So first off if any of my players (who are also DM's) are here, turn back now. 😜

So I have a campaign in a world that's my own version of Ravnica. I wanted to make a world where it's truly open and the game is driven by the players. Everyone started off as part of a notable adventurers guild and each day they take jobs from a jobs board in the guildhall. The world used to be at war but now has a peace treaty so tensions are still high between different factions. Also in this world my players are not the only heroes. They're in a world trying to prove themselves.

Now with some background out of the way on to my question. 

I feel like taking quests off boards will eventually get boring or at least I'll need to break it up with something more engaging. What advice would you give to advance the plot or what are ways you come up with new ideas and story hooks? Should I have a Villain to focus on? Have the world go to war? Or maybe bring in some rivals? I know there is so many possibilities but any advice would be much appreciated. 

(Edit): I should also note I still want to keep the world open and not railroad my players in anyway. 

Each quest they take will have antagonists. Judge how they react to these antagonists and how much investment they have in them. The one they seem to have the most fun with, have them start becoming the recurring villain that starts to tie some of the quests together. Have them starter gathering followers and steadily start causing more and more trouble. If they slay this villain/antagonist, have one of their Underlines rise up to replace them. 

I would also just have some quests have reoccuring "Themes". Like maybe one bandit group is a real pain in the arse and keeps reforming, causing new quests to keep popping up that involve them. You may also have a Necromancer who keeps narrowly evading the heroes and causing undead hordes, terrorizing peasants, etc. 

Maybe a rival Adventurer party that turns out to be sorta evil. The people love them at first as they are really competent and successful. Really sell them as rivals who the heroes are constantly compared to. Maybe they keep stealing the "good" quests, leaving them with crap. They run into them in dungeons where they are carrying out significantly more loot or have "already taken care of the problem". They're insufferable. Then maybe reveal they're working for a BBEG or have nefarious plans. How will the hero's prove their Famous, Beloved rivals are actually up to no good?

I've been thinking a lot about this lately as I am starting to write adventures in my own campaign setting. When I think about film and theater, movies/plays/musicals are only as good as their villain. This goes doubly for RPG adventures, and I started a thread a while ago on What Makes a Good Villain you should check out. Once you have a good villain, and know what they want, then it's much easier to design and adventure/plot around that villain.

In the interest of not railroading your players, you may want to come up with a few different villains very generally, maybe 3, and see what really interests the players. Or wait until they've gotten a hold of something and build your villain/plot then. After all if it 100% the players choice, then you don't know what the plot is until they pick up on a story thread they are interested in.

With your campaign setting in an uneasy peace, you have a lot of interesting elements to play with. First, I think creating and maintaining peace is much harder than war. It is a natural state for people, organizations, and nations to be at conflict with one and other. There are plenty of real world and historical examples of this, but the point is that peace is usually brokered and maintained by just a handful of individuals driving that process between the conflicting factions. If one or more of those people is removed, then it's just a matter of time before the peace falls apart.

You could have the players hired to protect a person important to maintaining the peace, or hired to kill someone who is maintaining that peace (maybe they don't know who, later find out, and have a tough choice to make). They could be establishing new trade routes, or perhaps stopping slavers who have been profiting from the rapidly dissolving fog of war. Perhaps with the onset of peace a noble patron hires the party to explore the grounds of a family estate that they were forced to flee many years ago to avoid being caught between Waring armies. 

Ultimately, it will depend on your players and what they want to do. Good luck! Sounds like a lot of fun!

The "job board" is a mechanic borrowed from video games.  I think your players will find it much more engaging to RP with the "crusty old sergeant" who's in charge of handing out assignments:  "Looks like we have a new batch of Rat Killers here!"   Party, "Rats?  There has to be something better than rats available!?"  Sergeant, "There's lots better, but you have to prove yourself first.  I could send you off to clear the goblins out of a dungeon, but then would have to send someone else to go retrieve your corpse!  Rats it is!"     And so on....

"So... I think you're ready for something more challenging.  How about an escort mission? "

The idea is to RP out their choices.  Also, instead of just taking jobs via the guild, there are other ways to get a side job.  Having the characters approached by NPC's who have problems and/or need a job done might be a more engaging...interactive way to introduce the group to their next job. It's easy to be impersonal when something is simply tacked up on a board "Husband missing 3 days.  Went hunting and hasn't returned." - a bit more difficult to hem-and-haw face-to-face about how "busy" you are when asked to do a job you really don't want to do. ie: "A, clearly distraught, woman approaches you, "Please! I need your help. My husband's been missing since he went out hunting three days ago. We don't have much, so can't pay much, and no one else will help. I beg you, please!" Peeking around his mother's skirts you see a five-year-old boy. His eyes are wide with fear, and hope, "Are you going to find my Da?"

The job board is a nice start, especially if you're in a world where everyone wants to adventure and prove themselves. There are several ways I can think of to move out of that format after a while:

- The first jobs might be straight-forward, while more advanced jobs might require you to go talk to the person, that might need convincing that you're the right persons for the mission, so you can get some RP interaction.

