Besides a tavern, the most common place for an adventuring party in Dungeons & Dragons is the village. Maybe it's the alternative starting point for the campaign, where the characters coincidentally meet in a local village. Maybe it's the setting of a first quest, or perhaps it could simply just be another village that the party passes through without too much care or worry.
However, as common as villages can be in your campaign, it can be difficult to come up with the right encounters and events for them. They're not as busy as towns, but not so uneventful that you could use what's in the wilderness like a wild animal attack. So, how do you create something that can be curated for a unique but common environment like a village? Well that's where we have you covered with some unique encounters that can be applied to most villages to make them just a little less common and more memorable.
6 Someone Isn't Who They Say They Are
When you enter a village, you're likely to spot a few villagers out and about. Though things seem normal, players may be surprised when they come across a shifty mayor who seems to regard everyone with suspicion, except the party. Upon some more discussion, the mayor will regale them with a tale that they heard someone break into an abandoned shack at the outskirts of the village. When they went to check in on the shack, they discovered that there was nothing there, except evidence of a break-in and remnants of some pale flesh which they had formally identified by a wizard as the flesh of a doppelganger.
Now they lurk around the village, not trusting any of the residents as they wonder which one is the doppelganger who has taken the true form of one of the villagers. However, what has happened to the true villager and who is the doppelganger is a mystery for the party to solve. This is a great way to get the party to explore the village, its residents and find out more about them while keeping engaged in a short and sweet mystery that will encourage a lot of roleplay along the line.
5 Like In Hot Fuzz
They say small towns have big secrets, so imagine just how big a secret a place as small as a village can muster. Well, this might seem like a more typical mystery, the one that a player might joke about when they enter a village for the first time, but it won't be much of a laughing matter when you make it come true. Imagine entering a village, everything seems normal from the local business to the farms to the tavern most of them hang around at night. But there's always something a bit... off, to say the least.
It could be the children making odd comments about their parents going to the forest at night, or a villager making an off-hand comment about how much they're looking forward to the full moon and then not answering why when asked about it. This village of yours is a cult, whether they believe in an actual deity, some false prophet that is the village leader or something else, but they're a cult and definitely plan to sacrifice one of the party. What does this cult worship? What do they want from the party (if anything)? What will they do? Well, that's all up to you.
4 Trapped In Time
From dark to possibly darker, or even comedic depending on your type of campaign. When the players stay at a village's tavern just to rest for the night, they're a little surprised when the tavern owner asks them who they are and how they got rooms. Upon inspection of the tavern logs, they find that not only is any record of them being there not written, but the gold they spent on the room is back in their pouches. Welcome to the village trapped in time.
For what could be days, weeks or even months, this village has been stuck in a time loop that affects all those who were in the village when this loop started, so the party are safe. You can have fun with this by turning it into a small quest, such as having a wizard or one villager who knows about the time loop who tries to research and perform methods to stop it, but to no avail. Will the party be able to stop this village trapped in time or simply take advantage of the village's situation?
3 Three Goblins And A Trenchcoat
For a campaign that's more on the comedic side, or perhaps just needing to take a break from the seriousness of a more dark arc, this is an encounter that's sure to have a lot of laughs. Players travel through the village, do their typical routine and then meet the mayor who is, to anyone who can roll a Perception above 5, just three goblins in a trench coat. Not to mention that, but despite having the charisma to effectively lead the village, they are terrible liars when it comes to hiding this fact.
But what makes things more nonsensical is the fact that nobody in the village seems to notice. Perhaps it's just some sort of elaborate prank. Maybe there's magic behind it, or maybe the villagers have the rosiest of tinted glasses, but this is a small detail that could make a village a lot more amusing than planned. Either way, the goblins seem to lead the town well, and so what your party does about them is left for your players to decide.
2 Nobody's Home
The opposite kind of encounter is one where an adventuring party stumble upon a village that isn't marked on any recent maps and is seemingly abandoned. Nobody resides there, that is, except for a lone elven mayor who has apparently been running the village for decades. What may seem like just a blip of time in the life of an Elf, is clearly quite a lot of time to apparently be running a village, especially when nobody is there. However, what makes things worse is that the mayor doesn't understand what the party means if they claim the town is abandoned, and will act as if there are residents with their own families, stories and lives going around.
It's clear that some disaster struck this village many years ago, practically wiping it off the face of the map as any significant location anymore. Except for the mayor, who has lived here for years and hallucinates the next generation of villagers, living in their own reality. This is the type of encounter where the party will need to be delicate, and it makes a hopeful resting point into a tragic tale to be remembered.
1 God Is With Us
A problem with villages is people tend to think that there's nothing significant about them. It's to the point where villages seem to mean nothing more than the start of some greater grander adventure, whether the genesis of an adventuring group or the humble background of a folk hero. So, perhaps instead of some great chapel or major religious nation, this would be a perfect quiet place for one of the all-powerful deities to reside.
Not quite literally, but when parties come across a small religious village that seems to revolve around its cozy chapel, it's hard not to be surprised when they see the champion of a God, the representation of a deity or something similar that is residing in the village. Not only is this fantastic for any religious party members to come across, but it's a way to give this village some backstory as you figure out answers about why the deity is here, what kind of deity it is and its impact on the village.