Hi everyone! I'm a pretty new GM. I've only ever played ttrpg as a GM with my kids, using the Hero Kids system.
We've been having a lot of fun running a longer campaign, and my kids were not really interested in the flavor of playing as actual kids (they want to be hulking lizardkin warriors who yeet the bad guys across the room and intimidate even the city guards to let them carry weapons in the city) so I have done a lot of adaptation of the included Hero Kids adventures to fit their style.
What I like to do is pull general plots and encounters out of the pre-made adventures, cut out or change stuff that doesn't fit, and use them as kind of quantum side quests whenever the players want to ask about rumors from the local innkeeper and stuff like that.
I have been mainly designing my own stuff as we go along but those adventures help a LOT with prep and having resources already compiled in a mostly usable way. It also helps me learn a lot about how to design encounters and plots since I don't have much experience.
I'm posting because I am about out of the Hero Kids adventures that I feel like fit our setting and play style and I am wondering if there are any other books that have adventures that can be used in this way that aren't system specific?
I've heard of things like the One Shot Wonders book, and others, or even the actual D&D published adventures, but having no experience with that or with even playing D&D 5e, I don't know how much work it would be to adapt things. So I am wondering if anyone has used resources like that and knows how they are put together would be able to let me know of some good ones to use in this way.
Free resources would be great, but I'm definitely willing to spend money if there are good products.
Not precisely what you asked for, but very useful resources so I'm plugging them anyway because I love them:
The Dungeon Alphabet
Fire on the Velvet Horizon
The Dungeon Alphabet seems great! I will add that to my list to check out.
Fire on the velvet horizon also looks interesting, but maybe a little intense for my current game. Kind of giving me some SCP vibes. Would be fun to run a Fringe-like campaign in a dark fantasy setting with these kinds of creatures. Reminds me of The Tales of Durand series, too, where when certain things happen, the world kind of starts to unravel and unbinds a lot of dark creatures and things.
Yeah. The "Fire on the Velvet Horizon" stuff is really too powerful to be used as-is in my experience; generally I'll insert them in much reduced form. "Hostage Frog" becomes a big frog monster that tries to swallow and digest the adventurers. "Ice Age Eye" becomes a particular frozen part of the map that's unusual and strange in a certain way. That is why I love it though; any one of those entries easily contains enough powerful content that it could take over and consume the entire campaign structure, so there's plenty of creative strength to use for adding flavor to the adventure even if it's not safe to use undiluted.