Gilladian
Adventurer
I've used some of Abdul Alhazred's ideas (Hi, big brother!) a few times myself....and sometimes they lead to interesting elements of the story developing themselves.
As a concrete example, I once had the PCs rushing off to a place to meet someone. However, I wanted time to flesh out the someone and the somewhere a good bit. So I threw in a semi-random encounter with a traveling fair. And a (mer)maid in distress. The PCs spent a whole session, or maybe even two, aiding the mermaid in escaping her contract with the fair's master. She turned out not to be a mermaid at all, and they had a lot of fun. At the same time, they picked up a parrot who seemed suspiciously bright for an ordinary bird.
Later on, I realized that the bird, who was a totally random "throw in" on my part, was really the lost prince of the kingdom, transformed into a bird and trapped in that form. And the person they were going to meet was the person who had transformed him. So I tied a throw-away moment with a smart-aleck bird into the main plot, and reinforced the party's dislike and distrust of the arch-villain. Not that they knew he was the arch-villain at that point... They just knew he was the guy who was trying to get the transformed prince away from them.
You never know when a little thread can be pulled on to redirect the PCs towards your "hoped for" encounters without ever feeling railroaded.
As a concrete example, I once had the PCs rushing off to a place to meet someone. However, I wanted time to flesh out the someone and the somewhere a good bit. So I threw in a semi-random encounter with a traveling fair. And a (mer)maid in distress. The PCs spent a whole session, or maybe even two, aiding the mermaid in escaping her contract with the fair's master. She turned out not to be a mermaid at all, and they had a lot of fun. At the same time, they picked up a parrot who seemed suspiciously bright for an ordinary bird.
Later on, I realized that the bird, who was a totally random "throw in" on my part, was really the lost prince of the kingdom, transformed into a bird and trapped in that form. And the person they were going to meet was the person who had transformed him. So I tied a throw-away moment with a smart-aleck bird into the main plot, and reinforced the party's dislike and distrust of the arch-villain. Not that they knew he was the arch-villain at that point... They just knew he was the guy who was trying to get the transformed prince away from them.
You never know when a little thread can be pulled on to redirect the PCs towards your "hoped for" encounters without ever feeling railroaded.
