midnight42
2012-09-11, 02:02 PM
I'm an experienced DM trying to create a campaign arc, something I've always found difficult. I'm very good at running adventures, but not so good at plotting a campaign.
By the way: This is the campaign that started in Dawnforge, took a break in Dungeonland while fighting slaadi and is moving on to (sort of) Eberron. If you're reading this and are one of my players, please stop here!
I know the basic background of the campaign; it involves a long-forgotten Big Bad who has infiltrated a lot of various groups in the Eberron campaign world to bend the world towards madness and destruction. I also have an initial adventure planned where the PCs run into the Big Bad's agents making life miserable for people, opening gates to various horrible dimensions, etc. The Big Bad's agents have strong hypnosis/charm-type powers, making them rather hard to spot. The PCs will presumably defeat the Big Bad's agents and find a few clues that will start leading them towards a discovery of the bigger picture--whom do these agents serve, and why? What was the point of opening up these gates? Etc., etc.
My dilemma is that I don't have a plot. When I think about what's going to happen in the campaign's future, I just come up with something like this: The Big Bad has flunkies/agents/cultists/whatever. Some of these flunkies stir up trouble--maybe they start driving part of a city insane, maybe they're finding some MacGuffin buried in a dungeon somewhere that will make them more powerful in the Big Bad's service, whatever. The PCs find these flunkies and defeat them, leveling up and finding out about another group of flunkies doing something else. Rinse and repeat until the PCs are high enough level to defeat the Big Bad.
The problem, as I'm sure you can see, is that this is very repetitive. The Big Bad knows what s/he wants (madness, mass destruction) and has agents doing verious things to accomplish that goal, but I don't get the sense of an overall story developing out of this.
I'm being deliberately vague about the exact details of the plotline and of my campaign world (which is a variant of Eberron), because I'm trying to ask a very high-level question about DMing: Given a world, a villain and the PCs, what is it that you do to make the players feel that they're in a developing plot where they can make a difference and where the plotline develops to a big showdown, rather than a plotline that involves wandering aimlessly from adventure to adventure until the PCs are high enough level to take on the Big Bad?
As a final note, my players are very clever, with interests leaning towards the combat side. They're not particularly interested in sophisticated, complicated backgrounds for their players. They are perfectly happy with more role-playing-oriented episodes (talking a reluctant NPC into giving help, laughing their way through embarassing hijinks, etc.), so long as some combat is mixed in. In general, they're much happier being fed adventures ("here's a goal to accomplish, here's where you go, here's the person sending you on the quest, go do it") than trying to strike off on their own ("OK, the King needs help fighting the forces of the Big Bad, you need to start searching the world for a MacGuffin that may or may not exist, and the conflict between Duke X and Baron Y is getting out of hand. It's up to you. What will you do next?").
By the way, this is a sort-of-new campaign. Specifically, I'm taking over from another person who stopped DMing. The players are 10th level and are basically being dropped into Eberron from a completely different campaign world. I'm planning on spinning the PCs' origin (from another world entirely) into a major plot point.
Thanks in advance for any ideas.
By the way: This is the campaign that started in Dawnforge, took a break in Dungeonland while fighting slaadi and is moving on to (sort of) Eberron. If you're reading this and are one of my players, please stop here!
I know the basic background of the campaign; it involves a long-forgotten Big Bad who has infiltrated a lot of various groups in the Eberron campaign world to bend the world towards madness and destruction. I also have an initial adventure planned where the PCs run into the Big Bad's agents making life miserable for people, opening gates to various horrible dimensions, etc. The Big Bad's agents have strong hypnosis/charm-type powers, making them rather hard to spot. The PCs will presumably defeat the Big Bad's agents and find a few clues that will start leading them towards a discovery of the bigger picture--whom do these agents serve, and why? What was the point of opening up these gates? Etc., etc.
My dilemma is that I don't have a plot. When I think about what's going to happen in the campaign's future, I just come up with something like this: The Big Bad has flunkies/agents/cultists/whatever. Some of these flunkies stir up trouble--maybe they start driving part of a city insane, maybe they're finding some MacGuffin buried in a dungeon somewhere that will make them more powerful in the Big Bad's service, whatever. The PCs find these flunkies and defeat them, leveling up and finding out about another group of flunkies doing something else. Rinse and repeat until the PCs are high enough level to defeat the Big Bad.
The problem, as I'm sure you can see, is that this is very repetitive. The Big Bad knows what s/he wants (madness, mass destruction) and has agents doing verious things to accomplish that goal, but I don't get the sense of an overall story developing out of this.
I'm being deliberately vague about the exact details of the plotline and of my campaign world (which is a variant of Eberron), because I'm trying to ask a very high-level question about DMing: Given a world, a villain and the PCs, what is it that you do to make the players feel that they're in a developing plot where they can make a difference and where the plotline develops to a big showdown, rather than a plotline that involves wandering aimlessly from adventure to adventure until the PCs are high enough level to take on the Big Bad?
As a final note, my players are very clever, with interests leaning towards the combat side. They're not particularly interested in sophisticated, complicated backgrounds for their players. They are perfectly happy with more role-playing-oriented episodes (talking a reluctant NPC into giving help, laughing their way through embarassing hijinks, etc.), so long as some combat is mixed in. In general, they're much happier being fed adventures ("here's a goal to accomplish, here's where you go, here's the person sending you on the quest, go do it") than trying to strike off on their own ("OK, the King needs help fighting the forces of the Big Bad, you need to start searching the world for a MacGuffin that may or may not exist, and the conflict between Duke X and Baron Y is getting out of hand. It's up to you. What will you do next?").
By the way, this is a sort-of-new campaign. Specifically, I'm taking over from another person who stopped DMing. The players are 10th level and are basically being dropped into Eberron from a completely different campaign world. I'm planning on spinning the PCs' origin (from another world entirely) into a major plot point.
Thanks in advance for any ideas.