I am in the middle of creating a new campaign. I already have an idea on how to fix the group together. They arrive in a city (every character has goals there) where they only get passage if they help someone. This someone is a spy that wants to find out about guards that seem to accept bribes. They can get into the city with the spy because he has a write of passage, so it is a win win he helps them and they help him.
But the guards will notice sometime on the same day that some people entered the city which should not be there, the forged write of passage is recognized by the guards and thereby they are going to prison. They will probably try to break out of it and will kill one or two guards in the process. The spy comes in again and says that he works for the crown and that they should stop killing each other because the player characters have an important thing to do here (which is finding out which guards take bribes).
The players will look for a list or some other kind of clue where they find out that they have to go to a nearby dungeon because there is a list or even the people that take those bribes. So they go through the dungeon blabla and then find out that the spy is there. The spy was not sure where to find the information where to go and that is why he spied on the player party. He wanted to find out who takes the bribes and how much they get because he is from a clan where different families compete against each other and he wants to know with which amount he is able to surpass the other families.
And that is where I am stuck. This adventure is pretty fleshed out but I don't know how to expand it and with "big goal" the campaign should overall have.
Now you could do different things here but all of them are not reeeeeaaaaaally my favourite:
The assasin could use dark magic, black portals, with those portals he spawns undead and that is a threat for the whole world because the family is pretty big and they are slowly trying to overtake everything
The players (after getting out of the dungeon) could be searched for in the area of the empire (which is pretty big) and are thereby on the run from the empire. They could also need to found their own faction/house in order to protect themselves and have a chance to survive. Or they have to make alliances with other houses.
There could be some kind of overarching problem like "where did the spy have this magic from?" and then there could be some kind of objects that they have to collect to save the world from the undead or to be specific to save them from the spys house
Do you have any ideas what the "big plot" of the campaign could be? I am not really sure on what to do. Do you think one of the 3 ideas is really good an I should pursue them? We will be playing in Wildemount and this first adventure will take place in Wildemount (shortly before war between Kryn Dynasty and Dwendalian Empire breaks out) in case this helps someone or gives the more context.
I don't know much about Wildemount, but maybe you could do a thing where each the families/houses etc. start warring with each other because the BBEG started manipulating them into the war. And so the players have to stop the war before it consumes the whole land.
Thank you a lot for your reply Ashe_Lonkins. I mean in general it is not that important that it plays in Wildemount because I will tweak the world how it fits my style. But I think that is also a good idea, I will consider it. Thx a lot! :)
I think you need to take a step back and look at your "get the PCs arrested" idea, because you're making a lot of assumptions about what the players are going to do. Let me explain:
You can't be 100% sure that arresting your PCs is going to go the way you think that it will. For example, the PCs could fight and run, and they just might win unless you throw a LOT of guards at them. However, why would there be a whole regiment of guards out looking for people over a small case of forgery? If your players are suddenly surrounded by a whole unit of guards it might feel weirdly forced and unrealistic, but if you do a more realistic encounter like "2 guards walking down the street notice you and shout 'hey you there! stop in your tracks!" then you risk your PCs fighting/running and blowing up your plan.
Even IF you manage to get the PCs to surrender, why wouldn't they be allowed to defend themselves and prove their innocence? They could say that they didn't know the document was forged, give up the spy's name, and even offer to deliver the spy to guards if they sense that it would be more beneficial to align themselves with the guards than with the spy. If they try this, you have two options, let them make a persuasion check and adapt to it if they succeed, OR, you force them to be imprisoned anyway because your story doesn't work without them ending up in jail. If you go with the first option, you need to be prepared with a new hook to get the PCs to the dungeon now that they're not in prison, and if you go with the second option, you have to be prepared for your players to be upset that they don't have any agency in the game.
My point is, if you need the characters to find a way to get to this dungeon, you'll need to prepare a few different ways to put the quest in front of them in case your first plan doesn't work out. Leave yourself some room to adapt to the PCs decisions, because you'll NEVER be able to predict what your players will do 100% of the time.
Now as for your question and your bigger story. Your intro hook seems to be "figure out which guards take bribes and how much you need to pay them to pay more than the other families". So start asking/answering questions about that hook and they'll lead you into pretty good story ideas. Examples:
Which families are bribing the guards and what are their positions within the city?
What kind of secrets do these families have?
What are the guards taking bribes to do?
WHY are the guards taking bribes? Is it because they simply like money, or does someone hold power over them?
What is in the dungeon that the PCs would actually be interested in? How does the dungeon actually connect to your guard/bribery plot?
Off the top of my head, a rough sketch of a plot coming from the answer to these questions could look something like this:
A powerful family is secretly part of a demonic cult who has the goal of summoning a demon prince to the material plane. Maybe one member of the family has been granted minor magical powers by her demon patron, and she's managed to turn one of the guards into her thrall, and she used that guard to get a few of the others on their side. In order to summon the demon, they need some rare kind of component for the ritual, and they need it in vast quantities. Now obviously such a component would be dangerous, valuable, and possibly illegal, so naturally they bribe the city guard to look the other way on the shipment of this component and even protect/deliver their shipments directly to the family's estate.
