Erk
2015-12-01, 09:07 PM
My players just finished blowing up a goblin infested mine and are about to start hunting a demon worshipping cult. The only problem is, I haven't really got any idea what the story is with this cult.
If you're revisiting this thread, I keep updating this first post with where suggestions have got me thanks to the kind feedback of others.
The Players
William Two, a ranger from the Frostrime (a tundra plane) is a level-headed, serious dude who was a leader among his people. He came here to the land where the heat is stifling and the water is runny like urine, in search of a sorceress who betrayed him and his clan and led to all his warriors getting killed. He's been tracking her all across the continent for months and he's finally hot on her heels after a tip-off in the last quest. William has good leadership qualities and tends to make good decisions.
Marcon is a shapeshifting druid who grew up a street urchin, wound up accidentally leaving the city and almost dying in the forest, and was taken in by a druid mentor. He's generally the party's moral compass and voice of reason, but he also often shows a selfish streak. Spends most of his time knitting (a time honoured druidic tradition).
Alanna is a human paladin of the Forgemother, a traditionally dwarven goddess with plenty of human followers. She grew up noble and generally expects things to work out for her. She makes brash, impulsive decisions and usually makes them with the business end of her hammer. She keeps things from getting boring. Thankfully her player is not as disruptive as the character, and keeps Alanna's decisions on the "fun" side of "plot derailing". She has still blown up a lot of things.
Sabina is a sorceress and scholar of planar geometry and demonology (she plays more like a wizard despite being the sorcerer class). She's widely discredited for publishing papers that fly in the face of modern magical theory. Most of these papers are, in fact, probably wrong. Some likely aren't, and she's here trying to prove that. She's studying a force called the Planar Knot, a strange coalescence of reality fibres that has created a sort of unstable local phenomenon mainly responsible for a river that just springs out of the middle of nowhere in the city where the current quest takes place. In the previous quest with the goblin mine, the players kinda sorta exploded the knot, but it has raveled itself back together. A little explosion doesn't destroy a twist in the very fabric of existence.
Sadie is a bard who was trapped in stasis for the last five or so years. I have no idea how she's going to play. The player is ten and is still figuring things out. I suspect chaos is going to ensue. She likes backflips, sneaking, playing the drum, and shooting things with crossbows. I'm not sure how she's going to handle social interaction, she's not good at in-character roleplay yet.
Dara is a wood elf rogue who worked as a goblin hunter in her youth, a smuggler until quite recently, and an ex-smuggler on the run from her former employer because she stole something insanely valuable from him most recently. She needs cash and took on a big goblin hunting gig (the last quest). She is a loner character who has, despite knowing it is not in her best interests, kinda started to like the idiots she has fallen in with. Against her best judgment she is continuing to follow them around to see what happens, and because having already saved Alanna's life three times in the last twenty four hours she's pretty sure that if she leaves they will die. If Dara doesn't want to be seen, Dara is not seen. If Dara wants an arrow in your eye, you have an arrow in your eye. Dara is not very book-smart but she is by far the most sensible party member; however, she almost never says anything (I think she enjoys watching the others get into trouble). She generally just pulls people out of trouble. By shooting an arrow with a rope tied to it through their legs and yanking.
The Villains
Anya is a warlock of an entity of pure Order, the Serelenth. The Serelenth is not a nice thing, and if it had its way everyone would die. However, the Serelenth is a long way away and this world is in the grips of its greatest enemy, an entity of madness. it is unlikely the Serelenth itself will be the main enemy of this campaign. Anya is a BBEG right now, but if the players don't kill her she could become an unreliable ally.
The Cult serves the entity of madness that Anya is opposed to. The local cultists are too backwater to know this though; they're basically a version of the KKK, worshipping dark demons that they think are gods, and punishing nonhumans.
Some terrifying half-formed demonic creature was going to be the macguffin of this quest. It was trapped in the planar knot, and the players found it powering a sort of weird goblin-generating system. However in order to destroy the goblin-generating system they decided to free the creature. Not, maybe, the smartest move; Alanna had a fair bit to do with it. This is going to have repercussions later, but not right now. currently the creature has its own agenda to attend to and this stuff is well beneath it.
