Need a few plot hooks, running out of time.

[Prince Zahn]

Hey guys, I'm with a little bit of a creative problem.
It might be the stress on me lately, or my work straining on my creativity, but coming up with what to do for my players has gotten rather hard. When I ask people what I could do, they tend to expect I'll just figure it out myself but I've been stuck for weeks now - After this multi-stage encounter, I'll have no more cards up my sleeve.

Do you have any ideas I could develop into an adventure?
Alternatively, have you ever been in this situation where you had writer's block and realized you're on your own this time? How did you get out of it?

[Comet]

What helps me is taking a step back and looking at what I have with as fresh a perspective as possible. Clear your mind of preconceptions and:

Check you players' motivations. Would any of those warrant a fun adventure?

Check your NPC's motivations. As above.

Check you rulebook. Are there any obstacles, rules or situations that you haven't gotten to use yet but would like to? Good games also give you plenty of inspirational material or random generators to kickstart your process when you need it.

Check out some ready-made adventures. The good ones are really good at dragging you out of your comfort zone and giving you a boost of creativity.

Check the source material you draw on. Try to think about what your game is really about beyond the usual Dungeons & Dragons kitsch and think about books or movies that capture some of that same feel. Then go back to those sources and see what you missed the first time and how that might inform your game.

[Lacco]

When I get into situation like this, I make some "breathing space". Downtime - find an inn to sleep in, find shops to spend money in. Put several encounters in - cutpurses? Over-active guards? A priest being attacked by people that don't like his god? Group of drunk barbarians? Group of drunk librarians? A ghost in the inn?

Some of these usually spark the creativity - the priests of one god are systematically attacked and driven out of the city - why? The cutpurses are overly active and the guards "shoot to kill" instead of just asking people to step away - why? Maybe there is an underground war.

Drunk librarians and the ghost? Welp, the undead are overly active and it's because the library contains dangerous books - some of them even sentient...and they don't want to stay locked inside.

Or it's just a colourful city and you move forward next week. Let the players discover and if they come with interesting ideas - use them. Ideally if you hear them ask "what if...?", consider what they say. Use it if it's good, twist it if it's not.

This will buy you some time and may spark some ideas.

On the other hand, if you want adventure hooks and stuff, try Marlowe's gambit (two guys enter with swords drawn - and they go directly for the group!), an old man with a map to treasure, plaguebearers, evil cult...

EDIT: Also, Comet's suggestions are pretty much how also I prepare plot hooks if I run out of fresh ideas.

[Douche]

Have them encounter a knight who is travelling the country-side demanding people to proclaim Lady Whatsherface as the most beautiful maiden in the land. If they don't do it (either because they have never met Lady Whatsherface, or because they just don't want to), he will challenge them to a duel.

Later on you will learn that Lady Whatsherface has never spent more than 3 minutes with the guy and she is totally creeped out by him.

[Lacco]

Have them encounter a knight who is travelling the country-side demanding people to proclaim Lady Whatsherface as the most beautiful maiden in the land. If they don't do it (either because they have never met Lady Whatsherface, or because they just don't want to), he will challenge them to a duel.

Later on you will learn that Lady Whatsherface has never spent more than 3 minutes with the guy and she is totally creeped out by him.

That reminds me of the Witcher...

As they approached the knight alongside road - he saw them and stood up. Geralt immediately stated "I'm sure your lady is the most beautiful one in this land and the others and whoever doubts it is a fool". The knight looked a bit surprised, but then he nodded and sat down.

[Lorsa]

Hey guys, I'm with a little bit of a creative problem.
It might be the stress on me lately, or my work straining on my creativity, but coming up with what to do for my players has gotten rather hard. When I ask people what I could do, they tend to expect I'll just figure it out myself but I've been stuck for weeks now - After this multi-stage encounter, I'll have no more cards up my sleeve.

Do you have any ideas I could develop into an adventure?
Alternatively, have you ever been in this situation where you had writer's block and realized you're on your own this time? How did you get out of it?

If I have a long time with creative block, often due to stressful life, I take a break from GMing for some time. Sometimes that is what you need.

Other times, switching game system or campaign is enough to get the spark back.

