I am a new DM and started up a home brew campaign. The way I thought i should go about it is to have a session every other week so i would have time to set up the next part of the adventure. I have already been through the first session and now I'm stuck with how to continue. I do however have an idea how I want the overall plot to go, that being the players take down the human government. But the way the players go on adventuring could affect that. I would appreciate any help I can get. Here's how it has gone so far with my campaign.

Before character building i read this to the players

This world is oppressed by the humans. In Deorum (the human capital city), they believe that all other races are below them, and wish to rule over the entire continent. In a means to do so, the human government has sent messengers across the continent in order to relay a message. “We have released a virus out among you that will spread across the continent. Of course we humans are immune to this virus, but as for all the other races the virus will affect, you will end up dead and withered in do time. The human race shall reign supreme! Hail our King!”

then after their characters were finished we discussed their character origins and how they all met and after that i through them into the story.

Sometime after the message had been spread, the PCs had arrived at a tavern in the town of Delaron. Around them people are drinking their sorrows away as if it were their last few days to live (it's a depressing atmosphere). They start to hear quite a bit of commotion outside the tavern as if there's a crowd forming outside. Suddenly they hear somebody yelling, “Tie her to the stake! I want to get this done as fast as possible!”    they went to investigate and found elven knights about to burn a human girl at the stake. that's the first encounter.

after that they find out that the human’s name is Elizabeth and is an acquaintance of a dragonborn sorcerer named Balasar. Balasar is well known in these parts as a leader of a rebel group that wants to dethrone the human king and set justice to the human government. Now the party is on their way to the next town over where the rebel group is located.

this is where we left off. A few additional things that the PCs don't know is the virus is actually fey spirits haunting people, the the human girl (Elizabeth) has a fey companion, and the elven kingdom has decided to take action and have started hunting potential carriers of the virus. (this last one might be already assumed)

so where I'm stuck is the layout of the town and encounters that could happen. I thought about when they enter the rebel hideout they'll stumble in on a brawl because of an internal dispute within the rebel group, I thought it would be interesting but other than that I'm not sure about any of the details.

First, really look at your group, what do they want, this I feel is the best place to start and if you've done a session 0 you should know the expectations

Now as for ideas, what do you think would be happening here, maybe a fight between humans and another race, talks going around, rumors of who has the virus, quarienten being done, 

As for adventuring you can tie that in with the rebels, they may need jobs done, like tracking down bandits, finding resources, leading raids and such. 

In truth I would suggest finding a book, movie, or show about rebel, it can be a great place for ideas to start growing 

I'll give you my views on how to flow campaigns. My way certainly isn't the only one, and other people have other views - and you can decide what works for you.

First, you don't have to write all the story, and all the points - that's what Players are for.

What you need to do is set up the central conflict idea:

1. What is the party's goal? What motivation have you given the party ( if any ) to pursue that goal?
2. Who is opposing them? What is their goal? What are their capabilities and limits? What is their personality; what are the things they will always do, and what will they never do?
3. What is the conflict between the party and their opponents?
4. How can the conflict possibly end? How will you be able to tell when the conflict is over?

You've set up a background situation, and a tone: Humans have released a deadly virus, and there's a tone of grim approaching death.

You've set up a couple of possible factions here: The Party, The Rebels, and possibly the Elven Kingdom ( represented by their knights ).

However, I don't see any mention of goals other than the party go over to the next town to possibly contact the rebels. I'm unclear as to why the party is doing this. Do they know, beyond, it's the next thing in the story to do?

What are the rebels rebelling against? Do they know about the virus release ( presumably since it was announced )? What do they want to do because of that? How does that accord, or conflict with what the party wants to do?

How about the Elven Kingdom and their Knights. What are they trying to do? What is their next move? Does that cause problems with the party?

Once you know who the factions are, what they want to do, encounters are pretty easy to set up.

• Figure out what the party is going to try to do next ( they'll tell you ).
• Figure out what the Party's allies and opponents are going to try and do next.
• Figure out where and how they'll collide.

Those are your encounters.

Note carefully that encounters are highly dependent on what the party is doing. This means that if the party goes off on a wild direction you'd never considered ( and they will! ), you just have to figure out how that will collide with what the other factions are doing.

There is also another class of events to figure out, and that's timed or world events. These are things that will happen on a schedule, or on the clock - like you know that on day 4 there will be a large storm, or an invasion of gremlings, or the volcano will erupt, or what have you.

These timed events will change what the factions will try and do, so they will affect the flow of events, and the available encounters.

