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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Stormborn" data-source="post: 2748184" data-attributes="member: 14041">(Sometimes its amusing to sit back and watch people say "What the OP meant was..."  especially when you are the Original Poster.)Some of the advice in this thread is very good, and largely what I as thining.  The metaplot point is well made - I should have some ready.  And, knowing how I tend to do things, would have anyway.  However, I think one of the tricks to the metaplots in an "open" enviroment is to not make them Apocolyptic Metaplots. In my group that has been the problem, we have one DM who is all about letting the PCs do whatever they want - however he tends to run CoC style games in which the world gets overrun by eldritch horrors if we don't do what we are supposed to do.In a sucesful open enviroment the metaplots, whether the PCs interact with them or not, should effect the PCs world, even if the PCs are unaware of it.   They should not, however, so drastically alter the  campaign enviroment that the nature of the game changes.  This is even true with adventures, for example I would not use, as one poster above mentioned, a possibly plot hook in which the town would be destroyed if the PCs didn't get involved.  Now, this may seem to dimish the PCs as world saving heros but I think the trick is making what the PCs do feel important to them and their world, even if on a personal level.   If they don't stop the strange cult that has been kidnapping children in the poor part of town it might result in a demon god being one step closer to coming into this world, but if they do stop them suddenly they have the gratitude of an entire community of people, which might be very important if later on they are on the run and need a place to hide out.Now, back to the questions at hand.  Sevral posters have mentioned that PC background is important in an "open", or at least realtively so, campaign.  To what degree should the DM help the PCs construct this back ground?  And why are they all together anyway if they have created very diverse backgrounds?</blockquote>

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