Hi there! I am going to be DMing my first ever game in a little bit but am feeling a bit overwhelmed and worried that I will let down my players. The plot idea I had in mind is that the players are professional treasure hunters who are trying to find a lost city of gold. The villain that I’m thinking of creating is a pirate king and his crew who are trying to get there before the party can. Any advice on how I can create better plot hooks and cool NPC ideas?
Hi there! I am going to be DMing my first ever game in a little bit but am feeling a bit overwhelmed and worried that I will let down my players. The plot idea I had in mind is that the players are professional treasure hunters who are trying to find a lost city of gold. The villain that I’m thinking of creating is a pirate king and his crew who are trying to get there before the party can. Any advice on how I can create better plot hooks and cool NPC ideas?
Honestly you seem to be on a good start! If some players aren't motivated by gold, a lost city can still motivate. What if powerful magic lies inside of the ruins, a possible weapon. It doesn't just have to be gold.
My advice is to make the search for the city fun, treacherous, and intriguing. Unless if this is a one shot, I'd say a good amount of the campaign should be spent searching for the city. Perhaps they need to create a wayfinder or something like that.
What level are you planning to play? Are you thinking of killing a character?
As a general rule for my campaigns, for a player to get a legendary magical item, they have to be at least lvl 13 and somewhere around 10 if like half of the party might die.
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Don't be afraid of the nerds beyond D&D, for they are not true nerds
Hmm, to answer your question about killing a character off, I am not going to make it easy for them and make it clear that death is a possibility and I would probably have the one shot have third level characters
There's nothing at all wrong with your idea. There are some things you might want to think about. Not all adventurers think of themselves as professional treasure hunters. A lot depends on the theme of your game and the tone. Is this something that is silly fun, or is it terribly serious life and death stuff? Is the magic level lower or higher in the setting than the normal setting? Are you using one of the published settings? D&D is by default set in the Forgotten Realms. There's one called Eberron that is very different indeed.
Maybe your players think of their characters as heroes, and they aren't out for treasure, the want to right wrongs and protect the weak. Perhaps what they really want is social stuff, intrigue and politics. Some people like to stay in a city and deal with problems there. Others just want to go out exploring and see what they can find.
I'll go ahead and assume you're using the Realms, or something similar. A Pirate King as the end boss implies either a Treasure Map, and/or the lost city of gold could be on an island. Either way, this lets you extend the story if you like with encounters along the way. The map could take them through dangerous places, getting to the island would involve sea monsters. Since this is a race of sorts, they might fight the pirates, but ship to ship combat would probably be hard to work with, so gloss over the heavy siege equipment and let people swing with ropes from one ship to the other. Be careful about people falling overboard. Armor makes it hard to swim and few people want to lose a character by having them drown. It can take a long time to take the stuff off, and some characters are based around having it, so making them fight without it would be a bit unfair.
How did they party get pointed in the direction of the lost city in the first place? Maybe that would make a good NPC to add in. It could be anything. It's not really needed, all it would take is that map. I think it would be fun to have some nobleman hire the players to go seek the City of Gold. A pirate who has decided to mend his ways might be involved somehow.
Maybe watch one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies for inspiration. I think there are also movies about a City of Gold, with a kind of Aztec feel, and you could combine ideas from those into your story.
Thanks for the advice! I can definitely incorporate some of those ideas into my story! I actually got my inspiration from watching the Dreamworks movie Road to El Dorado 😂😂
Agree with most of what's posted so far. Determine if the campaign is going to be quite serious or include random silliness early, to se the tone/theme and build this based on your players. Your session 0 should give you a feel for what they might prefer, so use their preferences as a guide.
Plot hooks, I would suggest developing as needed, so not to waste too much time. Set them up with maybe legends or stories of the city, something to start them on the path. As they proceed, you can/should start putting in bits here and there about another group, these shady pirate types, who also seem to be asking around about this city. Again, I would propose only feeding bits as needed, to draw the players in and slowly reveal their competitors (soon to be foes) Suggestions for that might include a stop where the pirate crew/captain has a reputation for brutality and cruelty, making him an official "bad guy" and building the party's animosity towards the pirates.
The tale, outline sounds great, with a LOT of room for you to work and still keep it on track. It's a great idea to start with such a broad, general overview, since it allows you and the players a fair bit of flexibility in how it proceeds. Most important, have fun.
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Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
Sounds like a solid concept. Throw in a side quest or npc plot hook or two along the way so players can have a bit more agency over the plot and I think you're golden.
