Hey everyone, my group is comprised of me (first time DM, previous player), 3 new players, and 1 semi-experienced player. In my homebrew world, there is an overall major plot point where my PC's need to help protect and ascertain knowledge of four fey crossings that separate the material plane and the feywild, and they are all on board and hooked with the grand storyline; however, I am struggling on how to let the slow burn exist. We are 3 sessions in, just arrived at a new city where I want there to be an own individual arc within this grand saga, but I am lost as how to make arcs fall into greater sagas—including things like travel time, cities on the way, etc. Or maybe do I just roll with it and let what I expected to be a bigger and grander narrative move by quickly? Thanks to everyone!
I’d say don’t add stuff just for the sake of adding stuff. That ends up feeling like a video game where you’re just grinding for levels. But, at the same time, you can always throw in a side quest, or do something related to a character backstory. If it’s a fun diversion for a couple sessions, it can still work.
Sometimes it can help to think in terms of a tv show, where there’s a season-long plot, but occasionally episodes that have nothing or a minimal amount to do with that overall plot.
And, of course, with your overall plot, it shouldn’t be as easy as go to fey crossing A, fight the thing, celebrate, go to B. It should never be easy. They get to A, only to realize they first have to acquire the macguffin to seal it off, but who knows where it is? Then they find out where it is, but it’s in the possession of a bad guy who doesn’t want to give it up. Or a good gal who doesn’t want to give it up. How do they get it? Now they finally have the thing, but turns out it’s broken. How do they fix it so they can use it? Then macguffin B is at the bottom of the ocean (so is fey crossing B, so it makes sense) while macguffin C is on another plane.
Keep in mind that you don't need every adventure the players go on to directly tie in to the larger narrative. If your friends go on a couple dungeon crawls without moving the narrative forward directly, they'll still probably be having a good time. You also don't need all the disparate elements to focus entirely on moving the plot forward. You just need one element to relate to the main story... if the players are exploring a haunted house, and they find one book somewhere in it that contains some information, no matter how minor, that relates to the grand storyline the players will still feel like they're moving that story forward.
Pacing is hard, and it's never going to be as clean and tidy as it is in books or movies.
It's easier if you don't have a single story driving things, so you can pump up story A to slow down story B, but that's not what you're working with. But if you can get the players interested in unconnected side plots, that's your main problem sorted. Are there things in the characters' backgrounds that you can bring up? Are there things that came up in previous sessions that warrant revisiting?
But I'll assume you don't have anything so easy to work with.
The first thing is that the four things (I'm not clear on what they're doing with them; I'm assuming it's something on the lines of "find each one in turn and do a Thing") should not be evenly spread out over the course of the campaign. The first one should come relatively easy. Then the rest get progressively harder in various ways. As things progress, there is likely some force, sentient or not, opposing their mission. Could be an enemy who wants to exploit the crossings. Could be leakage from the feywild through the crossings. (In the latter case, the progressive difficulty could just be because each one has had longer to leak.)
The second thing is that not everything should be about the main quest. If their mission is complicated by a war between two kingdoms between them and their goal, the war doesn't have to be about their quest. It can just be because there's an evil wizard, and he wants conquest, and maybe it's easier to solve the war than to go around it. As time moves on, they'll become known heroes, and people will come to them for help. All these things help you to control the pace, and give the players other plot hooks to bite on, and give you elements to bring back when you need something.
okay this completely blew my mind to think about!! Thank you! My brain was trapped in thinking of how to integrate into the web instead of simply how to add only one connection to it, that makes total sense, I appreciate this immensely!
Pacing is hard, and it's never going to be as clean and tidy as it is in books or movies.
It's easier if you don't have a single story driving things, so you can pump up story A to slow down story B, but that's not what you're working with. But if you can get the players interested in unconnected side plots, that's your main problem sorted. Are there things in the characters' backgrounds that you can bring up? Are there things that came up in previous sessions that warrant revisiting?
But I'll assume you don't have anything so easy to work with.
The first thing is that the four things (I'm not clear on what they're doing with them; I'm assuming it's something on the lines of "find each one in turn and do a Thing") should not be evenly spread out over the course of the campaign. The first one should come relatively easy. Then the rest get progressively harder in various ways. As things progress, there is likely some force, sentient or not, opposing their mission. Could be an enemy who wants to exploit the crossings. Could be leakage from the feywild through the crossings. (In the latter case, the progressive difficulty could just be because each one has had longer to leak.)
