So, I'm DMing a homebrew campaign. I have the next part of the campaign planned, but does anyone have ideas of how to smoothly transition from one part of the adventure to the next?
This depends a lot on what you're transitioning to/from. What just happened and what's happening next? Did your party just slay some monster that was terrorizing the locals and next, you want them to go on a journey to find some legendary item? The locals could want to throw a celebration for their heroes at the tavern and amidst all the celebrating, rumors swirl around of this item because rumors always swirl around at pubs.
Or maybe they just escaped an evil empire and are on the run. They can easily bump into an NPC that sets up the next quest.
I'd say you just need to have a lead-in that brings the information that starts the quest. Usually an NPC that gives information or some other fashion of getting that information out there. Could have a quest board that they look at because they wanna make some coin and that quest turns out to be bigger than they expected and they get wrapped up in stuff. Could find a mysterious letter that they end up investigating. Maybe the city they're in suddenly falls under attack. There are a lot of ways to start off something and it all really depends upon what the specific events are.
A simple flow is Event > Downtime/Recovery > Setup for the next event
I quite like using "the beach episode" method between arcs as a stop gap between two parts of a campaign in a similar way to how a TV show might pace things. The party have travelled away from the town, discovered there's more to the orc raids than they thought, solved the mystery and saved the town. They return back where the townmaster decides to throw a big celebration in their honour so there's a session where the party can just relax and have fun doing silly things and around the social encounters and silliness there will be a couple of NPCs who get the party to one side and tell them about some help they need...
Here's my latest example. Recently a party have been working around a small mining town which had been gathering an increasing undead presence which has seen them tracking down a group of necromancers who were trying to scare people away from excavations in the belief that deep within the rocks lies the remains of the first vampire, whom they wanted to try to bring back. Around this there was a little story within the town akin to Romeo and Juliet with a family feud and two lovers stuck between it which the party decided to interfere and resolve. Amidst all the chaos the families have developed a truce and the lovers can get married so after ensuring that the necromancers failed there was a wedding to be had. The party were asked to help out and went off to sort out things like the centre piece, wedding dress, rings and so on (a dragons head, a Robe of Scintillating Colors, reforged rings stolen from the mayor, a selection of flowers "picked up" from a local herbalist and as many pieces of material for decoration as the party could sneak out of a tailors without being spotted for those interested) while then providing entertainment at the reception. It ended up being two sessions as the party decided to make this "the best wedding ever" on a budget of 0. Of course, it turns out the mother of the bride made a pact with a demon at one point promising her the soul of her first born so when she gave her soul to her new husband things went rather awry at the reception and the party are off demon hunting for the next main arc as we close the session.
I love them as little roleplay heavy, silly, fun sessions and find they're good times for character discussion and just relaxing around the table after near death encounters and the hardships of the road.
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Hey!!
So, I'm DMing a homebrew campaign. I have the next part of the campaign planned, but does anyone have ideas of how to smoothly transition from one part of the adventure to the next?
Very carefully
I know that seems snarky but you were really vague. If you want real help you need to provide a bit more to go on.
As for me, I choose to believe that an extinct thunder lizard is running a game of Dungeons & Dragons via Twitter!
This depends a lot on what you're transitioning to/from. What just happened and what's happening next? Did your party just slay some monster that was terrorizing the locals and next, you want them to go on a journey to find some legendary item? The locals could want to throw a celebration for their heroes at the tavern and amidst all the celebrating, rumors swirl around of this item because rumors always swirl around at pubs.
Or maybe they just escaped an evil empire and are on the run. They can easily bump into an NPC that sets up the next quest.
I'd say you just need to have a lead-in that brings the information that starts the quest. Usually an NPC that gives information or some other fashion of getting that information out there. Could have a quest board that they look at because they wanna make some coin and that quest turns out to be bigger than they expected and they get wrapped up in stuff. Could find a mysterious letter that they end up investigating. Maybe the city they're in suddenly falls under attack. There are a lot of ways to start off something and it all really depends upon what the specific events are.
A simple flow is Event > Downtime/Recovery > Setup for the next event
I quite like using "the beach episode" method between arcs as a stop gap between two parts of a campaign in a similar way to how a TV show might pace things. The party have travelled away from the town, discovered there's more to the orc raids than they thought, solved the mystery and saved the town. They return back where the townmaster decides to throw a big celebration in their honour so there's a session where the party can just relax and have fun doing silly things and around the social encounters and silliness there will be a couple of NPCs who get the party to one side and tell them about some help they need...
Here's my latest example. Recently a party have been working around a small mining town which had been gathering an increasing undead presence which has seen them tracking down a group of necromancers who were trying to scare people away from excavations in the belief that deep within the rocks lies the remains of the first vampire, whom they wanted to try to bring back. Around this there was a little story within the town akin to Romeo and Juliet with a family feud and two lovers stuck between it which the party decided to interfere and resolve. Amidst all the chaos the families have developed a truce and the lovers can get married so after ensuring that the necromancers failed there was a wedding to be had. The party were asked to help out and went off to sort out things like the centre piece, wedding dress, rings and so on (a dragons head, a Robe of Scintillating Colors, reforged rings stolen from the mayor, a selection of flowers "picked up" from a local herbalist and as many pieces of material for decoration as the party could sneak out of a tailors without being spotted for those interested) while then providing entertainment at the reception. It ended up being two sessions as the party decided to make this "the best wedding ever" on a budget of 0. Of course, it turns out the mother of the bride made a pact with a demon at one point promising her the soul of her first born so when she gave her soul to her new husband things went rather awry at the reception and the party are off demon hunting for the next main arc as we close the session.
I love them as little roleplay heavy, silly, fun sessions and find they're good times for character discussion and just relaxing around the table after near death encounters and the hardships of the road.