Plot Ideas: my players need to take a vacation

[HenryHankovitch]

In my current campaign, I have the basics of my primary storyline going, involving shenanigans between two rival noble families in a city. At this point, though, I'd like to shunt my players off to some sort of extended side-journey, giving me a bit of breathing space for the plot to progress behind the scenes, and for them to level up a bit so I can start throwing vampires and demons and such at them.

Considerations: most of my players are new to tabletop RPGs, so they don't respond well to sandbox-style passive prompting. They're also still fairly fond of hack-n-slash play. Now, I could get away with just continuing to give them "an NPC approaches you with a job. The job leads you to a dungeon crawl" sessions, but I'd like to give them something that feels bigger. Especially a situation where their lives depend on Getting the Fsck Out. So I kind of want to hoodwink them into the plotline, rather than presenting it as just another job.

I haven't come up with any good overarching concepts, though. Something better than "you trip on a rock and fall into the Underdark," or "you mysterously get sucked through a portal into the Elemental Plane of Suck." So I'd appreciate any general plothooks that you could brainstorm along those lines.

[hamishspence]

"The local noble really appreciates your efforts, and rewards you with an all-expenses-paid vacation to Terror Island. Don't worry, the name is inaccurate"

Several encounters of extreme scariness later, the PCs learn that Terror Island is in fact a peninsula.

(All right, so I cribbed that from The Simpsons. :smallbiggrin:)

[Balain]

The standard Save the Princess from the bloodthirsty monster. The princess is really an evil powerful wizard that transformed her enemy/apprentice/friend/whatever into a monster that is now looking for revenge.

[Gnosko]

There is always the "treasure map". One faction of the noble houses obtains information that he believes should take your group straight to an Item of Power that will help in his political power bid somehow. The catch is this is just the first step in the treasure hunt i.e. it only leads you to a clue to the next clue. At the same time the other faction get wise to what yall are up to and sends a team and or teams to track you down and get to the item first.

[Calmar]

The heroes find/buy/steal/etc. a magic lamp that sucks them up into the palace of a maybe mad, maybe evil, but definitely very bored genie living in a dangerous and puzzling palace.

[BobVosh]

Oh my, giants/ogres/trolls/drow/orcs/goblins/bugbears/half dragon, half fiend, dire squirrels are raiding! Go kill em and find out why this normally standoffish band is invading.

Some relative died, you gain their inheritance. Murder mystery time!

A poor critter comes out of the woods, and speaks of grave danger to his race/the forest/or whatever.

[Lycan 01]

On the Chaosium website, they have several downloadable Call of Cthulhu scenarios. One of them, titled "The Scarecrow," involves the players taking a vacation to a small prairie retreat so they can recover lost sanity. Along the way, they see several creepy scarecrows amongst the crops on the plateau where the retreat is located. The first night they're there, the bridge - which is the only way off the plateau/island/whatever isolated place they were on that I can't remember - is destroyed, and another guest is murdered. Over the next few nights, other guests begin to drop like flies, and the players must figure out what's going on before they become victims as well.

I'm sure if you go check it out, you could easily convert it to a DnD game of some sort.

Its a pair of escaped convicts dressed as scarecrows.

[TheThan]

Send them on a cruise to a tropical desert island (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BeachEpisode). Could be a nice reward for a job well done. From there you could just let the characters lay around the beach and let the players develop their characters. Or you could throw in some underwater/jungle adventures at them.

Though I like the idea of adventurers actually stopping and taking a vacation once in a while.

[Ksheep]

Hmm… Sounds like a perfect opportunity for a case of Mistaken Identity. One of the team members is thought to be a robber/mugger/murderer who has been terrorizing the retreat town. They have to search over the island for clues as to who the real person is and where they are. Could even have the team mate in question get captured and replaced with the culprit.

[Zeful]

In my current campaign, I have the basics of my primary storyline going, involving shenanigans between two rival noble families in a city. At this point, though, I'd like to shunt my players off to some sort of extended side-journey, giving me a bit of breathing space for the plot to progress behind the scenes, and for them to level up a bit so I can start throwing vampires and demons and such at them.

Considerations: most of my players are new to tabletop RPGs, so they don't respond well to sandbox-style passive prompting. They're also still fairly fond of hack-n-slash play. Now, I could get away with just continuing to give them "an NPC approaches you with a job. The job leads you to a dungeon crawl" sessions, but I'd like to give them something that feels bigger. Especially a situation where their lives depend on Getting the Fsck Out. So I kind of want to hoodwink them into the plotline, rather than presenting it as just another job.

I haven't come up with any good overarching concepts, though. Something better than "you trip on a rock and fall into the Underdark," or "you mysterously get sucked through a portal into the Elemental Plane of Suck." So I'd appreciate any general plothooks that you could brainstorm along those lines.

Well, you could have an agent try to hire them for his employer, and the PC's employer could give them the leave to do so.

Or you could have an unrelated powerful evil wizard attack the town and send the PCs to another plane.

[742]

my favorites for introducing that type of player to a superdungeon while inciting just a touch of confusion and desperation: "its the day after the banquet-you think. your groggy, your hands are tied and this is most definitely not the evilempire embassy."
or send them into an encounter with an opponent they cannot possibly defeat, and likes to take prisoners. living underground is a plus. i would say drow are perfect but thats kind of a cliche.
its only really fair if the characters didnt invest a lot of points in listen spot and sense motive and arent the suspicious type.

[valadil]

If your players need a break from plot, you don't necessarily need to instigate that with yet another plot. What I've been doing lately is using travel time to help pace things out. If the players have spent more than 3 sessions in any one place, as soon as they go elsewhere they'll have a whole session of travel. If they've only been somewhere for one session when they decide to uproot, I fast forward past all the random encounters.