The second thing is that not everything should be about the main quest. If their mission is complicated by a war between two kingdoms between them and their goal, the war doesn't have to be about their quest. It can just be because there's an evil wizard, and he wants conquest, and maybe it's easier to solve the war than to go around it. As time moves on, they'll become known heroes, and people will come to them for help. All these things help you to control the pace, and give the players other plot hooks to bite on, and give you elements to bring back when you need something.
Absolutely, all of this!
Don't speed run the main quest and use a variety of different protagonists to ensure tedium doesn't set in. ("Oh dear, more undead? The Paladin smites again")
Make the player characters versatile by changing up the opposition, otherwise you might end up with some fierce undead hunters that an average orc band would make mince meat of ;-)
There are some really great ideas here but I'm going to add one more thing. Running a side quest as was mentioned by jl8e is a perfect thing. Keep the main campaign in the background so they don't lose sight of it but this gives them things to do and makes the world not feel static for one single story purpose. Throwing in the idea of a clue for the main game as TransmorpherDDs mentioned on the side quest also helps.
But here is my add with a little background. I'm running Rise of Tiamat and sometimes we need a break from the main game but I want to keep it story-focused. So I had the players make up secondary PCs that go on other quests related to the plot but instead of the NPCs discovering information that is brought back to the main Player Characters instead these side questing PCs run by the players go find it and return with it.
It's like watching a movie and the audience learns information before the main character because they saw a scene that gave them some more background. A perfect example of this is Bullet Train with the water bottle. Honestly, no one needed to know the details but what fun it was to watch it unfold. So instead of spoon-feeding my players the information they got to experience finding it themselves but with different characters. Still the main campaign but a different perspective.
Plus a fun side adventure not in the railroad of Rise of Tiamat. (FYI I do enjoy the premise but the book is a terrible read a points.)
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I live my life like a West Marches campaign, A swirling vortex of Ambitions and Insecurities.
A campaign is a series of Adventures that link together to tell one story. To simplify, a Campaign is 3 Adventures.
An adventure is a series of Encounters of which some link together to tell a story. This is not the same story as the Campaign. So each adventure is, simplifying, 3 encounters. That means that a simple campaign is 9 encounters.
now, you can add in three encounters to tell the big Campaign story, linking the Adventures.
you can add in encounters to tell the Adventure story around each part of the a campaign.
you can toss in things that are there just because nothing travels in a straight line (Tom Bombadil and Beorn, for example). They would be side quests.
I use the TV season metaphor a lot myself. A campaign for me is at least 3 seasons long, each season being a complete story, but all three also being stories themselves.
a season is made up of episodes. Some episodes will move forward the story season, others will be filler, and usually one links to the next season or a previous season. Then I have filler episodes.
my seasons run about about 10 episodes each.
an episode usually has six parts to it:
link to prior episode. Beginning of that episode. link to future episode. Middle of that episode. Side track/distraction. End of episode.
this gets really interesting when you realize I use movies as the plots for episodes.
I use an outline structure, breaking the story into parts, and then assemble them into a whole. That becomes my guidebook for doing each part of the whole. I may know I am going to do a story around 12th level based on the film Commando, but I won’t write it until I need to.
my next campaign I know the monsters, milestones, experience points, and more for each section, each part. But I have no idea how things past 5th level will play out because I need to know the party then.
I have a ton of side quests that are super simple “go here and get this” things, because they help to give players a break and can let me drop in useful stuff or fix something. Plus, no one likes to be railroaded. Side quests are just things that are there for players to choose from, and among those choices are the regular story points.
all you need is the bare bones — enough info to let you go forward. The rest you will get to.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Only a DM since 1980 (2000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA
I think you'll have some great advice here already! I agree with it all really. I personally like to slowly see where my campaign goes.
What I mean by this is that I might have an idea of the larger conflict, but I'd like to give my players the option to "forge their own path". As and example: If there is a nation that has been suppressed by its larger neighbor so the Archmage goes looking for some dark magic which might help them regain their autonomy. This plot will slowly be uncovered by the PCs but then I want them to be able to decide what side they take. What if they wanna side with the Mage? Or think this is a horrible idea and help beat the Mage? By building the conflict and then letting them interact with it it helps with the pacing and helps you easily bring in their backstory.