If you're finding you're running out of possible encounters, then you don't have enough factions, groups, or events, in play - or  those factions need to do more  - or you've come to the end of the conflict.

If the party gets bogged down and doesn't know what to do next ( and they will! ), have a handful of seemingly random events you can throw at the party to get them moving toward a goal again: one of the Bad Guys defects ( or is captured by the Party ) and tells the Party about The Evil Plan; one of the Player contacts gives the Party a clue; etc.

I find that a campaign is really a loop:

1. Set up the Party
2. Set up the "Bad guys", and their goals.
3. Set up the conflict between the Party and the Bad Guys
4. Show the Party the conflict, by having them run into ( or hear about, or be hired to stop ) the Bad Guys doing Bad Things in pursuit of their goal, that the Party doesn't want to happen: Hook & Party Motivation.
5. Listen to what the Party is going to do.
6. Figure out what the Bad Guys are going to do next ( IMPORTANT: based on what the Bad Guys know and what they want and NOT based on what you as a DM know from step #5 ).
7. Figure out where the Party and the Bad Guys are going to come into conflict.
8. Present the conflict to the Party
9. Have the Party try and resolve the conflict ( by trying to rescue the beautiful monster from the fearsome princess, or try to kill all the therblings, whatever ).
10. Figure out when this conflict is over ( they rescue the monster, the princess escapes with the monster, all the therblings are dead, etc. ).
11. Figure out if you have a timed event, or set piece that you want to throw into the mix to change up the circumstances in the world.
12. Is the overall conflict over? Yes? adventure is over. No? Go to step #5

It gets even more fun when you have multiple Bad Guys ( which can actually be in conflict with each other as well! ), Allied group, Neutral 3rd parties with their own goals, etc.

And it gets really epic when you can have more than one Party/Bad Guy conflict going on at the same time! :D 

Hope this gives you some ideas, and helps out.

Best of luck!

This very much helped me figure out how to continue the campaign, thank you. As for the goals, i had the human girl mention that she wants to return to the leader of the rebel group. I believe she is going to be a druid with the driud circle of dreams.

Also the players in my group have made there orgin storys more or less there goal.

There's a goliath barbarian whos orgin story is that the humans killed his family and wants to get revenge on whomever sent the order to do so.

A mountain dwarf that had a good carrier as a clan crafter. One day his village was burned to the ground and his shop up in flames. He swore to himself to cause suffering to any human he would come across from that day forward.

There was a wood elf theaf, he was exiled from the elven kingdom for attempting to steal from a wealthy merchant. Once exiled, he roamed the country side until he ran into our group of adventurers.

And finally we've got an Eladrin elf. As the fey city he had lived in came into contact with our current plane of existence, he was pulled away from his home and was stranded here. He wants to go back and a means to do so he follows the fey spirits. As lost as ever, he finally found some mighty looking adventurers. He sees the fey take a liking to this group and thus he follows them.

Would you say the goals my players have are good enough to carry the story along, or should I come up with something more?

Here's a suggestion I have, motives, em, you can create something very intresting here, the best advice I can give you, 

MAKE THIS GRAY

Good humans, bad other races, bad things happening to good people, good people doing bad things, people doing arguable bad things against good people because good people did bad things to them, keep this from being to simplicist, multiple conflicts can be great if you do it right. try not to back this black and white

now, plot hooks, there are some really good ones

Goliath Bar, now there a few options you have here, mister big bad general who called the order shows up all right to fight and finish what he started, that same general is found in grief, regreting his actions, even skipping combat and letting the Goliath end him for his crimes(good moral dilema). and if you want to get crazy bring some of that dead family back, what you do with them is up to you

Dwarf man, show him the good of humans, make him question his vegence, and at the same time build on that hatred, great things that fuel it, or even redirect it

thief boi, money, and if there's something deeper do that but money should be enough as long as it doesn't conflict with other goals

Eladrin, I would suggest using this fey virus from something, combine this fey virus with a portal, something he wants, then there's the human girl, you can use this fey connection as well, the ideas here are more abstract so you come up with that, 

good luck, and may the dice be in your favor 

Player character goals are different from factional goals.

For example, in a recent arc from my own campaign

An island wide multi-city thieves guild was in the midst of a civil war ( triggered off my one of the PCs - long story ), with their being a number of splinter factions arrayed against the old leadership lead by the Guildmaster Mattias Dundragon.

