Making next session more interesting

[HoboKnight]

I have my next session planned out. And while I have the dots connected, I'd really appreciate some input on how to make things more interesting as they unfold. I'd like to point out here - "making things more interesting", does not mean messing with my dots too much. I am not in a position to change NPCS radically, but an additional encounter, an interesting location, perhaps something completely else, can change an average session into a really interesting one.

Here is what I have: Elven PCs A, B, and C got transported to Feywild, where C got "infected" with "Feywild fire" - sort of flames with teleportative abilities. Basically, here and there, she bursts into green flames and teleports herself andy anything, touching her, into Feywil (no, not the ground, so Material plane stays right as it is).

Since A, B and C belong to a small elven tribe with powerful casters, these casters scryed on them hard in order to prepare scry-and-save operation. With A, B, and C bumbling around all the time, pinpointing was difficult. Their bumbling got them to a Tree of portals and they hopped into one, that got them into Wood of Sharp teeth in Faerun. There, they have met an elven druid and they are now on their way to the druid's tribe.

Plans for the next session:
- druid leads them through the forest, some description of the forest being dryer and of lighter green colors, then ABCs, since they hail from High Forest in the north
- spending the night in a hobbit-like burrow
- NPC druid can tell them of werewolves in Wood of sharp teeth and green dragons. Any other ideas?
- Next day they pass some napping ents - circle around
- Then they reach the druid's tribe - a nice settlement, built within the treetop of a super-large oak (ABCs village is composed of several trees with huts)
- As they talk to the village elder, a rescue party from their village teleports in, finally being able to scry upon the successfully
- They teleport ABC to their home village

I have this planned out for about 4 hours of play. The teleporters saving them is a long-time plot and a preparation for something bigger. But the rest ... Well, I'll be glad of any comments.

thanks!

[Unoriginal]

Not sure what's the point of spending the night in a different shelter if the point is to get teleported out of here right after.

I would suggest having *something* happen in this forest. Like going to the village directly and the elder recognizing C's teleporting fire problem and telling them to go consult X for help.

[KCWONDER99]

If you want something memorable to happen it may need more context for how your players run their characters, from reading it seems like they like the roleplay quite a bit.
Could the teleporting flames activate while in the hobbit like barrow revealing it to match up to a very different location in its counterpart plane? My mind went to a Wight barrow, similar to where the Hobbits in LOTR grabbed their weapons.

If you want more of a combat encounter I recently had redcaps become a sort of drop bear attack. Their iron boots special feature needs them to move 25 ft to work, but flinging themselves out of trees into people on the ground does it just as well. I added fall damage to the attack as well as hurting the redcap when it finished.

[Catullus64]

Don't know how well this squares with your plot, but I think that making use of the Feywild's time-dilating properties as mentioned in the DMG would be great way to inject extra drama into the plot as you describe it. The player characters, who according to your description seem to have been gone only a few days, come out and find that many years have passed in the material plane, and that drastic changes have occurred in their absence. The elven tribe of the northern forest seems new to them, so they'd have no reason to suspect that this was the case until their own people find them, aside from any obscure hints you'd want to throw their way.

What is the nature of the relationship between the PCs' native tribe and the Oak-dwellers, might I ask?

[HoboKnight]

What is the nature of the relationship between the PCs' native tribe and the Oak-dwellers, might I ask?

A very very distant cousins. Since they are long-lived, individual members of the tribe every few centuries visit each other, but there is no direct trade or frequent visitations.

Also thanks to all for your contributions!

[Tanarii]

What are the encounters here? I'm not seeing more than about 5 minutes of Dm non-encounter introductory summary for the start of a session so far.

[kingcheesepants]

It sounds like you have enough of a skeleton going that you might not need to add more, Actually to be honest it sounds like you're a little too convinced that they'll actually do what you expect. Maybe your group is really good at picking up your signals and is relatively predictable. But I wouldn't trust my group to sleep in a specific place or to take a certain route. But maybe your group is actually good at reading your intentions and doing as you expect (in which case congratulations).

You mentioned possibly throwing some werewolves at them. You can definitely make things interesting by fleshing them out a bit. Have the PCs overhear them arguing amongst each other about whether to turn the PCs into werewolves or just eat them whole. Even without any potential plothooks leading to a sidequest (maybe a hag turned them into what they are and now they're building an army of werewolves on her behalf?) a group of werewolves arguing about the merits and demerits of eating them and the potential place they would have in the pack (for example the leader says that he's the alpha wolf and therefore any new recruits would be down at the bottom as the omega wolves and then the others complain that omega wolves sounds way too cool, etc etc) is a lot more memorable than, some random werewolves attack.