I’d say just throw out the props, set the stage, and let the characters play. It’s always better to enjoy what happens organically than try to force anything.
all of your ideas sound amazing and fun, I love the idea of a forgotten city!
…feeling a bit overwhelmed and worried that I will let down my players.
Welcome to this side of the DM Screen! Those feelings are normal, they will go away eventually. Well, mostly go away - I've been GMing for (counts on fingers) 35 years and I still worry I'm letting my players down.
Relax, have fun, dont worry about making mistakes. If you rule soemthing you want to change latyer, just change it later. "Hi, players, I know I did this last session, but it turns out its not the rule. Last session stands, but from now on we'll use the rules."
Depending on your players, there's a lot of potential to make the hunt for this lost city into a bit of a scavenger hunt - each clue leads to another location where the players have to solve a problem to reach the next clue. The problem doesn't always have to be combat, even though that's always a blast, but can be riddles, completing a task for an NPC (such as a sprite or hag), or silly challenges to get the players to laugh.
The Road to El Dorado film is a great place to get a lot of vibe work from - inspiration for highs, lows, and a ton of silliness in between! Good luck!
Feeling overwhelmed is natural. I felt the same the first time and felt like I let down my players after several of my schemes got tossed out the window and I felt like I lost the plot. But everybody told me how much fun they had after the session and they've been showing up ever since...
You're not going to be a perfect DM the first time around, and that's OK. If you're playing with people that are new to D&D, they probably won't even blink if you forget a rule. There's no need to put so much pressure on yourself, I'm sure you'll do fine.
I'm not very good a long exposition but what I can say is this:
It is natural to be nervous and that does not go away no matter how experienced you are as a DM.
You do not need to know the rules forward and backward and what page number has the relevant information. If you don't know something make a judgment call and write a note to yourself to check on Rule X. When I got back into playing with 5e each game I would have five or six questions to check on shortly that list shrunk and 80 sessions later I think I have a better understand playing the game than I did in the beginning.
You are going to make mistakes. It's ok. We all do.
You may unintentionally kill the party. It's ok. It's amazing how unconsciousness can be mistaken for death or the villains see value in the party alive to sell off as a ransom to their hometown.
Don't be intimidated by the forums here. The posts in the forums are a valuable source of information. Some threads can are long, and tedious to find the information you may be searching for but 99% of the answers are buried in all those posts. Also, people like to debate things to the nth degree, it's normal and can make for some fascinating reading. (Check out the recent discussion on "Does Misty Step trigger enemy Reaction Opportunity Attack? ")
If you have a good group of players at your table they will understand this is all new to you, and a good chance new to them too. So learn and laugh together as they journey to the Lost City of Gold.
Ask questions. You are not alone. There as some great people here who can give you pages (see above) worth of information or how-to for this game we all love to play.
For your adventure one word: pyrite. AKA Fool's Gold. The city is made of Fool's Gold
Anyone?
* crickets *
Well, that's what I know. To paraphrase Forest Gump-- I'm not a smart man but I know what D&D is.
The best way to create plot hooks, in my opinion, is to break down the plot into arcs and detail out your key NPCs, items, and locations. Each major NPC, each major magical item they'll find, and each major location should have their own adventures and intrigue.
Some ideas:
Obviously, this island is lost for a reason. Perhaps someone or something doesn't want people finding it? Perhaps it houses some powerful ancient secret? Perhaps a demigod is secretly raising a cult on it in order to bring him back to life? Perhaps the pirate king is in on it? Or perhaps a deity is slumbering there, regaining power after a severe injury centuries ago, waiting for the right time to return?
The Pirate King will, of course, have many Captains of many ships under his control. This gives you many different NPC options to choose from as lesser antagonists. I suggest creating one smaller crew under the pirate king whose NPCs are all foils to the main PCs and can serve as a direct recurring antagonistic group, but one that is sympathetic and who the party is likely to let survive (or escape) as long as those people don't kill the party. Those NPCs should be sympathetic to the party, too, for some reason. Perhaps one of the PCs' family members is in that party?
McGuffins. Magical items of interesting properties. Perhaps in order to find this place, only a specific compass can be used? Now you have to find that compass, and that has an entire adventure attached to it alone. Perhaps the party must collect the pieces of a treasure map that lead to its location? Each of those becomes an adventure hook. When the treasure map is found, perhaps it's in a lost language, and the only way to read it is to find an ancient warlock from that time hiding out in a volcano somewhere, or on another plane altogether? Finding that NPC becomes a major plot point, and of course that NPC will have their own agenda going on, won't help for free, etc.
