I am trying to build potential encounters for after my player characters finish lost mines of phandelver. I am trying to customize story arcs based on my characters' backgrounds. I have some baseline stuff but I don't have the experience to set up encounters for broader arcs. There are encounters that I already have in mind for some of the characters, but I am not sure what to look for. looking for feedback and potential encounter ideas.
Morag: a half orc paladin of Lliira, goddess of joy, she became a paladin at random and has no religious training. She is a skilled warrior and randomly walked into an abandoned temple and decided there was beauty in joy. She comes from a nomadic tribe that created a treaty with an orc tribe through the arranged marriage of her mom. future potential arcs are her mother tries to arrange a marriage for her, authorities are attacking family coming to a wedding she may not want to participate in. There is also the issue of Lliira, I am having Lliira be betrayed by Wakeen, captured and hobbled, being broken into multiple beings and magical objects. She would be tasked with discovering this injustice and working to fix it. I wanted to use this as the overarching plot. I have quite a few encounter ideas for this including using several missions like Dead in Thay. and ramifications from Princes of the apocalypse. Still encounter ideas and critique would be helpful.
Mil-ten: a Kobold artificer who was taught basic spellcraft by a wizard his tribe captured. He tried to help the wizard escape but was unsuccessful. he is under the impression that the wizard is dead. he broke out of his prison and stole the items and supplies the wizard had on him. Mil-ten believes he is doing magic wrong and is trying to compensate with the items and supplies he found. What I have in mind is for the wizard to have escaped unbeknownst to Mil-ten. He is the conjuration teacher at a school and is rather competent in magic. He is a widower with a single daughter who is mentally disabled. One of the items mil-ten has is a headband of intelligence meant for the daughter. The wizard is also rather famous and many of his items are distinct. someone may notice and alert guards to potential theft. and I was thinking of a potential "home alone" encounter with the 1st level casters in the school. Not sure what to do next or if those are good ideas at all.
Ivan: a duergar barbarian who was a crafter in the underdark. He was banished for "misusing" resources by putting signature gems on the armor he created. now what he creates is meant to be entirely functional. I want to have him see his armor being sold in some store under another worker's name. not sure what the next step is. maybe proving this dwarf has been stealing the work of a variety of smiths.
Shaeek: an aaracokra ranger, not a ton of info in his background he said his tribe was slaughtered by gargoyles. Thinking of incorporating that into consequences of npc's having just finished princes of the apocalypse and the party dealing with the consequences.
I realize this is a lot and if this is ignored I understand.
What you've described are individual character story arcs. Those are really great for a campaign overall, but they're things that should develop over many levels of gameplay, and they are never the main thrust of the story. If they were, then only one character really has anything to do at a time.
First you need to come up with the overall story that everyone is equally engaged in. These can run in tiers, so level 1-5, 6-10 etc, so that you have story arcs that finish in reasonable time. For this, you need to know:
Who is the overall enemy that the PCs need to defeat at the end of the campaign/tier?
What does the enemy want to do?
Why is it a problem for the world?
Why are the PCs personally invested in opposing the bad guy?
The individual story arcs can then be worked into the larger overall campaign, but they need to run alongside (occasionally forming parts of) this larger arc. So the aaracockra's tribe was destroyed in order to fulfil the BBEG's plan (maybe they had something he wanted). The goddess of joy needs to be neutralised because somehow she opposes him etc.
Given some of the positions people have discussed already I wanted to describe a few things. one, I have Dmed modules before, usually lost mines of phandelver. I have also created two one shots that when played through seemed to function fine. I've just never tried to really plan out a whole campaign before, which is why I am asking for advice. I do have tiers of play in mind:
1-5 lost mines of phandelver,
5-9 I was planning on a variety of mini-arcs based on character backstories that could include Morag's arranged marriage and Mil-ten convincing his wizard mentor to let him keep his stuff or ivan discovering someone stole his work. and finding encounters and modules to fill in the gaps.
9-11 I was planning on doing Dead in Thay where a lich created a dungeon to increase the power of Thayan wizards and one of the areas involves the captured champions of Gods. leading to destroying a phylactery vault.
11 and on I was planning on them facing the agents of Bane and Loviatar who organized all of this. this would include reconstituting Lliira, breaking their hold on other gods they may have tried this on and finding a way to prevent them from doing it again.
I was planning on using foreshadowing from the beginning particularly giving Morag dreams that double as cries for help. I'm also looking for potential backup plans if the players don't take the bait.
The most useful thing i started doing when plotting out multiple plot threads in my sandbox game is to think in blocks, and think from the villain's perspective. I have three or four different villains running around, each with their own agenda, and I started by figuring out what their evil plan is.
Once I think of that end-goal (i.e. the Wizard wants to take over the southern region so they can use its resources to find the Keys to the Lost Tower and lay claim to the knowledge and power inside), I then block out what I think the first three steps of the plan look like (like 1; complete weapon experiment with salamander blood/heart OR recover magic gem to brainwash captured sheriff into his service for easier conquering of the area, 2; launch attack on the city of Westing and gather all its silver, gemstones, and any magic artifacts, and 3; summon the great empire empyrean who served the First King of Men and question it as to the location of the Keys and learn their resting place).
By blocking events off like that, you remove the vague overarching sense and actually focus down on what is happening, and how best to turn a plot thread into actual game content. I have a whole table in my notebook of different villains and their plots all blocked out like that and it's very useful.
