Hi! I'm a new DM, making my first campaign for my friends. I'm having trouble with the details of the overarching plot. My general idea is to have my players exploring the world looking for the pieces of an ancient artifact. There are 8 areas, each with a different story and overall theme, but the most important one is "Hands of God", a place ruled by a monarchy of elves. They worship the sun god and have an orb with overflowing magic that powers the whole kingdom, whitch has a futuristic theme. 600 years ago, while suffering from a delirius mental illness, the last king asked the sun god for a daughter, who gave him a clone of himself, but fem and young. She was raised as the kid from the god and the king, a genuine belief from the monarch. Not many years after, the king was murdered, and his kid unleashed many natural disasters into the world (unknowingly, of course). She rose to the throne, and now, is just as delirius as her father was back then. This is supposed to be the final boss, a crazy powerful magician, who doesnt listen to reason. My issue is that... I can't pin down a reason for my players to root against her, or this city. It is established that there is an enormus power inbalance in the world, and they are kida tyranniacal, but not really violent. The artifact my players are builing as the story progresses is going to change something about the magic orb in this city, and for the love of me I can't make something up that fits in a satisfactory way.
I thought about it destroing this city but making all other places reflourish and solve the issues that were brought up because of the natural disasters, make my players replace the actual gods, maybe straight up killing the sun god, or anything, I'm frustrated because I think the overall story is great, but I'm missing this key element.
What is this ancient artifact supposed to do once it's completed? The simplest explanation is that the orb is causing the rulers' delirium and the disasters. It will continue to do so until the orb is place safely back into the artifact that contains its side effects. To get it there, they have to defeat the queen. Which can mean just incapacitating her until its done.
But we don't know your players. Are their characters altruistic? That would be enough motivation for them. Are they selfish? They should already be getting a reward but this could mean another one. Who doesn't want to have a kingdom in their debt? One of them might even get to become king.
If the Orb is the source of the Hands’ power, then the characters trying to remove it to place in the artefact is likely to bring them into conflict. One potential outcome of the plot is trying to persuade the Hands to relinquish that power voluntarily for the benefit of the rest of the world. Perhaps a sidequest would be to find some magical whatnot that (temporarily) relieves the queen’s delirium and gives the party the chance to reason with her.
My players are mostly chaos gremlins, and they are playing characters that act on their own self interest most of the time, but not really in a malicious way, just transactional or because they don't really know better. Two of the five characters were thieves/mercenaries, two are former pirates that weren't really invested in the whole thing, and a noble looking for her lost brother.
By the time they get to the end, they are supposed to have their personal objectives fulfilled, and met a lot of people that were hurt because of the disasters. I'll have to see how this plays out, in theory they should want to solve this stuff by the time they fully know what's going on, but given the past of some characters giving them an extra reward seems like the way to go... the pirates might give in if getting back their original ship is on the table, or killing the queen in exchange of immense riches or a noble position in another kingdom for the mercenaries. Thanks! This is probably what I hadn't thought about yet
My players are mostly chaos gremlins, and they are playing characters that act on their own self interest most of the time, but not really in a malicious way, just transactional or because they don't really know better. Two of the five characters were thieves/mercenaries, two are former pirates that weren't really invested in the whole thing, and a noble looking for her lost brother.
By the time they get to the end, they are supposed to have their personal objectives fulfilled, and met a lot of people that were hurt because of the disasters. I'll have to see how this plays out, in theory they should want to solve this stuff by the time they fully know what's going on, but given the past of some characters giving them an extra reward seems like the way to go... the pirates might give in if getting back their original ship is on the table, or killing the queen in exchange of immense riches or a noble position in another kingdom for the mercenaries. Thanks! This is probably what I hadn't thought about yet
I'm in a similar boat, in that my players are chaos gremlins. The original campaign I wove for them, relied on a lot of empathy and me thinking they would inherently want to save people "just cause it's the right thing to do". I was wrong. They just want to prank each other and fight things. So I adjusted our campaign to their whimsy.
To get them to care however, I had to make things personal. That involved weaving their personal backstories directly into the bigger plot. With that in mind:
-Is there a way that one or all of your characters are related to the Mad King or Queen somehow?
-Can one of these ancient magical artifacts be used to hurt an NPC that they like? This might demonstrate the importance of collecting the artifacts before they fall into villainous hands.
-Can the Mad Queen send them or even the whole land nightmarish visions every few nights?
-Can the God that created the Queen personally task the adventures with destroying/saving her now that she's out of control?
Just a few ideas, hope something helps. Would love to hear how you move forward. Good Luck.
Why aren't the elves violent? It's perfectly natural (ignoring morality) for a nation to want to expand for any number of reasons: economic expansion, ruler's ego, belief that they're spreading civilization/"helping" lesser nations-- I would say the easiest way to direct the players against the elf empire is to make the empire aggressively expand and take over surrounding areas.
Even your chaos goblins might find themselves motivated if they hear the news that their hometown has been trampled in the wake of the Elven Sun Empire's war machine.