My best piece of advice for new DMs is "Figure out ASAP what you're good at improving and what you're not. Do your prep work around what you're not good at improving." For example, I'm terrible at coming up with NPC names or shop names on the fly, but I'm great at coming up with plot twists and NPC connections on the fly. So I always have lists of names of places, characters, shops, items, etc prepped.
Ooh I love those ideas. For the deity that’s on the island I was considering a demigod (or possibly a dragon) who has been slumbering there for a while. I was thinking that many centuries ago that island was welcoming to outsiders and were a peaceful people but outsiders wanted to find the secret to why this city was successful and would kill to find their secret. This act would anger the deity so he shut the island off for good, only waiting for those worthy enough to bring the island back. I know it’s cringe but this my first one shot and I’m just pulling things out of my head
Not cringe at all, that's a great concept with lots of room to roll with it!
Perhaps, while slumbering, the demigod put a spell on the island that made it impossible to find except by a select few followers who left to try and find others worthy of the island? They have long since died out, but perhaps they left some books and items behind that clue in on a secret way into the island. Perhaps it involves an emblem, but the emblem was stolen from them at some point - perhaps the Pirate King found a similar book and is aiming to collect these emblems?
You'd also want to figure out how this demigod allows people to "prove themselves worthy" and how they go about doing so to the demigod when the demigod can't be reached any reasonable way. Perhaps there are scrying mirrors the demigod put out into the world in sealed-off temples on other islands that allow contact with the demigod? Perhaps these temples have already been looted and only fragments of these mirrors exist, meaning multiple pieces must be collected and magically enchanted back together. Each temple could easily have a different theme based upon the demigod itself (ie 'seek not greed' as a theme for one temple might have the party tempted by piles of cursed gold, hinted at by skeletons in the piles or sumdat).
The Pirate King would obviously be looking for these things as well. The main antagonist should always be a step or two ahead of the party, though, unless the party has done something particularly clever. Giving them clues as to the antagonist's goals will help them do those clever things and thwart their enemy.
That’s a really cool idea. Probably for the sake of time I’d probably do two or three temples at most and I was thinking that since this is a sort of treasure hunt there would be riddles the party has to solve (in accordance to the theme of the temple) and if they can get it right they get the piece of the emblem and if they get it wrong they fall into a trap (they can still get the emblem but it won’t be as easy) A trap example I had in mind is that they are in a cavern and if they get the riddle wrong the cavern starts to fill with water and they have to find their way out before they drown
I love your idea! I do recommend running a pre-made module for your first adventure as a DM, but if you want to take on the challenge of homebrewing, there's nothing stopping you. My only advice with your adventure is to organize it with an intended path in mind, but prepare and present it as a set of events that the players can react to.
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Hi there! I am going to be DMing my first ever game in a little bit but am feeling a bit overwhelmed and worried that I will let down my players. The plot idea I had in mind is that the players are professional treasure hunters who are trying to find a lost city of gold. The villain that I’m thinking of creating is a pirate king and his crew who are trying to get there before the party can. Any advice on how I can create better plot hooks and cool NPC ideas?
Honestly you seem to be on a good start! If some players aren't motivated by gold, a lost city can still motivate. What if powerful magic lies inside of the ruins, a possible weapon. It doesn't just have to be gold.
My advice is to make the search for the city fun, treacherous, and intriguing. Unless if this is a one shot, I'd say a good amount of the campaign should be spent searching for the city. Perhaps they need to create a wayfinder or something like that.
What level are you planning to play? Are you thinking of killing a character?
As a general rule for my campaigns, for a player to get a legendary magical item, they have to be at least lvl 13 and somewhere around 10 if like half of the party might die.
Don't be afraid of the nerds beyond D&D, for they are not true nerds
-That one philosopher from ancient greece
Hmm, to answer your question about killing a character off, I am not going to make it easy for them and make it clear that death is a possibility and I would probably have the one shot have third level characters
There's nothing at all wrong with your idea. There are some things you might want to think about. Not all adventurers think of themselves as professional treasure hunters. A lot depends on the theme of your game and the tone. Is this something that is silly fun, or is it terribly serious life and death stuff? Is the magic level lower or higher in the setting than the normal setting? Are you using one of the published settings? D&D is by default set in the Forgotten Realms. There's one called Eberron that is very different indeed.
Maybe your players think of their characters as heroes, and they aren't out for treasure, the want to right wrongs and protect the weak. Perhaps what they really want is social stuff, intrigue and politics. Some people like to stay in a city and deal with problems there. Others just want to go out exploring and see what they can find.
