Just an arrow hits a member of the party with a note that points them in the direction you are trying to guide them in. Maybe the Mentor is even the one who shot the arrow.
A messenger gives them a message that is from someone (once again, maybe a tie-in for the Mentor), guiding them
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In the words of the great philosopher, Unicorse, "Aaaannnnd why should I care??"
Best quote from a book ever: "If you love with your eyes, death is forever. If you love with your heart, there is no such thing as parting."- Jonah Cook, Ascendant, Songs of Chaos by Michael R. Miller. Highly recommend
Fundamentally, your players are never going to keep track of all of this stuff as well as you are. You wrote it. It makes sense to you. All they have is the bits you told them, and they didn't write down half of it, and they misunderstood you some of the time.
I suggest simplifying. Write some factions out, whether by just sort of forgetting about the ones the players care least about, or through Big Drama. ("The Lich King of the North is dead! The Chromatic Coalition got fed up with him and razed his citadel and all the land within 30 miles!" Simplifies the playing field and establishes the CC as scary.)
How self-directed are your players? IF you ask them "what are planning to do next session?", will they have something for you, or do they expect you to feed them The Scenario?
As for directing them, a mysterious figure with an uncertain agenda who hires them to do something seemingly reasonable is a classic.
Are there "many" factions involved, or are there "too many" factions involved. If there's more than three, your players likely won't be able to keep it all straight without the game starting to feel like a homework assignment.
Look into the backstories of the characters to find a suitable mentor/coach/etc. Figure out which factions' activities are most clearly at odds with which character's ideals, and have a mentor from that characters backstory urge them to investigate that faction or to just take that faction down.
The campaign I'm running for a kids club has 5 factions and I'll agree with the above that of those the players probably care about 3. The real trick is it isn't the same three for every player. I actually went as far as creating a two sided laminated sheet I could give each player that had all five factions and a brief history of the world so they could write back stories that fit and each of them latched on to different factions so I've basically been putting together a mental Venn diagram of which faction the most people care about and focusing on them while the less important ones fade into the background until something plot relevant happens
One campaign I ran, my story goal was to get the party to leave the small village they were in, and head into the "northern wilds". They were supposed to escape with the McGuffin.
So I had a stranger appear, hand them the McGuffin and say "keep this away from them, keep it safe, get it out of here." Then he died.
Rather than flee with the MG, the party spent days pondering what to do, experimenting on the McGuffin, and not so subtley asking around if anyone knew anything about it.
Then I sent the literal royal army into the town demanding that someone hand over the McGuffin. I figured "Surely, they will heed the warning of the stranger and they'll leave town NOW'.
Nope, they decided instead to steal one of the magical horses used by the army, torture one of the bandits and ignore the advice of the mentor character who was DESPERATELY trying not to say "I will tell you what to do".
The one perk is that they DID make peace eventually with the army, and discovered some interesting characters (Cpl Rowe who was also a healer, my little Band of Brothers Reference) and then were commissioned by the army to investigate the bandits north of town.
So... yeah... it happens. You just gotta roll with it, and be open to saying "Dude, the plot's that way...."
Sounds like the whole of Middle Earth, and Gandalf in particular, would be very grateful they didn't have to deal with your players instead of Frodo lol
Sounds like the whole of Middle Earth, and Gandalf in particular, would be very grateful they didn't have to deal with your players instead of Frodo lol
Frodo had to follow the plot.
Players have no such compulsion, and will demonstrate it with great vigor.
One thing I did was start a Google doc that the players were in charge of, and any time I dropped a plot hook in front of them, they wrote it in the Google doc under a new heading. As they investigated different plots and explored their quests, they had this shared note repository where all of them could add stuff-- I as the DM would never touch it unless it was to correct spelling to avoid confusion, and I could tell which plot hooks the players were more interested in because you could see more players leaving notes about them.
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My campaign is well underway and the party is confused because there are many different factions involved.