• The old leadership's wanted to ( in order of preference ):
  1. End the War and re-unite the factions under Mattias: to this end he had captured the party member responsible for sparking off the entire war, and planned to give her to the guild captains as a sacrificial peace offering ( this was done mostly because my player needed to take a few weeks off due to her work schedule ).
  2. Gather enough power from outside the guild to crush the dissident factions. To that end Mattias had made a dangerous alliance with an old enemy of Humans, to gain short term power.
• The factions were fighting to ( in order of preference ):
  • Remove Mattias completely, and form their own syndicate
  • End the conflict in a truce, but in a position of strength so that Mattias couldn't target any of the leadership in any of the other municipalities ( mistakenly believing that the actions of one of the player-characters which almost killed one of the city guild captains was at the bequest of Mattias as an assassination attempt, since she was his great-niece).
• The Highguard ( local milita / army / police ) were:
  • Trying to quell the outbreak of violence.
  • Bring any and and all of the guild leadership to justice.
  • Root out those in their own ranks which were in the pocket of the various Guild factions.
  • Respond to the strong urging of a secret order of powerful protectors known as the Vashtari, who had become involved
• The Vashtari wanted to 
  • Stop Mattias, as - in a bid to gain enough power - Mattias had made a pact with a very old, dangerous, and powerful enemy of the Vashtari.
  • Discover the plans of their ancient enemy, and the extent of their infiltration into the local Human affairs.
• The reptilian tribal native creatures on the island where the peace summit between Mattias and his rebelling Guild Captains was to occur ( a mining prison camp on a volcanic island, run by some of the corrupt Highguard officers that were in Mattias' pocket ) wanted to:
  • Exterminate the infidel humans, and recapture the symbol of the Fallen God - which the party's Paladin had taken from the tribal Shaman in combat, when the party had run across one of the villages, as they were trying to approach the prison camp from the other side of the island.

Note this doesn't really have much to do with the party yet. This is just the local factions and the ongoing conflict. In theory, this could all get fought out and resolved without the party ever being involved. But the party had a hook into the adventure. 

• The party was trying to:
  • Rescue the kidnapped member of their company - who had been abducted by Mattias' men and spirited off to a peace summit on a dangerous volcanic island being used for a secret peace summit of the warring leaders of the Dark Star Theives Guild.

I can make the situation this complex, because I didn't have to work out how any of it was going to play out.

I just knew what all the factions were, what they believed, what they wanted, what their capabilities were, and what their personalities were like.

I just had to ask myself after each event: OK, how did that look to Mattias? What would her try and do next? How about the guild captains, etc.

Then I had to adjudicate who would succeed, who would fail, what events would occur, and how that would affect the overall situation. And I had to know when the party's conflict would be resolved in the middle of the chaos of larger events: either they would rescue their companion, or she would be killed.

I did "cheat" in a way, as I sped up, or slowed down aspects of the unfolding conflict, so that everything came to a head, all at once - in one massive story climax.

It should be noted that I didn't start out setting up anything nearly this complicated!

This complexity arose out of me asking and answering that loop of questions over and over, and thinking about the implications of everything that the various factions were doing, including the player-characters, and working in new ideas that occurred to me as the story unfolded.

We never ran out of possible encounters, or story threads - in fact there are story threads that weren't resolved when the main conflict above played out ( e.g. the guild captain who was the target of the player-character's so-called "assassination attempt" never managed to extract revenge, even though he was at the summit, when the main conflict went down - he gets filed under "possibly re-occurring villains" :D ).

All you have to do is start small, and keep working on that loop, occasionally adding new ideas that occur to you, over time, and which you can incorporate without contradicting  anything that's occurred previously in the story.

ive been thinking about the goals each faction could have and so far i have a few ideas. i would appreciate if i could get your help with flushing out and making each faction feel more for  complete. i have this so far:

Elven kingdom

• the elven kingdom is a safe haven for all races exuding humans.
• they wish to keep their subjects safe in their kindom but the humans threaten the peace
  • the counsel has decided that the elven kingdom will hunt the humans to keep their peace, to extinction if they must.

the rebel group

• the rebel leader strongly disagrees with the way the elven kingdom treats every human the same. he has seen that there are good humans and understands that there are dreadful one as well
• the rebel group was formed in order to take out the human government leaders, their rebel leader believes that to do so will stop the virus from spreading
• the rebel group wants to prevent the hunting of random humans and help the humans that are worth saving
  • to be worthy of help from the rebels, one must prove themselves of a good heart

the human government

• the human government believes that all other races are below humans, and wish to rule over the entire continent
• their King is in dire health and is no longer in a condition to serve his kingdom. however he has no heir to take his place.
  • to solve this solution the human government has found a way to help his majesty regain his youth. they have found the fountain of youth within the feywild. although it is guarded by an Archfey, the human government has made a deal with this archfey. for a droplet from the fountain of youth, they must offer a life to the archfey

i do believe ill introduce a dwarven clan sometime during the campaign as well. but i dont have to much thought out for that yet.

