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Bellmaethorion
2008-03-01, 03:10 PM
I was wondering whether this seems believable enough to use as a plothook, it's for a campaign I will be DM'ing, for players who haven't played D&D before, I will show this to them, after they arrive at a certain city,
and they will probably all be in some sort of circumstance that this seems a good option.

http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d28/Bellmaethorion/poster.jpg

Konig
2008-03-01, 03:14 PM
Nicely done, but the font is a bit hard to read.

How does the crown know about them? Do they have past histories?

Zincorium
2008-03-01, 03:16 PM
Er, first, you may want to change the text color (if you can) to something more realistic and readable. Black is unimaginative but it would work well. If you do want something fantastic, at least outline the letters in a contrasting color.

It is a bit cliche, but then all of D&D contains elements to that. Presentation is probably key to this, if you just have some undescribed person hand them that and then ask them what they do, that might hurt the excitement you should try and be building from the get-go. Go for memorable and immediate, get them involved and only break to let them pursue their own goals.

Yes the story revolves around the players, but giving them a sense that the world is moving on around them helps with immersion and verisimilitude.

Bellmaethorion
2008-03-01, 03:34 PM
I said it wrongly, I will print this out, and really give it to them, the characters will see it on some kind of notice board.
sorry for the confusion.

and about the colour of the font, it was black at first, but that was difficult to read, and as the Queen of this country is known as "The Silver Veil", I thought I'd try silver, I thought it was legible enough, but if it doesn't work, I'll have to change it.

and the cliché-ness of it, I was opting for that, really, trying to get it to be a typical message handed out by <insert government> to have the people do <insert action>

FlyMolo
2008-03-01, 03:37 PM
I like that. It's cool.

If I was a government, that's what I'd do.

Kol Korran
2008-03-01, 03:47 PM
well, for players who are new to the game, this could probably work, at least till they hear what the job/ service/ mission is... nothing in this necesserily means they'll take the job (it's the equivalent of "great pay!! comfortable hours!! a prestigious and challanging goverment job!!"... might get you to pick the phone or send your CV, but it does nothing to help commit you to work).
a hook requires not just informing the players of and adventure, but also putting soem sort of leverage/ motivation/ incentive/ threat tight proppels the players to pursue your plot.
this mostly comes from characters motivations and world view, circumstances, and probably most importent- the players likes and dislikes.

that said, it's a well done visual prop. good for you!

Illiterate Scribe
2008-03-02, 07:52 PM
I'd say that dark - vandyke, if you're an artist - brown would probably work best. It's not boring, but it doesn't stand out too much either.

Citizen Joe
2008-03-02, 08:53 PM
See if you can emboss or somehow highlight the silver so it has bright spots as well as darker spots. The contrast may make it more legible.

I used GIMP 2 to do a quick mod on it. Start with select color threshold around 30 and pick the text. If you get too much stuff, drop the threshold. Then I dropped the threshold to about 10 and picked off the bad colors (CTRL select). So, with just the text selected, I used gradient fill/Metallic something/Shaped spherical and that got a pretty good legible effect while still looking silvery.

Aside from the artistry, 'Adventurers' isn't really a term that royalty uses. Instead of the Queen try the Royal Explorers Society in the service of the Queen. A good cohesion method would be to have one of these elitist royal explorers hire on the party for various expeditions and keep them on retainer.