Whether you’re hunting for your next adventure hook, looking to spice up your encounters, or just love discovering what the D&D community is cooking up, DMsGuild has you covered. For both new players and veteran DMsGuild users, the amount of choices can be daunting. That’s why we’ve gathered some of our favorite choices, from breakout indie gems to polished expansions that slot seamlessly into an officially published campaign – even items that are already converted to use right on your Roll20 VTT. These are the titles our team keeps coming back to, and we hope they’ll be the first step on your next adventure.
As a Dungeon Master, “shopping episodes” stress me out – from filling my imaginary shelves with exciting options for the players to build their toolkit, to inventing a smorgasbord of small business owners across Faerun. With Dragon Delves on the horizon, I’ve been looking for a tool to provide a great shopping experience when my players finally best their foe and take the hoard for themselves. This book gaves me 20 fully fleshed out shops with engaging proprietors for everything from common vendors, magic shops, even tattoo parlors! Now I’m actually looking forward to giving my players their dream shopping escapade!
This one shot is a perfect side quest that is easy for any DM to run. Chock full of hilarity, it’s guaranteed to keep the party entertained as they deal with an ibis who finds a headband of intellect and develops ambitions of conquest. Included are rules for characters leveled 5-16 and a folder of hand-drawn images to accompany the campaign.
It’s got everything: tightly knit seaside community, Hitchcockian bird attacks, and a delightfully horrid climactic encounter with a clever villain. Great for parties that enjoy investigation and social encounters.
Both of my recommendations are great level 1 adventures.
Rats of Waterdeep is a murder mystery set in Waterdeep and has a lot of immersive lore in its layout design. Because it’s a mystery, the rolls are focused more on exploration and social pillar, as opposed to combat.
The Ring of the Battle Maiden is set in an arena on the Moonshae Isles and has a classic AD&D layout, so it’s great for people who love a vintage aesthetic and a lot of combat. It’s written with new DMs and new players in mind.
This entire series is a wealth of information for DMs. Anne provides you with individual loot for each monster in the respective title (and has made one of these for every released book, as far as I’m aware). You’ll also get crafting and harvesting systems for turning your loot into usable items. I have this PDF on hand every game I play.
A handy little encounter anthology that provides the DM with 76 different encounters for creatures included in the D&D Basic Rules. It’s really well laid out and helps DMs craft really cool encounters for their players whether for a one-shot or an ongoing campaign.
This series injected life into my 5 year long campaign that started from Dragonheist and moved into Undermountain. Even if I didn’t utilize all the materials, it started sparking connections between floors that I hadn’t thought about. Plus, the exaggerated themes gave me opportunities to lean into other forms of media. For example treating a certain desert floor as an apocalyptic wasteland (a la Mad Max) was a group favorite and nice departure from the typical fantasy.
This book is part of a series of different Uncaged Volumes. It is a beautiful book filled with over a hundred different art pieces. I love the adventure maps and stat blocks to get ideas for the next encounter and the original adventures make for a really intense campaign. While the book is designed for Tier 4 adventures, it really is worth having it on your shelf. It’s close to 300 pages and is the perfect opportunity to let these deities shine as they deserve to! The entire series of Uncaged is worth your time and will make your campaigns packed with subverted tropes.
Rarely does a campaign ever get to Level 20, and while this adventure serves as an endpoint for Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and Dungeon of the Mad Mage to flex your PC’s gods-like power, it can also be run as a one-shot to give players a taste of what high-level D&D can be by facing off against one of my favorite Monster Manual creatures, the terrifying Tarrasque!
This is a companion to my favorite adventure anthology released for D&D 5e, Journeys through the Radiant Citadel, written in collaboration with some of the same writers and expands the lore of the discovered worlds, more encounters and adventure hooks to include in your games and tons of great artwork all woven together by a diverse, world-wide group of 22 people.
This is just a glimpse into the incredible creativity waiting for you on DMsGuild. Whether you’re a seasoned DM, a brand-new player, or a creator yourself, there’s always something new to explore. You can always find our staff recommendations on this page. So, consider yourself under the influence of Bardic Inspiration and venture forth!