Wherever you may fall on the spectrum from "first-time Dungeon Master" to “Forever DM,” the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide is here to help. In addition to a comprehensive guide on crafting your own adventures, the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide contains five ready-to-run adventures, which are designed for characters levels 1-7.

Let's explore each of these adventures and how they can serve as a jumping-off point for DMs of all levels!

• Adventures Overview
• The Fouled Stream - Adventure For Level 1 Characters
• Miner Difficulties - Adventure For Level 2 Characters
• The Winged God - Adventure For Level 3 Characters
• Horns of the Beast - Adventure for Level 5 Characters
• Boreal Ball - Adventure for Level 7 Characters

Adventures Overview

Artist: Olly Lawson

Every adventure example is tailored to four characters of the specified character level. They each include an overview of the situation, hooks to get your players involved, and the encounters they might face.

These adventures are linked to locations near the Free City of Greyhawk, which is described further in the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide. However, they aren’t restricted to the Greyhawk setting. DMs are encouraged to tweak or adjust the details to fit other campaign settings they may be using. Regardless of how you intend to use them, each adventure features a map found in Appendix B of the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide. You can print these out, re-draw them onto your grid mat, or use them in the Maps VTT.

Something that really stands out about all of these adventures is that each of them is only a few paragraphs of text that’s easy to peruse. And yet, each of them contains a handful of encounters and a satisfying story conclusion. This is a keen insight for things you should focus on when crafting your own adventures as a DM to prevent overwhelming yourself. You really can run a whole session without spending hours writing notes.

A Trio of Sorts

While the first three adventures all stand alone as their own stories, you can also string them together into a mini-campaign taking the players from levels 1-3. The text for Miner Difficulties even has suggestions for tying it together with The Fouled Stream during the hook. This is a great way to practice combining different adventures for a larger campaign.

The Fouled Stream - Adventure For Level 1 Characters

This adventure for a level 1 party deals with a fungus of unknown origin that has polluted a nearby cave, spawning vile creatures. The folks in the village of High Ery are concerned when the fungal growth spreads to a nearby riverbank. The characters must follow a stream to find the source of the toxic spread.

They’ll encounter a friendly Treant named Borogrove, fight a series of fungus-corrupted monsters such as Twig Blights, and even save an infected Brown Bear. If the characters can locate the source of the fungus, they can purify the water and also earn a couple of magic items for their troubles.

There are about five encounters total in this mini-adventure, including exploring the small cave, which means that it can likely be played in about two to three hours with an average table.

Miner Difficulties - Adventure For Level 2 Characters

Artist: Katerina Ladon

The mayor of Blackstone has hired the adventurers to solve a problem in a local mine. A Hook Horror has gotten trapped in the mine and has killed several of the miners. Now, the miners have fled, and the mayor wants someone to kill the creature or drive it away.

This adventure contains seven encounters in total, but six of them are randomized as the players traverse the various tunnels. This allows you, as the DM, to roll on a special encounters table as they explore.

This adventure is notable because it can be solved either by fighting the Hook Horror or finding a different solution. This is a good reminder early in a campaign that sometimes stories can be resolved with creative, non-combat solutions for players who like roleplaying as problem solvers. Because of the random encounters and the various chambers of the mine, this adventure is fairly flexible on time to run because you can increase or decrease the number of random combat encounters as needed before the players find the solution.

The Winged God - Adventure For Level 3 Characters

A gnome merchant named Nondy Barducks was robbed by kobolds on his last journey. He hires the party as escorts to keep him safe on his next trip to the remote mining village of Diamond Lake. After encountering the kobolds along the road, the players will have the chance to pursue and capture the kobolds or to continue on their way. Either way, the adventurers learn that the kobolds were driven from their home by a Red Dragon Wyrmling.

The Winged God has two different encounters depending on whether the players chase the kobolds or not, but it eventually leads them to the dragon’s lair.

With the encounters for this adventure, you can expect to reasonably complete it within about 2-3 hours of gameplay. As an adventure for level 3 characters, the Red Dragon Wyrmling could possibly be the first time your characters encounter a dragon, so there are a lot of opportunities to play up the epic and mythical nature of such beings. Plus, novice and veteran players alike are always happy for a chance to loot a dragon’s hoard.

Horns of the Beast - Adventure for Level 5 Characters

Another escort quest, the adventurers are hired by a merchant named Melchis to accompany him to find a lost temple deep in the jungle. The titular Horns of the Beast is a fiendish Artifact that resides within the temple. There’s a big increase in scale for this level 5 adventure, which invites you to use the poster map of the Flanaess to traverse from the Free City of Greyhawk all the way down to the southern edge of the map.

This adventure plays out in three stages. First, you’ll travel by ship to the jungle with Melchis, a sea voyage culminating in a tough sea battle. Then, you’ll journey through the jungle itself, crossing 180 miles over the span of a few in-game days, with another random encounters table to determine what your players might run into. Finally, the third stage brings the party to a 90-mile stretch of coastal road until you discover the ruins.

The map and story are full of twists and turns, ending with a big battle over the Horns of the Beast, as well as the possibility of a character falling under a potent curse. Because of the multiple stages and potential encounters, this adventure will likely take you either one long session or multiple shorter sessions.

Boreal Ball - Adventure for Level 7 Characters

Artist: Katerina Ladon

The final adventure in this collection focuses on a single location filled with intrigue and danger. The adventurers have been invited to an unending Feywild ball held in the ice palace of the Baron of the Boreal Ball.

This adventure plays out across three dances, during which the players can choose to dance, mingle, watch others dance, or engage in another activity. This adventure utilizes the Renown rules covered in the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide, with the players’ choices and their successes or failures impacting their renown. There are five dancers in particular that can impact the players’ renown, and some could even be seeds for you to use as NPCs in future sessions.

While there are still opportunities for combat, this adventure leans heavily into social interaction. The Boreal Ball has a lot to offer for a DM who wants to try your hand at roleplaying various types of characters, as you’ll embody the Baron of the Boreal Ball and all of his eccentric guests. This adventure can be played within the scope of a few hours, but if the players are getting into it, it could easily stretch on a little longer.

Make It Your Own…or Make Your Own

These five different adventures laid out in the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide are here to help you jump right into playing and show you how to structure your own adventures. As we mentioned above, you, as the DM, are encouraged to adjust each of these adventures to fit your campaign.

But even if you end up not running any of these pre-built adventures, they serve as excellent examples of all the steps laid out in the Creating Adventures chapter. They each show you how simple it is to set up a premise, hook your players in, and lead them through a few encounters before sticking the landing.

With these pre-built adventures and the rest of the Creating Adventures chapter of the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide at your side, you’ll be stringing your adventures into campaigns in no time.

Riley Silverman (@rileyjsilverman) is a contributing writer to D&D Beyond, Nerdist, and SYFY Wire. She DMs the Theros-set Dice Ex Machina for the Saving Throw Show, and has been a player on the Wizards of the Coast-sponsored The Broken Pact. Riley also played as Braga in the official tabletop adaptation of the Rat Queens comic for HyperRPG, and currently plays as The Doctor on the Doctor Who RPG podcast The Game of Rassilon. She currently lives in Los Angeles.