So, I've ran a few campaigns so far, currently in the middle of Vecna Eve of Ruin. Been brainstorming with the idea of a Thieves guild campaign using the Taldorei Reborn Critical Role setting/source book. Will start by having the PCs as low level members of The Clasp - work their way up some with guild jobs and eventually make enough renown that they are introduced to a lieutenant/mid level leader of The Clasp.
In time, after making good relations with this mid level and coming to trust one another, they start to question the big boss of their guild branch. They have returned a good deal of valuable artifacts on their heists, as have some of the other crews in the guild, yet the coffers seem to be shrinking. With some investigation and sly work they uncover the Big Boss is actually a mole sent by a group called the Remnant's - a group of cultists who are gathering magical artifacts enough to sacrifice and break the chains of their long locked away god. This uncovers roughly around level 10 mid gamish. The next chapter is of the PCs trying to search for valuable vestiges of divergence that may help them to qual the threat of the cultists and this long lost god - culminating in a big showdown against big bad Remnant leader, and eventually with their God who is unleashed (thinking some sort of aberration or even Cthulhu).
All the while, the PCs are also having to deal with another group called the Myriads - a rival thieves guild from the neighboring continent of Wildemount, who have established themselves on The Clasps turf, and are willing to spill blood to further their own pockets. (This is kind of like plot B that is going on behind the heists during the early and mid levels that culminates in a big battle for one of the artifacts/vestiges of divergence).
I've got a couple intro level heists/jobs thought out, and then this brief outline for the overall story arc, open to suggestions on what you all might add or change as well!
Why will they start to question the boss of the guild branch? - I often find that assuming that players will do something is often the earliest mistake players can make. I would suggest thinking about it more in terms of: 'after some time, the Guild's boss begins acting suspiciously, and sending the party on unusual missions'. Be prepared though that players won't always pick up on the thing you intend that they pick up on.
What happens if they fail and don't return valuable artefacts? What happens if they decide to skim off the top? Will their be consequences for cheating the guild out of coin? What if they players do what you appear to be suggesting that the guild boss is doing?
How are you going to describe or make apparent that guild coffers are shrinking? Will you have a 'loot recovered to date' board? Will you have a ledger available to view by a guild member? Do all guild members get to know how much coin is currently stored in the coffers? What does the guild normally do with the money in it's coffers? Are all the members of the guild happy with simply building out the guild wealth, or do some people think the guild ought to spend some of it on hiring a new poison maker (for example)?
What are the clues that the party can reasonably uncover that will reveal what the boss is doing? Is the boss acting weird? Are other members of the guild having the same suspicions as the party might? Is it unusual that the guild is suddenly acquiring magic items, rather than cold hard cash?
How long has the boss of the guild been a guild member? How did they get turned by the cult? Was this a long term endeavour? Or did the guild manage to get blackmail to force the boss into doing this? If someone has become the leader of a guild, they've (presumably) invested many long hours of labour in building and serving the guild. Let's say it normally takes ten years to climb the ranks...did this guild boss get fast tracked? Did they bribe their way into this position? Or did the cult give the boss 10 years to achieve this position? And if so, why would the cult do that instead of simply hiring the thieves guild to acquire for them the items in question?
Thinking about Vecna: Eve of Ruin, the same weakness appears in your description - what if the party uncover the plot early? In Eve of Ruin you effectively lose several chunks of the adventure if the secret is found out early. Will you allow the party to uncover the secret early? If not, why not? Why are you gating the secret to level 10?
How will you introduce the cult? Are they a known force within your game's world?
What if your players want to side with the cult? Will you allow the players to help the cult? If not, why not?
What if the player characters don't want to stop the cult, instead thinking it's someone else's problem?
If this old god is going to be released - what is the point in the fetch quest for the vestiges of divergence? In other words - will you allow the players to be able to slaughter the cult and put and end to their evil ways? Or will you make it impossible to stop the ritual before it even begins?
What is to stop the player characters simply undermining and eliminating the Myriads before they begin looking for the vestiges?
Will the party be able to defect to the Myriads? Will that affect the rest of your planned adventure?
What will you do if the party decide that the guild isn't for them? Will you let them walk away?
From this I feel like you've written a great 'on rails' story. An adventure that really eliminates a lot of player character choices. Now, it may be that you know your players really well and can predict their actions impeccably - usually that isn't true though. It feels like a story, not a roleplaying experience or adventure to me personally. If you want this world to feel real and immersive though I'd suggest thinking less in terms of the story and more in terms of the world at large. Think about the stuff you hope the party don't choose to do - then work out how that will affect the world. Players are great at sniffing out all the options you often as a GM hope they don't choose. It's necessary I find to think about them.