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Hi! I'm a new DM, making my first campaign for my friends. I'm having trouble with the details of the overarching plot. My general idea is to have my players exploring the world looking for the pieces of an ancient artifact. There are 8 areas, each with a different story and overall theme, but the most important one is "Hands of God", a place ruled by a monarchy of elves. They worship the sun god and have an orb with overflowing magic that powers the whole kingdom, whitch has a futuristic theme. 600 years ago, while suffering from a delirius mental illness, the last king asked the sun god for a daughter, who gave him a clone of himself, but fem and young. She was raised as the kid from the god and the king, a genuine belief from the monarch. Not many years after, the king was murdered, and his kid unleashed many natural disasters into the world (unknowingly, of course). She rose to the throne, and now, is just as delirius as her father was back then. This is supposed to be the final boss, a crazy powerful magician, who doesnt listen to reason. My issue is that... I can't pin down a reason for my players to root against her, or this city. It is established that there is an enormus power inbalance in the world, and they are kida tyranniacal, but not really violent. The artifact my players are builing as the story progresses is going to change something about the magic orb in this city, and for the love of me I can't make something up that fits in a satisfactory way.
I thought about it destroing this city but making all other places reflourish and solve the issues that were brought up because of the natural disasters, make my players replace the actual gods, maybe straight up killing the sun god, or anything, I'm frustrated because I think the overall story is great, but I'm missing this key element.
Thanks in advance!
What is this ancient artifact supposed to do once it's completed? The simplest explanation is that the orb is causing the rulers' delirium and the disasters. It will continue to do so until the orb is place safely back into the artifact that contains its side effects. To get it there, they have to defeat the queen. Which can mean just incapacitating her until its done.
But we don't know your players. Are their characters altruistic? That would be enough motivation for them. Are they selfish? They should already be getting a reward but this could mean another one. Who doesn't want to have a kingdom in their debt? One of them might even get to become king.
If the Orb is the source of the Hands’ power, then the characters trying to remove it to place in the artefact is likely to bring them into conflict. One potential outcome of the plot is trying to persuade the Hands to relinquish that power voluntarily for the benefit of the rest of the world. Perhaps a sidequest would be to find some magical whatnot that (temporarily) relieves the queen’s delirium and gives the party the chance to reason with her.
My players are mostly chaos gremlins, and they are playing characters that act on their own self interest most of the time, but not really in a malicious way, just transactional or because they don't really know better. Two of the five characters were thieves/mercenaries, two are former pirates that weren't really invested in the whole thing, and a noble looking for her lost brother.
By the time they get to the end, they are supposed to have their personal objectives fulfilled, and met a lot of people that were hurt because of the disasters. I'll have to see how this plays out, in theory they should want to solve this stuff by the time they fully know what's going on, but given the past of some characters giving them an extra reward seems like the way to go... the pirates might give in if getting back their original ship is on the table, or killing the queen in exchange of immense riches or a noble position in another kingdom for the mercenaries. Thanks! This is probably what I hadn't thought about yet
My players are mostly chaos gremlins, and they are playing characters that act on their own self interest most of the time, but not really in a malicious way, just transactional or because they don't really know better. Two of the five characters were thieves/mercenaries, two are former pirates that weren't really invested in the whole thing, and a noble looking for her lost brother.
By the time they get to the end, they are supposed to have their personal objectives fulfilled, and met a lot of people that were hurt because of the disasters. I'll have to see how this plays out, in theory they should want to solve this stuff by the time they fully know what's going on, but given the past of some characters giving them an extra reward seems like the way to go... the pirates might give in if getting back their original ship is on the table, or killing the queen in exchange of immense riches or a noble position in another kingdom for the mercenaries. Thanks! This is probably what I hadn't thought about yet
I'm in a similar boat, in that my players are chaos gremlins. The original campaign I wove for them, relied on a lot of empathy and me thinking they would inherently want to save people "just cause it's the right thing to do". I was wrong. They just want to prank each other and fight things. So I adjusted our campaign to their whimsy.
To get them to care however, I had to make things personal. That involved weaving their personal backstories directly into the bigger plot. With that in mind:
-Is there a way that one or all of your characters are related to the Mad King or Queen somehow?
-Can one of these ancient magical artifacts be used to hurt an NPC that they like? This might demonstrate the importance of collecting the artifacts before they fall into villainous hands.
-Can the Mad Queen send them or even the whole land nightmarish visions every few nights?
-Can the God that created the Queen personally task the adventures with destroying/saving her now that she's out of control?
Just a few ideas, hope something helps. Would love to hear how you move forward. Good Luck.
Why aren't the elves violent? It's perfectly natural (ignoring morality) for a nation to want to expand for any number of reasons: economic expansion, ruler's ego, belief that they're spreading civilization/"helping" lesser nations-- I would say the easiest way to direct the players against the elf empire is to make the empire aggressively expand and take over surrounding areas.
Even your chaos goblins might find themselves motivated if they hear the news that their hometown has been trampled in the wake of the Elven Sun Empire's war machine.