Friday Encounter: Runestone Treasure Hunt

This encounter is fairly straightforward, but it's intended to get players thinking in terms of self-directed exploration, rewarding them for remembering landmarks and scouring the map for points of interest. It's by design the sort of puzzle you would find in an open-world video game. It will need some DM effort in advance to lay out a good treasure hunt - to this end, I've left it deliberately vague so that DMs can add their own landmarks and trails. The inciting incident could be placed in the wilderness, on the road, in a dungeon, or even in a town as a local landmark - the townspeople may or may not know about the nature of the stone, if you want to give your players hints to set them on their way. It may still be useful for players to hear rumors of a map to buried treasure written on runestones to get them in the right frame of thought.

The party should come upon a large standing stone in which runes and images are carved. The stonework can be discerned as depicting a distinctive landmark of some kind - this should be something specific enough that it cannot easily be mistaken for somewhere else. For instance, the stone could show a tower on an island in a lake, with a tree growing at its side. This image corresponds to another landmark in the game world some distance away from the stone.

It's up to you as to how the players should figure out where this landmark is. They could get hints from asking people in the nearby area, or they could consult written records that mention a similar feature in order to get directions to it. Alternatively, a DC 15 History check could be used to pinpoint the location the image depicts (for optimal fun, you can have a successful check give the location, but a failed check still give the player hints that approximate the next step in the trail - they'll have to do the legwork themselves to see how they apply). If all else fails, it's also fun to let the PCs stumble upon the landmark by happenstance if they pass through the same point or hex it was located - hopefully they'll remember the stone.

If the party follows the trail to this location, they will find another runestone, this one with a different image depicting a different landmark. Once again, following the clues to this next location will reveal another runestone, and so on. You can repeat this as many times as you like (or for as long as you think the players will be interested) - about four to five steps will work. You can also include additional challenges or puzzles along the way. Perhaps the first stone or two can be found easily enough by just being in the area, but later stones might be in more difficult locations to reach, such as at the top of a cliff, or guarded by an enemy or trap.

At the end of the trail, the party will find a monolith with no markings at all, just bare stone. If they dig in the ground, they will discover a treasure chest buried beneath this stone; it takes about an hour to unearth the chest. Inside is 4,100 GP's worth of gold, silver, platinum, and jewels, as well as one magic item for each member of the party suited to their class and play style.

This encounter is meant to be something for the players to pursue on their own, but it could also work as a competition. Perhaps a rival group is following the stones as well, and now the PCs must race against time to get to the treasure before they do - potentially facing sabotage along the way!