I think I need to give them a mentor/teacher/coach/ boss to tell them what to do next.
What devices have you used to send your young group in the right direction?
Just an arrow hits a member of the party with a note that points them in the direction you are trying to guide them in. Maybe the Mentor is even the one who shot the arrow.
A messenger gives them a message that is from someone (once again, maybe a tie-in for the Mentor), guiding them
In the words of the great philosopher, Unicorse, "Aaaannnnd why should I care??"
Best quote from a book ever: "If you love with your eyes, death is forever. If you love with your heart, there is no such thing as parting."- Jonah Cook, Ascendant, Songs of Chaos by Michael R. Miller. Highly recommend
Fundamentally, your players are never going to keep track of all of this stuff as well as you are. You wrote it. It makes sense to you. All they have is the bits you told them, and they didn't write down half of it, and they misunderstood you some of the time.
I suggest simplifying. Write some factions out, whether by just sort of forgetting about the ones the players care least about, or through Big Drama. ("The Lich King of the North is dead! The Chromatic Coalition got fed up with him and razed his citadel and all the land within 30 miles!" Simplifies the playing field and establishes the CC as scary.)
How self-directed are your players? IF you ask them "what are planning to do next session?", will they have something for you, or do they expect you to feed them The Scenario?
As for directing them, a mysterious figure with an uncertain agenda who hires them to do something seemingly reasonable is a classic.
Are there "many" factions involved, or are there "too many" factions involved. If there's more than three, your players likely won't be able to keep it all straight without the game starting to feel like a homework assignment.
Look into the backstories of the characters to find a suitable mentor/coach/etc. Figure out which factions' activities are most clearly at odds with which character's ideals, and have a mentor from that characters backstory urge them to investigate that faction or to just take that faction down.
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.
The campaign I'm running for a kids club has 5 factions and I'll agree with the above that of those the players probably care about 3. The real trick is it isn't the same three for every player. I actually went as far as creating a two sided laminated sheet I could give each player that had all five factions and a brief history of the world so they could write back stories that fit and each of them latched on to different factions so I've basically been putting together a mental Venn diagram of which faction the most people care about and focusing on them while the less important ones fade into the background until something plot relevant happens
Story time:
One campaign I ran, my story goal was to get the party to leave the small village they were in, and head into the "northern wilds". They were supposed to escape with the McGuffin.
So I had a stranger appear, hand them the McGuffin and say "keep this away from them, keep it safe, get it out of here." Then he died.
Rather than flee with the MG, the party spent days pondering what to do, experimenting on the McGuffin, and not so subtley asking around if anyone knew anything about it.
Then I sent the literal royal army into the town demanding that someone hand over the McGuffin. I figured "Surely, they will heed the warning of the stranger and they'll leave town NOW'.
Nope, they decided instead to steal one of the magical horses used by the army, torture one of the bandits and ignore the advice of the mentor character who was DESPERATELY trying not to say "I will tell you what to do".
The one perk is that they DID make peace eventually with the army, and discovered some interesting characters (Cpl Rowe who was also a healer, my little Band of Brothers Reference) and then were commissioned by the army to investigate the bandits north of town.
So... yeah... it happens. You just gotta roll with it, and be open to saying "Dude, the plot's that way...."
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Sounds like the whole of Middle Earth, and Gandalf in particular, would be very grateful they didn't have to deal with your players instead of Frodo lol
Frodo had to follow the plot.
Players have no such compulsion, and will demonstrate it with great vigor.
One thing I did was start a Google doc that the players were in charge of, and any time I dropped a plot hook in front of them, they wrote it in the Google doc under a new heading. As they investigated different plots and explored their quests, they had this shared note repository where all of them could add stuff-- I as the DM would never touch it unless it was to correct spelling to avoid confusion, and I could tell which plot hooks the players were more interested in because you could see more players leaving notes about them.