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View Full Version : DM Help I need some help with developing a few plot hooks and my campaign's story



Pikashell
2020-11-09, 01:06 AM
Hello, fellow DM's

My group are about to finish their adventure. Now we are about to take a break from this campaign but before we do that I want to throw some plot hooks related in some way to every member of the party. The thing is, I cannot come up with interesting ways to elaborate these ideas (I have a very vague idea of what I want the story to be). So far that's all the plot hooks I have come up with:

-The bard of lore meets a friend from their college who tells them they need to go back to the college to notify the rest of the bards there of the news that a new cult is forming (in my world the college of lore is basically this place where knowledge and all news go; kinda like the cobalt soul from matt mercer's world). The thing the party and the npc don't know is that they are being followed by zealous assassin's from the cult who learned that someone knows of their inner workings. I might put in the plot twist that the bard's parents are part of the cult (more as victims of being promised goods and not as masterminds)

-The barbarian gets notified that his clan which he ran away from is almost entirely destroyed because of a war. Now they need everyone they can get for a final attempt to reform the clan and recapture their former glory.

-The rogue who is in possesion of a dragon looking egg (that is actually the egg of a wyvern that has been experimented on) learns through his contacts that he can learn more about the egg if he found a legendary explorer. I plan for the explorer to eventually lead the party to a mage's tower who is the one who experimented on wyverns and other dragon like creatures in an effort to create true dragons artificially. Eventually the party might meet hunters who were personally affected by this wizard's experiments and now seek to destroy all of his creations.

Some other ideas for plot hooks I had are 1- a secret mind flayer invasion in the city they are in and 2- a cursed artifact tries to influence one of the party members in unleashing some forbidden power.

So the questions I have are do you think these plot hooks can be expanded into fun and memorable adventures and character arcs? If yes, how can I do it? What are your suggestions to improve these ideas and develop them? Should I drop them all together?

Thank you for reading this extremely long post and thanks in advance for your replies!

Unoriginal
2020-11-09, 07:05 AM
Hello, fellow DM's

My group are about to finish their adventure. Now we are about to take a break from this campaign but before we do that I want to throw some plot hooks related in some way to every member of the party. The thing is, I cannot come up with interesting ways to elaborate these ideas (I have a very vague idea of what I want the story to be). So far that's all the plot hooks I have come up with:

-The bard of lore meets a friend from their college who tells them they need to go back to the college to notify the rest of the bards there of the news that a new cult is forming (in my world the college of lore is basically this place where knowledge and all news go; kinda like the cobalt soul from matt mercer's world). The thing the party and the npc don't know is that they are being followed by zealous assassin's from the cult who learned that someone knows of their inner workings. I might put in the plot twist that the bard's parents are part of the cult (more as victims of being promised goods and not as masterminds)

-The barbarian gets notified that his clan which he ran away from is almost entirely destroyed because of a war. Now they need everyone they can get for a final attempt to reform the clan and recapture their former glory.

-The rogue who is in possesion of a dragon looking egg (that is actually the egg of a wyvern that has been experimented on) learns through his contacts that he can learn more about the egg if he found a legendary explorer. I plan for the explorer to eventually lead the party to a mage's tower who is the one who experimented on wyverns and other dragon like creatures in an effort to create true dragons artificially. Eventually the party might meet hunters who were personally affected by this wizard's experiments and now seek to destroy all of his creations.

Some other ideas for plot hooks I had are 1- a secret mind flayer invasion in the city they are in and 2- a cursed artifact tries to influence one of the party members in unleashing some forbidden power.

So the questions I have are do you think these plot hooks can be expanded into fun and memorable adventures and character arcs? If yes, how can I do it? What are your suggestions to improve these ideas and develop them? Should I drop them all together?

Thank you for reading this extremely long post and thanks in advance for your replies!

Well, first, if the Barbarian ran away from their clan, why would they be disposed to help it now? If it was my character I'd tell them to go to hell.

Second: the wyvern egg story sounds interesting, but I doubt anyone would be motivated enough by just "I'm curious about it" to care if the victims of its creator want to destroy it. Personally, I would have the unborn wyvern communicate by telepathy with the group, the experiment having awaken the draconic "sapient before birth" nature as well as giving it some mental powers. That way not only the egg can be active during other adventures, the PCs can bond with it.

Third: the lore bard cult plot can be interesting, but I'm not sure why the PCs would be involved when the mission is "X bard is going back to base to make their report". If it's just to act as bodyguards then I feel like it's not really taking advantage of the PC Bard's connections to the world. How about this, instead: Bard's friend has been spying on the cult, and unable to contact HQ, they sent a whole booklet of music sheets to MC, which turn out to be all the infos on the cult the friend could gather in a coded form.

Also for some reason I have the image of the cult's leader being a shapeshifter of some sort who decided to use the PC Bard's appearance as their public persona. Could be fun.

Secret invasion of illithids and cursed artifact are a nice start for scenarios, but why not combine them: an Illithid is being controlled by an evil artifact to unleash something worse. Other illithids try to stop them because they'll be the first on the choppibg block if the evil is unleashed.

Throne12
2020-11-09, 09:37 AM
What kind of break are you taking. If it just we arnt playing D&D for a bit then create hooks that have the players wanting to keep playing. So that the game stays in there mind throughout the break. If yall are going to start a new game. Dont worry about setting up hooks. And when yall come back you say (ok so yall have had x amount of downtime. So what did yall get up to. During this downtime.) Then create hooks based off of what they did during the downtime. Now if you have a story find a way to that story to the downtime activity.

MarkVIIIMarc
2020-11-10, 12:26 AM
I'm curious about the player backstories. Sometimes those have hidden and not so hidden plotlines in them.

Tying the past of two players together is something I haven't done yet.....maybe the evil leader of the cult who killed one character's parents is the leader of your Bard's college?