I'm writing a new short campaign for next semester, and I want to slowly drop hints about a duchess and her fortress deep in the woods, and her deceased love (who, importantly to the campaign, has a somewhat distinct appearance), but I don't know how to do it in such a way that the party won't immediately suspect her to be the BBEG and go hunting her down without her machinations progressing enough.
Should I introduce her lore as a sort of urban legend/ghost story at the start of the campaign, before anything suspicious happens? Or as a rumor once undead start rising? Or something else entirely? (This campaign will be at most 14 sessions, and the party just needs to be able to identify her as the culprit and hunt her down with two or three sessions to spare for a dungeon crawl/final battle).
I think one good way to start things like this without immediately leading to "let's go punch the BBEG in the face" is to layer the information.
Perhaps the party first hears about it in a journal, diary, or other text with very limited context, or overhears a rumor a couple towns over where there just isn't much information that is actionable- there's rumors of sightings of undead but no one really agrees on what's happening specifically, or the rumors are actually incorrect or misleading, exaggerated by a village drunk or a doomsayer who tried to make a single skeleton sound like an invasion of ghouls. Maybe they encounter a different group of adventurers or a merchant caravan that encountered something suspicious, but it wasn't a big problem for them and they dealt with the threat for now. Once it becomes more than an isolated incident, it becomes apparent that someone is causing the events.
Then, as part of the investigation into the actual BBEG, perhaps they get a bit more information about the cause. Before finding out who specifically it is, they might discover some noble has been expressing an interest in necromancy, but the source of information wants the adventurers to do a job for them first or mysteriously ends up dead with just enough clues to lead in the right direction after some investigation.
Once you're comfortable with the progress of the campaign, you can be more overt. Perhaps someone saw the duchess hiring grave robbers to retrieve corpses for her necromantic experiments, or she might even send an invitation to dinner a la Strahd, perhaps even posing to be interested in *ending* the undead situation instead of being the true cause.
Obviously there are many different ways to go about it but I think my preferred tactic is to use a bit of misdirection and obfuscation to make the initial information too vague or incorrect to lead directly to the BBEG's door, while still getting players connected with the crisis at hand. Obviously, tailor it to your group- some groups would be very upset to find out that they wasted a session tracking down a single skeleton that's been terrifying a tiny fishing hamlet's resident drunkard, while others would think it's interesting to see a world that has unreliable sources of information and treat it as good worldbuilding.
The best way I have done this is to make short (skyrim-level short) books for the world. The party will go to research something, and I will present them with a book that is about 25% what they needed, 50% interesting filler lore, 15% foreshadowing, and 10% misinformation.
Things which have come about from this:
- The artificer sought out a book about skyflight, to improve their Flyorite drive for their skyship. The Cleric read the book and discovered that another form of flight - that of using Bladderworm Venom - can set off a "Catastrophic Chain Reaction" if exposed to strong acid. When they were attacked by Kobolds with a Bladdership, he instigated this, causing their own captain to melt (essentially, the balloon blew out the breath weapon of an adult dragon as it exploded in acid).
- The Barbarian sought out a book on flying animals to try and find a flying mount. In that book, there was a passage regarding hunting, which explained about the Ten-Year Hunt, where the paladins of the holy order of the Cleric in the group hunted down the werebeasts of the West and killed them, using silver supplied from the family mines of said cleric. The Barbarian is on a lifelong quest to find the hunter who killed his mother. He is a were-bear. This came up roughly a year after the book was handed out.
- The party picked up a book of folklore to research the ancient lost kingdom of Aren, and in it found a story of the BBEG from a bygone age.
It takes me a few hours to write out some easily consumed lore-dumps, then I smatter it with old artwork from the public domain, and then print it as a booklet for them. the props look amazing, and I get to hand out interesting lore about my world which might otherwise not come up!
I just let them know what book they find, and then explain that I will have to make it between sessions, but let them know the details of things that they find relevant to their efforts. It's made a little bit of a rod for my own back, because now they keep going to libraries - but that just tells me that they're enjoying it!
How I'd do it, but my style may differ from your own.
While walking through town, or sitting in a tavern they overhear two commoners debating how life used to be better before this democracy stuff. The town council is nowhere near as effective as when their Grandmother served the Duchess and her family.
Wherever it's appropriate to have a bookcase, describe the titles of a few books one of them being the 'Duchess and her lost love' which is the fairytale version of how the two met and fell in love.
In some building there's an old map hanging from the walls, it depicts the region as it one was. It has interesting features on it, like old farmhouses now demolished to make way for the local adventurer's guild. It has an old watermill that has been disused. It has an old fortress which doesn't appear on any modern maps. It even still has the old library on it, you know, before it caught fire and had to be rebuilt.
In another building there's paintings or tin-types of different historical figures of the region, the owner of the building has been collecting them now for years. One is of the local king, another is of some random noble and her husband, another is of a hero of legend.
I'd try to do it through showing the party the clues. Either they'll pick up on them, or they won't. I think Bethesda games are great for this kind of environmental storytelling. Fallout 4 and Skyrim had some great examples that might get raise your interest in a location if you're paying attention, but if you weren't you'd dismiss them. Then down the line when something is revealed you suddenly twig and realise that the skeleton laid out in an odd way was showing you a part of the world.