My current adventure for one of my groups features something similar, so it may be helpful to show how I plotted it all out.
In my adventure setting of Forsceta, there is an individual who is trying to summon forth 'The Hunger'.
In this world, the Elves and Fey once led an empire that made all non-fey species subservient. The adventure is set a hundred, maybe two hundred years since the fall of the empire. As such the world is less magical. Travel between realms and planes of existence isn't possible easily (as such some spells are entirely disallowed). Summoning certain creatures isn't possible either without lengthy and involved rituals.
The individual trying to raise the hunger is a Changeling who believes that the world needs to be shown how dangerous things can be without the elven empire to protect it. He therefore is working as a steward to a city's ruler. He is using this position to acquire magic items, reagents, and effectively cover his tracks.
Odd things have begun happening in the city (a side effect of the summoning ritual), and the city's council have called adventurers (a rare breed in the world, only 1/100 people can use magics or have a D&D class). The job of the adventurers is to try and assist the city in getting to the bottom of things.
For every scheme of the changeling that the party prevent, the summoning ritual is delayed. If the changeling is discovered as the person conducting the ritual, he can be killed, and can be stopped. If stopped, the party succeed in saving the world - the adventure ends.
If the changeling manages to complete their 15-step summoning ritual, the city will effectively become a gateway between the material plane and the hells and allow fiends to rampage through the material plane, the hunger will be able to consume all that they desire. In which case, the only way to prevail will be to travel through the hells to find the hunger and to kill the hunger.
In designing this adventure I've set out the antagonist and a list of things that they need to achieve. All of these things can be prevented by the party, but if prevented the antagonist will attempt to look for an alternative. If no alternative is possible, they'll become vengeful toward the party and strike out at them firstly through 'official' means but then through progressively more aggressive and overt means.
Here's the list
Open a smuggling route into the city - Achieved
Acquire the blood of 12 innocents infected by poison - Achieved
Acquire 50 rot grub spawn - Achieved
Acquire a soul coin by trading with a Green Hag who lives outside the city's authority. To do this, the antagonist will need to arrange for a particular person to be sacrificed to the hag. - Achieved
Acquire a metallic dragon scale (there are no metallic dragons still alive in this world, but there is a set of metallic dragon scale armour that is known of). - Achieved
Use the previous items, in order to weaken the walls between the planes. A ritual incantation must be chanted for five hours while a brazier filled with reagents is burnt.- Achieved
Using a ritual which takes six hours to complete - summon forth an imp.
Using a ritual which takes 10 hours, and the sacrifice of an innocent - summon forth a cambion.
By this point the walls between planes and realms will have become weak - a deal must be struck with the Fey court to ensure that they will not intervene.
So too, must there be a way to prevent the creatures of the shadow realm from intervening - a magic artefact can prevent this - the antagonist must acquire it.
A place must be prepared - a ritual must be conducted to sanctify (deconsecrate) a building which will become the throne of a fiend lord.
A pit of everburning brimstone must be created to serve as a beacon to the fiends from the hells.
The sole remaining dragon in the area must be dealt with (trade, diplomacy, or death).
The gate must be prepared with a six hour ritual.
The final incantation must be spoken to open the gate.
The point here then is that the party are free to do what they like, but the world starts being affected as the antagonist carries out their nefarious deeds. The party can easily pick up on information, and I do drops clues, misdirects and other such stuff into the way of the group. If the players want their characters to spend the day shopping though - that's absolutely possible and can be done. If the party manage to acquire the dragon scale armour before the antagonist does, that's cool too!
I'm not saying that this form of adventure design will definitely work for you. What I'm trying to illustrate here though is that writing the story according to what the party are 'supposed' to do can often lead to a very restrictive adventure for players. Instead picking world events, or the things that the antagonist needs to achieve (and potential ways in which the party can knowingly or unknowingly stop the antagonist's plans) can be really useful.
My party are now level seven and while they don't know it yet, they've managed to prevent the antagonist acquiring something. They are a step ahead of the antagonist. So, he is using the city's clerks to set up wanted posters for the party (they didn't commit a crime, but he's forged paperwork to say that they did). It's all a ruse of course to try and get his hands on the item that they have.