The Cult Leader is a fellow who just showed up in town. Anya has been tracking him for some time, hoping to learn more about the cult's real organisation through him. However, he is also a high cleric of the Forgemother (Thanks Freelance GM). This guy is going to try to xanatos gambit the players into finding Anya (who has hella good illusion/disguise powers) among the cultists, and in the process probably ferret out any disloyal cultists. That's the plan anyway.
Essential plot
Marcon was called to this area because the sacred trees of the Elven Grove (the third of the city populated by sylvan elves) have been dying, and the elves can't figure out why. For them to call a druid is a big deal. This is Marcon's first real job as a solo druid, so it's a pretty big deal for him too.
Anya showed up in town around the time the trees started dying, following that priest who is secretly a cult leader. When she found out he'd taken up a semi permanent post here she used her disguise powers to infiltrate the cult and is now posing as a cultist. I want the players to believe that she is in league with the cult.
I think Anya may well be responsible for the trees dying, or it could be part of the cultists' plot. I just don't know yet because I haven't decided the significance of this. Anya does have a history of sapping (hurr hurr) the life force from creatures to enhance her powers, and it may be that she's using the trees because they have an equivalent power and make poor witnesses.
As for the cult leader, he came to get that demon out of the knot to see if it could function as a gate. See, the only other stable planar knot known to exist is the Balefire Gate, a gigantic portal to the far planes through which constantly swarms nasty stuff. An entire civilisation (the one Sabina comes from, called the Dathay) has formed to keep that thing in check. Now this knot has shown the capacity to bring things, big things, in from the far planes... the cult leader came to try to find that out but the players have proven it for him without him even needing to find a bunch of sacrificial victims. So his job now is not to free the creature, it is to reverse engineer the knot and open it fully so that it forms another stable hellgate. (thanks to Kopout for pointing this line out)
---
So, that's the story so far.
The thing is, I want to run some kind of investigative game, but honestly I've never tried to do that with so many players nor with such engaged roleplayers as I've got now. Can anyone offer suggestions or resources? My plot is getting pretty fleshed out, but I don't really know a good way to structure a mystery theme. Normally when I have before, I've had one or two players, or three or four who pretty much just wanted me to hand them the story on a platter. These players are really detail oriented, listen carefully to my plots, and roleplay well. I would like this to be pretty smooth.
If you're revisiting this thread, I keep updating this first post with where suggestions have got me thanks to the kind feedback of others.
The Players
William Two, a ranger from the Frostrime (a tundra plane) is a level-headed, serious dude who was a leader among his people. He came here to the land where the heat is stifling and the water is runny like urine, in search of a sorceress who betrayed him and his clan and led to all his warriors getting killed. He's been tracking her all across the continent for months and he's finally hot on her heels after a tip-off in the last quest. William has good leadership qualities and tends to make good decisions.
Marcon is a shapeshifting druid who grew up a street urchin, wound up accidentally leaving the city and almost dying in the forest, and was taken in by a druid mentor. He's generally the party's moral compass and voice of reason, but he also often shows a selfish streak. Spends most of his time knitting (a time honoured druidic tradition).
Alanna is a human paladin of the Forgemother, a traditionally dwarven goddess with plenty of human followers. She grew up noble and generally expects things to work out for her. She makes brash, impulsive decisions and usually makes them with the business end of her hammer. She keeps things from getting boring. Thankfully her player is not as disruptive as the character, and keeps Alanna's decisions on the "fun" side of "plot derailing". She has still blown up a lot of things.
Sabina is a sorceress and scholar of planar geometry and demonology (she plays more like a wizard despite being the sorcerer class). She's widely discredited for publishing papers that fly in the face of modern magical theory. Most of these papers are, in fact, probably wrong. Some likely aren't, and she's here trying to prove that. She's studying a force called the Planar Knot, a strange coalescence of reality fibres that has created a sort of unstable local phenomenon mainly responsible for a river that just springs out of the middle of nowhere in the city where the current quest takes place. In the previous quest with the goblin mine, the players kinda sorta exploded the knot, but it has raveled itself back together. A little explosion doesn't destroy a twist in the very fabric of existence.
Sadie is a bard who was trapped in stasis for the last five or so years. I have no idea how she's going to play. The player is ten and is still figuring things out. I suspect chaos is going to ensue. She likes backflips, sneaking, playing the drum, and shooting things with crossbows. I'm not sure how she's going to handle social interaction, she's not good at in-character roleplay yet.
