a terrible price. Perhaps the truth behind that legend is an unusual Domain of Dread ruled over by someone whose quest for vengeance while mortal cost many lives and caused great suffering, so much so that they were ultimately punished by higher (or lower) powers and transformed into a Hag and condemned to take the part of an enabler for others to eternally repeat their mistakes. If someone has a sufficiently intense lust for vengeance they might find themselves transported by the mists to this domain where they meet the Hag (who we might as well call Haggis for convenience). The wronged party is offered the opportunity to take part in a blood magic ritual to call forth certain vengeance upon the ones they blame for their ill fortune, but are warned that there will be a terrible price to pay, so only the most desperate who believe they have nothing left to lose (or those whose need for vengeance blinds their reason) will go along with the idea. Naturally, someone in this adventure makes that extremely ill advised deal, and the supernatural instrument of that vengeance is called forth and begins its relentless pursuit of those who have been marked. The wronged party - now the summoner - leaves Haggis' presence and so exits the Domain of Dread through the mists and is returned to where they came from, but soon enough those that were marked start to die horribly, as does anyone who gets in the way of the monster that is exacting this vicarious vengeance, and the summoner comes to realise the true cost of the Faustian pact they have made as they experience the brutality of the actions of this monster from its perspective with each kill. At this point the Party get involved, perhaps hired by the person or people who are the marked target(s) of this vengeance for protection, or hired by the summoner in a desperate bid to stop the horror they themselves unleashed. The Party might be able to learn the legend of the Hag and her pet monster from the summoner and other locals familiar with the legend by talking to people and other forms of investigation. The Party may ultimately encounter the monster and try to stop it, only to find that the creature itself cannot be directly slain by spells or by weapons either mundane or magical, only slowed down or temporarily defeated, and that by opposing it the party have made themselves its next target. The Party might try to find a way to reach Haggis in her Domain of Dread and try to force her to call off the monster, take her out in the hope that might stop the creature, or even try to lift the curse she is under (with complications aplenty to make that option interestingly challenging) in the hope that freeing her from her fate will cause the monster to cease to be a threat. The Party might learn that killing the summoner is the only known, certain way to stop the monster, and are then left with the moral quandary of whether or not the summoner's actions warrant such a fate when they were genuinely wronged and didn't realise the true nature of the deal they were making when they entered into the pact with Haggis. The Party could also simply allow the monster to do what it was summoned to do, but not only would that involve standing by while its butchers the people it was summoned to destroy when maybe their crimes also don't warrant such an end, but also simply allow the beast to carve its way through any guards the marked targets might have, any loved ones or friends that might try to protect them, or anyone else who thinks it is their duty to try to stop such a creature like local town watchmen. Haggis could be readily represented by a Hag stat block of whatever colour is preferred (I like the Green Hag for this role myself) who is masquerading as an elderly human witch, perhaps with the addition of the idea that Haggis is tied directly into her Domain of Dread and so is not easily permanently killed there. The stand in for Pumkinhead needs to be something suitably nasty that can pull off a manifestation of vengeance itself - cruel, devious, pure as venom as the quote from the movie goes - so maybe a Bone Devil from the Monster Manual? With its flying speed removed and its poisoned stinger reworked as a bite attack? Add in the idea that it only attacks those who are marked or those who attack or try to stop it, and the idea that it regenerates 20 hit points at the start of each of its turns, this regeneration can't be stopped by any normal means, and the creature cannot be slain until it is prevented from regenerating, and you have a pretty decent relentless manifestation of vengeance. Maybe radiant damage means that it will become dormant for a time when its last hit points are taken, but it will still ultimately return. To stop it for good, the Party needs to discover how it was summoned and how to break the power of that summoning, and might have to contemplate doing very unpalatable things in the pursuit of that goal.

[@hikerchris7164]

Exactly the inspiration I needed for some epic fey adventures I have coming up. Thank you Ghostfire, once again!

[@GhostfireGaming]

Our pleasure!

[@willmendoza8498]

This was great

[@shawnnichols3517]

Great ideas! Thanks!

[@GOO_lock]

I love these ideas

[@GhostfireGaming]

Thank you! 😄 Glad you enjoy them.

[@samuelrodriguez9801]

I think I could make use the Robin Hood inspired adventure in the Border Kingdoms of the Forgotten Realms.

[@michaeljpastor]

this one may have been done before I think, but: your party meets a little lost girl running away from a wolf. only it turns out that *she* is the (were)wolf.

[@TeveshKP]

Is there an alternative to D&D Behond for your adventure book? I've looked around on Ghostfire's website but don't see anything.

[@TakaD20]

I'll put a good king in a castle, only on the outside transformed into a beast and a real beast that looks just like that terrorizing the villagers... when party eventually kills the king, that should bring some moral implications.

[@spellelf]

I wish I had money so I could buy all of y’all’s stuff.

[@Cparks7650]

Ebay. You can save yourself a bit.

[@ThatWeirdGuy7708]

More of these please!

[@keithulhu]

When you said twisted fairy tales, I thought of the cartoon Fractured Fairy Tales (and I'm probably really dating myself with that reference).

[@Midastouchvr]

Do you guys have any plans on making a physical version of lairs of etharis? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I couldn’t find one, and would prefer a physical copy over a digital. Also, thanks for the great ideas on great retellings of these stories!

[@GhostfireGaming]

There is a Lairs of Etharis softcover available through our website. However, it requires the Grim Hollow Monster Grimoire for the monster & magic item rules. It was originally designed as a companion for the Monster Grimoire Kickstarter, so isn't as fully fleshed out as the D&D Beyond version.

[@Midastouchvr]

@ cool! Do you guys ever plan on transferring the whole version to physical, or would that be too hard and costly

[@radmanramezani7188]

Can you please make a timeline page in grim hollow like you did for your other book, drakkenheim

[@basementmadetapes]

Is this available direct thru ghostfire’s site?

[@datdejvtho2581]

Aww man, I thought this was a Gwent video, but it just uses the art

[@samuelrodriguez9801]

Actually, Beauty and the Beast was a German Fairy Tale.

[@adambaldinger4507]

Me... I'm afraid.....

[@admorewarhammer5141]

where did you steal all the footage from?

[@7913AJunior]

Agreed - some of the media they use for illustrations is really cool, and apart from artists deserving credit, it'd be really nice to just - know where something is from so we can look it up! 'Title of piece', artist (year) just in the corner as the clip plays would be really helpful, simply to do, and unintrusive visually!