I'll go ahead and assume you're using the Realms, or something similar. A Pirate King as the end boss implies either a Treasure Map, and/or the lost city of gold could be on an island. Either way, this lets you extend the story if you like with encounters along the way. The map could take them through dangerous places, getting to the island would involve sea monsters. Since this is a race of sorts, they might fight the pirates, but ship to ship combat would probably be hard to work with, so gloss over the heavy siege equipment and let people swing with ropes from one ship to the other. Be careful about people falling overboard. Armor makes it hard to swim and few people want to lose a character by having them drown. It can take a long time to take the stuff off, and some characters are based around having it, so making them fight without it would be a bit unfair.
How did they party get pointed in the direction of the lost city in the first place? Maybe that would make a good NPC to add in. It could be anything. It's not really needed, all it would take is that map. I think it would be fun to have some nobleman hire the players to go seek the City of Gold. A pirate who has decided to mend his ways might be involved somehow.
Maybe watch one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies for inspiration. I think there are also movies about a City of Gold, with a kind of Aztec feel, and you could combine ideas from those into your story.
<Insert clever signature here>
Thanks for the advice! I can definitely incorporate some of those ideas into my story! I actually got my inspiration from watching the Dreamworks movie Road to El Dorado 😂😂
Agree with most of what's posted so far. Determine if the campaign is going to be quite serious or include random silliness early, to se the tone/theme and build this based on your players. Your session 0 should give you a feel for what they might prefer, so use their preferences as a guide.
Plot hooks, I would suggest developing as needed, so not to waste too much time. Set them up with maybe legends or stories of the city, something to start them on the path. As they proceed, you can/should start putting in bits here and there about another group, these shady pirate types, who also seem to be asking around about this city. Again, I would propose only feeding bits as needed, to draw the players in and slowly reveal their competitors (soon to be foes) Suggestions for that might include a stop where the pirate crew/captain has a reputation for brutality and cruelty, making him an official "bad guy" and building the party's animosity towards the pirates.
The tale, outline sounds great, with a LOT of room for you to work and still keep it on track. It's a great idea to start with such a broad, general overview, since it allows you and the players a fair bit of flexibility in how it proceeds. Most important, have fun.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
Sounds like a solid concept. Throw in a side quest or npc plot hook or two along the way so players can have a bit more agency over the plot and I think you're golden.
I’d say just throw out the props, set the stage, and let the characters play. It’s always better to enjoy what happens organically than try to force anything.
all of your ideas sound amazing and fun, I love the idea of a forgotten city!
Welcome to this side of the DM Screen! Those feelings are normal, they will go away eventually. Well, mostly go away - I've been GMing for (counts on fingers) 35 years and I still worry I'm letting my players down.
Relax, have fun, dont worry about making mistakes. If you rule soemthing you want to change latyer, just change it later. "Hi, players, I know I did this last session, but it turns out its not the rule. Last session stands, but from now on we'll use the rules."
Depending on your players, there's a lot of potential to make the hunt for this lost city into a bit of a scavenger hunt - each clue leads to another location where the players have to solve a problem to reach the next clue. The problem doesn't always have to be combat, even though that's always a blast, but can be riddles, completing a task for an NPC (such as a sprite or hag), or silly challenges to get the players to laugh.
The Road to El Dorado film is a great place to get a lot of vibe work from - inspiration for highs, lows, and a ton of silliness in between! Good luck!
Feeling overwhelmed is natural. I felt the same the first time and felt like I let down my players after several of my schemes got tossed out the window and I felt like I lost the plot. But everybody told me how much fun they had after the session and they've been showing up ever since...
You're not going to be a perfect DM the first time around, and that's OK. If you're playing with people that are new to D&D, they probably won't even blink if you forget a rule. There's no need to put so much pressure on yourself, I'm sure you'll do fine.
Good luck!
You got this!!! Smile, breathe, and have fun! Great concept by the way
Maybe watch El Dorado or Disney's Atlantis for some inspiration?
Nugz - Kobold Level 4 Bloodhunter/Order of the Mutant - Out there looking for snacks and evil monsters.
Ultrix Schwarzdorn - Human Level 6 Artificer/Armorer - Retired and works in his new shop.
Quercus Espenkiel - Gnome Level 9 Wizard/Order of Scribes - Turned into a book and sits on a shelf.
Artin - Fairy Level 4 Sorcerer/Wild Magic - Busy with annoying the townsfolk. Again.
Jabor - Fire Genasi - Level 4 Wizard/School of Evocation - The First Flame, The Last Chaos. Probably in jail, again.
