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Message: <blockquote data-quote="meomwt" data-source="post: 5719808" data-attributes="member: 47885">I've recently been running some adventures as a prelude to The Red Hand of Doom. The players have had references to "The Horde" when confronting opponents, seen Red Hands scrawled on the walls of a shaman, there have been dreams which contain clues as to what is happening (an ancient Dwarven King grasped by a Red Claw; a Dragon which is many colours at once; and so on). They are now becoming interested in who or what the horde is, and are likely to want to hunt them down (even if an old enemy hadn't allied herself to the Wyrmlords and decided that the party need to be taken out). The point of all this is that if you have an idea where you want to go four or five levels away, use that information in current play - without being too heavy-handed at first - so that when the time comes, the players actively want to get involved and don't feel railroaded in. Although - to be fair - making it up on the fly and tying things together later works as well. I've done that in the past, too, and as long as you can make it seem like you meant it, it will be ok. The beauty of RPG's is that there isn't a box set with all the episodes on you can devour once the season is over, and memory can be subjective, so people don't always notice the iffy bits you've done off the cuff, and remember that it all hung together at the end, more or less.</blockquote>