- If there several factions, they all might be looking for up-and-coming heroes to strenghten their ranks. After they succeeded on a few missions, they might be contacted by several of those, and might have to make a choice. This gives them both allies (their new faction) and potential ennemies (the one they rejected). This might even give them some antagonists within their own factions, people seeing them as obstacles on their own road to celebrity and fame.

- Finally, there's the Witcher 3 road, where you can do several missions before realising that they're actually all connected. The PCs could then be interested to investigate that connecting reason on their own.

Groundwork: Check your player's ideas now on "the game is driven by the players" if you have not done that in a Session Zero. Are they really into shaping the game world themselves, or do they just want to play fun episodes. Player involvement only works, when you can play quite often and they players can see some progression on their goals. Too much real life time passing between  sessions will create problems later on.

1. Advice: Create a "movement of the world"
There should be something that is changing the world from session to session, the players have "no way of influencing" that creates a dynamic. This can be anything from changing seasons (travelling will change a lot, whether you travel in summer or in winter e.g.), the political situation in the realm (war, succession intrigues in the royal family, an expanding religion etc.).
2. Advice: Offer "split paths" of adventure
The situation changes, when nobody takes "jobs off the board" and the players can't take all the jobs at the same time. This creates changes in the game world.
E.g. I usually offer three "adventure hooks" to my players, that are open fort them to explore and resolve directly. If they take hook 1, hook 2 and 3 will "progress" while the players concentrate on hook 1. After solving hook 1 the other two have changed, e.g. the bandits raiding the villages have gotten stronger and more dangerous (the hooks will get more challenging or less rewarding for the players). When they have dealt with the second hook, the third one will have passed without their involvement, usually with a big consequence to their environment. They have chosen not to stop the bandits, but searched for a religious artefact instead (hook 1) and rescued the fishermen from a sea monster (the fleet of boats is damaged, because it took them a while to react - hook 2). The bandits have sacked the important caravan from the capital, bringing in medical supplies and a chest full of coins, that should have funded the local militia. Now the local guard contingency will remain small and ill equipped, not being able to stop the powerful bandit king from his next coup.

3. Advice: Use personal backstory
If your players have created a backstory for their characters, use some of that. The person that is hiring the players could be a relative, a former lover, the neighbour etc. The bandit king terrorizing the town is really one of the player's sibling. The mythical artefact that has opened a gate to The Nine Hells belong in the custody of the player's guild.

If there was a war that just ended, there are a lot of possibilities to write material directly related to the aftermath of the conflict.  For instance, there are likely a lot of war orphans being cared for at various temples.  What if the orphans at one temple are being trained as thieves or worse yet, they are being used as hosts for some kind of monstrous parasite? 

Or perhaps after rescuing a particular child, they realize that had inadvertently put themselves in the middle of a custody battle b/c the child's parents are dead, but their relatives are on opposite sides of the war? 

If your players are savvy and mature enough, have them get hired to clear out peasants from a patch of land that used to belong to another kingdom that now belongs to your Ravnica.  The peasants don't want to move, but the party's job is to move them.  This puts the party in a moral quandary.  

Have you considered starting mini-adventures through encounters?

I've been working on a random encounter table where some of the non-combat options could lead to further adventures.

A couple of examples:

(This one will only work with lower-level characters, since higher levels will probably have more options to help.) They meet an old man with a heavy wagon full of ore.  Attacking wolves scared his horses off, and he has no way to get his ore to the refinery: if he stays here, bandits or monsters will finish him off.  He asks if he can temporarily transform the party into horses to haul the ore, in return for which he will give them half his profits.  The old man is actually a high-level wizard, who casts True Polymorph on them, and by the time they reach the town, they are permanently transformed.  The wizard asks them to stay in the street while he lets the refinery foreman know he has a load to deliver, then goes into the company tavern and sells the wagon, ore, horses and all.  A stranger comes out to drive the wagon away, and (if the 'horses' cooperate) will offload the ore at the refinery.  Then the horses will be taken to a stable to be sold at a horse auction  the next day.  Will they escape the stable?  Will they be bought at auction by a poor and kind-hearted farmer who can't afford to lose them?  Will they manage to convince someone they are not really animals?  Will someone cast Dispel Magic on them?  If they return to their own shapes, will they find the wizard and end his evil reign of practical joking?

A heavily-armored band of bounty hunters stops the party and compares them to a wanted poster they are carrying.  It is for an elven prince who murdered his brother and turned bandit: 5000gp if captured alive ('cause prince) only 800 dead.  The bounty hunters are eager, and if any party member even remotely resembles the prince, (Elven, half-elven, long blonde hair, amber eyes, "This halfling has a posh accent, I bet she's the prince in disguise!") they will attempt to capture the party and turn them in to the city guard. At the very least, the players are made aware of the prince storyline.  They may also have a battle with bounty hunters, captivity to escape, and/or more information from the city guard who informs the bounty hunters of their error.

