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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jbear" data-source="post: 5244379" data-attributes="member: 75065">I have a similar dilema as you. I love for my players choices to be meaningful, which often means when they fork off in one direction a lot of cool stuff I have prepared is never used.My campaign is not a sandbox like what LostSoul gives great advice how to construct. My story has a plot that is rumbling on behind the scenes and is linked to what the PCs are involved with in different ways.But I want them to involve themselves with it in the way they choose to. So this is how I try and achieve that with the very limited time I have to prepare material:I had a very loose idea of the main world event that is moving the world cogs.I marked out some main secondary cogs that were influenced by the main action.The PCs first adventure hook would eventually lead them to a key character involved with one of these secondary cogs.I didn't have time to map out an entire world or the adventure or even the big picture from beginning to end. My players were all new, so the first part of the action was in a way fairly linear. The forks they could take caused ony a minmal deviation in the direction they headed (not that the players perceived it that way). I added some sidetreks along the way inspired by the little blurbs in the campaign guide I was using, to make their journey unique and flavoursome. One of the sidetreks the players actually followed up I took from an encounter in Open Grave and then  built more interesting stuff around it including story hooks that had nothing to do with the main story but could provide them very useful information about it. They didn't follow it up any further in the end, but if the had of, then I would have used the Tower Of Spellguard as a base for the adventure and shaped it to my liking.Further on, they followed another side trek that continued to grow and grow the deeper they got into it. For this one I took a similar themed desert temple mini adventure from a Goodman Games module full of different little mini adventures and rebuilt it to my liking. Some of the fluff I had to discard totally. Some of the fluff started getting my creative juices flowing.  Suddenly it seemed a waste that they had gotten so deeply into this story, for it then to bear no relevance with the big picture. So I decided to link them together. The big picture began to expand, deepen, complicate itself, take shape and grow. I began to build an alternative hook into the main action through this side adventure for them, if they followed it through to the end and the PCs were willing to side with a minor evil in order to battle the greater one. Surprisingly, at least for me, they made a pact with this minor evil, gained a powerful, selfish and manipulative dark ally which would bring them closer to the main story faster than previiously forseen. And of course who will turn all their deeds to his benefit much to the PCs surprise. This also allowed them to start putting bits and pieces of information that they had together (because now there began to be something to actually put together). But I didn't begin any of this until they had decided to go down that way. At the beginning it was a few encounters from a premade adventure module that I had reshaped and brought to life. If they had have passed by, little was lost.When they finally arrived at their destination the narrow flow ended and their possibilities finally expanded pulling them in at least 7 or 8 different directions at once. A few of those choices lead to the same place. Some were not relevant to the main story, but most were linked to it in different ways eventually. Now obviously I wasn't about to prepare that many different adventure paths only to ever use 2 or 3 of them (if that).This is how I handled it:I told my players that they had reached a major crossroads in the story. That the ideas were there loosley but that I was not going to develop any of them any further until they made a decision which one they wanted to follow. Once they had made that decision, I began the building process. What I did have ready was a premade module that loosely fit the situation in one way or another for each possible path. Most of them were from Goodman Games, or some specifically chosen adventures from the Scales of War adventure path, even a couple of AD&D adventures including one of the original Ravenloft adventures. Once they chose which way they were going I took what I had and began making it fit, make sense and come to life.So now the story behind their adventure has come together as I weaved all these different stories together. They have a fairly good sense of what is going on (at least as much as they should at this stage) and they are totally hooked into the story. The good thing is we got there without having to sacrifice the possibility of them making meaningful choices. I just made everything meaningful in its own way.Eventually they will have to follow up some of the other roads when they return back to the junction point once this part of the adventure is concluded (but that is cool because I already have some solid bases to build on when the time comes) and those that aren't followed up... well no loss because I lost no time on them, despite them being semi-prepared in a way. Will they ever get there... well, I hope so because they are heading into a pretty epic adventure ... things looked pretty grim when we left off last. If they are not careful and at least a little lucky they are about to be whisked off on another side trek they stumbled into after some bad decision making that could land them in a depraved city of eladrin trapped in time endlessly playing out their massacre day after day by hordes of savage barbarians. I'm hoping they avoid that, but I have the module ready to build upon if it all goes wrong! And if they pull it off! great, back to the action. I hadn't prepared anything despite being ready for that eventuality, so nothing was lost!</blockquote>

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