Adventure Wednesday: The d6 Outpost

On the far reaches of the kingdom sits a small fort. Its only purpose is to guard the border and warn of approaching threats from the west. The land is desolate and the soldiers stationed here rely on supplies from the nearest city, some two days hard ride away. This place is isolated and those unlucky enough to be here spend day after day looking out at nothing......

Welcome to Adventure Wednesday! Last week we started Story Seed Tuesday. I decided I should move this to Wednesdays so I could have my efforts to create weekly content more spread out across the week. This is our first Wednesday installment and I already though I would do something a little different. If you like this idea, I will see about including some roll tables with future adventure ideas. As we go forward the blog will end up with a good store house of adventure roll tables to go along with the monsters of Friday's Forgotten Fiends!

Stories about an isolated outpost or ship are common place and work equally well for sci-fi and fantasy. Players can either be stationed there when things start to go wrong, or they could be responding to word of something bad, perhaps the last supply train never returned?

Today I am going to provide a few roll tables that will allow you as the GM to generate a quick plot you can use to build an adventure around. The tables are setting agnostic and should work as well for D&D 5e as they do for The upcoming Expanse RPG by Green Ronin Games.

Step 1: Roll for the outpost type.

1d6 Roll	Result	Goods, Cost Modifier Number of goods
1 2 3 4 5 6	Guardpost Gateway Place of Study Isolated Community Trade Outpost Religious Order	-2, +20%, 3 0, +10%, 2 +2, +10%, 2 0, +20%, 1 0, +10%, 4 0, +20%, 2

Step 2: Make a number of rolls equal to the "Number of Goods" rolled in Step 1. Modify these rolls by the "Goods Modifier".

1d6 Roll + Goods Modifier	Result
1 2 3 4 5 6	Weapons Armor Food Lodging Basic Goods Lore about the Area

Step 3: Determine the environment the outpost exists in. Make sure to note if this is a fantasy or a sci-fi outpost.

1d6 Roll	Location
1 2 3 4 5 6	Edge of Kingdom/Deep Space Rocky Area/Asteroids Coast Line/Gas Giant Forests/Rocky Moon Deserts/Lagrange Station Mountains/Class M Planet

Step 4: Determine a basic plot

1d6 Roll	Location
1 2 3 4 5 6	Attacked by Enemy Faction (Military, pirates, etc) Attacked by Natural Enemy (Wild animals, alien organisms) Natural Catastrophic Event (Earthquakes, asteroid strikes) Plague (Disease outbreak, Zombies, Mutations) Betrayal (Higher up at outpost has sold it out) Outpost has been taken over in secret (Enemies unknown to the players now control the outpost)

Step 5: How are the players involved?

1d6 Roll	Location
1 2 3 4 5 6	Relief Effort Stationed at Outpost Sent to Investigate Escort to or From Outpost Evacuation of Outpost Rescue Mission Infiltration

Now that we have a few fun tables to roll on, let's generate a few story ideas!

Setting	Type	Goods	Location	What is happening?	How are the characters involved?
Fantasy	Trade Outpost	+20% cost Weapons, Armor, Lodging, Basic Goods	Edge of the Kingdom	Natural catastrophic event.	Sent to Investigate the cause of the event
Sci-Fi	Religious Order	+0% cost Basic Goods, Lore about the Area	Asteroid Base	Attacked by a natural enemy	Evacuation
Fantasy	Religious Order	+0% cost Weapons, Food	Mountains	Attacked by an enemy faction	Members of the order, or hire as guards
Sci-fi	Gateway	+10% cost Lodging, Lore about Area	Lagrange station	Attacked by an enemy faction	Rescue Mission

There you have it. Four super quick story idea seeds and a set of table to generate a lot more all revolving around an isolated outpost.

If you liked this article then don't forget to subscribe to get the next exciting installment on pulp gaming both Sci-Fi and Fantasy!

If you have questions or comments don't forget to hit me up on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube or Instagram!

Make sure you don't miss a single post and subscribe by e-mail today!

If you need to check out any of these great games stop on by DriveThruRPG and pick something up through my affiliate link to help support the blog!

Till next time, don't forget to Keep it Weird!