Scene Name
One line: where this happens · what the scene is for
Using this template
Duplicate this file, rename it <slug>.html, and replace every field below. Set the marker to 🌊 Fluid. Update the rail anchors to match your sections. Do not leave template text in a real page — filler here has escaped into live pages before.
At a Glance
- Where
- The location, precise enough to put on a map
- When
- Time of day, tide, or whatever window makes this scene urgent
- Who
- The named NPCs present, and whatever else is in the room
- Stakes
- What the party can win here — and what failing costs them
- Leads to
- The scenes this one opens
Arrival
How they get in, and what is dangerous before anything inside is. Answer the general features once — light, sound, footing, cover, verticality — so you never have to invent them mid-scene. Call out the thing they notice without asking, and write a DC only where failure has a consequence you would otherwise improvise under pressure.
What Happens
Three beats, in whatever order the party earns them:
- Beat one. What is happening here whether or not they interfere.
- Beat two. The thing they can find, and what it tells them.
- Beat three. The pressure — a clock, a rival, a rising danger. Track it where they can see it.
Then the developments: what changes if they sneak, if they talk, if they try the clever thing, and if they lose. Each one routes somewhere; none of them stops the module.
Clue — what it is
The discoverable fragment, written the way the party encounters it rather than the way you know it. Name the second route to this same fact — if there isn't one, go make one before you run this.
Behind the screen
What is true here that the party cannot see, and what it is being set up to pay off. If the scene has an alert state, define the one variable, what raises it, and what each downstream zone does once it's raised.
If they can fail here, say how — and say where the failure leads.
If It Comes to Blows
Whether a fight happens at all, and what the opposition wants instead of one. Give the opening move, the positioning, the objective they are actually fighting for, and the condition on which they flee or surrender. Reskin an existing 2014 MM creature at the right CR — same statline, at most one or two clearly-labelled house tweaks. Do not invent a block.
Creature Name
Size type, alignment · reskinned <MM creature> (MM, CR —)
As written. The statblock's own features, unchanged.
House tweak — Name. The one thing you changed, and why it fits the reskin.