Come up with better ways to give players adventure hooks than a bulletin board with wanted posters like in a cowboy movie.

Scatter these around your realm or make them random encounters in a city or on the road. It will make your world seem vibrant and alive and your adventure hooks seem organic.

1. Gauldron’s Map

Among the documents recovered in a treasure hoard is a vellum map of a strange place–now in ruins–that reveals the location of a secret vault. The dungeon under Cappice Keep, where the Scriven Sorcerers once met, seems a dangerous place. But perhaps this map prepared by the bard Gauldron Darksigil will tempt bold adventurers.

The map has information more pertinent to the sorcerers than to looters, but the hint about the secret vault and cryptic clue about how to access it should be enough.

2. Maccenna The Storyteller

A popular figure in a local tavern is Maccenna, a hearty older woman with many tales of her bardic adventures in wilderness and foreign ports. She still keeps her ear to the ground for interesting tales brought back by others.

In exchange for the heroes’ own tales of their exploits, she will share one of her own that suggests there is a treasure to be had, a mystery to be solved, or a menace to be slain in some dark corner of the shire.

3. Golyer the Potion-brewer

Golyer is a pleasant dwarven brewer of strange concoctions–more medicines than magical potions, to be sure–but is always in need of some strange plant or exotic creature’s body part. Rumor has it he’s been known to purchase a magical item of other sorts as well, and that he offers them to lords and nobles who secretly seek his more exotic wares.

Golyer will only be interested in minor enchanted items. Powerful items are too valuable–and therefore dangerous–for him to deal in. He’s more interested in monster body parts and is willing to pay.

4. Henrik the Bailiff

Henrik runs a clean operation and always seems to know what’s happening all over the city, whether it’s building construction or trouble with trade. He has the ear of the baron, the sheriff, and the judge, as well as the aldermen on the city council and can regularly be found surveying shipping activity at the docks.

Henrik knows a rumor or two about jobs adventurers could do, such as escorting a trade caravan on a dangerous route, finding a missing trader and his wagon full of rich goods, or taking care of some troublesome ogre or troll for a reward by the merchants guild.

5. Selani the Fortune-teller

The traveling fortune-teller Selani is a round woman with long braids and colorful clothes. She senses the specialness of the heroes and offers to tell their fortunes. When she sets to work, she finds that indeed the heroes have many possible futures, which Selani sees as forking paths.

One path leads to a tall, dark man with one eye who bids them to board a ship for a sea voyage that will take them to an island. Another leads to an important priest of their faith–a short, fat fellow–who needs them to slay the ghouls who have infested his graveyard and figure out where they are coming from. Other paths are cloaked in fog with unclear actions and events. A troll? A strange stone puzzle?

6. The Un-abandoned Watchtower

The lonely watchtower on the border the the town of Dressalford hasn’t been manned since the realm was expanded west nearly a hundred years ago. So why is there smoke wafting from its chimney?

7. The Foreign Corpse

The heroes find the corpse of a foreign merchant that holds documents that, when examined, reveal secret writing strongly suggesting she was a spy for the neighboring realm.

Other documents suggest her name was Imsara and mention an inn not far away. Perhaps they know more about her. And surely the local nobles should be alerted and perhaps the sheriff as well, whether her death was murder or predation.

8. The Whispering Pools

Hidden deep in the enchanted Fae Arbor woodlands fraught with danger, are certain dark, still pools. As a blue moon‘s light reflects upon them, the pools unveil secrets in soft whispers, revealing the destined path to those who listen with open hearts. What treasures lie within the earth; what dangers lurk in ruined places; and what knowledge beyond that of mortal men awaits discovery in strange lands may all be revealed.

The whispers of the pools are often cryptic and sometimes taunting. The pools will ask what the heroes seek and can magically divine where it can be had. But the answers may be disappointing, as powerful magic items are usually in the possession of powerful NPCs (some of them heroic and pure of heart and others too powerful and influential to confront) or else deep in very dangerous pits of chaos.

9. The Monster of Thrayun

Deep in the ruins of the old fortress of the knightly Order of Thrayun is a strange, misshapen creature who promises knowledge you want in exchange for a certain treasure: the Seal of Ansara. Go and bring back what it wants, and it can use it to tell you where to find the thing you seek.

It has a name: Glissara, for it was once Dame Glissara, fallen champion of the order, cursed to dwell here as a monster–and not to reveal herself–until the Seal of Ansara was returned to its rightful place in the fortress of Thrayun. Grateful, she will transform into her beautiful original form and reveal the information you want before, at last, dying in peace.