If you simply need a few ideas from us here, then some details of your campaign would be helpful. What type of setting and party are we talking about?

[Sam113097]

I've found that large cities have tons of easy plot hooks that you can use on the fly, and they can be as important or unimportant as you want them to be, depending on how the adventure goes. If the players enjoy chasing down a group of thieves, then they can be connected to a kingdom-wide thieves guild. If the adventure's not going over well, something else that the players might be interested in can pop up in the city.

This is free, and it might help: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/83932/650-Fantasy-City-Encounter-Seeds--Hooks

[MrStabby]

Maybe start from the other end or start from the middle.

Ask yourself what rewards do you want to give your players? A stronghold? A title? A cool magic weapon? A family? A kingdom?

Then ask yourself what they have to do to get it? To help someone? To seize it from someone? To trick someone for it? Work back a series of steps for them to achieve to pull it off. Next work out the information you give the players at each step so they see enough of the big picture to be motivated and little enough that each reveal is still news and drives the plot forward. Finally seed your campaign with encounters that match the setting, have NPCs with the information the players need and are of an appropriate difficulty.


Start from the middle by thinking of really cool encounters. "I want a fight on the deck of a sinking ship thats also on fire. And there's a thunderstorm and so on... Work out the things your players like the things you like and design an isolated encounter. Do a handful of these showcase encounters then ask why the players are there, what they are trying to achieve then find a way to tie these all together in a plot. Build some bridging encounters to make things consistent and you are close to done. Don't expect the players to not wreck one or two of your encounters and dont expect everything to go the way you have planned but use it as inspiration.

If you are using a new world then dont forget you can create an iconic encounter to showcase a faction you want to use - night assassins who sing to you before they kill you or cthonic barbarian tribe that erupts from the earth. Find something cool about your world that you feel is underexplored and use that as a starting point.


Just some of the ways i try things.

[Prince Zahn]

Hey everyone! Thank you all for your responses! I'm grateful to find people eager to help.

If I have a long time with creative block, often due to stressful life, I take a break from GMing for some time. Sometimes that is what you need.

Other times, switching game system or campaign is enough to get the spark back.

If you simply need a few ideas from us here, then some details of your campaign would be helpful. What type of setting and party are we talking about?

I don't see retiring this campaign as an option yet. It's gotten really exciting for me as I seek to do bold things as a storyteller.

I'm playing 5e:The setting itself is... I always have trouble defining it, but it is a little bit of Renaissance in a traditional D&D setting, races have been tweaked in terms of fluff, there are also satyr and gnolls but they are non playable. dwarves are extinct on the relevant continent. The land is wracked with a crime wave, and the PCs are each looking to defeat a particular villain and their respective gangs, and are tracking them down one at a time. the general motif is on money and greed that drive both good and evil alike. Undeath and resurrection are a lost art in my campaign, while Demons and Devils begrudgingly share the realm of hell (but that's currently irrelevant). On top of their personal grudges, The PCs are also being blackmailed by a malevolent Oni into being his lackeys.

I've found that large cities have tons of easy plot hooks that you can use on the fly, and they can be as important or unimportant as you want them to be, depending on how the adventure goes.

This is free, and it might help: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/83932/650-Fantasy-City-Encounter-Seeds--Hooks

I just downloaded it, thank you! I'll have a look at it and see if I can do the next city a little better with it. In this city the gang is in right now, my players primarily focused on the crime in the city, and it became a focus. I hope not to do that again soon, even though it was really funny.

Maybe start from the other end or start from the middle.

Ask yourself what rewards do you want to give your players? A stronghold? A title? A cool magic weapon? A family? A kingdom?

Then ask yourself what they have to do to get it? To help someone? To seize it from someone? To trick someone for it? Work back a series of steps for them to achieve to pull it off. Next work out the information you give the players at each step so they see enough of the big picture to be motivated and little enough that each reveal is still news and drives the plot forward. Finally seed your campaign with encounters that match the setting, have NPCs with the information the players need and are of an appropriate difficulty.


