D&D: Five Adventures Ripe for Roleplaying
If you want to get more into the R of RPG, these adventures will serve you up with plenty of opportunities to play your role at the table.
When it comes to adventures, there’s no shortage of modules that offer up inventive dungeons or splashy boss fights or new ways to die in the wilds of Icewind Dale. But, what if you want to talk it out? What if you prefer to solve your problems with words and swords? These five modules might not be roleplay-only, but they’ll give you plenty of chances to play your character.
Curse of Strahd
Curse of Strahd is one of the adventures that keeps popping up whenever folks think of the greats. But there’s a reason for that. Curse of Strahd delivers opportunities to talk to the main villain as well as to kill him. The big bad vampire boss of Barovia is a menacing presence throughout your stay in the mists of Ravenloft.
And that’s a big part of why people keep coming back to this adventure. The roleplaying opportunities abound. Strahd is full of confidence, right up until you reverse his fortune and raise the stakes, as it were. But that makes it fun all the while.
Courts of the Shadow Fey
This adventure is one of Kobold Press’ trickiest to run, but grappling with it may well be worth it for experienced DMs looking to give their players a more roleplay-heavy adventure. In Courts of the Shadow Fey, the players are drawn into the Shadow Court and wrapped up in intrigue.
What makes it tricky is the same thing that makes it rich for roleplay opportunities: characters have to be bought in, and to understand the rules of the world. The courtly intrigue only works if people know the kinds of consequences they may suffer for breaking some of the unwritten rules. And the only way to get that across is to have all the background info. But with a little finesse, this is one of few intrigue adventures out there. Most other ones, you’ll have to make yourself.
Wild Beyond the Witchlight
The Wild Beyond the Witchlight: A Feywild Adventure is probably one of the most roleplay focused adventures WotC has ever put out. You can famously get through the whole module without having to roll initiative (so they claim). But even if you’re not going for a no-kill run, there are still plenty of opportunities to dig into the wealth of social encounters awaiting you in the Feywild. I don’t know what it is about Fae Realms that encourage roleplay, but here we are.
Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel
Journeys through the Radiant Citadel is an adventure anthology that’s full of opportunities for roleplaying. One of two anthologies on this list, Radiant Citadel revolves around the titular citadel serving as a hub for adventure and lost civilizations floating out in the Deep Ethereal plane.
Travel there and you’ll find adventures awaiting that offer you chances to browse Night Markets and roleplay with all sorts of strange beings, even solve mysteries if you can keep your wits about you. It’s a collection of newer adventures that stands in contrast to the next entry on this list…
Quests from the Infinite Staircase
Quests from the Infinite Staircase is an anthology of classic D&D adventures, revamped for the modern age. But make no mistake, they were as roleplay focused then as they are now. Adventures like The Lost City which was designed by Tom Moldvay to encourage players AND their DMs to explore cities and the peoples within, or the TSR UK adventures Beyond the Crystal Cavern and When a Star Falls were praised when they came out as being different from the usual dungeon crawling fare.
That holds true today as well. You can get involved in a love story, in a prophecy, or even, if you end up fascinated by robots, in a conversation with a ship’s AI in varying states of running amok.
What are your favorite roleplay-focused adventures?