Let's say your PCs learn which guards take bribes, and they inform the spy. The spy then starts to pay these guards more to do whatever it is that he wants them to do, and now the guards work for a different family. The demon-worshipping family loses their access to preferred shipping arrangement and starts a war with the spy's family that has apparently moved in on their turf. Before you know it, there's chaos in the city as agents from these two houses act out hostilities on their benefactors' behalf, and your PCs are caught in the middle of it.
This all happens in the background, as your PCs only know the surface information. Along the way you can offer them hooks to do jobs for one house or another in this war, and as they go deeper they learn the truth about the demon-cult. Then they have to stop it before it's too late.
I dunno, that's one idea, but the point is that if you ask yourself the detail-related questions you'll probably come up with something good
So,
I am in the middle of creating a new campaign. I already have an idea on how to fix the group together. They arrive in a city (every character has goals there) where they only get passage if they help someone. This someone is a spy that wants to find out about guards that seem to accept bribes. They can get into the city with the spy because he has a write of passage, so it is a win win he helps them and they help him.
But the guards will notice sometime on the same day that some people entered the city which should not be there, the forged write of passage is recognized by the guards and thereby they are going to prison. They will probably try to break out of it and will kill one or two guards in the process. The spy comes in again and says that he works for the crown and that they should stop killing each other because the player characters have an important thing to do here (which is finding out which guards take bribes).
The players will look for a list or some other kind of clue where they find out that they have to go to a nearby dungeon because there is a list or even the people that take those bribes. So they go through the dungeon blabla and then find out that the spy is there. The spy was not sure where to find the information where to go and that is why he spied on the player party. He wanted to find out who takes the bribes and how much they get because he is from a clan where different families compete against each other and he wants to know with which amount he is able to surpass the other families.
And that is where I am stuck. This adventure is pretty fleshed out but I don't know how to expand it and with "big goal" the campaign should overall have.
Now you could do different things here but all of them are not reeeeeaaaaaally my favourite:
Do you have any ideas what the "big plot" of the campaign could be? I am not really sure on what to do. Do you think one of the 3 ideas is really good an I should pursue them? We will be playing in Wildemount and this first adventure will take place in Wildemount (shortly before war between Kryn Dynasty and Dwendalian Empire breaks out) in case this helps someone or gives the more context.
Thank you guys a lot in advance!
I don't know much about Wildemount, but maybe you could do a thing where each the families/houses etc. start warring with each other because the BBEG started manipulating them into the war. And so the players have to stop the war before it consumes the whole land.
Thank you a lot for your reply Ashe_Lonkins. I mean in general it is not that important that it plays in Wildemount because I will tweak the world how it fits my style. But I think that is also a good idea, I will consider it. Thx a lot! :)
I think you need to take a step back and look at your "get the PCs arrested" idea, because you're making a lot of assumptions about what the players are going to do. Let me explain:
My point is, if you need the characters to find a way to get to this dungeon, you'll need to prepare a few different ways to put the quest in front of them in case your first plan doesn't work out. Leave yourself some room to adapt to the PCs decisions, because you'll NEVER be able to predict what your players will do 100% of the time.
Now as for your question and your bigger story. Your intro hook seems to be "figure out which guards take bribes and how much you need to pay them to pay more than the other families". So start asking/answering questions about that hook and they'll lead you into pretty good story ideas. Examples:
Off the top of my head, a rough sketch of a plot coming from the answer to these questions could look something like this:
A powerful family is secretly part of a demonic cult who has the goal of summoning a demon prince to the material plane. Maybe one member of the family has been granted minor magical powers by her demon patron, and she's managed to turn one of the guards into her thrall, and she used that guard to get a few of the others on their side. In order to summon the demon, they need some rare kind of component for the ritual, and they need it in vast quantities. Now obviously such a component would be dangerous, valuable, and possibly illegal, so naturally they bribe the city guard to look the other way on the shipment of this component and even protect/deliver their shipments directly to the family's estate.
Let's say your PCs learn which guards take bribes, and they inform the spy. The spy then starts to pay these guards more to do whatever it is that he wants them to do, and now the guards work for a different family. The demon-worshipping family loses their access to preferred shipping arrangement and starts a war with the spy's family that has apparently moved in on their turf. Before you know it, there's chaos in the city as agents from these two houses act out hostilities on their benefactors' behalf, and your PCs are caught in the middle of it.
This all happens in the background, as your PCs only know the surface information. Along the way you can offer them hooks to do jobs for one house or another in this war, and as they go deeper they learn the truth about the demon-cult. Then they have to stop it before it's too late.
I dunno, that's one idea, but the point is that if you ask yourself the detail-related questions you'll probably come up with something good
"To die would be an awfully big adventure"