Hi, I’m a newish DM running my first homebrew campaign and I think it’s broken.
Basically, one of my players asked if I could run a game where some sort of cursed disease/plague has taken over the kingdom (I don’t think they understand the concept of escapism, but what can you do?). I agreed, and came up with a plot where my players have to journey from one end of the realm to the other, towards the citadel where the disease is believed to have originated, in the hopes that they can find the source and cure it. I was gonna go with some kind of final battle where the boss is an evil warlock whose patron cursed the realm.
Only problem is, that basically means none of the actual quest can happen until they get there, so their whole campaign is just a series of sidequests. And to make matters worse, they’re first-time players who really took my ‘in this game you can do whatever you want’ speech to heart, and now their characters are refusing all of my sidequest plot hooks because they need to ‘stay focused on the goal’. At this rate the whole campaign is gonna be a bunch of horse riding and then one big TPK.
So, any ideas on how I can 1) change my campaign plan to make the surrounding cities have at least some relevance/clues to the disease so that some actual plot can happen, and 2) incentivise my players to do sidequests?
When they get to the citadel, they discover that they need a mcguffin to defeat the BBEG. Maybe the mcguffin is in parts all over the realm Voltron style.
You have two options...
continue with the journey and seed hints along the way so when they get to the citadel they know to revisit at least some of the old cities (maybe knew ones as well). This might not work if they're resisting side quests, though, in which case...
Let them get to the citadel quickly, learn just how ridiculously OP the BBEG is and devise a way for them to discover that they need to find the mcguffin. You could do this by quickly moving them into a confrontation with either the BBEG or one of his powerful henchmen. Have them totally thrashed but because they're so weak the BBEG sees them as amusement rather than a threat. He toys with them a while, then knocks them out and kicks their unconscious bodies to the curb. (As DM you have permission to contrive this - the battle will have them making death saving throws, but then they wake up somewhere.) They come across and old wise person who tells then they are brave but foolish and cannot defeat the BBEG without the mcguffin. A brief explanation of what it is and what the legends say and voila! You have a quest that they'll be motivated to follow.
Notice:
The old wise one is talking about legends. They're old, things change and--if you want--inaccurate. When they get to where the mcguffin part was meant to be, they discover its no longer there. They fight the guardian in the temple, or the tomb wight, or whatever was meant to be guarding it to discover it was stolen a 100 years ago and now is in some noble's castle. You can string this out as long or as short as you want and your players will tolerate. Don't over do it - if every time they get to a mcguffin dungeon and it's gone, they'll get tired of it pretty soon.
Disease... part of the mcguffin could be in the shadowrealm, or feywild... they have to figure out how to get there and then find their way to the mcguffin.
You have created a potential patron in the old wise one.
You can flesh this out or as little or as much as you want. Also, the BBEG is now not just a threat to the realm, but a personal enemy. When they defeat him in 12 months (or whatever) victory will be sweet!
Also, not sure what bloggers or podcasters you follow, but I'd suggest Role Playing Tips with Johnn Four. He's really good for this sort of stuff. Check out his 'loopy planning' model, I think it will work well for you. (I haven't used it yet because I'm running a published module, but I'm using some of the principles as it's a pretty sand-boxy module.)
(FYI, I'm not affiliated but I am a Patreon backer.)
Hi, I’m a newish DM running my first homebrew campaign and I think it’s broken.
Basically, one of my players asked if I could run a game where some sort of cursed disease/plague has taken over the kingdom (I don’t think they understand the concept of escapism, but what can you do?). I agreed, and came up with a plot where my players have to journey from one end of the realm to the other, towards the citadel where the disease is believed to have originated, in the hopes that they can find the source and cure it. I was gonna go with some kind of final battle where the boss is an evil warlock whose patron cursed the realm.
Only problem is, that basically means none of the actual quest can happen until they get there, so their whole campaign is just a series of sidequests. And to make matters worse, they’re first-time players who really took my ‘in this game you can do whatever you want’ speech to heart, and now their characters are refusing all of my sidequest plot hooks because they need to ‘stay focused on the goal’. At this rate the whole campaign is gonna be a bunch of horse riding and then one big TPK.
So, any ideas on how I can 1) change my campaign plan to make the surrounding cities have at least some relevance/clues to the disease so that some actual plot can happen, and 2) incentivise my players to do sidequests?
Any advice greatly appreciated!
