Kids love "parkour"
The cave entrance that led somewhere much hotter.
This is a recap of an adventure from about a year before I first wrote it up—one the kids still talked about long afterward. One of their favorite parts was what I called playing Frogger. They called it parkour.
The setup
During a seasonal celebration everyone froze at the sight of a large red dragon in the distance, flying toward the castle. It looked like an attack run—then it simply passed overhead far above. Dragons were on everyone’s mind.
Later a small animal approached the party, acting strangely, clearly trying to get their attention. The gnome cast Speak with Animals and got quite a story: a large fiery creature had been setting the woods near the animal’s home on fire. Curious but cautious, the party set out.
Near the foot of a mountain—close to where they had last seen the dragon—they found burned terrain centered on a cave, with a small river of lava flowing from it.
As they approached they met not a dragon but an azer. They defeated it and entered. Deeper in, following the lava, they passed through a dark, foggy stretch of poor visibility. On the far side they found the cave’s exit… onto Muspelheim, the fire plane—hot, dry, and clearly not home.
The battle in Muspelheim
The red dragon wasn’t the immediate problem. Azers and magma mephits were. The party stood on a flat stone shelf, lava on three sides and the cave behind them.
Ahead, past rocks floating in the lava and a stone bridge swarming with azers, a demonic figure worked the controls of a contraption directing lava into the cave—and keeping the portal open.
Jumping the floating rocks in Muspelheim.
The heroes had to leap rock to rock to shut the device down. Some rocks drifted like boats—about 15 feet each round—so hesitation meant missing the next jump to the bridge. Each jump needed an Athletics or Acrobatics check; failure meant a dip in the lava for 1d6 fire damage, all while fighting azers and mephits.
Everyone fell in at least once; a few fell more than twice. Eventually the fighter reached the demon and finished him. The gnome realized they could destroy the device and race back through the portal before it closed.
On the return trip they noticed the portal wasn’t fully sealing—only weakening. The nearby red dragon’s lair was stressing the barrier between worlds. They would need to face the dragon after all.
The takeaway
The terrain puzzle was simple to run and unforgettable for the kids: a clear objective, real challenge, and a physical “parkour” fantasy they still name-drop years later. A follow-up in Jotunheim (the ice plane) was less successful as pure terrain play, but it paid off in other ways.