Start from the middle by thinking of really cool encounters. "I want a fight on the deck of a sinking ship thats also on fire. And there's a thunderstorm and so on... Work out the things your players like the things you like and design an isolated encounter. Do a handful of these showcase encounters then ask why the players are there, what they are trying to achieve then find a way to tie these all together in a plot. Build some bridging encounters to make things consistent and you are close to done. Don't expect the players to not wreck one or two of your encounters and dont expect everything to go the way you have planned but use it as inspiration.

If you are using a new world then dont forget you can create an iconic encounter to showcase a faction you want to use - night assassins who sing to you before they kill you or cthonic barbarian tribe that erupts from the earth. Find something cool about your world that you feel is underexplored and use that as a starting point.


Just some of the ways i try things.

starting from the middle or the end goes very much against my usual way of doing things, but it's worth trying! Let's say, for example, that I want to offer one of my players a chance at lycanthropy, as a reward for a quest (probably werebear, fits spiritually to the Totem spirits, among other things. I'll update whether I get an idea or grasp at straws, but my head hurts right now.
I didn't quote the thing with Lady whatserface, but I got a good laugh from it

Keep it up, friends, I'm eager to hear more advice, and more suggestions!

[Lycanthrope13]

If you want, I've got the bones of a story you could flesh out to fit your campaign. It's something I've started working on just recently for my next run as DM, so it's still pretty rough, but I imagine you could work with it.

You say an Oni is blackmailing the party, that's good. Have him get in touch however he normally does, and tell the party about some "disturbance in the Force" type deal. I don't know how dramatic you are as a DM, but i would probably say "a stirring of power which has not been felt for an age and an age." Then send the party way off into the sticks to investigate.

(Probable debate among party as to what's going on, how to prepare, etc. Possible encounters en route.)

Arrive at village A, which is deserted, but shows signs of battle (dried blood spatters, broken windows, claw marks on doors, but NO bodies).

Party should investigate/loot the area (I don't know which your players are predisposed to). Your discretion what they find.

If they don't decide on their own to check neighboring villages for survivors/rumors, nudge them in that direction.

Proceed to village B, where similar signs of battle are present, but fresher (blood still wet, fire still burning in hearth, but still NO bodies). Insert traumatized NPC here. A lone survivor who just keeps repeating "They're dead. They're dead" before running away screaming, never to be seen again. At this point the sun should be setting, and the party should make camp.

Cue attack! In the middle of the night, have them wake up surrounded by relatively low level undead (don't want a TPK before things get interesting). I know you said undead don't exist in this world, and necromancy is a lost art, but that's why it's perfect. They won't expect it.

So your BBEG is some wizard who rediscovered some ancient tomes on necromancy and plans to conquer with a fearless, tireless army of the undead. I would do a little cat and mouse game for a while, and probably include a Seven Samurai style defense of a village before the final showdown. Then the question becomes where to take the story.Was he just some lone nutcase or part of a sinister cult? What happened to those ancient tomes? If the party gets ahold of them, how do they handle it?

I know it's a really rough framework, but I imagine you could fill in the blanks and get a few solid sessions out of it.

[Bohandas]

-Mind-flayer settlement was destroyed several years ago by demonic incursion and/or zombie apocalypse. Remains almost as dangerous to surrounding area now as it was when it was populated by mind-flayers.

-CE demon wields NG intelligent sword powered by the bound soul of an innocent child who fears blood and hates violence. Won't somebody put him to rest?

[RazorChain]

Street Urchins and Prostitutes have gone missing in the city. A serial murderer is suspected, reward offered. The fat, jolly, kidney pie vendor is the culprit. The loss of his wife and children drove him insane and opened him up to demonic possession. Now he has his own little family of demonic undead in his cellar. Guess what is in those delicious kidney pies.

The players enter a forbidden tomb, seeking loot and treasure. On the tomb is a terrible curse that transforms them all into goblins. Now they must find a way to reverse the curse as goblins. GM: "no you are too small to wield your zwei-hander and you don't fit into your armor".

A local lord hires the players to take care of a bandit problem. The bandits have been operating from the forest, robbing caravans that pass through. The bandits are actually the merry men, led by a Robin Hood figure. They oppose the tyrannical evil lord who hired the players, the lord is taxing his subject to starvation to buy more valuable paintings, sculptures and statues for his art collection. At the same time his sultry daughter is trying bed all the players, preferably at the same time. If rejected she will accuse one of the players of taking advantage of her. Daddy will not be pleased.

