Today I saw a rumour tweeted by @randomdnd, and immediately thought it would make a fantastic stepping off for a single session of Dungeon World:
You lose her near a desolate prison flooded with giant chuul. The hag said that the Dream Shard of Death was fought here. #dnd
What are you doing?
From here, you can extrapolate the ambiguities in the hook to generate some compost for the game. If you have a D6 closer to hand than a playgroup, use these instead:
Who is she?
- 1-3: a master ironmonger
- 4-5: the hag
- 6: a pregnant duchess
Lose her?
- 1-3: Lost her trail
- 4-5: Escaped her chase
- 6: She died
What caused the desolation?
- 1-3: Dragonfire
- 4-5: Plague
- 6: Geostationary comet
Who was imprisoned?
- 1-3: War criminals
- 4-5: Heretic scholars
- 6: A nascent godling
The hag?
- 1-3: Grendeldam, mother of trolls
- 4-5: An accursed warlock
- 6: Terrestrial boneless lamprey
The Dream Shard of Death?
- 1-3: A sentient glaive
- 4-5: An historic troupe of would-be heroes
- 6: A gestalt anthropocorpus
Fought…
- 1-3: And slain
- 4-5: And fled
- 6: But never bested
Do you have some grim portents?
No.
Just use a couple of small clocks and extrapolate from whichever thread isn’t being directly addressed right now.