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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ObsidianCrane" data-source="post: 4105163" data-attributes="member: 54918">Hmm first things first the "PCs are good" rarely works in my experience. Most players play a "vaguely good guy", you'll see a lot more Han Solo than you will Luke Skywalker for example.Motivating the PCs into adventuring is always a challenging thing, and there are several ways to do it, some are good, and some work with the right players, few are ever just plain bad.The plot is best laid out to the PCs in stages, little bits that over time tie together to make a bigger picture. Babylon 5 used to have a lot of episodes where it seemed that nothing of note happened, but by the time you got to the end of a season (or more) you could see the bigger picture taking shape.You can treat the campaign kind of like a TV series, each Season would be 26 sessions ( half a year of weekly play, a year of fortnightly play) and correspond to a Tier of play.Heroic Tier  - Season 1 - it introduces the characters, they learn about the world and their role in it. For your campaign they might start encountering more strange things in the day to day operation of doing other adventures. Adventures don't have to be drawn from the main plot in an obvious way to the players, but should regularly drop clues that there is a bigger picture. The season should end with a major event to let the players know they are in a new ball park - eg the Red Moon appears in the sky followed by an orgy of violence as people act on fears and dark desires. 26 Sessions is probably 8 or 9 adventures, if they are not focussed on the dungeon crawl mentality. That's still advancing slightly faster than a level an adventure.Paragon Tier - Season 2 - The players now know their world and have learnt that the BBEG is really a BBEG. They have the evidence of the first season that was sprinkled through it tied together to see a clear threat. They spend this Season learning about the BBEG, and finding a way to stop the BBEG. Most of the Adventures will be obviously plot focused, with a few that will likely pay off in season 3 - the ones where you meet important allies and so on. This is the Season where the PCs find out how to kill the BBEG and they race to get that tool before the BBEG can stop them destroy it etc.Epic Tier - Season 3 - if you have watched Babylon 5 this is season 4. The season in which everything is tied up and the Heroes finally begin to act directly against the BBEG. They will help their shattered Pantheon form an alliance, they will fight and kill one of the BBEG's powerful minions and so on. Until at the end the PCs finally confront the BBEG and are directly involved (with their God Allies) in defeating the BBEG.If the Hero Tier part of the Campaign works well, the other two will be much easier to mastermind because the PCs will largely want to follow the plot.Now lots of people have given advice on how to set up a campaign, and or adventure but there are some things you can be sure about; Players will do bizzare and unexpected things!"You do what!!"Will become an all to familiar thing <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />It often follows statements like "I shoot him" or "I stab him" and they will probably be the least difficult things a Player will want to do that will mess up your plans. (I regularly put DMs through the pain of entirely redirecting their module or even campaign with simple innocent IC and appropriate actions.) So the more flexible your plans the easier it is to accomodate players doing bizzare things that throw you a curveball.You might plot out the Adventures as a series of statements and goals leaving the details a little vague until you come to planning that particular session. Then you might have to plan 2 or 3 expected paths through the adventure for the session that let you achieve your goals while letting the Players think they controlled what they were doing.That's probably the hardest thing - convincing the players they are controlling things all the while having them do what you wanted.</blockquote>

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