[Vinyadan]

Have them cross the deserted streets of Coventry to meet Lady Godiva riding naked. See how the players want to act on it. Also see how the locals react.

[Bohandas]

The stagnation of technology at the medieval level and the inability of magic to overcome limitations such as seeing through lead or conjuring gold are both he work of an ancient conspiracy dating back to the Battle of Pesh, which the conspiracy whishes to prevent a repeat of as it was fought with gratituitous use of atomic weapons and twin-cataclysms level attack spells.

[Bohandas]

Something with a barbaric tribe of cultureless feral people originating from a collapsed/destroyed illithid settlement

[Lycanthrope13]

Party is suddenly surrounded by elite royal guards who arrest them for treason/terrorism/mass murder. They're thrown into individual, null magic cells, and stripped of all their equipment. After a sham of a trial, they are sentenced to public execution.

Now they have 72 hours to escape, and begin a desperate search to clear their names while being pursued by bounty hunters. I hope they have good disguise modifiers, because the reward posters will likely have a price in platinum.

[Prince Zahn]

If you want, I've got the bones of a story you could flesh out to fit your campaign. It's something I've started working on just recently for my next run as DM, so it's still pretty rough, but I imagine you could work with it.

You say an Oni is blackmailing the party, that's good. Have him get in touch however he normally does, and tell the party about some "disturbance in the Force" type deal. I don't know how dramatic you are as a DM, but i would probably say "a stirring of power which has not been felt for an age and an age." Then send the party way off into the sticks to investigate.

(Probable debate among party as to what's going on, how to prepare, etc. Possible encounters en route.)

Arrive at village A, which is deserted, but shows signs of battle (dried blood spatters, broken windows, claw marks on doors, but NO bodies).

Party should investigate/loot the area (I don't know which your players are predisposed to). Your discretion what they find.

If they don't decide on their own to check neighboring villages for survivors/rumors, nudge them in that direction.

Proceed to village B, where similar signs of battle are present, but fresher (blood still wet, fire still burning in hearth, but still NO bodies). Insert traumatized NPC here. A lone survivor who just keeps repeating "They're dead. They're dead" before running away screaming, never to be seen again. At this point the sun should be setting, and the party should make camp.

Cue attack! In the middle of the night, have them wake up surrounded by relatively low level undead (don't want a TPK before things get interesting). I know you said undead don't exist in this world, and necromancy is a lost art, but that's why it's perfect. They won't expect it.

So your BBEG is some wizard who rediscovered some ancient tomes on necromancy and plans to conquer with a fearless, tireless army of the undead. I would do a little cat and mouse game for a while, and probably include a Seven Samurai style defense of a village before the final showdown. Then the question becomes where to take the story.Was he just some lone nutcase or part of a sinister cult? What happened to those ancient tomes? If the party gets ahold of them, how do they handle it?

I know it's a really rough framework, but I imagine you could fill in the blanks and get a few solid sessions out of it.

you had me until you brought undead into this. I don't want undead. I omitted them for a reason. I intend to stick to the no undead thing.

-Mind-flayer settlement was destroyed several years ago by demonic incursion and/or zombie apocalypse. Remains almost as dangerous to surrounding area now as it was when it was populated by mind-flayers.¹

-CE demon wields NG intelligent sword powered by the bound soul of an innocent child who fears blood and hates violence. Won't somebody put him to rest?²

1. no undead, please. see above.
2. the Oni has a child's soul right now, i have a few plans with what he'll do with it. but this is the coolest idea I heard so far.

