Can someone cast Guidance on me? Looking for advice on tying my campaigns low level encounters to the late game scenarios.

[MortalForce]

Hi folks, just joined this page after listening to a bunch of Mike Shae's podcast episodes, so if you're reading this Mike, thanks. Am I a grognard now?
I thought I'd post here because the odds of my players finding this are vanishingly small and no longer use FB or Reddit, but if you're called Warrick, Andy, Leon, Emma, or Kim AND you're playing a game with four people that share four of those names, look away!
So. 6 weeks ago, I started a campaign at my FLGS, Bea DnD. I've built a fairly complicated character driven Plot Web using DM Academy's excellent Plot Web video. I have five players, all currently Level 2, with thematically appropriate multiclassing allowed. We have a Goliath Paladin (oath of vengeance), a High Elf Rogue, an Aasimar Warlock ( who wants to choose an Archfey patron), a Gnome artificer/evocation wizard, and a Tortle monk (they just fought rats in the sewers too!). We're playing in my homebrew world with themes of greed in a jungle frontier setting, with a nation state (Taldea) settling the shoreline and trying to make a trade passage through the jungle continent as a soft power grab. A rival nation (Heleaine) that profits from another trade route is trying to disrupt these efforts, while other parties are involved, like a pirate fleet, a shipping company not unlike the East India Company, an ape tribe, 3 lizardfolk tribes, an undiscovered dwarven city in the mountains, and a lich that they imprisoned so long ago that his name has passed into myth.
In terms of hooks:

• The rogue has no memory of life on land so she's part of an ancient society that originally settled the region and gave it life, and shares kindred ties with the lich. She's also hunted by Heleaine agents.
• The monk has ties to the pirate fleet, who attacked his town and burned it to the ground. He's also looking for his other three tortle monk brothers to reestablish their order/monastery. If you can't tell, I'm less than enthused by how low effort I feel this PC was. At least his PC wasn't named after a renaissance artist.
• The paladin has ties to the shipping company (unbeknownst to her), and is also looking for an ancient artifact that I've split into three parts. One with a GOO patron whose avatar is nearby (and whose warlock from the shipping company sunk her backstory ship), one with the shipping company CEO (who happens to be arriving in a week), and another with the lich.
• The warlock has come to the jungle to find gems in the caves and gold in the rivers, but also went to school with shipping co's CEO's son, and wants to help his parents' failing trade company (isn't it nice when the players give you a healthy LIVING family?) caused by, you guessed it, the shipping company screwing them over. I'm thinking he's aasimar due to prayers by mummy, to tie him to the same god as the paladin.
• The artificer/wizard came here to kick ass and chew gum, and he's all out of gum. He was framed as the designer of the navigation system that caused two ships to collide, so he bailed during the investigation because the shipping company is too powerful to be held to bear in court. Really, he's here to find ancient scrolls and means to become more powerful, and he's heard rumours of the lich's vast magical vaults (not that he knows it's a lich).

While I've got a decent web to drive the group to the ultimate bad guy of the lich, I'm a bit worried that I've painted myself into a corner by needing to have a huge arcane prison a long way away from the town to contain it. There are hundreds of miles of largely unwritten/unplanned travel to this location.
Here's what I have vaguely outlined thus far:
-Arrived in town, met NPC's, familiarising themselves with townsfolk.
-Doing a variety of quests that bring them into conflict (or allegiance) with the nobility, the foreign Heleaine agents, the pirate fleet, and the shipping company.
-The shipping company arriving and the CEO making his way to the lich's prison for riches/cutting the trade route through successfully/power (and probably fleeing or dying when they release the lich).
-The party witnessing the release of the lich and realising they might be screwed.
-The lich's phylactery being held by the dwarves (unbeknownst to them), needing to be destroyed by sacrificing something(s) of great value, countering the themes of greed.

Basically, I have some solid stuff for around town and one day's travel away, but beyond that, I'm sort of stuck. I have ideas about the party visiting High Elven ruins to rebuild an artifact of great power to destroy the phylactery, meeting the other tortle monks and uniting them, and a pursuit through the jungle to the lich prison, but I'm sort of stuck on how. Am I overthinking it?

I'd love to hear your thoughts, constructive criticism, and questions. There is obviously lots more than what I've outlined here.

 

[Theory of Games]

Looks like a nice little railroad story for the players to follow. If that' what your players like doing.

Do you have a map of your world? If so, why not just drop the party in a kingdom, give them rumors of what's going on in the region and let the players decide what they want to do? As they explore the kingdom, have them 'bump into' important NPC (faction heads) who are looking to hire able-bodies adventurers for blahblahblah.

Let the players explore their agency. It's liberating for everyone involved IME. And sure, have the BBEG doing BBEG stuff in the background and those activities start having an impact on the kingdom, the important NPCs and eventually, the PC party.

