Give me ideas

My present campaign is more of a minicampaign, involving the PCs' quest to restore the rightful king of a small nation. You know - that old chestnut. They're quite enjoying it so far because I'm giving them carte blanche over what they do - letting them decide how to proceed rather than giving them missions and so on.

What I'm after is some ideas as to how I can make their lives a little more difficult, how I can put a bit of extra spark into the campaign premise, and missions or side quests I can give them without interfering too much with their autonomy. My players hate to be railroaded.

Basically, the situation now is they are making their way northwards, with one allied NPC off to raise an army in their name. The PCs and their dozen-or-so followers have established a messenger service as a way to keep track of events and to recruit new followers. At the last adventure, they infiltrated a naval base, killed the admiral, and destroyed the flagship and a lot of the supplies for the fleet. At the end of the adventure, they learned the kingdom to the north has invaded, and all young men are being conscripted. This will make it very hard to keep the young prince, who is 16, from being discovered.

What else could I do? Keep in mind the following:

• Tenth-level or thereabouts
• I don't want to push them into anything they don't want to do. That's what killed my old campaign.
• I eventually want them to succeed - I'm trying to make their job hard but not impossible. I don't want them to go away feeling cheated.

Regular visitors may wonder why I always seem to be here and why I start so many threads.
This is because I am a public servant.
I therefore have little to do at work of any interest.

Well, aside from the usual (the current king, the usurper, is doing everything he can to keep the throne), maybe throw your pc's a curve:

Unbeknownst to the pc's, a secret cult that worships an evil god wants to put the rightful king back on his throne. Why? Perhaps they have a dark prophecy that foretells a time of great woe is at hand when the 'True king comes into his own'. The usurper might be privy to this prophecy, and wishes to keep the prince off the throne in hopes that it will forestall the time of woe. In which case, what do the pc's do? Remove the usurper, return the king to his throne, and hope that they can handle whatever this 'time of woe' throws at them? Or try to keep the usurper safe, until they can find out more about this prophecy, how to keep it from coming to pass, and then safely return the rightful king to his realm?

How about this? The prince, though young, is actually a member of this cult, and wishes to bring about the time of woe by reclaiming his throne. The pc's are unwitting dupes, and if they succeed in removing the usurper, will bring an age of darkness upon the world. If they find out about the prince before they remove the usurper, then they will have to dodge cult assassins, not to mention the fact that if they kill the prince before exposing him and the cult they will have a lot of explaining if it's ever found out (which, given the existence of spells like speak with dead and the like, is virtually guaranteed).

Sorry if I kinda rambled. It's early, and I need to sleep, but I thought I'd share my thoughts.
Hope this helps!

You could always have the king's enemies turn him into a dog/frog/something unnatural.
That would certainly put a kink in their plans.

As a sidequest, introduce a bunch of high-powered mercenaries. I suggest Githyanki. They're on the run from some mind-flayers and will offer their services in exchange for refuge.

Set up:

The PCs will have to eliminate a small conclave of mind-flayers and Umber Hulks. The Gith can't do it, because they can't be seen by the mindflayers. If an illithid gets away and reports that they were routed by human adventurers, no one at mind flayer central will care much. If they report that the gith are alive and well, more mind flayers will come. So for one night the PCs get to fight some monsters that they usually don't (I assume).

If the PCs aid the Gith and give them refuge, they will preform brilliantly (if over-zeleous) as mercenaries. There are occasional instances of the Gith "going to far" and committing a war crime here and there, but they are otherwise very effective.

A level or two down the road, the PCs are approached by some Githzerai. The Githzerai want to know where the PCs stand on the Gith war. The PCs will have to decide if they want to turn over the Githyanki or stand up for them.

You should build this up so that the Githyanki mercenaries are clearly not "good guys". They are definately evil, but they're playing by the PCs rules according to the original bargian. So it should be a real choice for the PCs.

Aris Dragonborn said:

Unbeknownst to the pc's, a secret cult that worships an evil god wants to put the rightful king back on his throne. Why? Perhaps they have a dark prophecy that foretells a time of great woe is at hand when the 'True king comes into his own'. The usurper might be privy to this prophecy, and wishes to keep the prince off the throne in hopes that it will forestall the time of woe. In which case, what do the pc's do? Remove the usurper, return the king to his throne, and hope that they can handle whatever this 'time of woe' throws at them? Or try to keep the usurper safe, until they can find out more about this prophecy, how to keep it from coming to pass, and then safely return the rightful king to his realm?

Click to expand...

The way I'd play this one is that the "Time of Woe" (tm) is actually the civil war that results from trying to put the rightful heir on the throne. See, the evil cult spread all this around and convinced the usurper to usurp the throne in the first place in order to avert the "Time of Woe" (tm), never realizing that he was going to be the one to bring it about in the first place. I'd have the evil god be some sort of god of war or strife that thrives on conflict and his followers want a drawn out war and they keep switching sides to secretly aid whoever is losing to keep the war going as long as possible.

I like the Githyanki idea. I may just have to use that.