This makes it environmental and not lore, and theoretically possible less boring for the party. If the characters choose to ask more questions about the Duchess then the two commoners having a debate can fill them in on the legend. The point is that it then becomes a player choice, not a lore dump. They've asked for it, you're not dumping it out of the blue.
I'm writing a new short campaign for next semester, and I want to slowly drop hints about a duchess and her fortress deep in the woods, and her deceased love (who, importantly to the campaign, has a somewhat distinct appearance), but I don't know how to do it in such a way that the party won't immediately suspect her to be the BBEG and go hunting her down without her machinations progressing enough.
Should I introduce her lore as a sort of urban legend/ghost story at the start of the campaign, before anything suspicious happens? Or as a rumor once undead start rising? Or something else entirely? (This campaign will be at most 14 sessions, and the party just needs to be able to identify her as the culprit and hunt her down with two or three sessions to spare for a dungeon crawl/final battle).
:)
I think one good way to start things like this without immediately leading to "let's go punch the BBEG in the face" is to layer the information.
Perhaps the party first hears about it in a journal, diary, or other text with very limited context, or overhears a rumor a couple towns over where there just isn't much information that is actionable- there's rumors of sightings of undead but no one really agrees on what's happening specifically, or the rumors are actually incorrect or misleading, exaggerated by a village drunk or a doomsayer who tried to make a single skeleton sound like an invasion of ghouls. Maybe they encounter a different group of adventurers or a merchant caravan that encountered something suspicious, but it wasn't a big problem for them and they dealt with the threat for now. Once it becomes more than an isolated incident, it becomes apparent that someone is causing the events.
Then, as part of the investigation into the actual BBEG, perhaps they get a bit more information about the cause. Before finding out who specifically it is, they might discover some noble has been expressing an interest in necromancy, but the source of information wants the adventurers to do a job for them first or mysteriously ends up dead with just enough clues to lead in the right direction after some investigation.
Once you're comfortable with the progress of the campaign, you can be more overt. Perhaps someone saw the duchess hiring grave robbers to retrieve corpses for her necromantic experiments, or she might even send an invitation to dinner a la Strahd, perhaps even posing to be interested in *ending* the undead situation instead of being the true cause.
Obviously there are many different ways to go about it but I think my preferred tactic is to use a bit of misdirection and obfuscation to make the initial information too vague or incorrect to lead directly to the BBEG's door, while still getting players connected with the crisis at hand. Obviously, tailor it to your group- some groups would be very upset to find out that they wasted a session tracking down a single skeleton that's been terrifying a tiny fishing hamlet's resident drunkard, while others would think it's interesting to see a world that has unreliable sources of information and treat it as good worldbuilding.
The best way I have done this is to make short (skyrim-level short) books for the world. The party will go to research something, and I will present them with a book that is about 25% what they needed, 50% interesting filler lore, 15% foreshadowing, and 10% misinformation.
Things which have come about from this:
- The artificer sought out a book about skyflight, to improve their Flyorite drive for their skyship. The Cleric read the book and discovered that another form of flight - that of using Bladderworm Venom - can set off a "Catastrophic Chain Reaction" if exposed to strong acid. When they were attacked by Kobolds with a Bladdership, he instigated this, causing their own captain to melt (essentially, the balloon blew out the breath weapon of an adult dragon as it exploded in acid).
- The Barbarian sought out a book on flying animals to try and find a flying mount. In that book, there was a passage regarding hunting, which explained about the Ten-Year Hunt, where the paladins of the holy order of the Cleric in the group hunted down the werebeasts of the West and killed them, using silver supplied from the family mines of said cleric. The Barbarian is on a lifelong quest to find the hunter who killed his mother. He is a were-bear. This came up roughly a year after the book was handed out.
- The party picked up a book of folklore to research the ancient lost kingdom of Aren, and in it found a story of the BBEG from a bygone age.
It takes me a few hours to write out some easily consumed lore-dumps, then I smatter it with old artwork from the public domain, and then print it as a booklet for them. the props look amazing, and I get to hand out interesting lore about my world which might otherwise not come up!
I just let them know what book they find, and then explain that I will have to make it between sessions, but let them know the details of things that they find relevant to their efforts. It's made a little bit of a rod for my own back, because now they keep going to libraries - but that just tells me that they're enjoying it!
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How I'd do it, but my style may differ from your own.
I'd try to do it through showing the party the clues. Either they'll pick up on them, or they won't. I think Bethesda games are great for this kind of environmental storytelling. Fallout 4 and Skyrim had some great examples that might get raise your interest in a location if you're paying attention, but if you weren't you'd dismiss them. Then down the line when something is revealed you suddenly twig and realise that the skeleton laid out in an odd way was showing you a part of the world.
This makes it environmental and not lore, and theoretically possible less boring for the party. If the characters choose to ask more questions about the Duchess then the two commoners having a debate can fill them in on the legend. The point is that it then becomes a player choice, not a lore dump. They've asked for it, you're not dumping it out of the blue.
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