Street Urchins and Prostitutes have gone missing in the city. A serial murderer is suspected, reward offered. The fat, jolly, kidney pie vendor is the culprit. The loss of his wife and children drove him insane and opened him up to demonic possession. Now he has his own little family of demonic undead in his cellar. Guess what is in those delicious kidney pies.¹

The players enter a forbidden tomb, seeking loot and treasure. On the tomb is a terrible curse that transforms them all into goblins. Now they must find a way to reverse the curse as goblins. GM: "no you are too small to wield your zwei-hander and you don't fit into your armor". ²

A local lord hires the players to take care of a bandit problem. The bandits have been operating from the forest, robbing caravans that pass through. The bandits are actually the merry men, led by a Robin Hood figure. They oppose the tyrannical evil lord who hired the players, the lord is taxing his subject to starvation to buy more valuable paintings, sculptures and statues for his art collection. At the same time his sultry daughter is trying bed all the players, preferably at the same time. If rejected she will accuse one of the players of taking advantage of her. Daddy will not be pleased.³

1. how come half of everybody's ideas involve undead, for the one campaign I'm not using them?
2. I have a feeling half of my players won't enjoy n becoming goblins...
3. classic, hits a little close to home >_>

Have them cross the deserted streets of Coventry to meet Lady Godiva riding naked. See how the players want to act on it. Also see how the locals react.

...What? I think some of my friends might be offended by this.

(Hey, I started this thread because I KNEW it won't be easy! But all this is helping, but I need to be creative)

The stagnation of technology at the medieval level and the inability of magic to overcome limitations such as seeing through lead or conjuring gold are both he work of an ancient conspiracy dating back to the Battle of Pesh, which the conspiracy whishes to prevent a repeat of as it was fought with gratituitous use of atomic weapons and twin-cataclysms level attack spells.

that's epic, I should save this sort of thing in my sleeve for like, another 8 levels of so...

Something with a barbaric tribe of cultureless feral people originating from a collapsed/destroyed illithid settlement

I never thought of using illithids in my campaign, more out of laziness than anything else. I might think of something to do with them, there's potential...

Party is suddenly surrounded by elite royal guards who arrest them for treason/terrorism/mass murder. They're thrown into individual, null magic cells, and stripped of all their equipment. After a sham of a trial, they are sentenced to public execution.

Now they have 72 hours to escape, and begin a desperate search to clear their names while being pursued by bounty hunters. I hope they have good disguise modifiers, because the reward posters will likely have a price in platinum.

Really awesome, I like these sorts of challenges but I don't have the slightest clue on how to run a prison escape. I wanna consider something like this further down the line, though

[Lycanthrope13]

Sorry about the undead thing. Didn't know you were 100% against it. Could always be something else. Demons, werewolves, rabid dire gerbils, whatever. I was just spitballing.

As for the prison break, I've only ever done one, and that was as a PC. The DM allowed each of us to conceal one item. Rogue took a lockpick. Cleric took his Ring of the Ram, although technically his holy symbol was tattooed on his hand, so he had that too. Monk took a single dart. Bard had a Wand of Missles (don't ask how he concealed that). I was a Barbarian, and took an arrowhead. DM made us take our turns individually and in different rooms to prevent metagaming before the party was reunited. I used the arrowhead to cut my shirt into strips, wove some into a sling, and wrapped the rest around my hand with the arrowhead sticking out (improvised spiked gauntlet). I played sick, curled up in a ball retching, and when the guard checked on me, I punched him in the neck. DM ruled it an instant kill, said I got his jugular, because he thought it was creative.

I took his keys and sword and went to find the rest of the party. Bumped into the Rogue and Monk who were trying to stealth their way out. Actually, they heard me coming, thought I was a guard and tried to jump me. We got our casters who were pretty screwed by the null magic thing, and snuck out with 2 party members dressed as guards taking the rest of us to the torture chamber.

Torture chamber wasn't null magic, so we used that ring to bust into the sewers and sneak out that way.

[RazorChain]

1. how come half of everybody's ideas involve undead, for the one campaign I'm not using them?
2. I have a feeling half of my players won't enjoy n becoming goblins...
3. classic, hits a little close to home >_>

If you don't want undead then you can just change it, the kidney pie vendor is possessed by a demon and keeps the corpses of the prostitutes and street urchings, they are his new family. Describe for example "When you enter the dining room there is a large table with 10 seats, the table is decked with plates with rotting food. In each of the chairs a corpse is propped in a sitting position. The bodies seem to be of those urchins and prostitutes that are missing and are in various degrees of decomposition with maggots infesting their flesh. As you inspect the scene you notice one thing, a precise cut has been made on each corpse, removing their kidneys." The effect will be much better if the PC's have tasted his delicious kidney pies.