One or two players get kidnapped by the bad guys and have to be rescued. A KIDNAPPING!!! A KIDNAPPING!!!! YEA!!!!
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Husband, Father, Veteran, Gamer, DM, Player, and Friend | Author of the "World of Eirador" | http://world-guild.com "The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules." ~Gary Gygax
Your campaign isn't necessarily broken, but it's probably not what you imagined it to be before you started to play. That's not the same thing!
Your players are doing the right thing. They know the kingdom is threatened by a disease, you have told them what's causing it, therefore they will go there as soon as possible. They are acting as their characters should act - trying to solve the crises ASAP.
The "mistake" you did was to give them that information to early, and not create several "steps" they have to untangle to learn that. My advice would be to live with that, and move them quicker towards the end. It will be a shorter campaign than you envisioned, but the story will be better. To try and derail them with a lot of side quests to level them up, will not be very enjoyable story wise.
Have them get there, but let them learn that they will need something to defeat the BBEG, have them search for those things and then a final confrontation.
The only reason the final fight is going to be a TPK is because you are not willing to rewrite the final boss. Just do that, make him less powerful, adjust him to the characters level, and accept that this adventure ended up shorter than you thought. The campaign doesn't need to be over. Perhaps this was just the servant of an evil bigger evil that is leaking into your world.
The only reason the final fight is going to be a TPK is because you are not willing to rewrite the final boss. Just do that, make him less powerful, adjust him to the characters level, and accept that this adventure ended up shorter than you thought. The campaign doesn't need to be over. Perhaps this was just the servant of an evil bigger evil that is leaking into your world.
Took the words right out of my mouth.
I was going to suggest, you could take this as an opportunity to tweak things around and make the planned BBEG a bit player, have the PC's storm the castle, defeat the Warlock, and then discover they were only a pawn in a larger game and that this plague is only the trial run for something much more potent and deadly, and leave clues for the PC's to pick up and follow in order to explore the world and gather more info to discover who the real mastermind behind the plague is.
At least, that's how I would handle it. Hope that helps!
Yeah, it's pretty normal in D&D that players, when given a goal, drive to that with pretty single-minded focus. Unless they see why they need to go do these side things, they might not want to.
So, give 'em what they're aiming for, and make that the start rather than the end.
The PCs storm the citadel. Make them work for getting in there, fight skeleton guards or whatever. Then they get to the final boss, and he fight isn't that hard, because turns out everyone in the citadel was also weakened by the plague. Including the guy who created it. Makes for a nice "You may have killed me... but death will not stop my plans!" moment from the BBEG. Or maybe he's just the minion of some demon that was actually running the show - "you may have killed me, but my master's plans proceed anyway, you can't stop them!"
The players find the ingredients he used to create the plague, the mystical components... do they have anyone among them who might identify what exactly spell it was and how to undo it? No? Then I guess they have to go find a druid/warlock/mystic/MisterQuestGuy/wizard who can help them figure out an antidote or reversal. Who has responded to the plague by locking himself in a wizard tower with all sorts of magical defenses to protect himself. (Dungeon #2! Maybe they take this one peacefully and find a way to sneak in without beating up all the guards, since the guy's just being responsible and socially isolating himself, no need to wreck his tower. Or maybe they pick up their swords and wreck his tower.)
Then they get there, and he tells them what they need to do to reverse the ritual. Or maybe sends them on a quest to do something for him first. Or maybe they need to gather multiple ingredients from different places - you've got hooks for as many adventures as you want them to have, Just Add Requirements. Probably no more than three.
Then once they've gotten the ingredients, maybe completing the ritual pulls in the BBEG from the other plane where he was causing all this havoc, PCs get their boss battle. Or maybe BBEG does not appear, and after all that they've just reversed the plague... and now they need to go on a whole new questline to actually get at the BBEG and stab him in the face before he cooks up some other horrid plot.
An addition to the above, you could also make it harder getting to the citadel itself. Fights can get them into the keep or lair of the BBEG, but depending on the political landscape the city/citadel surrounding that lair could be in lock down (not hard to imagine right now).
Rumours lead the party to a less reputable organisation that's willing to smuggle them in for the right price or favour.
If you take other advice from above (exploring for a cure, ingredients, whatever) giving reasons for the players to frequently leave and return . Then they would have to maintain a good relationship with this underground group, which in turn could raise interesting moral dilemas for the PCs. They may need to face that they have helped to make this group the most powerful in the city, now ready to take over in the power vacuum after the final battle.