As you see, I'm not writing a story - I'm building a world. My players get to tell the story and choose all the actions within that story.
All good points! I’ll be fleshing it out more over the next year or so, we still have not even reached the midway point in Vecna. This is just a brief plot I’ve thrown together in the last couple of days. I know the players May and probably will do the unexpected and we will reach that point when we get there. The good thing about the setting is that it has so many great locations that are fleshed out pretty well and they have also written pretty good adventure hooks for each location that can be used to take the story in any direction really.
The guild boss, I was thinking the real boss has been taken out of the picture, and the Remnants have somehow taken over this person, maybe with a magic jar spell or some other way to make them a puppet.
Pretty sure they will stick to the thieves guild plot for a while at least, I already ran the idea by then and they were excited about it. Once they find something super shiny they don’t want to turn in to the guild, things may go a different path and I’ll be ready for that.
I do also want them to feel that between guild jobs they can explore anywhere they like, and take on jobs from the locals as well. The great thing about The Clasp is they have a presence all across the continent, so they can take on guild work any place they desire.
Cool, though I'd seriously advise not using Vecna as an example. It's a dreadfully designed adventure with a lot of glaring weaknesses. Not least of which is
How pointless the book becomes once Kas is revealed. The fact that they had to invent a mcguffin in order to limit high level players' abilities kinda shows how little thought they put into the overall design.
Oh definitely. I amended that part about Kas and am using the real Mordenkainen. Kas will come later. I actually have another thread open about the changes I made to that campaign.
What if your players want to side with the cult? Will you allow the players to help the cult? If not, why not?
I love this part! I kind of hope they do, that would be fair game. I suppose at that point they would be helping the cult to open the gate, and thwart do gooders from interfering. Maybe some confrontations with the Taldorei council or even the old Vox Machina crew.
Maybe even have them succeed in opening the gate to the BBEG early, the world falls to chaos, and perhaps then they are seeking out resistance members to quiet them for good or whatever else they decide to take on.
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So, I've ran a few campaigns so far, currently in the middle of Vecna Eve of Ruin. Been brainstorming with the idea of a Thieves guild campaign using the Taldorei Reborn Critical Role setting/source book. Will start by having the PCs as low level members of The Clasp - work their way up some with guild jobs and eventually make enough renown that they are introduced to a lieutenant/mid level leader of The Clasp.
In time, after making good relations with this mid level and coming to trust one another, they start to question the big boss of their guild branch. They have returned a good deal of valuable artifacts on their heists, as have some of the other crews in the guild, yet the coffers seem to be shrinking. With some investigation and sly work they uncover the Big Boss is actually a mole sent by a group called the Remnant's - a group of cultists who are gathering magical artifacts enough to sacrifice and break the chains of their long locked away god. This uncovers roughly around level 10 mid gamish. The next chapter is of the PCs trying to search for valuable vestiges of divergence that may help them to qual the threat of the cultists and this long lost god - culminating in a big showdown against big bad Remnant leader, and eventually with their God who is unleashed (thinking some sort of aberration or even Cthulhu).
All the while, the PCs are also having to deal with another group called the Myriads - a rival thieves guild from the neighboring continent of Wildemount, who have established themselves on The Clasps turf, and are willing to spill blood to further their own pockets. (This is kind of like plot B that is going on behind the heists during the early and mid levels that culminates in a big battle for one of the artifacts/vestiges of divergence).
I've got a couple intro level heists/jobs thought out, and then this brief outline for the overall story arc, open to suggestions on what you all might add or change as well!
Feedback from just what you've presented:
From this I feel like you've written a great 'on rails' story. An adventure that really eliminates a lot of player character choices. Now, it may be that you know your players really well and can predict their actions impeccably - usually that isn't true though. It feels like a story, not a roleplaying experience or adventure to me personally. If you want this world to feel real and immersive though I'd suggest thinking less in terms of the story and more in terms of the world at large. Think about the stuff you hope the party don't choose to do - then work out how that will affect the world. Players are great at sniffing out all the options you often as a GM hope they don't choose. It's necessary I find to think about them.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
My current adventure for one of my groups features something similar, so it may be helpful to show how I plotted it all out.
In my adventure setting of Forsceta, there is an individual who is trying to summon forth 'The Hunger'.
In this world, the Elves and Fey once led an empire that made all non-fey species subservient. The adventure is set a hundred, maybe two hundred years since the fall of the empire. As such the world is less magical. Travel between realms and planes of existence isn't possible easily (as such some spells are entirely disallowed). Summoning certain creatures isn't possible either without lengthy and involved rituals.