I often like to have their backstories as the "side quests" and sometimes all, some or none of them have anything to do with the main plot. This can give them a break from the main quest and go help one of their allies save their families or whatever might come up.
Lastly I also like to see what NPCs the players love to interact with and then create some conflict that needs solving there. Maybe there is a merchant with a quirky accent and funny hat they always seek out when they make it back into the city. If they ever come back and see the shop destroyed and the merchant gone, I'm pretty sure they'll go all out to find their friend:)
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Hey everyone, my group is comprised of me (first time DM, previous player), 3 new players, and 1 semi-experienced player. In my homebrew world, there is an overall major plot point where my PC's need to help protect and ascertain knowledge of four fey crossings that separate the material plane and the feywild, and they are all on board and hooked with the grand storyline; however, I am struggling on how to let the slow burn exist. We are 3 sessions in, just arrived at a new city where I want there to be an own individual arc within this grand saga, but I am lost as how to make arcs fall into greater sagas—including things like travel time, cities on the way, etc. Or maybe do I just roll with it and let what I expected to be a bigger and grander narrative move by quickly? Thanks to everyone!
I’d say don’t add stuff just for the sake of adding stuff. That ends up feeling like a video game where you’re just grinding for levels. But, at the same time, you can always throw in a side quest, or do something related to a character backstory. If it’s a fun diversion for a couple sessions, it can still work.
Sometimes it can help to think in terms of a tv show, where there’s a season-long plot, but occasionally episodes that have nothing or a minimal amount to do with that overall plot.
And, of course, with your overall plot, it shouldn’t be as easy as go to fey crossing A, fight the thing, celebrate, go to B. It should never be easy. They get to A, only to realize they first have to acquire the macguffin to seal it off, but who knows where it is? Then they find out where it is, but it’s in the possession of a bad guy who doesn’t want to give it up. Or a good gal who doesn’t want to give it up. How do they get it? Now they finally have the thing, but turns out it’s broken. How do they fix it so they can use it? Then macguffin B is at the bottom of the ocean (so is fey crossing B, so it makes sense) while macguffin C is on another plane.
Keep in mind that you don't need every adventure the players go on to directly tie in to the larger narrative. If your friends go on a couple dungeon crawls without moving the narrative forward directly, they'll still probably be having a good time. You also don't need all the disparate elements to focus entirely on moving the plot forward. You just need one element to relate to the main story... if the players are exploring a haunted house, and they find one book somewhere in it that contains some information, no matter how minor, that relates to the grand storyline the players will still feel like they're moving that story forward.
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Pacing is hard, and it's never going to be as clean and tidy as it is in books or movies.
It's easier if you don't have a single story driving things, so you can pump up story A to slow down story B, but that's not what you're working with. But if you can get the players interested in unconnected side plots, that's your main problem sorted. Are there things in the characters' backgrounds that you can bring up? Are there things that came up in previous sessions that warrant revisiting?
But I'll assume you don't have anything so easy to work with.
The first thing is that the four things (I'm not clear on what they're doing with them; I'm assuming it's something on the lines of "find each one in turn and do a Thing") should not be evenly spread out over the course of the campaign. The first one should come relatively easy. Then the rest get progressively harder in various ways. As things progress, there is likely some force, sentient or not, opposing their mission. Could be an enemy who wants to exploit the crossings. Could be leakage from the feywild through the crossings. (In the latter case, the progressive difficulty could just be because each one has had longer to leak.)
The second thing is that not everything should be about the main quest. If their mission is complicated by a war between two kingdoms between them and their goal, the war doesn't have to be about their quest. It can just be because there's an evil wizard, and he wants conquest, and maybe it's easier to solve the war than to go around it. As time moves on, they'll become known heroes, and people will come to them for help. All these things help you to control the pace, and give the players other plot hooks to bite on, and give you elements to bring back when you need something.
okay this completely blew my mind to think about!! Thank you! My brain was trapped in thinking of how to integrate into the web instead of simply how to add only one connection to it, that makes total sense, I appreciate this immensely!
Absolutely, all of this!