One advice if you choose to turn your BBEG into a "lesser" minion. Don't plan too far ahead (again). Don't expect to know exactly where the players will go. However there's one thing you should expect: once you have the players "hooked" on a goal, they will usually move towards it as quickly as possible.
Also, the BBEG's patron could theoretically see the PCs coming, and instruct his warlock to send his minions, to stop the PCs from reaching the capital in the first place. That allows you to insert plot-related combat to level them up whenever you like, and might allow you (if they investigate properly) to take some of those side quests, but now they're information gathering to figure out how to defeat the BBEG, or stop the plague, or defeat the patron. If they ignore the hooks even now that they're plot-related, you just throw another set of minions at them -- higher powered, but a little more obvious in who they're working for, until they have to react.
The normal solution for 'head straight for the boss' is to make it so the PCs can't head straight for the boss. The easiest option is that the PCs arrive at the destination, have to fight their way through a surprisingly small garrison, and discover the BBEG isn't actually there (maybe he used to be there, maybe he was never there), but there are clues. As for travel time, just elide over it.
The normal solution for 'head straight for the boss' is to make it so the PCs can't head straight for the boss. The easiest option is that the PCs arrive at the destination, have to fight their way through a surprisingly small garrison, and discover the BBEG isn't actually there (maybe he used to be there, maybe he was never there), but there are clues. As for travel time, just elide over it.
This perhaps work once, but no more. You quickly fall into the "your princess is in another castle" trap. his only make the players loose interest in the plot. Yes, you can use a twist once, perhaps twice, but if you overdo it, the players will simply stop believing in you, and then they will stop to care about the plot.
This perhaps work once, but no more. You quickly fall into the "your princess is in another castle" trap. his only make the players loose interest in the plot. Yes, you can use a twist once, perhaps twice, but if you overdo it, the players will simply stop believing in you, and then they will stop to care about the plot.
Oh, I don't recommend doing something like that every time; it's important to mix things up. However, "he wasn't really there" is the easiest way to handle the current problem.
My friend once came over to play checkers but all I had was chess. We played chess together and it was fine.
This will be an unpopular opinion, but you can just tell your players "Hey, these side quests ARE the game. Your not obligated to play, but they are all I have. I'm worried if you don't engage with what I've made, you'll be disappointed."
You'll get two things out of this, player participation, and feedback. If they say, "Oh, well we are actually having fun riding horses and avoiding quests" you can sigh in relief and keep doing what you are doing. Or they will say "Oh, ok we will come up with character reasons to bite on some of your hooks!"
This isn't your job, you aren't going to have a performance review. It is a hobby and the DM is a player too. If the party never does anything you find interesting or fun, you are going to get bored, burn out and then no one plays. You're players aren't children that you have to trick into eating their vegetables :p they are adults who are there to play with you, their friend :)
THE GAME OF D&D REQUIRES EVERY PLAYER AT THE TABLE TO BE CONCERNED ABOUT THE OTHER PLAYERS HAVING FUN. THE. DM. IS. A. PLAYER. TOO.
DM: Hey! I have a cool idea for an encounter next session!
Player: Sweet! My Paladin will get to use his new abilities!
DM: I don't want to give too much away but a criminal element is going to be involved. I know your Paladin has no patience for "scoundrels and scum", what kind of hook would get your character to work with them temporarily?
Player: Hmm, well he has a soft spot for children. They remind him of his dead sister. If a child was at risk he'd take the job.
DM: huh, well having children involved wouldn't be appropriate for what I have planned.....hey what if the person that offered you the job looked just like your sister? Like, you know they are a criminal but they are charming and just remind you so much of your sister? Would someone like that be able to convince you?
Player: Oooh, maybe? Why would they look like my sister?
DM: You don't know >:).
Player: You bastard. Lol sure let's see where this goes.
Hi, I’m a newish DM running my first homebrew campaign and I think it’s broken.
Basically, one of my players asked if I could run a game where some sort of cursed disease/plague has taken over the kingdom (I don’t think they understand the concept of escapism, but what can you do?). I agreed, and came up with a plot where my players have to journey from one end of the realm to the other, towards the citadel where the disease is believed to have originated, in the hopes that they can find the source and cure it. I was gonna go with some kind of final battle where the boss is an evil warlock whose patron cursed the realm.