Dara is a wood elf rogue who worked as a goblin hunter in her youth, a smuggler until quite recently, and an ex-smuggler on the run from her former employer because she stole something insanely valuable from him most recently. She needs cash and took on a big goblin hunting gig (the last quest). She is a loner character who has, despite knowing it is not in her best interests, kinda started to like the idiots she has fallen in with. Against her best judgment she is continuing to follow them around to see what happens, and because having already saved Alanna's life three times in the last twenty four hours she's pretty sure that if she leaves they will die. If Dara doesn't want to be seen, Dara is not seen. If Dara wants an arrow in your eye, you have an arrow in your eye. Dara is not very book-smart but she is by far the most sensible party member; however, she almost never says anything (I think she enjoys watching the others get into trouble). She generally just pulls people out of trouble. By shooting an arrow with a rope tied to it through their legs and yanking.
The Villains
Anya is a warlock of an entity of pure Order, the Serelenth. The Serelenth is not a nice thing, and if it had its way everyone would die. However, the Serelenth is a long way away and this world is in the grips of its greatest enemy, an entity of madness. it is unlikely the Serelenth itself will be the main enemy of this campaign. Anya is a BBEG right now, but if the players don't kill her she could become an unreliable ally.
The Cult serves the entity of madness that Anya is opposed to. The local cultists are too backwater to know this though; they're basically a version of the KKK, worshipping dark demons that they think are gods, and punishing nonhumans.
Some terrifying half-formed demonic creature was going to be the macguffin of this quest. It was trapped in the planar knot, and the players found it powering a sort of weird goblin-generating system. However in order to destroy the goblin-generating system they decided to free the creature. Not, maybe, the smartest move; Alanna had a fair bit to do with it. This is going to have repercussions later, but not right now. currently the creature has its own agenda to attend to and this stuff is well beneath it.
The Cult Leader is a fellow who just showed up in town. Anya has been tracking him for some time, hoping to learn more about the cult's real organisation through him. However, he is also a high cleric of the Forgemother (Thanks Freelance GM). This guy is going to try to xanatos gambit the players into finding Anya (who has hella good illusion/disguise powers) among the cultists, and in the process probably ferret out any disloyal cultists. That's the plan anyway.
Essential plot
Marcon was called to this area because the sacred trees of the Elven Grove (the third of the city populated by sylvan elves) have been dying, and the elves can't figure out why. For them to call a druid is a big deal. This is Marcon's first real job as a solo druid, so it's a pretty big deal for him too.
Anya showed up in town around the time the trees started dying, following that priest who is secretly a cult leader. When she found out he'd taken up a semi permanent post here she used her disguise powers to infiltrate the cult and is now posing as a cultist. I want the players to believe that she is in league with the cult.
I think Anya may well be responsible for the trees dying, or it could be part of the cultists' plot. I just don't know yet because I haven't decided the significance of this. Anya does have a history of sapping (hurr hurr) the life force from creatures to enhance her powers, and it may be that she's using the trees because they have an equivalent power and make poor witnesses.
As for the cult leader, he came to get that demon out of the knot to see if it could function as a gate. See, the only other stable planar knot known to exist is the Balefire Gate, a gigantic portal to the far planes through which constantly swarms nasty stuff. An entire civilisation (the one Sabina comes from, called the Dathay) has formed to keep that thing in check. Now this knot has shown the capacity to bring things, big things, in from the far planes... the cult leader came to try to find that out but the players have proven it for him without him even needing to find a bunch of sacrificial victims. So his job now is not to free the creature, it is to reverse engineer the knot and open it fully so that it forms another stable hellgate. (thanks to Kopout for pointing this line out)
---
So, that's the story so far.
The thing is, I want to run some kind of investigative game, but honestly I've never tried to do that with so many players nor with such engaged roleplayers as I've got now. Can anyone offer suggestions or resources? My plot is getting pretty fleshed out, but I don't really know a good way to structure a mystery theme. Normally when I have before, I've had one or two players, or three or four who pretty much just wanted me to hand them the story on a platter. These players are really detail oriented, listen carefully to my plots, and roleplay well. I would like this to be pretty smooth.