Family Friendly D&D Adventure: Troll Bridge
Based on the old fairytale, this adventure turns an old story trope on its head. This adventure can be adapted for any age or level characters.
Joacob Potter, the mayor of the small village of Homlin, is offering a reward of 500 gold pieces to anyone that can remove the trolls from under the bridge that spans the deep canyon on the road to the city of Makersburg. Mayor Potter will tell any adventurers that respond to the offer that three trolls have taken control of the bridge and they charge traveler 2 silver pieces to cross. The bridge is the only way to cross the canyon. The next closest crossing is one day’s walk to the north.
In reality, the trolls are handy craftsmen and stone masons and built the bridge for the town of Homlin. They were promised payment of 1,000 gold, but the mayor did not have the money to pay them once the bridge was completed. In fact, the mayor only has 250 of the 500 gold he has offered as a reward for removing the trolls.
The trolls are Ogg, Bog and Larry. Unlike most trolls, they are lawful neutral in alignment, meaning they keep their word and they will do whatever they feel is necessary to collect the money they are rightfully owed for building the bridge. The trolls are charging travelers a toll to cross the bridge in order to get paid. The trolls would happily leave, if they get paid the remainder of what they are owed. So far, they have collected 750 gp worth of tolls, more than half what they were promised by the Mayor Potter.
If the adventurers arrive during the day, they will find it quite busy with traffic flowing from both directions on the new bridge. One troll is on each side of the bridge collecting the tolls and the third troll can be found under the bridge guarding their belongs and cooking dinner.
10 Responses
It’s kinda short
Yes, it is short. I am a fan of the Lazy DM method of prepping. This is a good way to get started. Also, keep in mind that these are short adventures meant to keep younger players engaged for a couple of hours. They are not meant to be used for long gaming sessions.
Maybe you could throw in a side quest or use this as a way to get the characters on the road to another adventure.
Hi, my son (7) and nephew (9) would like to start. I have very limited experience, but am willing to DM. Is there more information about this campaign?
Hi Susan. I am working hard in the background to digitize a lot of the materials I have created for our campaign. All of the adventures on this site are drawn from our game. I didn’t string them together into a “campaign” because I wanted players & DMs to have the freedom to put these “one-shots” together in any order they wanted.
It really makes me happy to hear that people are using the adventures and want more. Guess I better get writing.
DMing Dad
Hey there! I am not usually one for commenting on things like this, but I wanted to thank your for this one-shot idea. I’m currently working on writing a one-shot for the class I’m teaching and this actually works perfectly! Can’t wait to run this as an adventure for them.
Hey, thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment. I do what I can when I have time and it’s really great to see people enjoying the material I put out.
Hi there,
I just wanted to thank you for this great idea. My three sons live roleplaying (I use icrpg) and this is a great encounter idea.
All the best
John
This is fantastic! This is exactly the kind of thing I’m looking for. Is there a pdf or something I can buy?
Reece, nothing to buy yet. I do have a patreon account where you can get early access, access to extra content and influence the types of content I make for the website. Heck, you could event get an custom character, complete with original character art at one of the support levels. Thanks for stoping by!
Thank you so much for posting this! I had never DMed before, and I needed something fun for kid and adult players during a family visit. I was able to toss in an encounter on the way to the bridge, make up (probably way too many) villager NPCs, and cook up some fun small town politics.
This ended up being SO MUCH FUN for everyone. The players loved figuring out that the trolls weren’t the enemy, and coming up with a solution that worked for everyone was fun to RP. And I, the new DM, got a kick out of helping the story play out.