Find info quickly in my DnD adventure
Designing The Crypts of Ember Hollow
When we built the LorePanic demo, we needed an adventure that would show what the tool can actually do. So we wrote one from scratch — a full D&D 5e one-shot called The Crypts of Ember Hollow. Here's how we designed it and why we released it for free under CC-BY-4.0.
Find info quickly in my DnD adventure
Why write an original adventure?
We could have used existing open content for the demo. The SRD is right there. But a search tool is only as good as the content you search through, and we wanted something that would make people think "oh, this is what it would feel like with my own adventure books."
That meant we needed a real adventure — one with NPCs who have secrets, rooms with interconnected puzzles, encounters that reference earlier clues, and a story that rewards careful reading. Not a stat block compendium. Not a dungeon with twenty identical rooms. Something a GM would actually prep and run.
It also had to be fully original so we could release it under a Creative Commons license without any legal headaches. No third-party IP, no borrowed proper nouns. Just the SRD 5.1 rules and our own world.
The design constraints
We set a few rules for ourselves before writing a single word:
One session. The adventure had to be completable in a single 3-4 hour session. That meant a tight scope: one town, one dungeon, one villain.
Levels 1-3. New players should be able to play it, and experienced GMs should be able to slot it into any low-level campaign.
SRD-only monsters. Every stat block had to come from the Systems Reference Document so we could publish under CC-BY-4.0. No Monster Manual exclusives.
Dense enough to search. The adventure needed enough interconnected details that searching it with LorePanic would feel genuinely useful — NPCs who reference each other, clues that pay off rooms later, treasure that ties into lore.
Emotionally resonant. A dungeon crawl is fun, but what makes an adventure memorable is caring about the outcome. We needed stakes that felt real.
Building Ember Hollow
The town came first. We wanted a place that felt lived-in — small enough that every NPC matters, but detailed enough that players could spend an hour asking questions and piecing things together before ever entering the dungeon.
Five key NPCs, each with their own personality, motivation, and a distinct piece of the puzzle. Torvin the pragmatic tavern keeper who knows the town's rhythms. Elder Maren who has the history and the quest hook. Silas the morally-flexible merchant who knows more than he should. Lira, the traumatized survivor who provides the emotional core. And Brother Alden, the priest who understands the spiritual dimension of the threat.
No NPC has the full picture. The party has to talk to several of them — and cross-reference what they learn — to understand what they're walking into. That's the kind of information structure that makes a search tool shine: "What does Silas know about the Ember Heart?" or "Who saw the figure at the tree line?"
The dungeon: ten rooms, zero filler
The Crypts have ten keyed locations across two levels. The upper crypt (C1-C3) is the public burial chamber — familiar, slightly unsettling, easing players into the atmosphere. The lower chambers (C4-C10) are Aldric Voss's sealed laboratory, where things get strange.
Every room serves at least two purposes:
C1 (Sunken Vestibule) — Sets the tone and establishes that the barricade was broken from inside, not outside.
C5 (Web-Choked Storeroom) — A combat encounter and the discovery of Pella Marsh's body, which answers one question while raising others. Why did she come down alone?
C6 (Puzzle of the Three Flames) — A logic puzzle that gates progress and rewards players who examine the environment carefully rather than just rolling dice.
C7 (Hall of Copper Mirrors) — A mid-dungeon rescue (Donal Fenn) and a mechanical hint about the copper panels revealing invisible creatures, which pays off in C8.
C8 (Shadow Vault) — A dangerous fight and a hidden shortcut to the final room, rewarding thorough exploration.
C9 (Bone Workshop) — The second rescue (Ged Ashwood) and a way to weaken the boss by disrupting the bone conduits.
The goal was to make sure that a GM searching "what happens in room C7?" gets a rich answer with multiple threads, not just "four skeletons attack."
Aldric Voss: a villain worth talking to
The final encounter with Aldric is the part we're proudest of. He's a wight — mechanically straightforward — but his story makes the fight mean something.
Aldric was a man who loved his town. He cured plagues, warded off raids, and spent decades protecting Ember Hollow. His tragedy is that he feared death more than he feared what the Ember Heart would make him become. Three centuries of isolation eroded his humanity until the protector became the threat.
We gave him a DC 18 Persuasion check — not to defeat him through diplomacy, but to make him hesitate. One round where the fragments of who he was break through. It doesn't save him. But it makes the moment when the Ember Heart shatters and his expression shifts to relief feel earned.
That's the kind of detail that shows up when a GM asks the AI agent "What is Aldric's motivation?" and gets back a nuanced answer instead of "he's undead and evil."
The three missing villagers
We structured the three missing NPCs as an escalating emotional arc through the dungeon:
Pella Marsh (found dead in C5) — a somber discovery early on. She came back alone to gather herbs for Lira. Her note in her pocket is a gut punch.
Donal Fenn (found injured in C7) — a mid-dungeon reward. The party saves someone. Morale boost.
Ged Ashwood (found captive in C9) — right before the final boss, raising the urgency. He's being drained. The clock is ticking.
These aren't random hostages. The party met Lira in town, heard her guilt about suggesting the visit. They met Gareth Fenn, who can barely hold himself together. When the party finds these people — alive or dead — it should land because the town section built the emotional investment.
Why CC-BY-4.0?
We released the adventure under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 because we think the TTRPG community benefits from more open content, not less. GMs can use it, modify it, translate it, even publish their own version — as long as they credit the source.
It also means the demo is genuinely useful. You're not just testing a tool with placeholder text — you're searching through a real, playable adventure that you can download and run at your table tonight. If it gets you interested in what LorePanic can do with your adventure books, even better.
Try it yourself
The full adventure is available right now in the LorePanic demo. Search it, chat with the AI agent about it, ask questions about NPCs or room descriptions — it's all there, no account required.
And if you run The Crypts of Ember Hollow at your table, we'd love to hear how it went.
About us
LorePanic is an AI-powered companion for tabletop RPG Game Masters that instantly searches your adventure books, rulebooks, and campaign notes so you never have to flip through pages mid-session. It records your games with live transcription, surfaces contextual suggestions as the story unfolds, and generates automatic session recaps — letting you prep less and run more memorable games. Whether you're running D&D, Pathfinder, or homebrew, LorePanic keeps your entire campaign's lore one question away.
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