Also, having random tables for kingdom & wilderness encounters will make things so much easier for you. Myself, I just 'plan' the opening scene of a campaign, then after I pepper the group with rumors, I let the players go and do what they want. It's their show, right? I'm just a GM, not a film director with a script for people to follow. You've got events pre-planned and that can be IME a big mistake because what happens when the party doesn't follow your story the way you intended? Usually what happens is the GM either tries to force the party back onto the rails OR the GM gets confused and frustrated and the campaign falls apart.

There's a reason why most modern campaigns don't last very long.

 

[Potocki]

Reading your summary, I see that you have outlined some interesting high-level plotlines and themes, while lacking a reason for the party to get engaged. It sounds like the most interesting stuff happens without the party - the CEO plays with powers beyonds his understanding without any input by the party. According to you, you're trying to keep the party's plates spinning while this complicated plot plays out without any necessary engagement by them until "their part" (destroying the phylactery) begins. What happens if they miss all of your plot hooks? What if they think (le horreur) that your hooks are boring and becoming a pirate sounds more interesting?

Don't get me wrong - there's nothing particularly wrong with your plotline as described; the only issue is that the party has no reason to get involved. So at this point you have two distinct choices, that come down to your philosophical bent as a DM:

1. It's your plotline, so make them play it. Instead of the generic "you arrive in town and the bartender tells you to kill 20 rats in the basement" beginning, have your party start as mercenaries hired to escort the jungle convoy to the arcane prison. They can spend a few sessions familiarizing themselves with the world and the town (if it's important) before starting a long journey to the prison filled with hazards and enemies. Give them plenty of chances to get to know this group of morally-gray individuals they're traveling with - it'll make it more impactful when most of them are turned into the lich's thralls. If they decide to go after the phylactery, then maybe it's not because they're heroes - maybe they're just trying to claw back the payday they lost when the CEO got zapped into the Shadowdark.

2. If railroading them into the plot isn't your thing, then start building out the world and preparing for them to take their own path. If they decide to go with the convoy, great, go back to step 1. If they don't, then give them plenty of related hooks to keep them involved with the plot. Maybe they hate the shipping company and the CEO, but seem interested in the convoy - perhaps this rival nation can hire them as spies? Maybe they just want to screw around in town taking sidequests - then make them get caught up into the cold war between these nations, while dropping plenty of hints about the eventual fate of the convoy so they feel prepared when the crap hits the fan. Maybe they want to be pirates, in which case it seems like a great time to get them to really hate the shipping company and give them a reason to save the world after the company starts the apocalypse.

 

[MortalForce]

Looks like a nice little railroad story for the players to follow. If that' what your players like doing.

Do you have a map of your world? If so, why not just drop the party in a kingdom, give them rumors of what's going on in the region and let the players decide what they want to do? As they explore the kingdom, have them 'bump into' important NPC (faction heads) who are looking to hire able-bodies adventurers for blahblahblah.

Let the players explore their agency. It's liberating for everyone involved IME. And sure, have the BBEG doing BBEG stuff in the background and those activities start having an impact on the kingdom, the important NPCs and eventually, the PC party.

Also, having random tables for kingdom & wilderness encounters will make things so much easier for you. Myself, I just 'plan' the opening scene of a campaign, then after I pepper the group with rumors, I let the players go and do what they want. It's their show, right? I'm just a GM, not a film director with a script for people to follow. You've got events pre-planned and that can be IME a big mistake because what happens when the party doesn't follow your story the way you intended? Usually what happens is the GM either tries to force the party back onto the rails OR the GM gets confused and frustrated and the campaign falls apart.

There's a reason why most modern campaigns don't last very long.

Yeah, I've obviously left out substantial sections of the storyline for relative brevity, so it might come off as more railroady than it actually is. There's nothing stopping them from engaging with the various factions in any way that they see fit. They'll be entirely able to have a pirate themed campaign if that's something that they are interested in. That said, I'll have a look over what I've got with a fresh set of eyes.

I've got a map of my world, but the overview is gigantic, and have previously made sectional maps for specific campaigns in the world. I haven't finished the map for this part of the world yet.

I'll let the chips fall where they may a bit more and see how things shake out. I'll still have the various factions doing things that I've described, but make more of an effort to honour player agency. I'd thought about running random encounters being a bit less random and having encounters that are more balanced and appropriate to the campaign. There's no reason for some creatures to be in a jungle, and if they fight a particular faction, it seems reasonable that that faction would pursue them.

Thanks for your insights.

 

[MortalForce]

What happens if they miss all of your plot hooks?

