I’ve been running games for decades now and I thought I had used up all the standard scenarios. Adventuring, exploring, problem-solving, negotiation, role-playing, and to the death combat. I even threw in my favourite tropes of double-crosses, Mimics, and curses.

But the one scenario I realized I hadn’t even run is the escape scenario. Captured, alone, stripped of weapons, and alone in cells somewhere under a mountain.

I am having an immense amount of fun planning and open ended escape that lets the players choose how and when to try and escape. It will be a combination of strategy, negotiation, battles, and problem solving. It really is a fundamentally different session that all the others I have run.

In Guy Sclanders “Creating Epic Campaigns“, he details the four types of adventures we can send players on:

• Thwarting – stop a nefarious plan or destroy evil
• Delivering – deliver a person or object to a location or person
• Collecting – find and gather a series of items or people
• Discovering – explore and be taken on an emergent adventure based on what is found.

I can’t recommend Creating Epic Campaigns enough. It is an expert level course on how to create a plot, design an adventure, explore motivations, consider story structure, and ensure your sessions are collaborative where the Dungeon Master and the players create the story together.

Most of our adventures are a combination of the four types listed above, but I believe there is a fifth choice – Surviving.

Surviving could be escaping, avoiding, hiding, or just surviving in the face of overwhelming odds. It is similar to thwarting but the players are reacting instead acting. They are just trying to survive the night and taste freedom once more. Then they can think about Thwarting, Delivering, Collecting, or Discovering once more.

I feel sheepish not running Surviving adventures before – but I think this is an adventure type I will return to – I am having a blast and I think the players will also enjoy this truly unique adventure.