Recently, I've putting together some ideas for a game I'd like to run. While I'd love to run a continuous, drawn-out campaign, I know that the schedules for myself and my group of potential players are scattered at best.
Because of this, I'm thinking of running a more episodic game, where each adventure is roughly self-contained, with some long-term threads popping up occasionally. My current plan is to have the characters work as agents of a secret organization on behalf of a king or other leader. I also plan on keeping the world relatively detail-free at the start so that players can have more input on things and I have more room to make things up on the fly when necessary. This setup allows for characters to come in and out more freely, since I can always say they're out on other assignments.
To start things off, I'm thinking of running an "entrance exam" type quest to test the group's capabilities where they're sent to follow a lead regarding a lost royal treasure. I will include a couple of complications. First, the group has to keep the item's disappearance a secret (public knowledge of this theft might cause unrest in the kingdom) and second, the treasure isn't actually missing - the group's patron organization is just testing them.
Some questions:
1. Do any more experienced DMs have any general advice on running this type of game?
and,
2. Does anyone have thoughts on my starting adventure or have some ideas on how to make it more exciting? What could make for an interesting McGuffin for them to search for, even if it's one that they can't really find?
Because of this, I'm thinking of running a more episodic game, where each adventure is roughly self-contained, with some long-term threads popping up occasionally. My current plan is to have the characters work as agents of a secret organization on behalf of a king or other leader. I also plan on keeping the world relatively detail-free at the start so that players can have more input on things and I have more room to make things up on the fly when necessary. This setup allows for characters to come in and out more freely, since I can always say they're out on other assignments.
To start things off, I'm thinking of running an "entrance exam" type quest to test the group's capabilities where they're sent to follow a lead regarding a lost royal treasure. I will include a couple of complications. First, the group has to keep the item's disappearance a secret (public knowledge of this theft might cause unrest in the kingdom) and second, the treasure isn't actually missing - the group's patron organization is just testing them.
Some questions:
1. Do any more experienced DMs have any general advice on running this type of game?
and,
2. Does anyone have thoughts on my starting adventure or have some ideas on how to make it more exciting? What could make for an interesting McGuffin for them to search for, even if it's one that they can't really find?