My main story is an evil dragon using it's minions to collect the parts of a key to a dungeon it wants to get into. I started this game with the players easing into the world with side quest and encounters with good amount of role play. I broke the game into three parts, my beginning which has the players become group and used to each other, the middle where they learn of these evil minions and have some idea of their goal and the climax where the players find a way to defeat the dragon. the story is loose with pinpoint ideas the players can choose to follow or do their own thing. I need help figuring out how to introduce the players into the second half of the story, the middle. I was thinking about the dragon sending a group of her minions to a city where one of the keys is in the possession of a lord. Does anyone have any ideas or is this good enough?
I guess it depends on what kind of side quests and encounters you had in the first part. Is there a particular NPC the group interacted with a decent amount? If so is there a way for this NPC to be push in the right direction? There's always the rumors option - where the group hears rumors about a marauding group of blank and they go to investigate and stumble upon a group of the dragons minions. Or you could even just have the party in the right place at the right time when the minions show up.
Have rumors start up about a dragon and its minions attacking locations through out the area. While the party is in the area doing their thing, have a massive shadow fly over the city/town. Everyone is looking skyward, trying to figure out what happened when a deafening roar is loosed. Chaos breaks out and suddenly the sound of fighting is heard from the direction that the shadow came. "What do you do?"
The Party need a motivation to get involved in the adventure. This can be motivation for the Players or the Characters - and ideally, there should be motivation for both, but in a pinch, only motivating the Players would suffice.
Letting the Party know about the Dragon's plans shouldn't be that hard. As noted you can seed the world with rumors, or information from contacts, or even stage a sighting by the Characters. That's Player motivation: you can here to play out an Adventure, here's an Adventure. But it doesn't address Character motivation; why are the Characters not going "Dragon? Yeah, I think I'll go south a be a Pirate, thanks"?
Motivations are either positive ( you do this thing, you get this benefit ), or negative ( you fail to do this thing, and this bad thing will happen ). You need to apply one or both of these to the Characters. Maybe one or more of the Characters are looking for an artifact, or really want a Holy Avenger sword and - by sheer coincidence - the Dragon is known to have one of these. Or, perhaps the Party is straight up hired by the local Baron to deal with the threat. Or perhaps the actions of the Dragon will threaten - directly or indirectly - something that the Characters value ( their home town, it has captured the Princess, to get one of the parts of the key it needs to destroy a sanctum that is holy to the Paladin, etc. ). In any case the motivation needs to be personal to the Characters (even if it's just greed), but that motivation doesn't need to be the same for each Character.
Once you introduce Character motivation, not only have you informed the Party of the Adventure, but you've focused them on solving the situation. I think that constitutes an effective introduction to the Adventure.
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Have the players competing with one of the minion groups to acquire one of the keys without initially realizing it. To them it is some quest macguffin, but they soon realize they are in a race... Or perhaps the players already have possession of said macguffin and don’t realize it. The big bad minions take it or try to take it... or perhaps the minions have taken the macguffin from someone they know... or perhaps they witness a theft and murder in flight, but are implicated and must clear their name...
Hmm. I'd actually have the party stumble across a set of the dragon's minions by accident. Set them up to go somewhere and it's wrong place-wrong time. They wind up pulled into a fight, take out the minion party, and wind up with a piece of the key (but they don't even know what the heck it is.)
As they go along, they start to realize they're being hunted by these jerks trying to get this thing away from them. It gives them a reason to find out "who are these ********, why do they want this thing, and what is it?" That should get them well entangled in the situation. (Unless you have a strange bunch of PCs that are just like "fine, take the stupid thing! We don't even know what it is." Then you'll have to pull the "kill them all - they know too much already" cliche, and the baddies drop some clues in dialog before they all get dead.
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My main story is an evil dragon using it's minions to collect the parts of a key to a dungeon it wants to get into. I started this game with the players easing into the world with side quest and encounters with good amount of role play. I broke the game into three parts, my beginning which has the players become group and used to each other, the middle where they learn of these evil minions and have some idea of their goal and the climax where the players find a way to defeat the dragon. the story is loose with pinpoint ideas the players can choose to follow or do their own thing. I need help figuring out how to introduce the players into the second half of the story, the middle. I was thinking about the dragon sending a group of her minions to a city where one of the keys is in the possession of a lord. Does anyone have any ideas or is this good enough?
I guess it depends on what kind of side quests and encounters you had in the first part. Is there a particular NPC the group interacted with a decent amount? If so is there a way for this NPC to be push in the right direction? There's always the rumors option - where the group hears rumors about a marauding group of blank and they go to investigate and stumble upon a group of the dragons minions. Or you could even just have the party in the right place at the right time when the minions show up.
Have rumors start up about a dragon and its minions attacking locations through out the area. While the party is in the area doing their thing, have a massive shadow fly over the city/town. Everyone is looking skyward, trying to figure out what happened when a deafening roar is loosed. Chaos breaks out and suddenly the sound of fighting is heard from the direction that the shadow came. "What do you do?"
The Party need a motivation to get involved in the adventure. This can be motivation for the Players or the Characters - and ideally, there should be motivation for both, but in a pinch, only motivating the Players would suffice.
Letting the Party know about the Dragon's plans shouldn't be that hard. As noted you can seed the world with rumors, or information from contacts, or even stage a sighting by the Characters. That's Player motivation: you can here to play out an Adventure, here's an Adventure. But it doesn't address Character motivation; why are the Characters not going "Dragon? Yeah, I think I'll go south a be a Pirate, thanks"?
Motivations are either positive ( you do this thing, you get this benefit ), or negative ( you fail to do this thing, and this bad thing will happen ). You need to apply one or both of these to the Characters. Maybe one or more of the Characters are looking for an artifact, or really want a Holy Avenger sword and - by sheer coincidence - the Dragon is known to have one of these. Or, perhaps the Party is straight up hired by the local Baron to deal with the threat. Or perhaps the actions of the Dragon will threaten - directly or indirectly - something that the Characters value ( their home town, it has captured the Princess, to get one of the parts of the key it needs to destroy a sanctum that is holy to the Paladin, etc. ). In any case the motivation needs to be personal to the Characters (even if it's just greed), but that motivation doesn't need to be the same for each Character.
Once you introduce Character motivation, not only have you informed the Party of the Adventure, but you've focused them on solving the situation. I think that constitutes an effective introduction to the Adventure.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
Have the players competing with one of the minion groups to acquire one of the keys without initially realizing it. To them it is some quest macguffin, but they soon realize they are in a race... Or perhaps the players already have possession of said macguffin and don’t realize it. The big bad minions take it or try to take it... or perhaps the minions have taken the macguffin from someone they know... or perhaps they witness a theft and murder in flight, but are implicated and must clear their name...
Hmm. I'd actually have the party stumble across a set of the dragon's minions by accident. Set them up to go somewhere and it's wrong place-wrong time. They wind up pulled into a fight, take out the minion party, and wind up with a piece of the key (but they don't even know what the heck it is.)
As they go along, they start to realize they're being hunted by these jerks trying to get this thing away from them. It gives them a reason to find out "who are these ********, why do they want this thing, and what is it?" That should get them well entangled in the situation. (Unless you have a strange bunch of PCs that are just like "fine, take the stupid thing! We don't even know what it is." Then you'll have to pull the "kill them all - they know too much already" cliche, and the baddies drop some clues in dialog before they all get dead.