Plot Hooks

I've been thinking a lot about plot hooks recently. For years I've been a believer in putting plot hooks at the end of the session, dropping several of them at once, then allowing the players to decide which one they're going to go after next time we play. This lets me have a very open ended game while still being able to focus on the details of where and what the PCs are doing in the game. I don't have to make a bunch of stuff up on the fly because the players decided to go in a completely random direction (often anyway), and I can still allow the players to do what they want without feeling railroaded.

But, when thinking up some plot hooks for coming games, I also got to thinking about the concept of "Show, don't tell." It's a writing philosophy that says you don't want to do a lot of exposition - use action when you can instead, make the characters do something to advance the plot. If you want to explain something to the reader, use the story itself to explain it. Don't say the emotions of the characters, describe them and let the reader come to the conclusion that you want them to. It's more involving, more interesting, and it just makes for better reading.

It can also be used in adventure design to great effect. It's more fun when the players' PCs are involved in the world around them, discovering things for themselves, than when they're told about things. That's why whenever I feel the need for some exposition or long dialog out of NPCs, I make sure that there are interesting things going on around them at the same time, or that they're in an interesting location, something to keep them feeling that they're not just sitting around listening to NPCs going on about things.

So, I got to thinking about that with plot hooks, and I thought to myself, "Self, why not drop a plot hook in the middle of the adventure as an encounter." And, by this I don't just mean drop a letter on an NPC who they fight that points them to something bad happening elsewhere. I mean when they see this encounter they're going to think "Oh crap. Something bad is going down somewhere." Something that will make the players themselves sit up, take notice, and decide that they're going to have to look into this. Sure, there might be things in the aftermath to lead them elsewhere if they want: letters, interrogating hostages, that kind of thing. But, the encounter itself will be integral to the plot hook, and obvious. (Plot hooks have to be obvious most of the time - I'm sure you know why.)

What I came up for this adventure was a group of hobgoblins and goblins coming up the North Road (which is relatively untraveled) with a giant cart full of human corpses, being pulled by two zombies. Something like, 15x20 feet of corpses piled four people high. The first question they asked is what the heck were a bunch of hobgoblins doing with corpses. Well, the two zombies pulling the cart gave them a bad feeling about that one. Then they wondered where they were getting all these corpses. They had a bad feeling about that one. So, now they can investigate this. And, they probably want to pretty soon because not only are the hobgoblins apparently killing a lot of people, but they might be dealing with some kind of zombie army at the same time.

It also has the added benefit of mixing things up during the game. They get something they weren't expecting, something that leads them in a different direction. It gives me a good way to introduce these things, too, without breaking any kind of suspension of belief, because it will be dropped in a logical way.

So, I'm going to keep trying this. Not every session, but maybe half of them, I'm going to drop something in that they aren't expecting, something that can lead them in a different direction. I'm going to keep dropping the plot hooks at the end as well. I dropped two more at the end of the last session. But, there are just too many good things about how this worked out in game not to keep doing it.