D20 town/non-combat adventures?

UncleSporky

Hi guys, I don't usually hang out here but I've played some RPGs lately and looked into making an adventure.

I was just wondering if anyone knows a resource for modules/adventures that are less dungeon based and more town adventuring based. Grilling people for information, confronting a nobleman who is thought to be a vampire, looking for murder clues, going into hiding while trying to clear your name, etc. Puzzles and mysteries outside of ancient deathtraps. Disappearing into crowds, staging elaborate distractions, and chases across rooftops.

I know there are game systems designed specifically around this type of thing but I was looking for something D20, preferably D&D 3.5ish. I've always felt there's a good enough base of skills and feats for mostly non-combat RP that you could have fun with this but every adventure I can find is just a dungeon crawl, rooms with defined features and encounters. I know it is harder to write a non-linear town exploration, but surely someone has? Maybe I don't know how to look.

Mike Danger

There was an arc of Eberron adventures centered around the PCs chasing down an inquisitive gone rogue...the last one, Hell's Heart, is on the WOTC site but the other two are out there in old Dungeon issues somewhere. I think there were a few more Eberron adventures in Dungeon that were in the vein you're talking about.

Canada_jezus

Ptolus city by the spire has an entire 1-20 campaign in a city, dungeon crawling and combat do pop a lot though. But there has to be *some* kind of inspiration inside.

Horseshoe

In some of the older edition modules you will find more "puzzle" oriented stuff because back then you didn't tend to roll for non-combat stuff.

White Plume Mountain comes to mind. You had to solve riddles and deal with traps in a way that didn't involve dice resolution. I believe there's a 3.5 conversion of WPM on the wizards.com site that basically contains the original riddles and puzzles. For example there was a Sphinx in the dungeon that asked you a riddle that disarmed the traps in the hallway or something if you answered it right.

The original Tomb of Horrors has a bit of this as well. The final "boss" was like a flaming jeweled skull or something like that which couldn't be hurt with... well most anything. You had to figure out that the only way to kill it was by throwing some gems that you found in the dungeon at it, which were extremely valuable but might also be the only thing at your disposal to destroy it (i think it was something like the skull/lich/thing lost 1 hp per 1,000gp value of the special gems).

delroland

A friend of mine beat Tomb of Horrors with "Ye Olde Bag of Holding Plus Portable Hole" trick.