Don't speed run the main quest and use a variety of different protagonists to ensure tedium doesn't set in. ("Oh dear, more undead? The Paladin smites again")
Make the player characters versatile by changing up the opposition, otherwise you might end up with some fierce undead hunters that an average orc band would make mince meat of ;-)
There are some really great ideas here but I'm going to add one more thing. Running a side quest as was mentioned by jl8e is a perfect thing. Keep the main campaign in the background so they don't lose sight of it but this gives them things to do and makes the world not feel static for one single story purpose. Throwing in the idea of a clue for the main game as TransmorpherDDs mentioned on the side quest also helps.
But here is my add with a little background. I'm running Rise of Tiamat and sometimes we need a break from the main game but I want to keep it story-focused. So I had the players make up secondary PCs that go on other quests related to the plot but instead of the NPCs discovering information that is brought back to the main Player Characters instead these side questing PCs run by the players go find it and return with it.
It's like watching a movie and the audience learns information before the main character because they saw a scene that gave them some more background. A perfect example of this is Bullet Train with the water bottle. Honestly, no one needed to know the details but what fun it was to watch it unfold. So instead of spoon-feeding my players the information they got to experience finding it themselves but with different characters. Still the main campaign but a different perspective.
Plus a fun side adventure not in the railroad of Rise of Tiamat. (FYI I do enjoy the premise but the book is a terrible read a points.)
I live my life like a West Marches campaign, A swirling vortex of Ambitions and Insecurities.
Structure notes
A story always has a beginning, middle, and end.
A campaign is a series of Adventures that link together to tell one story. To simplify, a Campaign is 3 Adventures.
An adventure is a series of Encounters of which some link together to tell a story. This is not the same story as the Campaign. So each adventure is, simplifying, 3 encounters. That means that a simple campaign is 9 encounters.
now, you can add in three encounters to tell the big Campaign story, linking the Adventures.
you can add in encounters to tell the Adventure story around each part of the a campaign.
you can toss in things that are there just because nothing travels in a straight line (Tom Bombadil and Beorn, for example). They would be side quests.
I use the TV season metaphor a lot myself. A campaign for me is at least 3 seasons long, each season being a complete story, but all three also being stories themselves.
a season is made up of episodes. Some episodes will move forward the story season, others will be filler, and usually one links to the next season or a previous season. Then I have filler episodes.
my seasons run about about 10 episodes each.
an episode usually has six parts to it:
link to prior episode. Beginning of that episode. link to future episode. Middle of that episode. Side track/distraction. End of episode.
this gets really interesting when you realize I use movies as the plots for episodes.
I use an outline structure, breaking the story into parts, and then assemble them into a whole. That becomes my guidebook for doing each part of the whole. I may know I am going to do a story around 12th level based on the film Commando, but I won’t write it until I need to.
my next campaign I know the monsters, milestones, experience points, and more for each section, each part. But I have no idea how things past 5th level will play out because I need to know the party then.
I have a ton of side quests that are super simple “go here and get this” things, because they help to give players a break and can let me drop in useful stuff or fix something. Plus, no one likes to be railroaded. Side quests are just things that are there for players to choose from, and among those choices are the regular story points.
all you need is the bare bones — enough info to let you go forward. The rest you will get to.
Only a DM since 1980 (2000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA
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I think you'll have some great advice here already! I agree with it all really. I personally like to slowly see where my campaign goes.
What I mean by this is that I might have an idea of the larger conflict, but I'd like to give my players the option to "forge their own path". As and example: If there is a nation that has been suppressed by its larger neighbor so the Archmage goes looking for some dark magic which might help them regain their autonomy. This plot will slowly be uncovered by the PCs but then I want them to be able to decide what side they take. What if they wanna side with the Mage? Or think this is a horrible idea and help beat the Mage? By building the conflict and then letting them interact with it it helps with the pacing and helps you easily bring in their backstory.
I often like to have their backstories as the "side quests" and sometimes all, some or none of them have anything to do with the main plot. This can give them a break from the main quest and go help one of their allies save their families or whatever might come up.
Lastly I also like to see what NPCs the players love to interact with and then create some conflict that needs solving there. Maybe there is a merchant with a quirky accent and funny hat they always seek out when they make it back into the city. If they ever come back and see the shop destroyed and the merchant gone, I'm pretty sure they'll go all out to find their friend:)