Oh. OH. I can see where you're coming from, particularly with regard to the storyline not being necessarily dependent on the players. I've wrapped most of my player's backstories into involvement with the jungle, the shipping company, the rival nation, and the lich's treasure, but if the players decide that it's easier to get treasure from piracy, there's really nothing stopping them. As a bonus, they can also hit the shipping company that way as well. And that's something I haven't planned out or even considered until right now.
But tell me if these plot hooks aren't compelling:
-The gnome wizard is the fall guy for the shipping company's failure
-The high elf rogue has ancestral ruins literally calling her home
-The goliath paladin wants to avenge her lost ship and crew
-The tortle monk has brothers in important locations that he wants to reunite with
-The aasimar warlock needs treasure to find to keep his family afloat
All of these things should lead the players to engage with the setting, right? I'm not being facetious when I'm asking this, I'm genuinely curious. Because of course I wrote it, so I think it's genius. Well, not genius, but well rounded as a player driven campaign. I don't want to railroad the players, but I do want them to tell a story specific to their PC's. If that means that they throw out their backstory, then I'm not really sure what they wrote them for.

 

[Moving Pictures]

As someone else has already indicated in a less-than-subtle way, you're into railroad terrain ... which can be problematic.

My approach is inherently sandboxy. What this means is that things will happen that the party has no control over, no knowledge of.... like volcano eruptions far away.

My players are Greg, Tanya, Pardeep and Jaimie, and you better not read past this line if you're here.

So. Let me delve into a conceptual approach for my campaign: a triple full moon, which only happens once every 200-plus years, or so. That's going to be an epic spiritual/religious moment. I would like to time a campaign end on that clock.... but I am not tied to that. The basic idea is that in my world, there are three classes of deities: greater gods, lesser gods, and demideities. Their powers are not absolute and infinite, and are in fact tied to the number and power (see: level) of worshippers. In time, deities have bounced from one tier to the other... those who gain worshippers gain power. Currently, the Gnomish pair of deities are weakening at a rapid rate. Even the gnomes are turning to human faiths that are more able to assist them.

That may become a campaign end: some demideity kidnapping a high priest of a greater god for sacrifice under the three moons to trigger the ascention of a nasty deity to the next level of power. It's a thought: I haven't created the forces that would do that, yet. I don't need to.

In the immediate national context, I have started to introduce factions and politics to my group: a group of horse-riding plains-living folks evicted from their homelands 475 years ago... some want their lands back. The main nation used to be a collection of powerful dukes under a monarchy. The monarchy is gone, replaced by a house of lords, but some who trace their bloodline to the old Dukes want to reclaim power.

The main church is a prototypical mother-goddess religion, deeply entwined with the main nation. But the high priestess, revered and loved, is growing old. She has just stepped down, paving the way for the faith (and the goddess) to select a new high priest.

The Goddess, Huran, sensing that she is losing followers because of a very real tie to this main nation, is going to guide her potent priests to select a leader who is more of a universalist. He will immediately begin detatching the faith from the operations of government. The goal is to counter some of the failings of being perceived as the "official government religion." While the church has been paid well by the government to do things like have clerics in every town, city and some villages to perform the fantasy equivalent of taxpayer funded medicare, the church requires its entry level clerics to serve in defined posts.

Gifted, freedom-hunting youth are more interested in other faiths, such as a rising competitor - ironically, Huran's daughter. Alessa is a free-spirited deity whose followers were historically nature clerics (I have no druids) but recently, Alessa's powers have increased and now the faith is creating normal clerics - competing for the same resources.

OK. So this is long-winded. But you see here a backdrop for things that may draw the players into various elements.

There are Dukes present, especially those in the north of the country, who would love to see the House of Lords weakened, because it would give them greater power to shatter the system and return to a feudal monarchy. The shift in the Huran faith will create political uncertainty.

The entry-level/introductory adventure saw the party become aware of a plot to assassinate the son of a baron - or the baron, they still aren't sure. SOme nefarious crime lord had been retained to poison high-price, fancy whiskey with arsenic.

If the party follows this trail in the future, it may lead to a political rival trying to undermine certain elements within the House of Lords.

The party just finished an adventure where they assisted in brokering a cease-hostilities arrangement with goblins eager to reclaim lands that were once theirs.

And who might benefit from the main nation ceding terrain in the south, and appearing weak? Perhaps the same individual who would benefit from a southern leader dying mysteriously in six to eight months.... Or maybe it's two different northern power-brokers unknowingly targetting the same area/people for similar purposes.

The key is to create a storyline and a dynamic that is flexible. Undertand the motivations of your key baddies. The party has no idea who the baddies are.... not a clue. But that will reveal itself in time.

Yesterday, Caislingairn, the most potent premier-league rugby team in the country for decades, and last year's premier-league champion just lost to Gamble and Stoke 24-19. Their season record is 0-4-1, and the team appears in shambles. The mutterings in the pubs suggest the rugby-bonkers citizenry is already doubtful Caislingairn can defend its title.