I'm not very good a long exposition but what I can say is this:
It is natural to be nervous and that does not go away no matter how experienced you are as a DM.
You do not need to know the rules forward and backward and what page number has the relevant information. If you don't know something make a judgment call and write a note to yourself to check on Rule X. When I got back into playing with 5e each game I would have five or six questions to check on shortly that list shrunk and 80 sessions later I think I have a better understand playing the game than I did in the beginning.
You are going to make mistakes. It's ok. We all do.
You may unintentionally kill the party. It's ok. It's amazing how unconsciousness can be mistaken for death or the villains see value in the party alive to sell off as a ransom to their hometown.
Don't be intimidated by the forums here. The posts in the forums are a valuable source of information. Some threads can are long, and tedious to find the information you may be searching for but 99% of the answers are buried in all those posts. Also, people like to debate things to the nth degree, it's normal and can make for some fascinating reading. (Check out the recent discussion on "Does Misty Step trigger enemy Reaction Opportunity Attack? ")
If you have a good group of players at your table they will understand this is all new to you, and a good chance new to them too. So learn and laugh together as they journey to the Lost City of Gold.
Ask questions. You are not alone. There as some great people here who can give you pages (see above) worth of information or how-to for this game we all love to play.
For your adventure one word: pyrite. AKA Fool's Gold. The city is made of Fool's Gold
Anyone?
* crickets *
Well, that's what I know. To paraphrase Forest Gump-- I'm not a smart man but I know what D&D is.
Oh, yeah. One last thing.
HAVE FUN
The best way to create plot hooks, in my opinion, is to break down the plot into arcs and detail out your key NPCs, items, and locations. Each major NPC, each major magical item they'll find, and each major location should have their own adventures and intrigue.
Some ideas:
My best piece of advice for new DMs is "Figure out ASAP what you're good at improving and what you're not. Do your prep work around what you're not good at improving." For example, I'm terrible at coming up with NPC names or shop names on the fly, but I'm great at coming up with plot twists and NPC connections on the fly. So I always have lists of names of places, characters, shops, items, etc prepped.
Best of luck!
Ooh I love those ideas. For the deity that’s on the island I was considering a demigod (or possibly a dragon) who has been slumbering there for a while. I was thinking that many centuries ago that island was welcoming to outsiders and were a peaceful people but outsiders wanted to find the secret to why this city was successful and would kill to find their secret. This act would anger the deity so he shut the island off for good, only waiting for those worthy enough to bring the island back. I know it’s cringe but this my first one shot and I’m just pulling things out of my head
Not cringe at all, that's a great concept with lots of room to roll with it!
Perhaps, while slumbering, the demigod put a spell on the island that made it impossible to find except by a select few followers who left to try and find others worthy of the island? They have long since died out, but perhaps they left some books and items behind that clue in on a secret way into the island. Perhaps it involves an emblem, but the emblem was stolen from them at some point - perhaps the Pirate King found a similar book and is aiming to collect these emblems?
You'd also want to figure out how this demigod allows people to "prove themselves worthy" and how they go about doing so to the demigod when the demigod can't be reached any reasonable way. Perhaps there are scrying mirrors the demigod put out into the world in sealed-off temples on other islands that allow contact with the demigod? Perhaps these temples have already been looted and only fragments of these mirrors exist, meaning multiple pieces must be collected and magically enchanted back together. Each temple could easily have a different theme based upon the demigod itself (ie 'seek not greed' as a theme for one temple might have the party tempted by piles of cursed gold, hinted at by skeletons in the piles or sumdat).
The Pirate King would obviously be looking for these things as well. The main antagonist should always be a step or two ahead of the party, though, unless the party has done something particularly clever. Giving them clues as to the antagonist's goals will help them do those clever things and thwart their enemy.
That’s a really cool idea. Probably for the sake of time I’d probably do two or three temples at most and I was thinking that since this is a sort of treasure hunt there would be riddles the party has to solve (in accordance to the theme of the temple) and if they can get it right they get the piece of the emblem and if they get it wrong they fall into a trap (they can still get the emblem but it won’t be as easy) A trap example I had in mind is that they are in a cavern and if they get the riddle wrong the cavern starts to fill with water and they have to find their way out before they drown
I love your idea! I do recommend running a pre-made module for your first adventure as a DM, but if you want to take on the challenge of homebrewing, there's nothing stopping you. My only advice with your adventure is to organize it with an intended path in mind, but prepare and present it as a set of events that the players can react to.