So I want to work on making a prologue for my D&D campaign. I have an idea, where the players live inside of a bastion guild in a secluded mountainous landscape. The main problem i have been having is thinking of ways to make the prologue entertaining for the players and to produce a thorough character ideals, personality, providing motivation for the characters, and making more opportunities for roleplay.
Does anyone have any ideas for what i should be adding to make this prologue more engaging and useful for my campaign?
(probably worth mentioning the end plan of the prologue is to have the players' guild residence completely razed of the face of the land. I plant to have their guild go in the middle of a war between the more intelligent monsters)
If the characters all lived together in that place, why not have the players help you create that place? Just because you're going to be the DM for the campaign doesn't mean you have to do all the worldbuilding yourself too. Letting the players get involved in the worldbuilding not only makes your life easier, it helps the players feel invested in the world. And it greatly reduces the amount of time it takes for the players to get up to speed with what their characters would already know about the world.
Have each player start building their backstory by explaining how and why they ended up there. And let them establish connections and tensions between their characters. That will provide you with some juicy ways of messing with them later on.
The main problem i have been having is thinking of ways to make the prologue entertaining for the players and to produce a thorough character ideals, personality, providing motivation for the characters, and making more opportunities for roleplay.
It's not your job to give the player characters personality, ideals, and even general motivation. That is up for the players to decide when they make their characters. Opportunities to roleplay can be a double edged sword, because it's like giving people time to make small talk - some people can talk all day to random strangers about whatever, other people sit in awkward silence unable to think of anything to say.
If the point of the prologue is to help the player characters meet and make friends and/or flesh out their characters I'd suggest the following:
1) have each player design their own bedroom in the guild bastion and prompt them to add little personal touches like what's on their beside table, what do they keep in the locked chest, what did they bring from home. You can use the Trinket table to help those that lack inspiration.
2) have each player come up with their backstories for why they joined the guild, and come up with one NPC they are friends with in the guild, and one NPC they consider annoying or have a rivalry with in the guild.
3) make them participate in some friendly competition(s) within the guild - maybe a drinking game, maybe a training exercise, maybe a wrestling/sparring match, maybe kind of sport they play. You can use the NPCs the player characters don't like as their opponents to give them more incentive to participate and something to play off of for RP.
4) send them on a basic mission outside of the bastion, then when they return the bastion is under attack and they can choose to try to rescue the NPCs their characters are friends with or not.
Thanks for the advice! I’ll implement that to make the start more engaging, i had not thought of making the characters work with me in the world building. Definitely a cool way to get the players engaged.
Thanks for the detailed advice! The idea of having them create an NPC or use a premade one as friendships or rivalries is really cool, and will definitely engage some actions.
Friendly competitions would also be a great way to have the players get into the prologue and get engaged with the guild, having them get connected to it before it’s demise, starting the main campaign.
thanks for all the advice!
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So I want to work on making a prologue for my D&D campaign. I have an idea, where the players live inside of a bastion guild in a secluded mountainous landscape. The main problem i have been having is thinking of ways to make the prologue entertaining for the players and to produce a thorough character ideals, personality, providing motivation for the characters, and making more opportunities for roleplay.
Does anyone have any ideas for what i should be adding to make this prologue more engaging and useful for my campaign?
(probably worth mentioning the end plan of the prologue is to have the players' guild residence completely razed of the face of the land. I plant to have their guild go in the middle of a war between the more intelligent monsters)
If the characters all lived together in that place, why not have the players help you create that place? Just because you're going to be the DM for the campaign doesn't mean you have to do all the worldbuilding yourself too. Letting the players get involved in the worldbuilding not only makes your life easier, it helps the players feel invested in the world. And it greatly reduces the amount of time it takes for the players to get up to speed with what their characters would already know about the world.
Have each player start building their backstory by explaining how and why they ended up there. And let them establish connections and tensions between their characters. That will provide you with some juicy ways of messing with them later on.
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.
It's not your job to give the player characters personality, ideals, and even general motivation. That is up for the players to decide when they make their characters. Opportunities to roleplay can be a double edged sword, because it's like giving people time to make small talk - some people can talk all day to random strangers about whatever, other people sit in awkward silence unable to think of anything to say.
If the point of the prologue is to help the player characters meet and make friends and/or flesh out their characters I'd suggest the following:
1) have each player design their own bedroom in the guild bastion and prompt them to add little personal touches like what's on their beside table, what do they keep in the locked chest, what did they bring from home. You can use the Trinket table to help those that lack inspiration.
2) have each player come up with their backstories for why they joined the guild, and come up with one NPC they are friends with in the guild, and one NPC they consider annoying or have a rivalry with in the guild.
3) make them participate in some friendly competition(s) within the guild - maybe a drinking game, maybe a training exercise, maybe a wrestling/sparring match, maybe kind of sport they play. You can use the NPCs the player characters don't like as their opponents to give them more incentive to participate and something to play off of for RP.
4) send them on a basic mission outside of the bastion, then when they return the bastion is under attack and they can choose to try to rescue the NPCs their characters are friends with or not.
Thanks for the advice! I’ll implement that to make the start more engaging, i had not thought of making the characters work with me in the world building. Definitely a cool way to get the players engaged.
Thanks for the detailed advice! The idea of having them create an NPC or use a premade one as friendships or rivalries is really cool, and will definitely engage some actions.
Friendly competitions would also be a great way to have the players get into the prologue and get engaged with the guild, having them get connected to it before it’s demise, starting the main campaign.
thanks for all the advice!