Summary

• Settlements in D&D provide rumors and adventure hooks for new campaigns.
• Generating tension among religious factions and social classes can create interesting side quests.
• NPCs can be in distress due to religious rivalries, exploitation by the wealthy, or family feuds.

While 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dungeons & Dragons is about exploring the titular dungeons, a good campaign has other moving parts. Along with a safe space to trade and 💖tend to w🍌ounds, settlements provide rumors and adventure hooks that your players can use as the start of a new adventure.

The best side quests draw upon things important to your PCs or the group's favorite NPCs. Conflict creates interest, and you're going to need plenty of smaller conflicts to generate interesting side quests. Here are some ideas for generating all kinds of tension 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:in your cities and towns.

8 🍌 Religious Rivalries

Nothing Better Than Sects And Violence

While most D&D settings are polytheistic according to lore, most people don't wor🍎ship every single god. It's entirely possible for a settlement to generate conflict when its people are divided between followers of two diametrically opposed gods, such as Selune and Shar in the Forgotten Realms.

If your party has a cleric or paladin, you can up the stakes by having one of the religious factions be the clergy for their respe🦹ctive god. 🔜That being said, your party has more freedom to pick sides (or stay neutral) if none of their deities are represented in the conflict.

7 Eat Theꦉ Rich

The Perfect Snack For Any Adventuring Party

While plenty of PCs come from noble or wealthy backgrounds, the ultrarich don't garner much sympathy when t♕hey're NPCs. If a wealthy NPC is grossly exploi🔯ting the populace, your players are bound to take notice. They're even more bound to kill the rich NPC in question and loot their mansion.

This conflict is well-suited to humanoid NPCs, but there's no reason to keep it to regular folks if you don't want to. Drag📖ons and cloud gia🉐nts are canonically known to hoard wealth, and can provide more of a combat challenge if you don't feel like giving your rich bastard class levels or an extensive security detail.

6 😼 ♔ Sacrificial Lambs

For When Your Players Actually Care About NPCs

While tensions between different sects are a good conflict if you love intrigue and faction play, sometimes you just want to run a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:spooky evil cult. There's nothing wrong with this, especially if an NPC your players h𝕴ave tak✨en a liking to gets kidnapped and offered up as a sacrifice.

Of course, there are other ways to put NPCs in distress if you don't want to put a cult in your game. Perhaps a cannibalistic monster has terrorized the town for ages, demanding a person as tribute every year (or however long you want to make it). This keeps the fundamentals the same while offe♔ring up a different flavor for your players.

5 Sta💃r-Crossed Lovers

If You Like Romeo And Juliet

Imagine arriving at a settlement only to find out an NPC you were supposed to meet up with is being forced into an arranged marriage. This alone is likely to resonate with players who care about personal autonomy and free will, but you can 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:add some romance to give things a little razzle dazzle.

The reasons for the 🔯community disapproving of two characters' romance can be whatever you want, as long as your players are comfortable with the explanation. Having both romantic partners be NPCs is bound to have your players wondering why they should care, so consider making the pair a player character and their established NPC love interest.

4 ཧ ﷽ Hag-ling For Deals

Start Practicing That Cackle

The Monster Manual and assorted sp🎀latbooks have a huge variety of different hags for you to choose from when building an encounter. Hags can be found in or near just about every humanoid settlement, taking on🧜 names and appearances that help them blend in with the local populace.

If you want to build a side quest around a hag, focus on the nasty consequences faced by the people she's made deals with. Your players are 🀅sure to find plenty of miserable NPCs who would be all too happy to share their sad story. What's more, the hag's lair can be looted if NPCs don't have the means to reward your players.

3 There Is An Impostor Amonꦑg Us

Will Your Players Know Who To Trust?

Sometimes, you have a good idea of what creature you🤡 want to build an encounter around. Other times, you have a vague idea for a scenario leading up to a monster encounter. This conflict is for the latter, and can be easily customized to fit your needs no matter what the settlement is like.

The basics are pretty simple: 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:an important authority figure (or someone beloved by the community) has been abducted or killed, with𒁏 an impostor secretly put in their place. To pull this off, you need to strike the right balance between suspicion and plausible deni𓆏ability.

Doppelgangers are the most obvious go-to for this encoun๊ter, but fiends also fit the archetype well.

2 Nature's Revenge

Don't Cut Down That Tree

Sometimes the mundane details of building a settlement run into conflicts of their own, especially when environmental concerns are at play. If the residents of a town cut down a dryad's t♛ree or polluted the ocean hideout of a marid, they're probably going to suffer some painful 𒊎consequences in the near future.

Fey and elementals are the most appropriate creatures for these types of encounters. This is the perfect conflict if you have one or more druids in your party, but you can run it if your group is druid-free as well. Just be warned that druidless parties are probably going to solve the issue differently from🔜 what you may have imagined.

1 Family Feuds 🥃

If You Really, Really Like Romeo And Juliet

As the subtitle implies, this confli🎶ct dovetails nicely with the 'star-crossed lovers' scenario, but you can just as eas🍷ily run it without any romance. Dealing with family feuds is a great way to allow your players to pick a faction to ally themselves with, especially if both sides contain likeable NPCs.

Rival noble houses are the most obvious choice for this conflict and are an excellent go-to if you want a campaign heavy with po🦹litical intrigue. This easily adapts itself to drow houses if you're running an Underdark game, or you can use compܫeting crime syndicates if you're running an urban adventure.