I'm planning a seafaring campaign for -+ 4 players.
The rough plot for the campaign is that the party have been hired to help in the search for a lost underwater city that is said to contain untold riches (basically in world version of atlantes), to do so they will have to collect pieces of an artefact that acts as a magical navigational device to the lost city. To add more tension there will be another ship and crew with the same goal that the party will have to out maneuver and beat to the pieces (possibly a naval ship?).
My current plan is to give the players the same level of status as the officers on the ship.
Thoughts on the plot and how to make it more interesting? I'm a newish DM and don't want to railroad my players.
Probably neither crew will get all of the pieces, so they’ll end up having to work together. This is a great opportunity to run some low-level adventures where failure is a possibility. Depending on how many of the early missions they accomplish, their negotiating position will be improved.
Of course, if one team comes up just one or two pieces short, they’ll probably try to just steal the remaining pieces. This is where a clever pirate will employ the old buried treasure and map with riddle trick.
What do you mean same rank as the officers? Usually civilians have no rank on a ship. Are they passengers? Maybe owners / investors in the voyage? That might give them some status akin to rank. Or are they actually part of the crew?
By rank I mean more of status/pivalate level, I'm planning on having the party hired by the captain as contracted specialists who will receive a cut of treasure found.
My suggestion would be to not let the cat out of the bag right away if you get my drift. Do it slowly over time. Hopefully you have not mentioned this lost city and the navigational artifact to the players of the campaign. If you have, it is not a big deal; but better to keep it a secret.
Then have an adventure where the PCs find a piece of the artifact. Possibly they are exploring a tomb, they kill some undead and they find it. What is it? What does it do? Where is it from? (See how a mysterious item can lead you and the PCs down a nice story line)
They then need to investigate what this magical piece is (you can explain that the item is part of a larger item). To investigate, the PCs need to go investigate the item in the greatest library in the lands...oh dang...that library is in a neighboring country that is not kind to outsiders. Now they have to go try and sneak in and get the information. Only to find out that the information has been stolen by a thieves guild (here is the competing ship and crew looking for the same item/city).
This leads to sneaking into the thieves guild or finding the information in other places and so on....
Basically, a campaign should be far reaching with many different tentacles of plot lines. (But that is just how I like to run things.)
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I'm planning a seafaring campaign for -+ 4 players.
The rough plot for the campaign is that the party have been hired to help in the search for a lost underwater city that is said to contain untold riches (basically in world version of atlantes), to do so they will have to collect pieces of an artefact that acts as a magical navigational device to the lost city. To add more tension there will be another ship and crew with the same goal that the party will have to out maneuver and beat to the pieces (possibly a naval ship?).
My current plan is to give the players the same level of status as the officers on the ship.
Thoughts on the plot and how to make it more interesting? I'm a newish DM and don't want to railroad my players.
Probably neither crew will get all of the pieces, so they’ll end up having to work together. This is a great opportunity to run some low-level adventures where failure is a possibility. Depending on how many of the early missions they accomplish, their negotiating position will be improved.
Of course, if one team comes up just one or two pieces short, they’ll probably try to just steal the remaining pieces. This is where a clever pirate will employ the old buried treasure and map with riddle trick.
What do you mean same rank as the officers? Usually civilians have no rank on a ship. Are they passengers? Maybe owners / investors in the voyage? That might give them some status akin to rank. Or are they actually part of the crew?
By rank I mean more of status/pivalate level, I'm planning on having the party hired by the captain as contracted specialists who will receive a cut of treasure found.
My suggestion would be to not let the cat out of the bag right away if you get my drift. Do it slowly over time. Hopefully you have not mentioned this lost city and the navigational artifact to the players of the campaign. If you have, it is not a big deal; but better to keep it a secret.
Then have an adventure where the PCs find a piece of the artifact. Possibly they are exploring a tomb, they kill some undead and they find it. What is it? What does it do? Where is it from? (See how a mysterious item can lead you and the PCs down a nice story line)
They then need to investigate what this magical piece is (you can explain that the item is part of a larger item). To investigate, the PCs need to go investigate the item in the greatest library in the lands...oh dang...that library is in a neighboring country that is not kind to outsiders. Now they have to go try and sneak in and get the information. Only to find out that the information has been stolen by a thieves guild (here is the competing ship and crew looking for the same item/city).
This leads to sneaking into the thieves guild or finding the information in other places and so on....
Basically, a campaign should be far reaching with many different tentacles of plot lines. (But that is just how I like to run things.)