Hi everyone! I'm a pretty new GM. I've only ever played ttrpg as a GM with my kids, using the Hero Kids system.
We've been having a lot of fun running a longer campaign, and my kids were not really interested in the flavor of playing as actual kids (they want to be hulking lizardkin warriors who yeet the bad guys across the room and intimidate even the city guards to let them carry weapons in the city) so I have done a lot of adaptation of the included Hero Kids adventures to fit their style.
What I like to do is pull general plots and encounters out of the pre-made adventures, cut out or change stuff that doesn't fit, and use them as kind of quantum side quests whenever the players want to ask about rumors from the local innkeeper and stuff like that.
I have been mainly designing my own stuff as we go along but those adventures help a LOT with prep and having resources already compiled in a mostly usable way. It also helps me learn a lot about how to design encounters and plots since I don't have much experience.
I'm posting because I am about out of the Hero Kids adventures that I feel like fit our setting and play style and I am wondering if there are any other books that have adventures that can be used in this way that aren't system specific?
I've heard of things like the One Shot Wonders book, and others, or even the actual D&D published adventures, but having no experience with that or with even playing D&D 5e, I don't know how much work it would be to adapt things. So I am wondering if anyone has used resources like that and knows how they are put together would be able to let me know of some good ones to use in this way.
Free resources would be great, but I'm definitely willing to spend money if there are good products.
I loved reading through the manual for Morrowind with the copy we got on the original XBox. I read all the class descriptions, details about the schools of magic, and had a whole character planned out before starting the game. I didn't get into tabletop gaming until much later, but looking back, that manual really captured the same feeling of reading through the D&D players handbook and picking out a race, class, background, etc.
I think that feeling is why it's still my favorite PC game.