Then the kidney pie vendor will come after them with a hook and a meatcleaver sceaming at them to leave his family alone :)

[Bohandas]

Love interest of one of the PCs is kidnapped by the henchmen of a ghostly spellcaster who needs her as a sacrifice to his god (bonus points of any of you can guess what movie that's from)

EDIT:
Can be a ghostwalk style ghost or other sort of non-undead spirit. An incorporeal fiend would actually be best

[Bohandas]

-Three oppressive Lawfwul Evil demihuman, goblinoid, and kobold kingdoms are stuck in a 1984 style politically useful eternally stalemated war. This state of affairs was engineered by baatezu soul harvesters. The resistance, at least in the human kingdom and to a lesser extent the goblin kingdom, is led by chaotic evil demons whose plan for freeing the kingdom basically involves destroying it with arson, murder, mass destruction, and Kingsmen-style riot incitement; they call themselves "terminationaries" because they are only interested in destroying the government, without providing any sort of a replacement for it.

-People are smuggling tomes of black magic

-PCs, if they are in the Abyss, are teleported before the Lords of Woe, who then teleport them out to some other more actively hostile territory because, as the Lords explain, they think it will be funny.

-Sectarian war between the Cult of the Ebon Triad (a cult worshipping a being combining the features of Erythnull, Hextor, and Vecna, in hopes of forcing said deities together into a single entity due to belief equaling power on the outer planes) and an advanced Sibriex demon (Fleshwarping primordial demons. see Fiendish Codex 1) who claims that they not only stole his idea but also ruined it (further investigation will reveal that the Sibriex's version involved capturing aspects of the three deities and physically joining them together into a human centipede)

-Servants of a god of misery and misfortune have begun a campaign of arbitrary curses (just putting curses on whoever they come across) and random untargeted sabotage (that is to say they'll, for example, rig a ceiling to collapse without care or regard to who specifically it will collapse on) [Homebrew misery domain you can use: lv1- Black Bag (bovd) (conjures bag of torture implements), lv2- Blindness/Deafness, lv3- Bestow Curse, lv4- Crushing Despair, lv5- Nightmare, lv6- Cloak of Hate (Heroes of Horror) (all initial reactions to victim are one level more hostile and victim takes -10 to diplomacy), lv7- Bestow Greater Curse (BOVD, Spell Compendium), lv8- Polymorph Any Object, lv9- Imprison Soul (Heroes of Horror) (Sucks creature's soul into small totem; creature's body gradually dies); Granted Power- Add Intimidate and Disable Device to cleric class skills and Black Bag spell also conjures holy symbol and thieves tools in bag in addition to the normal knives and scalpels]

-Illegal trade in the fur of celestial animals is on the increase

-A sadistic punk has been going around in the dead of night mutilating domestic animals; sawing the legs off of horses, stuff like that.

-Ruler has been replaced by imposter but imposter is better ruler than real ruler

[Prince Zahn]

Hey guys thank you for all of your awesome ideas! It certainly got me thinking about where I'm going to take the adventure. I might make use of the death after all, just not going to bother with zombies and ghouls and skellies. But I might fit a ghost somewhere.

You guys were a great help, and gave me quite a few things to think about as I continue to the next arc. there is much to prepare, so little time! I hope I good things will come your way, or at least a situation where I can return the favor!

[Segev]

If you ever want to base a plot around "but... but undead can't HAPPEN!" reactions, consider using Flesh Golems. They can be mistaken for zombies. Bone Golems (and Bone Devils, come to think of it) could be mistaken for skeletons.

You could have somebody faking being a necromancer with such things, if there are implications which would make such fakery useful to him, even if it's just for a horrifying, terrible reputation that can cow people into submission.

[SirBellias]

Usually, when I run out of ideas, I look on the monster manual for some thing cool, then I see how that creature could interfere with the current mission.

Have you found the yellow sign?

[Bohandas]

This other thread may be useful:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...ncounter-Ideas