New Campaign Idea, but in need of minor plot hooks

[Mongobear]

I think you're in good shape, you've got a solid outline for where you want things to go, but I don't think you need (or even should want) much more than an outline.

Yeah the more I think about it, the more I want to go with a generic "Family A, B, C are persuing goals X, Y, Z respectively. And attempt to pull the PCs into it, to the benefit/detriment of all those involved.

PC's are going to do weird stuff. The adventure is going to go off the rails. That's fine, it's good fun. Think about the relevant NPC's and have them react in authentic ways and don't sweat it if the plot veers in an unexpected direction.

The only problem I foresee with this though, is that compared to some of what I have read on this site as far as "dysfunctional PC groups" is pretty take compared to some of what our group has done in the past.

Spoiler: Example of Real adventure we've done

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I can recall vividly a set of adventures in the past year where we were colonists of sorts in a new land that was relatively unsettled aside from a few indigenous elves in a nearby forest. As opposed to a usual adventure, there was a period of 2-3 years (in game time) over ~3 sessions, where the sessions revolved entirely around building up the town, and settling the surrounding lands, Age of Empires style.

Instead of actually helping with these activities, for the first year or so, our parties Cleric of "Wee Jas", who we later found out was actually a LE worshipper of Asmodeus, slowly was corrupting the entire town, constantly passing notes in secret to the DM, and starting a cult.

Once we got the town up and running, the players decided to host a great celebration, Thanksgiving style, like in the old days. The Cleric volunteered to take responsibility in arranging the meal and preparing everything, reasoning that he hasn't done much in the past and as his way of making ammends. We all agreed, and went on a small tour of the surrounding lands to fully appraise what all we have done.

A few days later, the meal is about to take place, the Cleric has made what appears to be a wonderful display of a meal, with every food imaginable for the times, and several types of ale, wine, etc. All of the townsfolk, not affiliated/dominated with his "cult" and all of the PCs except him dig in and start having a great time.

This Cleric begins giving a speech you would expect for such an occasion, but in actuality, is using Silent Spell to cast a "ritual spell" he has arranged in secret with the DM, to sacrifice such a large number to Asmodeus, for being "willing" since, he argued, they willingly ate the food.

So Ritual complete, everyone who was eating the food, PCs included, suddenly burst into Hellfire or something, die, and have their souls forever imprisoned in Asmodeus's gallery of playthings. The Duke of Hell even makes an appearance on the Material Plane after this little stunt, and grants the Cleric some ungodly number of Wishes/boons due to sacrificing somewhere near 500 people at once.

Suffice it to say, campaign was over, and the Cleric became the next BBEG for our Epic Level Campaign, since he went from level ~8 to somewhere in the mid 20s from all of his wishes, hooray DM fiat for Wish wording.

This is the type of shennanigans I would like to avoid. Normally I would have never of had a problem with the above circumstances if they would have either played out over the course of months of actual play time, or we were actually going for an evil campaign. The entire basis of that adventure was "You are goodly people loyal to the crown being paid to venture to unknown lands and settle them for the Crown" and one guy had to ruin the entire thing cause he felt like being a head cultist/"satan" worshipper.

I remember a Star Wars game I ran were the PC's were supposed to meet a rebel contact who would give them a mission, but their contact was sneaking into to the meeting site. The PC's scouted out the meeting site, saw an armed guy sneaking around, panicked, and shot him dead. My plot for the adventure didn't survive scene 1.

I forget the details, but they ended up storming an Imperial base, shooting a bunch of people, and making off in stolen tie fighters. Good times.

Yeah in our group, we would have shot him dead, raped his corpse, completed the mission anyways, joined the Dark Side, ate some cookies, killed Luke and company, raped their corpses, went back to the Emperor, ate some more cookies, killed the Emperor, raped his corpse, cried all the cookies were gone, blown up Coruscant with the Death Star, blown up the Death Star, went to Dagobah, redeemed ourselves to the Light Side, killed Yoda, raped his corpse, then discovered a secret recipe for force cookies and never adventure again.

Its better to give the PC's free rein to do whatever damn fool thing comes into their heads than worry too much about the plan. It's all a continuum of course, but at one end is railroading and that's no fun. Err on the side of chaos. :)

I certainly dont want to be a railroad conductor, but I dont want the world to be a literal "Sandbox" where they can do anything they want. Id like the world as a whole to have "guide-rails" that allow a certain degree of wiggle room, but that ultimately keeps them on track from point A to point B, and not A to Q to 7 to M back to A reverse plot to -228 then finally to B.