The beauty part is you really shouldn't try to plan too far ahead. Three steps should be enough to get a sense of how events would unfold without any interference from the players, but, once the players do start interfering, the villain's plans are going to change anyways so you can approach that later once events have unfolded, as if the villain was updating their scheme in real time.
In short, if you want to figure out how to take character arc threads and turn them into adventure content, figure out who the antagonist is, what their goal is, what the first few steps of their plan is, and then dangle it in front of your players and see if they bite.
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I am trying to build potential encounters for after my player characters finish lost mines of phandelver. I am trying to customize story arcs based on my characters' backgrounds. I have some baseline stuff but I don't have the experience to set up encounters for broader arcs. There are encounters that I already have in mind for some of the characters, but I am not sure what to look for. looking for feedback and potential encounter ideas.
Morag: a half orc paladin of Lliira, goddess of joy, she became a paladin at random and has no religious training. She is a skilled warrior and randomly walked into an abandoned temple and decided there was beauty in joy. She comes from a nomadic tribe that created a treaty with an orc tribe through the arranged marriage of her mom. future potential arcs are her mother tries to arrange a marriage for her, authorities are attacking family coming to a wedding she may not want to participate in. There is also the issue of Lliira, I am having Lliira be betrayed by Wakeen, captured and hobbled, being broken into multiple beings and magical objects. She would be tasked with discovering this injustice and working to fix it. I wanted to use this as the overarching plot. I have quite a few encounter ideas for this including using several missions like Dead in Thay. and ramifications from Princes of the apocalypse. Still encounter ideas and critique would be helpful.
Mil-ten: a Kobold artificer who was taught basic spellcraft by a wizard his tribe captured. He tried to help the wizard escape but was unsuccessful. he is under the impression that the wizard is dead. he broke out of his prison and stole the items and supplies the wizard had on him. Mil-ten believes he is doing magic wrong and is trying to compensate with the items and supplies he found. What I have in mind is for the wizard to have escaped unbeknownst to Mil-ten. He is the conjuration teacher at a school and is rather competent in magic. He is a widower with a single daughter who is mentally disabled. One of the items mil-ten has is a headband of intelligence meant for the daughter. The wizard is also rather famous and many of his items are distinct. someone may notice and alert guards to potential theft. and I was thinking of a potential "home alone" encounter with the 1st level casters in the school. Not sure what to do next or if those are good ideas at all.
Ivan: a duergar barbarian who was a crafter in the underdark. He was banished for "misusing" resources by putting signature gems on the armor he created. now what he creates is meant to be entirely functional. I want to have him see his armor being sold in some store under another worker's name. not sure what the next step is. maybe proving this dwarf has been stealing the work of a variety of smiths.
Shaeek: an aaracokra ranger, not a ton of info in his background he said his tribe was slaughtered by gargoyles. Thinking of incorporating that into consequences of npc's having just finished princes of the apocalypse and the party dealing with the consequences.
I realize this is a lot and if this is ignored I understand.
What you've described are individual character story arcs. Those are really great for a campaign overall, but they're things that should develop over many levels of gameplay, and they are never the main thrust of the story. If they were, then only one character really has anything to do at a time.
First you need to come up with the overall story that everyone is equally engaged in. These can run in tiers, so level 1-5, 6-10 etc, so that you have story arcs that finish in reasonable time. For this, you need to know:
The individual story arcs can then be worked into the larger overall campaign, but they need to run alongside (occasionally forming parts of) this larger arc. So the aaracockra's tribe was destroyed in order to fulfil the BBEG's plan (maybe they had something he wanted). The goddess of joy needs to be neutralised because somehow she opposes him etc.
Spoilers for a variety of modules possibly.
Given some of the positions people have discussed already I wanted to describe a few things. one, I have Dmed modules before, usually lost mines of phandelver. I have also created two one shots that when played through seemed to function fine. I've just never tried to really plan out a whole campaign before, which is why I am asking for advice. I do have tiers of play in mind:
I was planning on using foreshadowing from the beginning particularly giving Morag dreams that double as cries for help. I'm also looking for potential backup plans if the players don't take the bait.
The most useful thing i started doing when plotting out multiple plot threads in my sandbox game is to think in blocks, and think from the villain's perspective. I have three or four different villains running around, each with their own agenda, and I started by figuring out what their evil plan is.
Once I think of that end-goal (i.e. the Wizard wants to take over the southern region so they can use its resources to find the Keys to the Lost Tower and lay claim to the knowledge and power inside), I then block out what I think the first three steps of the plan look like (like 1; complete weapon experiment with salamander blood/heart OR recover magic gem to brainwash captured sheriff into his service for easier conquering of the area, 2; launch attack on the city of Westing and gather all its silver, gemstones, and any magic artifacts, and 3; summon the great empire empyrean who served the First King of Men and question it as to the location of the Keys and learn their resting place).
By blocking events off like that, you remove the vague overarching sense and actually focus down on what is happening, and how best to turn a plot thread into actual game content. I have a whole table in my notebook of different villains and their plots all blocked out like that and it's very useful.
The beauty part is you really shouldn't try to plan too far ahead. Three steps should be enough to get a sense of how events would unfold without any interference from the players, but, once the players do start interfering, the villain's plans are going to change anyways so you can approach that later once events have unfolded, as if the villain was updating their scheme in real time.
In short, if you want to figure out how to take character arc threads and turn them into adventure content, figure out who the antagonist is, what their goal is, what the first few steps of their plan is, and then dangle it in front of your players and see if they bite.