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Exploration based adventures/campaigns: how do you do it?
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5167758" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>After you've got your content together, the most important thing is to find reasons to drag your players across the map. And the trick here is to drag them so that they don't necessarily take a straight line from point A to point B. Instead, the plot hooks have to just give them the general location of point B, and the PC's are expected to need to spend some time hex sweeping to actually find it.</p><p></p><p>So plot hooks tend to be of the sort:</p><p></p><p>"There is a lost city filled with wonders. Noone knows exactly where it is, but its supposed to be within 3 days journey of the head waters of this major river."</p><p>"Because of your appearance, the natives think you are from a civilization that is supposed to be on the other side of the moutains. They have no commerce with the civilization, but they heard from the Dandan who heard from the Mokeen who heard from the Botani that the Zulani sometimes trade with them so maybe if you could find the Zulani they'd be able to tell you how to get there."</p><p>"There is a secret magic healing pool deep in the forest, but no one has been able to go there for a long time because something terrible now gaurds it."</p><p>"One of the other exploration groups went to set up a base near a lake deep in the interior, but we haven't heard from them since. Could you go and find out what happened?"</p><p>"We've been hearing alot about the Brectans, who are said to rule a wide empire and have a mighty army, but we have no direct contact with them. We know that they live that a way, could you go establish relations with them?"</p><p>"We keep finding all these high tech artifacts, but the natives seem to think its taboo to talk about them. One of the other teams said that they saw what looked like a city on top of a plateau that looked like it might belong to the same culture. We want you to go explore it and see what you can learn."</p><p>"We need a source of copper. The natives from the interior have been trading us native copper ingots. We need you to head that away and see if you can locate where the copper comes from so we can set up a mining operation."</p><p>"Spies in the homeland have determined that a rival nation has established a military outpost. We only know its general location. We need you to go that away, find out where it is, and spy out the defences and strength of the garrison."</p><p></p><p>And so forth.</p><p></p><p>Hopefully, once the PC's have explored enough, they'll start having thier own questions that they want answered, find places they want to plunder, and begin to develop thier own independent motivations. Because this is an exploration game, and because you've got content, as the PC's move across the map on one mission, they are going to find different hooks and points of interest that may lead them in entirely unexpected directions. And likewise, once they get where they are going, they might not find what they expected to find. The lost city could still be inhabited. The rival military outpost could have been destroyed by some formidable and hitherto unknown danger. The copper mines might be owned by giants. The Brectan might represent such a formidable empire that the represent a direct threat, or they might prove to be entirely mythological, or they might prove to be fantastic beings like skulks, birdfolk, ghouls, or drow.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 5167758, member: 4937"] After you've got your content together, the most important thing is to find reasons to drag your players across the map. And the trick here is to drag them so that they don't necessarily take a straight line from point A to point B. Instead, the plot hooks have to just give them the general location of point B, and the PC's are expected to need to spend some time hex sweeping to actually find it. So plot hooks tend to be of the sort: "There is a lost city filled with wonders. Noone knows exactly where it is, but its supposed to be within 3 days journey of the head waters of this major river." "Because of your appearance, the natives think you are from a civilization that is supposed to be on the other side of the moutains. They have no commerce with the civilization, but they heard from the Dandan who heard from the Mokeen who heard from the Botani that the Zulani sometimes trade with them so maybe if you could find the Zulani they'd be able to tell you how to get there." "There is a secret magic healing pool deep in the forest, but no one has been able to go there for a long time because something terrible now gaurds it." "One of the other exploration groups went to set up a base near a lake deep in the interior, but we haven't heard from them since. Could you go and find out what happened?" "We've been hearing alot about the Brectans, who are said to rule a wide empire and have a mighty army, but we have no direct contact with them. We know that they live that a way, could you go establish relations with them?" "We keep finding all these high tech artifacts, but the natives seem to think its taboo to talk about them. One of the other teams said that they saw what looked like a city on top of a plateau that looked like it might belong to the same culture. We want you to go explore it and see what you can learn." "We need a source of copper. The natives from the interior have been trading us native copper ingots. We need you to head that away and see if you can locate where the copper comes from so we can set up a mining operation." "Spies in the homeland have determined that a rival nation has established a military outpost. We only know its general location. We need you to go that away, find out where it is, and spy out the defences and strength of the garrison." And so forth. Hopefully, once the PC's have explored enough, they'll start having thier own questions that they want answered, find places they want to plunder, and begin to develop thier own independent motivations. Because this is an exploration game, and because you've got content, as the PC's move across the map on one mission, they are going to find different hooks and points of interest that may lead them in entirely unexpected directions. And likewise, once they get where they are going, they might not find what they expected to find. The lost city could still be inhabited. The rival military outpost could have been destroyed by some formidable and hitherto unknown danger. The copper mines might be owned by giants. The Brectan might represent such a formidable empire that the represent a direct threat, or they might prove to be entirely mythological, or they might prove to be fantastic beings like skulks, birdfolk, ghouls, or drow. [/QUOTE]
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