Avoiding campaign sameness

[Piperken]

So one quandary that has popped up now I am running a campaign is quests/mission-situations having the same or similar hooks i.e. The party not too long ago finished finding someone who had gone missing (they were kidnapped), and in near the future, there is a faction that would like them to seek one of their agents, who has gone missing.

At this point there are other game situations they can get into at the table, so this is not a matter of above being their only option. While I'm aware of above now, I'd like to avoid this sameness in the fiction and would love to read suggestions ppls have employed themselves in published, or in their own homebrew campaigns, regardless of structure.

 

[payn]

3E DMG II and the ultimate campaign guide for PF1 have lists that are adventure hooks in a single sentence. Obviously, these are ice breakers for GMs to flesh out their adventures, but its helpful to distill an adventure to a single sentence or paragraph. That way you can see if you are going to the same well too much.

One thing you can do if you find yourself repeating is to subvert it. The organization wants you to find their missing member who happens to be hiding from them for good reasons. That sort of thing.

 

[bloodtide]

Use randomness.

You can Google 'plot hooks' easy enough. Find like 100 and make your own random table.

And for a real custom one, make one 'Mad Lib' style with lots of blanks. The __ is _____ the __________ to get the ________. Then do a bunch of random rolls to fill them in:

"The broken cogs is The Red Gnomes the plot to get the kings crown."

 

[KYRON45]

The agent didn't go missing; they just didn't come back when their mission was done. They completed their task as was their mandate but upon doing so they decided that they no longer wanted to be part of the the status quo. When you find said agent they are now helping a colony of kobolds work out how to get the local (insert bigger monster here) off their back. And also....they are working on a new strain of rhubarb because they discovered that gardening is their new passion. Now the party has to decide...do we help the agent/kobolds fight this monster...do they try and convince the agent to go back or to abandon the kobolds?
Maybe this monster that's bothering the kobolds is only causing trouble because of some malady it has. Or maybe the beast is heartbroken because the dryad it loves is trapped/sick or in some other kind of trouble.

Have each new problem bleed into some other problem. Insert some whimsy into the situations. Not every plot needs to be "X hired you to do Y". After they help out some of these "monsters" maybe some greater power (Fey/Divine/etc.) takes notice and either appreciates your help (reward) or doesnt (now they are chasing you).

There are only so many kinds of stories out there....the real trick is dressing them up to look new.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Buy a book full of random tables

 

[mcobden]

I think this is where the OSR movement has some good advice. Sometimes you dont need a quest or hook or "adventure" at all. Create an unstable situation with tons of potential chaos and just let the PCs bump around in it. The adventure will create itself.

 

[Autumnal]

Ironsworn is free in PDF and has many handy tables for such things, I note.

 

[GMMichael]

I suspect that sameness comes from the GM's thought: "what would be a cool adventure?"

Variety comes from the story itself. "The villain did X to accomplish Y. Now that that problem is solved, what's the next step in accomplishing Z?"

 

[W'rkncacnter]

"The broken cogs is The Red Gnomes the plot to get the kings crown."

...what does that even mean?

 

[Jd Smith1]

Change settings, and in each setting, tailor the group premise for existence to the setting.

For example, the last five campaigns my group has been together (4 years real time):

1) Fantasy
2) Occult-hunting while serving as a detachment for the Chief of Scouts (intelligence officer) for the Continental army, 1776.
3) A morrow-project awakening in Digenesis setting.
4) A Questing Knight and his entourage in Fading Suns
5) (Current) Serving as rail police for the Union Pacific in Mexico in an 1889 where the Mexican revolution started in 1888. The UP has a contract to restore and expand the national railways (as in RL). Also a healthy dose of Cthulhu.

Being part of a larger organization removes a lot of pressure, because the PCs dont require deep insight into the 'why'. It also generates vast opportunities for scenarios, because the bigger the organization, the more and diverse issues it has. For example, in our current campaign, the PCs are based in Chihuahua, and recently there was a high-society American woman stirring up trouble over the UP turning a blind eye to brothels for the Chinese workers being stocked with girls imported. mostly unwillingly, from China (the UP brought its Chinese workforce south, as in RL). With a work force losing 2-3 men in fatal accidents per mile, interference with their entertainments is unacceptable, and also dangerous, because the native population is not thrilled with an imported work force.

Too often the standard TTRPG trope is that the PCs are hired guns scrounging for their next job. Break that tradition, and give them a boss assigning them work. Downtime is handled by the PCs getting uninteresting routine duties for a while. You can also have the occasional person coming to the PCs directly for help, and thus add in getting time off to do XYX, while annoying the boss or owing him a favor.