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View Full Version : Good side quests.



Shinizak
2009-09-03, 11:17 AM
When a party is traveling from town to town you usually want there to be something exciting in the middle to make the party feel as though time has passed, however random encounters are NEVER the way to go. Got any hooks for an adventure on the WAY to the plot?

Lysander
2009-09-03, 11:31 AM
Something related to the plot. For example, if the party is out to stop some evil conqueror they could encounter an innocent trading caravan under attack from the lord's minions. After they rescue the traders they learn that the BBEG has sent soldiers to impose a toll on that road, and that they've built a base nearby. Side quest: Destroy the enemy base.

It's not related to the bad guy's quest for the Artifact of Power, but it lets your PCs win a small victory against the enemy and illustrates how the BBEG is affecting other people in the world. If it was just wolves attacking the trading caravan and they were asked to kill off a wolf cave, your PCs would just think "geez, wolves are overpopulating this region."

Edwin
2009-09-03, 11:33 AM
That depend on a number of things, which in turn depend on an even greater number of things.

Where are the adventurers heading, what kind of environment are they in, do they have any particular sort of enemy - and I could go on.

If you would give us more info, I'd be happy to help with some ideas, or are you just looking for some general help?

Edit: Lysander seem to have coined it better than me, so there you go. :smallsmile:

UserClone
2009-09-03, 11:42 AM
You should check out the books En Route I, II, and III. They are books of exactly these, little sidequests.

Eldan
2009-09-03, 11:53 AM
On Planewalker.com, you can find the adventure Desire & The Dead, which contains about fourty or so random encounters, most of which are actually connected to the plot. Of course, it's highly setting- and location-specific, so you wouldn't be able to use most of them. Howeever, the general idea there is this: because the power working behind the scenes is relatively subtle at first, most of them serve to establish that something is wrong, which could work in most situations: show your PCs the influence of the BBEG: monsters that should not occur where the PCs meet them are displaced from their natural habitats. Refugees. People with Nightmares, strange omens and portents and so on. Whatever fits the evil plot.

Shinizak
2009-09-03, 12:22 PM
That depend on a number of things, which in turn depend on an even greater number of things.

Where are the adventurers heading, what kind of environment are they in, do they have any particular sort of enemy - and I could go on.

If you would give us more info, I'd be happy to help with some ideas, or are you just looking for some general help?

Edit: Lysander seem to have coined it better than me, so there you go. :smallsmile:

They are currently going to meet a vintner who had sent a bottle of wine with insanity cast upon it to the local noble's hunting guild (which caused the guild to attack the town). What the PC's don't know is that a lich cast insanity on the bottles 25 years earlier with the hopes that the current vintner would send a batch to the king (the king's father tried to have the lich destroyed several years earlier and now wants to get revenge by killing the son) The lich is level 13 and the party is made of 6 level 3 gestalt characters.

bosssmiley
2009-09-03, 12:27 PM
When a party is travelling from town to town you usually want there to be something exciting in the middle to make the party feel as though time has passed, however random encounters are NEVER the way to go. Got any hooks for an adventure on the WAY to the plot?

And... yer doing it wrong. :smalltongue:

The random encounter roll is not a "check for wandering XP"; it is in fact a potential side quest plot hook in its own right. You just have to do a little work to make sense of why that particular encounter happens in a certain area at a particular time and what relationship it has to what else is happening in the game.

If you don't have a half-baked rationale to hand, let the players create it for you. Why is that Manticore outside its normal hunting ranges? Why are there bandits on this (*roll* regularly patrolled) trail, and why are they so desperate that they'll attack wandering killer hobos? What religion are these pilgrims, and which shrine are they going to? Is that smoke over the rise?

It's called Gygaxian Naturalism (http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2008/09/gygaxian-naturalism.html), and it's how D&D is supposed to work.

Edwin
2009-09-03, 01:14 PM
They are currently going to meet a vintner who had sent a bottle of wine with insanity cast upon it to the local noble's hunting guild (which caused the guild to attack the town). What the PC's don't know is that a lich cast insanity on the bottles 25 years earlier with the hopes that the current vintner would send a batch to the king (the king's father tried to have the lich destroyed several years earlier and now wants to get revenge by killing the son) The lich is level 13 and the party is made of 6 level 3 gestalt characters.

Perhaps you could pit them against a lone insane hunter, who then in turn carries a map (which would go in the general direction of where they are heading), to a secret hideout for a couple of the surviving hunters. Have them find out that the hunters are planning an attack on town - or whatever is appropriate - and then you will, hopefully, plot to destroy the hunters.

This way you keep the plot of the lich in motion, showing that it has other effects than the immediate, and you give them a sense of something happening during their travels.

And you could have it go even further by planting a clue to a new plot-hook in their cavern.

Bottom line is - be creative, and exploit every little possible angle in you already established plot as long as it makes sense.

kc0bbq
2009-09-03, 01:26 PM
In place of random encounters I usually dish out a red herring, or something that subtly points to an upcoming subplot or main plot phase, or a side plot that they managed to hook themselves into unwittingly.

For example, my party has had marks put onto them that signify they are volunteering to be Hunted. They didn't know about them until a faerie dragon showed up and has been hanging around to enjoy the show. So far, as they travel, they've asked two different sources about the marks, why they're marked, and if they could be removed. Both of those sources are fey, one being the faerie dragon. They don't get answers they like - but the answers are the answers fey would give.

I can drop an occasional fey based encounter on them and not have any concern on whether it appears too random.

As for red herrings, they ran into a couple of wererats and assorted companions (this is 4e). A high religion check told them that these were Tharizdun cultists. They latched on to the bizarre behavior of this small encounter, and soon they had come to the conclusion that the source of their problems was this cult. For four or five sessions they tried to connect the dots to determine what the cult was doing.

Occasionally there is a random encounter where it would fit. They find a blood spattered wagon and signs of struggle, for example. Then they proceed to get a 7 to track and end up getting ambushed by a predator of some sort. :P

Small things that lead to clues need to be scattered all over. Sometimes the players just don't see any significance of the skeleton of a wizard in a wierd spot.