The individual trying to raise the hunger is a Changeling who believes that the world needs to be shown how dangerous things can be without the elven empire to protect it. He therefore is working as a steward to a city's ruler. He is using this position to acquire magic items, reagents, and effectively cover his tracks.
Odd things have begun happening in the city (a side effect of the summoning ritual), and the city's council have called adventurers (a rare breed in the world, only 1/100 people can use magics or have a D&D class). The job of the adventurers is to try and assist the city in getting to the bottom of things.
For every scheme of the changeling that the party prevent, the summoning ritual is delayed. If the changeling is discovered as the person conducting the ritual, he can be killed, and can be stopped. If stopped, the party succeed in saving the world - the adventure ends.
If the changeling manages to complete their 15-step summoning ritual, the city will effectively become a gateway between the material plane and the hells and allow fiends to rampage through the material plane, the hunger will be able to consume all that they desire. In which case, the only way to prevail will be to travel through the hells to find the hunger and to kill the hunger.
In designing this adventure I've set out the antagonist and a list of things that they need to achieve. All of these things can be prevented by the party, but if prevented the antagonist will attempt to look for an alternative. If no alternative is possible, they'll become vengeful toward the party and strike out at them firstly through 'official' means but then through progressively more aggressive and overt means.
Here's the list
The point here then is that the party are free to do what they like, but the world starts being affected as the antagonist carries out their nefarious deeds. The party can easily pick up on information, and I do drops clues, misdirects and other such stuff into the way of the group. If the players want their characters to spend the day shopping though - that's absolutely possible and can be done. If the party manage to acquire the dragon scale armour before the antagonist does, that's cool too!
I'm not saying that this form of adventure design will definitely work for you. What I'm trying to illustrate here though is that writing the story according to what the party are 'supposed' to do can often lead to a very restrictive adventure for players. Instead picking world events, or the things that the antagonist needs to achieve (and potential ways in which the party can knowingly or unknowingly stop the antagonist's plans) can be really useful.
My party are now level seven and while they don't know it yet, they've managed to prevent the antagonist acquiring something. They are a step ahead of the antagonist. So, he is using the city's clerks to set up wanted posters for the party (they didn't commit a crime, but he's forged paperwork to say that they did). It's all a ruse of course to try and get his hands on the item that they have.
As you see, I'm not writing a story - I'm building a world. My players get to tell the story and choose all the actions within that story.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
All good points! I’ll be fleshing it out more over the next year or so, we still have not even reached the midway point in Vecna. This is just a brief plot I’ve thrown together in the last couple of days. I know the players May and probably will do the unexpected and we will reach that point when we get there. The good thing about the setting is that it has so many great locations that are fleshed out pretty well and they have also written pretty good adventure hooks for each location that can be used to take the story in any direction really.
The guild boss, I was thinking the real boss has been taken out of the picture, and the Remnants have somehow taken over this person, maybe with a magic jar spell or some other way to make them a puppet.
Pretty sure they will stick to the thieves guild plot for a while at least, I already ran the idea by then and they were excited about it. Once they find something super shiny they don’t want to turn in to the guild, things may go a different path and I’ll be ready for that.
I do also want them to feel that between guild jobs they can explore anywhere they like, and take on jobs from the locals as well. The great thing about The Clasp is they have a presence all across the continent, so they can take on guild work any place they desire.
Good tips, thank you sir.
Cool, though I'd seriously advise not using Vecna as an example. It's a dreadfully designed adventure with a lot of glaring weaknesses. Not least of which is
How pointless the book becomes once Kas is revealed. The fact that they had to invent a mcguffin in order to limit high level players' abilities kinda shows how little thought they put into the overall design.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
Oh definitely. I amended that part about Kas and am using the real Mordenkainen. Kas will come later. I actually have another thread open about the changes I made to that campaign.
What if your players want to side with the cult? Will you allow the players to help the cult? If not, why not?
I love this part! I kind of hope they do, that would be fair game. I suppose at that point they would be helping the cult to open the gate, and thwart do gooders from interfering. Maybe some confrontations with the Taldorei council or even the old Vox Machina crew.
Maybe even have them succeed in opening the gate to the BBEG early, the world falls to chaos, and perhaps then they are seeking out resistance members to quiet them for good or whatever else they decide to take on.