A drow elf appears in their path, holding out a deck of playing cards. "Pick a card, any card," he says with an evil grin.  If the party takes a card (or attacks) the drow laughs and vanishes. (He was an illusion.) The players are left with the business card of a magic shop in a nearby city, advertising "Melinda Mayhem’s Whimsical Wizardries: Potions, Novelties, Transformations, Toys, Illusions, Enchantments, Children’s parties."  If they happen to go there, they will find that the proprietress and her staff have been immobilized, and the shop is being ransacked by cultists looking for a magical artifact.  If rescued, Mayhem will give the artifact to the adventures, saying that she heard it was the key to an ancient mystic portal....somewhere in the southern swamps.

Well if there are still tensions between nations and there's other heroes, a war setting up or even starting could happen. Maybe heroes of different nations see it as justice to fight for their homeland, and they all end up going to war. Maybe the party wants to end the war, win it for the nation they're in, help other heroes, overthrow the one they're in even. Really, a lot can happen, but what they do is ultimately up to the DM, and what's possible.

Tie the story to their backstories. Nothing makes a story more engaging than something that relates to your players personally.

As a couple have said already, resolve players backstory. If your players have gone to the trouble of writing backstories for their characters, you should reward them for that, and it is the best way to get them engaged in the story. If you could give us some info about your players backstories, we may be able to give you some more detailed ideas.

That said, your world seems ripe for adventure. A tense and new peace always has unhappy parties. Who won? What were the conditions of the peace? The losing side will almost certainly have groups who don't think peace is the answer, as will the winning side. Those groups would be looking at either influencing the political powers to restart the war, or possibly overthrow the current ruling class and take the power themselves.

 Creating a campaign driven by the players/characters motivations is key. Use the first few adventures to allow the characters to evolve and gauge what drives the group. Are they a heroic party keen to save the world? Are they treasure hunters eager to make a coin? Do they hate authority and go out of their way to be antagonistic to leaders? Do they have well thought out backstories they are keen to develop? Do they have quirks, interests or strong ties to anything? How did they go on the adventures - make any enemies/friends? Find anything unusual/valuable? All of this should help you steer the party on a campaign that they are interested in and have direct ownership of.

If you create an adventure or path that you sense doesn't interest them - change it. Give them an out if saving the princess from the giant becomes a clique bore, have them discover that the giant is the one really in need of saving. If they are part of an Adventurers Guild, make sure you have a rivalry with another equally or slightly more powerful party. Ensure they outdo and/or embarrass the group early so they will do anything to beat them going forward. They don't need to be evil, they can be good but as long as there is a health rivalry, it will work a treat.

Believable villains are crucial. I love using villains that have clean motivations.

The Ghost Duegar ('Demon of the Dark') whose body was locked in binding chains by the Dwarven Kingdom in the past and the party unwittingly frees. His family and people were slaughtered in their homes by the same heroic founders of Dwarven Kingdom who is now determined to wipe out their descendants as retribution.The Knight who kills under sufferance to protect his wife. The Hobgblin General ('The Butcher of Blackwater') who seeks to free his people from the Elven Empire who enslaved them, once and for all. The merchant halfling who undermines and hires thieves to attack a party members business in fear of his own being run out of business and him failing his father once again.

The best villains link or directly oppose the party or a party member. Having a Blackguard villain when you have a Paladin in the party works beautifully. Similarly, having an assassin who was a childhood friend of the rogue is both personal and confronting.

In the end, you're already on the right track because you're keen to make the game about the players and make the campaign motivating. Just remember though, you're fun is important too so make sure you create a campaign and adventures you enjoy too. Good luck

This has been most helpful. 😁 

Thank you so much for your input. I want to try make my game engaging and something I would like to play myself. So hopefully I don't lose track and just pay attention to how the players are reacting. Giving it some time to get a read is a great idea and something I can't believe I overlooked. 

Thank you everyone for their input. I've a lot of inspiration here and plenty of homework. 😁

Back story is something I had planned from the start but at the moment it's something all but one has neglected so far. They have a basic idea but no connections or hooks for me to use right now (I need to work on that with them).

War breaking out again is something I think is inevitable. Rival guilds is something I think I'll do too. You have all given me great ideas. 

The job board is only for lower tier ranks till they have some renown where they get personal requests. I might have an upgraded board too like a quest board rather than small jobs.

I had an idea of dungeons randomly appearing in the world something similar to the mystery dungeon series of games. 

I love the idea of a sibling of one of the player characters being a warlord in an opposing faction, as the only player to make a back story, has a brother that defected from the legion his whole family is a part of and joined a tribal faction who love battle and war. 

So far my players consist of a Izzet Weird (homebrew) wizard, A fighter/Rogue Half-orc, a Kenku Ranger and a Dragonborn Blood Hunter. All of them come from cities in different regions so war is gonna be an interesting dilemma for the party. 

I'm happy to hear even more ideas from people. Again thank you all so much for the feedback. 

Quote from AlexanderHandleIt >>

Tie the story to their backstories. Nothing makes a story more engaging than something that relates to your players personally.

 I figured this was said already. That was my answer.