10. The Diadem of Olghin

This diadem of the sage-king of antiquity is set with an enchanted stone that gives the wearer insight into past times and visions of past events. The apparitions of lost eras are both illuminating and dizzying, and wearing the diadem soon leaves the user weak, confused, and prone to hallucination. But the knowledge gained can be invaluable: locations of fallen fortresses, secrets of hidden hoards, passwords and clues to antique mysteries… perhaps even enough to draw a crude map.

11. Hepsilar’s Tome of Mysteries

This century-old leather-bound book contains insights and lore about the locations of certain treasures left behind by folk fleeing catastrophes, about the creatures lurking in the depths of cavernous pits, and about the arcane and puzzling protections that guard lost items of power.

This one tome might point the way to a dozen treasures and mysteries, but the descriptions are sketchy and sometimes obscured by a riddle, cipher, or antique language, as Hepsilar was loath to reveal secrets to the impetuous or unserious. All information found should be checked with a living sage, as some of the secrets (1 on a d6) have since been revealed by others and the treasures recovered.

12. Douglaff the Sage

Douglaff is a thoughtful, if eccentric, halfling scholar of myth and magic with black hair and piercing blue eyes. He answers the heroes’ questions about their recent treasure finds but then props up his slippers and mentions an idea they might pursue based on something he came across in his research….

A vintage librum of lore and tradition talks of fine goods and furnishings in a ship called the White Gull. Twice a year, with the lowest tides, a wreck by that name lies uncovered on the sand below a cliff not far from the city harbor. It was always thought to be an ordinary trader of little account to warrant the peril inherent in reaching and exploring it, but its name is the same as the rich ship in the lore.

13. Crocolis the Ill-Favored

A dwarf born with dwarfism, Crocolis Doubledwarf is a tiny, scheming wretch who nevertheless has risen to head a syndicate of thieves and spies. On some chance occasion, the heroes overhear him talk to his cronies of pursuing a particular treasure thought to lie in a dangerous place not so far away.

Overcome with greed and overloud with drink, he orders his fellow blackguards to ready provisions and arms to set out in seven days, all the while waving about a certain document (a map?) he says is all they need to claim fortune and glory.

14. Suchal the Royal Pursuivant

Suchal Dinfana is an official of the Royal College of Arms. He seeks a particular item on behalf of the king himself which the heroes may have encountered on a previous adventure. His questions are sharp and specific.

When the heroes’ answers suggest they have not encountered the unnamed object, the official will suggest that pursuing the answers to his questions might bring them great favor and reward with the king. For now, he will not say exactly what the object is or why it is important, but it must have something to do with the work of the Royal College of Arms.

15. Averbert’s Traveling Company

Isomart Averbert is a round-faced cleric of the heroes’ own religion who approaches the heroes with a proposal: they combine forces to confront the old peril that has plagued this vicinity for too long.

Perhaps it is a pair of bulettes or an infestation of undead. Regardless, Isomart’s adventurers will pursue one strategy while the heroes pursue another, hoping to meet in the middle. The Traveling Company has a good reputation and only fair intentions, but there is surely some variable no one has taken into account….

16: The Call of Steel

One of the heroes has carried a magical axe for some time, but now the hero finds their dreams intruded upon by strange visions–visions of the heroes pursuing a scourge that awakens a new power within the axe. Perhaps the axe will become…

• Especially good against undead, which is revealed only once it is used against a powerful undead creature.
• Especially good against giants, revealed only once used against a powerful one.
• Especially good against lycanthropes, revealed only once used against a powerful were-creature.

The GM can ask “Which direction is the weapon is drawing you toward…?” In battle against that great scourge, the axe takes on its new property, befitting the heroes’ class level.

17: A Public Cry for Heroes

The standard method of disseminating information in a medieval society was the town crier.

A town crier makes a formal announcement of a prize for the return of a relic or artifact to the city’s cathedral. The arch-bishop has authorized the local bishop to offer such a prize to any who recover the item. It is believed the item lies in a ruins not far from the city, the exact location of which is generally known to locals but rarely visited due to the perils it harbors.

The bishop can provide a map of the place as it once was, altho the accuracy cannot be guaranteed, as changes may have been made between the creation of the map and the site’s destruction. At least two other companies of adventurers show interest, the Marvallian Mercenaries and Galdor’s Gallant Fellows.