I made a homebrew campaign for my 4 players and rethinking the ending. Simply put, there might not be enough room for players to make their own decisions and I'd like to improve that.
Bbeg is a high status aristocrat that formed a religious organization that helps people in need of protection from undead and curses. His plan - clear the continent from all curses and undead by a big ass ritual that needs 4 Spires that will connect with the main base, giving it enough mana to destroy every undead creature and all source of curses.
Their main enemy is basically Orsted from Mushoku tensei - extremely strong monk dragonborn with a variety of magic artifacts.
What's the plan for this campaign:
1 The group joins this organization after 2 tragic encounters with "Orsted"
2 They help finding artifacts and build defences from him(through a course of many missions)
3 they gradually find clues that their leader is hiding something
4 (and it's where I'm kinda lost) players go on a new mission - protecting one of their bases from bandits. In the process, they meet the leader of those bandits, who's actually their good friend and is actually a great guy - Sildar Hollwinter. He gives them an explanation that something is clearly wrong and their goal is very much unreachable, this leader is doing something else.
They agree that sildar will try and reach his good friend that was once in the organization and could enlighten them on their real plan.
Then they meet this friend, main enemy - "Orsted", who, after a brief misunderstanding, explains the real plan of the real BBEG and they start destroying all 4 spires, having to fight(or try and persuade) previous friends.
Is this plan alright? Or is it too forced and I should rewrite the big reveal, so they find out themselves, maybe asking the BBEG head on, getting destroyed(but not dying, maybe going to jail) in the process?
It’s too forced. Never assume you know what the PCs will do. You know what the bad guy wants to do, and even what will happen if no one interferes. You don’t know what the characters will do.
Even the first step, they join this organization, is too much. You can decide they might be invited to join, but they might say no. Heck, depending on how they handle the 2 tragic encounters, you might look at the organization and decide they would not be willing to work with the PCs. Try to keep things like that in mind, don’t get so attached to your idea for a plot that you push it through no matter what.
That’s the thing with a D&D campaign, you can’t start at the ending and work backwards. The characters might just go a different direction entirely.
There's a good framework there. You can definitely build on this. So you've got the "Big Good Guy" building a massive thing that will allegedly eliminate all undead and all curses from the land. That sounds great. But anyone with a double-digit Insight check should suspect that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
So maybe the Big Good Guy sends the party somewhere to find a Magical McGuffin that he needs for his ritual, or maybe the party is sent to clear out a distant tower to prepare it to become part of this ritual network. But along the way, the party finds an entire town of undead creatures - zombies, skeletons, etc. But the undead don't attack! In fact, they're just going about the normal daily chores like they did in life. And somehow the party finds out that this village is one of the "test ranges" that the Big Good Guy is using to test his ritual magic. Apparently, the Big Good Guy, like any diligent researcher, is conducting small experiments to ensure the success of the Big Experiment. So he's got his own covert team of evil priests going around murdering entire villages and then cursing them to become undead. And then the Big Good Guy tests his weapon on them!
Don't rely on an NPC to tell the players the plot. Sure, you can have NPC offer clues, but it's better to SHOW the players the plot! Let them find one of the failed experiments of the Big Good Guy's practice rituals. Let them see the suffering that he has caused to countless innocent people in his pursuit of perfection. Let them discover the truth on their own. Let them peek behind the curtain and see that the Big Good Guy is really just a Zealot who is perfectly content to destroy all undead even if it means destroying all of the living, too!
Hey there.
I made a homebrew campaign for my 4 players and rethinking the ending. Simply put, there might not be enough room for players to make their own decisions and I'd like to improve that.
Bbeg is a high status aristocrat that formed a religious organization that helps people in need of protection from undead and curses. His plan - clear the continent from all curses and undead by a big ass ritual that needs 4 Spires that will connect with the main base, giving it enough mana to destroy every undead creature and all source of curses.
Their main enemy is basically Orsted from Mushoku tensei - extremely strong monk dragonborn with a variety of magic artifacts.
What's the plan for this campaign:
1 The group joins this organization after 2 tragic encounters with "Orsted"
2 They help finding artifacts and build defences from him(through a course of many missions)
3 they gradually find clues that their leader is hiding something
4 (and it's where I'm kinda lost) players go on a new mission - protecting one of their bases from bandits. In the process, they meet the leader of those bandits, who's actually their good friend and is actually a great guy - Sildar Hollwinter. He gives them an explanation that something is clearly wrong and their goal is very much unreachable, this leader is doing something else.
They agree that sildar will try and reach his good friend that was once in the organization and could enlighten them on their real plan.
Then they meet this friend, main enemy - "Orsted", who, after a brief misunderstanding, explains the real plan of the real BBEG and they start destroying all 4 spires, having to fight(or try and persuade) previous friends.
Is this plan alright? Or is it too forced and I should rewrite the big reveal, so they find out themselves, maybe asking the BBEG head on, getting destroyed(but not dying, maybe going to jail) in the process?
It’s too forced. Never assume you know what the PCs will do. You know what the bad guy wants to do, and even what will happen if no one interferes. You don’t know what the characters will do.
Even the first step, they join this organization, is too much. You can decide they might be invited to join, but they might say no. Heck, depending on how they handle the 2 tragic encounters, you might look at the organization and decide they would not be willing to work with the PCs. Try to keep things like that in mind, don’t get so attached to your idea for a plot that you push it through no matter what.
That’s the thing with a D&D campaign, you can’t start at the ending and work backwards. The characters might just go a different direction entirely.
There's a good framework there. You can definitely build on this. So you've got the "Big Good Guy" building a massive thing that will allegedly eliminate all undead and all curses from the land. That sounds great. But anyone with a double-digit Insight check should suspect that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
So maybe the Big Good Guy sends the party somewhere to find a Magical McGuffin that he needs for his ritual, or maybe the party is sent to clear out a distant tower to prepare it to become part of this ritual network. But along the way, the party finds an entire town of undead creatures - zombies, skeletons, etc. But the undead don't attack! In fact, they're just going about the normal daily chores like they did in life. And somehow the party finds out that this village is one of the "test ranges" that the Big Good Guy is using to test his ritual magic. Apparently, the Big Good Guy, like any diligent researcher, is conducting small experiments to ensure the success of the Big Experiment. So he's got his own covert team of evil priests going around murdering entire villages and then cursing them to become undead. And then the Big Good Guy tests his weapon on them!
Don't rely on an NPC to tell the players the plot. Sure, you can have NPC offer clues, but it's better to SHOW the players the plot! Let them find one of the failed experiments of the Big Good Guy's practice rituals. Let them see the suffering that he has caused to countless innocent people in his pursuit of perfection. Let them discover the truth on their own. Let them peek behind the curtain and see that the Big Good Guy is really just a Zealot who is perfectly content to destroy all undead even if it means destroying all of the living, too!
Anzio Faro. Protector Aasimar light cleric. Lvl 18.
Viktor Gavriil. White dragonborn grave cleric. Lvl 20.
Ikram Sahir ibn-Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad. Brass dragonborn draconic sorcerer Lvl 9. Fire elemental devil.
Wrangler of cats.