• The dwarves have barricaded themselves in their keep to prevent the virus from affecting them, only occasionally going out for supplies such as food and drink.

I like it - you have large scale factional goals now.

You have two intolerant extremes - The Elven Kingdom, and the Human Kingdom - and one more moderate central group - The Rebels - struggling to find a more reasonable balance between the two, and wanting to act to stop, or undo, extreme actions of either side.

You've got a story tone - violent and grim action in an apocalyptic crisis as you describe in your OP - and you've got some themes that your potential storyline can explore: racial intolerance; how people react to crisis; and struggling to find a middle ground in a highly polarized world ( seems a very timely theme - ahem ). I don't think themes are something you should beat players over the head with, but you can use them to flavor the descriptions of your world, or frame you individual local ( or quest ) goals.

Now you would need something specific - a local or quest goal - to get the ball rolling.

Looking at your notes, something that suggests itself to me ( use it, modify it, or ignore it as you will ), is the quest to retrieve a single drop of the fountain from the Feywild.

It's likely that you'd have a Human expedition ( complete with their sacrifice - who are they? why were they chosen? Is there something specific about them which makes them an appealing sacrifice to the Archfey? Do the Archfey really mean to kill them, or do they simply want access to them and they have something more complex and devious in mind? ) trying to cross into the Feywild.

If the Elves have heard about the plan to restore the Human King, how are they responding? Will they send an expedition to stop them? Who will they send ( major antagonist NPC development time on both the Human and Elven sides, here! ) Do they Elves have a pre-existing relationship with the Archfey? That seems likely - but are they allies, enemies, or are just familiar with one another? How is that likely to affect the goals of the Archfey?

Do the rebels catch wind of this race for the Feywild? What do they know? What do they think? What will they try to do?

If you want to introduce the Dwarves, then you can force circumstances on them: the sacred grove which touches the Feywild closest to the domain of the Archfey exists deep in the Raven's Gap mountain pass through the Ironfang Mountains - deep in territory controlled by the Dûnhark clan, who just want to be left alone, and want "no truck with outsiders not of our blood!"

I get the impression that you're setting up the Rebels to be the sympathetic faction that the player-characters will either join, or ally themselves with - if so, you now have a mission for the players, as they attempt to do something to advance the Rebel agenda.

I don't know what level your party is - but scale accordingly. Maybe the players are powerful enough to get directly between the factions and attempt to aid or hinder one of the factions. Maybe they are powerful enough to attempt to beat both factions there, and cross into the Feywild and make their own deal with the Archfey (  which means you need to know exactly what the Archfey really want, and what they might be tempted by, and plant some clues towards that in the storyline ). Maybe they are low level, and are simply couriers attempting to deliver a letter from the Rebel leader to Erikerlun Snowthane, High Lord of the Dwarven stronghold of Gomkalduhr. Maybe it's a rescue mission, and they need to stealth into the human camp and rescue the hapless sacrifice before the Humans reach Gomkalduhr. Given the overall "race to the Feywild" situation, there are lots of possibilities.

Or - you could leave it up to the party. Have their Rebel contacts explain the entire situation to them, "something must be done!", and see what the party decides to do. If they  get stuck, maybe one of the grizzled old Rebel veterans can wander over to their campfire to bum a drink, and opine loudly about the possibilities " It seems to me that you've got a couple options here lad ... ".

Just by setting up the factions, and conflicting goals, over a specific objective, you've now got multiple possible encounters and adventures.

And as the party plays out whatever they decide to do, keep notes for all the factions: what do they want, what do they see happening, what will they try to do next? In the next chapter of the story, who will come in conflict, who will succeed or fail, what will the results be - and here's where the Party shines, and influences events. What world events will intrude and influence the story-line? Will unfolding events touch on other factions ( like it did in my example with the Dwarves above)? Will they get involved? What is their agenda?

What do they factions think of the Party? What will they do - if anything - for, or about, the Party? 

You'll find that the reactions of the factions to events in your adventures push the overall story arc along, without you needing to write it. You can absolutely trim, guide, or throw curves into the overall storyline - that's part of your job - but it becomes a job of management, plus the occasional creative addition, rather than a job of having to create a complete, complex, and nuanced fantasy epic solely out of your head on day one before the players even start.

Sounds like it could be a lot of fun! :) 

Best of luck :)