Only problem is, that basically means none of the actual quest can happen until they get there, so their whole campaign is just a series of sidequests. And to make matters worse, they’re first-time players who really took my ‘in this game you can do whatever you want’ speech to heart, and now their characters are refusing all of my sidequest plot hooks because they need to ‘stay focused on the goal’. At this rate the whole campaign is gonna be a bunch of horse riding and then one big TPK.
So, any ideas on how I can 1) change my campaign plan to make the surrounding cities have at least some relevance/clues to the disease so that some actual plot can happen, and 2) incentivise my players to do sidequests?
Any advice greatly appreciated!
This could be fun, actually...
When they get to the citadel, they discover that they need a mcguffin to defeat the BBEG. Maybe the mcguffin is in parts all over the realm Voltron style.
You have two options...
Notice:
Good luck. All is not lost!
Also, not sure what bloggers or podcasters you follow, but I'd suggest Role Playing Tips with Johnn Four. He's really good for this sort of stuff. Check out his 'loopy planning' model, I think it will work well for you. (I haven't used it yet because I'm running a published module, but I'm using some of the principles as it's a pretty sand-boxy module.)
(FYI, I'm not affiliated but I am a Patreon backer.)
One or two players get kidnapped by the bad guys and have to be rescued. A KIDNAPPING!!! A KIDNAPPING!!!! YEA!!!!
Husband, Father, Veteran, Gamer, DM, Player, and Friend | Author of the "World of Eirador" | http://world-guild.com
"The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules." ~Gary Gygax
Your campaign isn't necessarily broken, but it's probably not what you imagined it to be before you started to play. That's not the same thing!
Your players are doing the right thing. They know the kingdom is threatened by a disease, you have told them what's causing it, therefore they will go there as soon as possible. They are acting as their characters should act - trying to solve the crises ASAP.
The "mistake" you did was to give them that information to early, and not create several "steps" they have to untangle to learn that. My advice would be to live with that, and move them quicker towards the end. It will be a shorter campaign than you envisioned, but the story will be better. To try and derail them with a lot of side quests to level them up, will not be very enjoyable story wise.
Have them get there, but let them learn that they will need something to defeat the BBEG, have them search for those things and then a final confrontation.
The only reason the final fight is going to be a TPK is because you are not willing to rewrite the final boss. Just do that, make him less powerful, adjust him to the characters level, and accept that this adventure ended up shorter than you thought. The campaign doesn't need to be over. Perhaps this was just the servant of an evil bigger evil that is leaking into your world.
Ludo ergo sum!
Took the words right out of my mouth.
I was going to suggest, you could take this as an opportunity to tweak things around and make the planned BBEG a bit player, have the PC's storm the castle, defeat the Warlock, and then discover they were only a pawn in a larger game and that this plague is only the trial run for something much more potent and deadly, and leave clues for the PC's to pick up and follow in order to explore the world and gather more info to discover who the real mastermind behind the plague is.
At least, that's how I would handle it. Hope that helps!
Yeah, it's pretty normal in D&D that players, when given a goal, drive to that with pretty single-minded focus. Unless they see why they need to go do these side things, they might not want to.
So, give 'em what they're aiming for, and make that the start rather than the end.
The PCs storm the citadel. Make them work for getting in there, fight skeleton guards or whatever. Then they get to the final boss, and he fight isn't that hard, because turns out everyone in the citadel was also weakened by the plague. Including the guy who created it. Makes for a nice "You may have killed me... but death will not stop my plans!" moment from the BBEG. Or maybe he's just the minion of some demon that was actually running the show - "you may have killed me, but my master's plans proceed anyway, you can't stop them!"
The players find the ingredients he used to create the plague, the mystical components... do they have anyone among them who might identify what exactly spell it was and how to undo it? No? Then I guess they have to go find a druid/warlock/mystic/MisterQuestGuy/wizard who can help them figure out an antidote or reversal. Who has responded to the plague by locking himself in a wizard tower with all sorts of magical defenses to protect himself. (Dungeon #2! Maybe they take this one peacefully and find a way to sneak in without beating up all the guards, since the guy's just being responsible and socially isolating himself, no need to wreck his tower. Or maybe they pick up their swords and wreck his tower.)
Then they get there, and he tells them what they need to do to reverse the ritual. Or maybe sends them on a quest to do something for him first. Or maybe they need to gather multiple ingredients from different places - you've got hooks for as many adventures as you want them to have, Just Add Requirements. Probably no more than three.
