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View Full Version : A good goal for an adventuring party...



Krade
2008-10-02, 12:06 AM
Recently I've been seriously considering running a D&D 4e campaign and while I have the idea of what the world they will be adventuring in will be like, I want to have some kind of ultimate goal for all of the characters to be able to share no matter what their ambitions might be.

The campaign world will involve a major Empire having just collapsed under it's own poorly governed weight. There is copious amounts of political and militaristic strife, slave trading, small scale wars between local governors and neighboring countries, churches ransacked, farms burned, ect. The point is, there is some major chaos going on in this place right now and most people will be lucky enough to survive it, let alone carve out their own place in it.

Since this will be a 4e game, the story and goals will be sectioned off into one part for each tier of play.

At the heroic tier (this one is easy), the adventure will start off a lot like The Warriors. Small group of friends (or just people united under the same goal of not dying) find themselves quite suddenly in the middle extremely hostile forces and they will have to fight thier way back to Coney Island a nearby neutral or peaceful country (which isn't really very nearby since this was a large empire and the nearest other country is half a continent away or more).

At the paragon tier is when things get iffy. What then? Now that they are safe, are they going to go back and fight the good fight? Unify the empire once more? Carve out their own little space and damn the rest? Stop the Cults of Orcus from gaining control of large amounts territory? I just really don't know where it would go next.

At the epic tier... I don't even know...:smallannoyed:

Dublock
2008-10-02, 12:24 AM
well...you have ideas. Ok so the first objective is safety. Safe to assume everyone has good alignment? If thats the case, you can get the party or some people involved with one of the bigger political warlord trying to take over the former empire. Theres a few ways you can do that.

There is always helping the rebels, against the former empire :smalltongue:

I'm not sure what to do if the party is mixed alignments honestly.

Krade
2008-10-02, 12:41 AM
I wasn't planning on making it an all good party so much as as non-evil party. Unaligned will be allowed and almost necesary if one or more of them chooses to be certain races (Shadar-Kai or a few others from the MM). I want the final or short term goals be what the party wants to do rather than just "You're getting paid to do it so do it and don't complain." I've never DM'd before and I don't want to ever say "You guys are doing this and that's that." if it can be avoided. I want them to have real options that will actually effect how I make the story pan out.

Tsotha-lanti
2008-10-02, 02:19 AM
At higher levels of play, the players should be coming up with their goals. 3.5 epic play where the majority of plots originate from the DM is unimaginable to me.

By paragon tier, the PCs should have enough experience in the world, enough allies and enemies, to have found their place in the world, and to have formed their own goals. If they haven't, they've still got time - the DM can keep introducing circumstances and characters for them to react to, and that can tie the PCs to parts of the game world ( = motivation). By epic tier, they need to have their own visions, their own ideas of what they want and what to do, which are pursued independently while occasionally reacting to circumstances and plots presented by the DM.

Edit:
Consider Luke Skywalker. At first, he's reacting to plot hooks and following the story. Then, when that's done and he's definitely in the paragon or epic tier, he starts rebuilding the Jedi Order, based on internal motivation (rather than the external motivation he'd followed so far). Bad **** goes down all over the place and interrupts his plans, and he puts it right so he can get back to business.

Edit2:
Okay, just noticed you said you're a first-time DM, so I guess more tips would come in handy.

How do you help the players self-motivate?

Backgrounds help. Having a family is great - I love running RuneQuest because I run family- and clan-focused games, where the players have immediately accessible goals that they can pursue without me pushing them into it.

A sandbox-style world helps. Compare Splinter Cell and GTA - which game lets you make your own fun, and why? Having a big, fairly detailed setting (or a vague setting that you detail as you go along - be sure to make copious notes during or after sessions about everything you've made up), with lots of NPCs who have their own agendas independent of the PCs helps a ton.

NPCs - allies, enemies, innocent bystanders, etc. - are of greatest importance.

My first 3.0 campaign started out with a Curse of the Azure Bonds rip-off: the PCs wake up in Tilverton with strange glowing blue tattoos on their arms, and are compelled to try to assassinate Azoun. They end up on the run, hunting down the people who bound them, and this goes on the entire campaign, for years of real time. Along the way, however, they end up in Mistledale, and apparently fall in love with Ashabenford. They save the town and dale from Zhentarim, adventure in it and under it and around it, and keep coming back. They start businesses, become community leaders, and protect the place, and make their own plans around the things that they have encountered so far, and the things they want.

Crow
2008-10-02, 02:33 AM
I think you should play through some of the Heroic tier stuff for a while and then see how things develop. As you play through, situations will develop that will give you ideas of what would be good adventures and goals as you proceed into the next tier.

If you try to put it all together beforehand, especially over that many levels, there is a really good chance things won't turn out how you want at all.

Behold_the_Void
2008-10-02, 02:39 AM
10 levels is a lot longer than you might think. Assuming you don't level every session, that's a good 3-4 months at least. Let the story develop, let the characters make allegiances and such, and then when you have a more firm idea of where they're going, you can plan ahead.

turkishproverb
2008-10-02, 03:29 AM
4e you say? How about solving a great mystery of the world.

Have the party on a quest to discover where all the objects, buildings, and items in the world come from, since no-one is capable of crafting anything within the 4E rule framework. :smalltongue:


Seriously though, How about dealing with an old fashoned Orc invasion?

SadisticFishing
2008-10-02, 03:45 AM
4e you say? How about solving a great mystery of the world.

Have the party on a quest to discover where all the objects, buildings, and items in the world come from, since no-one is capable of crafting anything within the 4E rule framework. :smalltongue:


Seriously though, How about dealing with an old fashoned Orc invasion?

*twitch*

I like prophecies. Also, big things the PCs made themselves part of, not the other way around.

But yeah, for now, deal with simple - things can wait till Paragon to get more complex, for sure.