Alternatives to the letter at the end of the adventure?

[Fromost the Grimm]

Personally, I'd find any such 'letter' at the end of BBEG fight a bit of a let-down.

There are other ways of reaching the same thing, as other posters have chimed in with ... the crux of which comes down to how much your players play just to kill things, versus how much your players play for the exploration and investigation side of the game. If they just want hack n' slash, then they'll probably be happy with a simple one-degree-of-separation 'clue' on the BBEG. But if they like snooping about the dungeon, searching through the enemy commander's quarters, then that's the way to feed them the next clue. Moreso, planting a series of clues that point in a certain direction when taken in context of one another rewards that snooping.

Have orders in the BBEG's quarters written in a strange script, or bearing a seal or mark of a merchant house. A strange piece of jewellery or a unique weapon could yield information when it's taken to an expert to be appraised. Bizarre spell components could give a clue to another region of the world, and/or a unique holy symbol may lead to the party to another city looking for information.

And if the party don't put two n' two together with all this, send in an assassin! The party think they'd cleared out the dungeon and defeated the BBEG ... but they missed his sneaky assassin, who tailed them as they left the dungeon, and attacked one unsuspecting night. When the party finish him off, he's got another more obvious clue that can guide them in the right direction ...

 

[Stoat]

Personally, I'd find any such 'letter' at the end of BBEG fight a bit of a let-down.

I concur, that's why I started the thread!

Thanks for the good ideas, everyone. I'll take as many as you can throw at me.

Two alternatives that I've used in the past:

(1) Packing crates marks with the coats-of-arms of other places where the evildoers operate.

(2) A huge map of the surrounding area covered with obscure symbols. Some of them represent other safehouses used by the evildoers, some represent potential targets for evildoing, some represent places that even the evildoers fear.

 

[fba827]

Session A: Kill Mr. A, search him, move on, etc (though Mr. A had a tattoo, they wouldn't have given it a second thought, therefore it does not need to be seperately described).

Session B: Kill Mr. B, search him, etc. They notice he has an odd tattoo on his forearm. Normally, they would not give it a second thought, but then they realize they saw the same tattoo on Mr. A from a couple days ago!

They must have been connected... and, if so, what is the group that connects them? And who leads that group? ....

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

A variant of letter might be:
- a prisoner with more information
- a map with some markings on it (X marks the spot)

A more novel take might be:
- an artifact or piece of art that requires an expert to analyze or a connoisseur to sell it to.
- the information is already known before the final confrontation. A prisoner informs the others, the party intercepts the letter before it reaches the BBEG dungeon (or at least his room).

A more complex approach is something KM suggests - there are multiple adventures that have something in common that the PCs eventually piece together. (Let's hope they are not too dense to figure it out. )

 

[chintznibbles]

I like to set things up with enough branching paths that by the time the PCs have actually finished an adventure, they've really finished a chapter and (usually) graduated to the next tier of influence. My old rough tier system is pretty close to 4e's endemic tiers, so it works out.

When the PCs graduate a tier, they are usually given some kind of boon that increases the scope of their activities, whether it's an increase in mobility (a ship, some kind of special mounts) or status ("Hey, they gave us a castle. Imagine that."). Low level characters are active locally, mid-level characters can cover an entire country, and high/epic characters go out and save the world. With this increase in scope, it usually becomes pretty easy to draw parallels between incidents they have perhaps just finished ("Yay! We cleared this lair of evil cultists that had been plaguing the county! Wait, what? All the other counties have lairs, too? What the hell is going on here?") and begin searching for hidden threads.

I'm certainly not immune to occasionally dropping the obvious >Next Adventure Here< hints within a given branch of a given chapter, usually when it needs to be slightly obvious that the branch is forking and I want the PCs to commit to one and not be confused about the other options. But if you can involve skill checks and roleplaying opportunities, even obvious hints can still be amusing game time. Even something like placing the hint in the middle of the adventure rather than the end can go a long way. It does somewhat deaden the impact of the current end-goal, but that's not always a bad thing.

 

[FireLance]

Other possibilities are:

1. The party finds an object labelled with an address, or a name and an address. Did the defeated enemy take it from that location, or did he intend to send it there? What is the significance of the object? What happens if the PCs take it to that location?

2. The party finds a letter addressed to them that reveals some information and points them in the direction of the next adventure. Who left the letter, what is his interest in the matter, and why doesn't he just communicate with the PCs face to face?

3. The party finds what appears to be a prophecy, the first part of which describes the adventure they have just completed. There are several more parts to the prophecy. Who made the prophecy, how accurate is it, and what happens if the PCs decide not to do what it says?

 

[Piratecat]

Have the treasure be part of the clues. The items, their history and their origin tie intimately in with the next adventure. For instance, if the loot hoard is full of exceptionally fine wine and aquamarines, and there's an elven town fifty miles away known for its wine-making and aquamarine jewelry, you can probably guess where this bad guy's boss is hiding...

 

[diaglo]

A common cliché in adventures is the "clue letter" at the end. You've seen it. It's the letter addressed to whatever sucker it was the PC's just killed that reads:

Minion!
Continue your good work terrorizing the people of littletown. Send slaves and treasure to me at nextweeksadventure dungeon!
Signed,
Next week's BBEG.

The intent is for the players to realize that this week's BBEG was just a cog in a greater scheme. Presumably, they'll track down the writer of the clue letter, and do battle with him.

IMO, this is a fairly clumsy way to put an adventure hook in front of the party. And it often doesn't make sense. Do orc chieftans send formal letters to their goblin underbosses?

I'm looking for alternatives. What other means are available to suggest connections between groups of enemies?

or usually the letter is the other way around.

the PCs have just killed BBEG of the week. and in or on his desk they find a letter he is writing for his boss that hasn't been sent yet. a laundry list of the items he will be sending or needs so he can complete his task. sometimes the names of the PCs included as possible troublemakers to his completion of said task(s).


players like to feel they are noticed. clues like this boost their ego too.

 

[Hussar]

Great ideas everyone.

What about cut scenes? Instead of plot exposition in written form, play out a (very short) scenario that doesn't involve the PC's. I'd keep it down to about 30 minutes tops. Hand out role cards to each player so that they can act out the scene and then play it out. For example, the PC's have just defeated the outpost and you want them to go on to the main lair of the BBEG.

You give out roles to your four players - a messenger, two lieutenants and a prisoner. You play out the BBEG. Set the scene - the lieutenants are interrogating the prisoner about the party (works even better if they've MET the prisoner at some point) and the messenger bursts in with news that a scout has sent word that the outpost has fallen.

They then work over the prisoner trying to gain more information about the party.

Hrm, that messenger needs more of a role. Ok, maybe the BBEG has a love interest or something that can join in. Whatever, this is what I'm coming up with off the top of my head.

Anyway, I think it gives a real sense of life and immediecy to your bad guys. Instead of only seeing the results of the bad guy or interacting with him in a very limited sense as the PC's, you can explore the motivations and personalities of the bad guys using your players.

 

[Krensky]

After the players defeat the villain and his evil cult they spend a few days soaking up the town's thanks, and then news comes from the next town over that the exact same mysterious deaths are happening there with the same mutilations and the same type of victims and same MOs.

Adjust for taste, but have the players discover that the villain wasn't the top dog by seeing the ultimate villain's schemes continue to move forward.