Then once they've gotten the ingredients, maybe completing the ritual pulls in the BBEG from the other plane where he was causing all this havoc, PCs get their boss battle. Or maybe BBEG does not appear, and after all that they've just reversed the plague... and now they need to go on a whole new questline to actually get at the BBEG and stab him in the face before he cooks up some other horrid plot.
An addition to the above, you could also make it harder getting to the citadel itself. Fights can get them into the keep or lair of the BBEG, but depending on the political landscape the city/citadel surrounding that lair could be in lock down (not hard to imagine right now).
Rumours lead the party to a less reputable organisation that's willing to smuggle them in for the right price or favour.
If you take other advice from above (exploring for a cure, ingredients, whatever) giving reasons for the players to frequently leave and return . Then they would have to maintain a good relationship with this underground group, which in turn could raise interesting moral dilemas for the PCs. They may need to face that they have helped to make this group the most powerful in the city, now ready to take over in the power vacuum after the final battle.
One advice if you choose to turn your BBEG into a "lesser" minion. Don't plan too far ahead (again). Don't expect to know exactly where the players will go. However there's one thing you should expect: once you have the players "hooked" on a goal, they will usually move towards it as quickly as possible.
Ludo ergo sum!
Also, the BBEG's patron could theoretically see the PCs coming, and instruct his warlock to send his minions, to stop the PCs from reaching the capital in the first place. That allows you to insert plot-related combat to level them up whenever you like, and might allow you (if they investigate properly) to take some of those side quests, but now they're information gathering to figure out how to defeat the BBEG, or stop the plague, or defeat the patron. If they ignore the hooks even now that they're plot-related, you just throw another set of minions at them -- higher powered, but a little more obvious in who they're working for, until they have to react.
Birgit | Shifter | Sorcerer | Dragonlords
Shayone | Hobgoblin | Sorcerer | Netherdeep
The normal solution for 'head straight for the boss' is to make it so the PCs can't head straight for the boss. The easiest option is that the PCs arrive at the destination, have to fight their way through a surprisingly small garrison, and discover the BBEG isn't actually there (maybe he used to be there, maybe he was never there), but there are clues. As for travel time, just elide over it.
This perhaps work once, but no more. You quickly fall into the "your princess is in another castle" trap. his only make the players loose interest in the plot. Yes, you can use a twist once, perhaps twice, but if you overdo it, the players will simply stop believing in you, and then they will stop to care about the plot.
Ludo ergo sum!
Oh, I don't recommend doing something like that every time; it's important to mix things up. However, "he wasn't really there" is the easiest way to handle the current problem.
My friend once came over to play checkers but all I had was chess. We played chess together and it was fine.
This will be an unpopular opinion, but you can just tell your players "Hey, these side quests ARE the game. Your not obligated to play, but they are all I have. I'm worried if you don't engage with what I've made, you'll be disappointed."
You'll get two things out of this, player participation, and feedback. If they say, "Oh, well we are actually having fun riding horses and avoiding quests" you can sigh in relief and keep doing what you are doing. Or they will say "Oh, ok we will come up with character reasons to bite on some of your hooks!"
This isn't your job, you aren't going to have a performance review. It is a hobby and the DM is a player too. If the party never does anything you find interesting or fun, you are going to get bored, burn out and then no one plays. You're players aren't children that you have to trick into eating their vegetables :p they are adults who are there to play with you, their friend :)
THE GAME OF D&D REQUIRES EVERY PLAYER AT THE TABLE TO BE CONCERNED ABOUT THE OTHER PLAYERS HAVING FUN. THE. DM. IS. A. PLAYER. TOO.
An example
DM: Hey! I have a cool idea for an encounter next session!
Player: Sweet! My Paladin will get to use his new abilities!
DM: I don't want to give too much away but a criminal element is going to be involved. I know your Paladin has no patience for "scoundrels and scum", what kind of hook would get your character to work with them temporarily?
Player: Hmm, well he has a soft spot for children. They remind him of his dead sister. If a child was at risk he'd take the job.
DM: huh, well having children involved wouldn't be appropriate for what I have planned.....hey what if the person that offered you the job looked just like your sister? Like, you know they are a criminal but they are charming and just remind you so much of your sister? Would someone like that be able to convince you?
Player: Oooh, maybe? Why would they look like my sister?
DM: You don't know >:).
Player: You bastard. Lol sure let's see where this goes.
2 is perfect, just what you need. Add as many sidequests or just "encounters" as you need. There is nothing bad in this.