Campaign Suggestions

[Wheaton's Whelp]

Completed a session zero today with a new group for a D&D 5E campaign. I'm DM'ing and initially the plan I communicated to these 4 new players was that I would run a WotC published adventure. However, I found out today that they all came with character-driven plot hooks a plenty. I'd love some suggestions for how you all would navigate some of these. I'm leaning towards maybe writing up a story myself to make it have more character-arch driven campaign pieces (They expressed a want for a role-play heavy campaign).

Setting Information: Because I was going to run a published adventure, I started them in the city of Daggerford along the Sword Coast.

Interesting Bits to Play With:
Vengeance Must be Brought: The Rogue in the party secretly is seeking to gain access to the Nine Hell's to kill the devil which killed his parents. He tries to hide this as his primary motive, but is a constant dagger in his side.

A Magic Leyline Map: The Monk's job at his monastery was as a cartographer. In his adventures he happened upon a map of the Sword Coast but even to him the map was largely unreadable, and on the surface extremely flawed. The map denotes magic leylines and where they cross is a magical node/a point of magical significance. From his cartographer background, he believes this map only becomes decipherable when the equation/logarithmic function used becomes known (This player has a firm mathematical background).

Pilgrimage: The Cleric is an elvish noble who has just started their coming of age pilgrimage. Because of his focus on the dead, as a Cleric of the Grave, his community has turned on him. He is unsure if after his year on pilgrimage they will accept his back .

Additionally, he doesn't know at this time, but his home town/forest is the site of a magical node according to the map.

Political Powers: The Bard of the group also has a noble background, but is from Waterdeep. Too spontaneous for politics he left Waterdeep for a high level degree in the arcane arts within the Bard's College. Word has reached him of turmoil within his family's line of successors and family in-fighting is currently plaguing his family and their position as nobles.

Some of the thoughts I've been considering:
Not a Map but a Ritual: The magical nodes could be part of a ritual to open a gate to another plane. Or they are the details of a protective ward which keeps something locked away. Each node they mess with weakens the lock.

Don't Hate the Player...: I would like to morph the Rogue's hatred towards devils. What I'm picturing is something like early on when the character was young he almost died from illness, but his parents bargained their souls (with a deadline for them to be paid in full) to an opportunistic devil.

If anything sparks and you think of anything which would make for a gripping plot hook or character arch please post it below.

Thank you!

[MarkVIIIMarc]

To get the Rogue into the Hell, have an evil Warlock open a Portal to Hell for his Balor master to come raid the Sord Coast for slaves.

The party then can fight the Warlock, fight the Balor and launch their own hit and run assault on hell.

Edit, the Warlock cam be as powerful or weak as needed. Ldt them level quite a few times befor the Balor.

[Quoz]

Sounds like you have the setup for a great character driven campaign with a lot of player input. My recommendation is to treat your plot arc along the same pacing as a tv season. Have an overarching plot (Looks like deciphering the map and getting to the nine hells to kill the demon is a solid direction to start) Each session pick the interaction of two characters backgrounds for that episodic plot (for example, the rouge and cleric by facing a zombie infestation that was started by a warlock bound to the rogue's nemesis) and maybe every other session or so dangle another plot point that advances them toward the final goal.

Make sure to give each character time to shine and resolve their personal objectives along the way. I like your thought of pulling the twist on the rogues background a lot. Look for ways to present difficult and defining choices - position the bard with a chance to save his family's position, but doing so would require him to cross his mentors at the Bardic College. Have a race against the clock where the monk's monestary and the clerics hometown are both under threat. Have a fiendish rival of your rogue's nemesis offer the rogue power without specifying the cost.

Sounds like you've got a great start to what could be a memorable campaign. Best of luck.