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Message: <blockquote data-quote="StormKnight" data-source="post: 6418477" data-attributes="member: 79113">That's for the suggestions! I'm afraid that's pretty much backwards from what I'm experiencing. As mentioned, these tend to come up as part of the natural flow of the game. I haven't designed them from the PCs point of view. I've thought "here are these people, they are doing this stuff". I come up with what is going on in the world, who the people are, what they would be doing if the PCs weren't there... and I wind up without good places to go when the PCs interact. <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=":)" />This was an imminent question for me because I was running this last night. This was worrying question for me because it was a second play, and the first play went very badly!Typing in the question helped to clarify my thoughts on it a lot; I adjusted a lot of things, this time from the approach of "what would make good points of interaction/clues for the PCs?" rather than "what are these people doing". Things went much, much better.Some of the changes I made:* Originally, there were several pictures of early members of the group hanging in the study; one being of a person the PCs recognized. These pictures were moved down to the lower floor room that the PCs were likely to see first. This immediately established that they were on the right track, and more importantly gave them a good conversation starter.* Originally, most of the commune members had witnessed an 'incident' (the above mentioned captured NPC visiting - she's an insubstantial mutant who looks quite scary). Though they interpreted it differently (Ghost? Angel? Demon? Shared hallucination?), they all knew about it. Problem is, that makes it a bit of a shared secret among them, that outsiders would probably find a bit implausible. Not something you want to talk tp potential new recruits about (not without a lot of spin at least)So, in the redone version, only a few people had seen the visitor. Some of them had been scared, and left the group. The others were the ones working with the demon. The rest didn't know what happened exactly; the person showing the PCs around had chalked it up to a practical joke that a few people had taken too seriously. This made him much more willing to talk about it, and gave the PCs info that the 'prankster' group were people they needed to look at more closely.* Really big change. Originally, the conduit (the cosmic communicator thing) was controlled magically. You focus energy it in the proper way, it connects to different places. Problem is, while that's something one of the characters can do, it's not actually something the PLAYERS can interact with. So, in the redone version, the conduit had a visible piece, but also a hidden actual control panel. That's something the players could look for and interact with and figure out. It still required an infusion of magic energy to actually trigger, but that's how other magical objects have worked, so they knew to do that.This also meant that the one person there who knew how to control the conduit had to do physical things to use it. He could tell the PCs had messed with it, but he needed to actually go manipulate it himself to figure out what they had done. And he can't power it himself, so he needed his associates for it, but needed to make changes to the controls while they weren't there (he didn't want to share that secret). This gave a lot more stuff going on for the PCs to spot, spy on and interact with.* The conduit itself originally was mainly just voice. I changed it to create an image as well, which when the PCs activated it gave them much more information about who they were talking to (and gave who they were talking to more info about them...)* One of the commune members became a big tabloid reader and conspiracy nut. This resulted in her recognizing a PC (who had wound up in a celebrity gossip bit as a celebrity's new girlfriend...long story!). This set her up as a good source of info and gossip; she was also in touch with what was going on within the group, like the people meeting at night for some secret reason. She was also fun to play; I made her familiar with a lot of stuff that had happened with the PCs, but drawing a lot of wild conclusions about them; her info was pretty good, but her connections and theories were wildly off!* Originally, the demon had given a made-up name for itself to the people. Ditched that bit of misdirection; he's got a huge ego and was virtually unknown in this world when he made contact with the originally. There would have been no reason for him to use an alias.* The guy who was in touch with the demon, this time, actually contacted the demon for advice. Said demon has been playing a "wise guiding angel" to them, but when the PCs stepped in and confronted him, they knew he had a really bad temper and goaded him into breaking his character and delivering a bunch of vicious threats that turned his two less knowledgeable followers against him.* Part of the premise involved using the conduit to find a place to go for more information, but the original set-up left them without a really good reason to go to a potentially dangerous place. This time, after they had exposed the demon he bit, he had his still loyal follower set up the conduit to allow him to direct a bolt of infecting energy at one of the PCs. Now they NEED to follow-up to figure out what she's been infected with.So, this time went very well. Fun bit of light mystery and interaction, setting up to a nice cliff-hanger and more upcoming adventure. Fhew (that's, err, a sigh of relief).Now I'm trying to figure out how to generalize what I learned here.* Worked better when approached from "how will I give the PCs info" rather than just "what are the NPCs up to?"* Conflicting NPCs give the PCs a lot more to interact with.* Be sure that some of the NPCs will be inclined to open up to the PCs, at least enough to give them clues as to who to talk to.* Provide leads to follow early to direct the conversations."what would I do if strangers showed up?  Or the po-pos?"  They might make some common-sense decisions, or even have a drill for when the wrong people show up.For the record, for this particular instance, none of this really makes sense. What they do with strangers is welcome them, be very friendly, and hope they'll be impressed enough to want to donate money and stay there. And talking with spirits/angels/demons may be odd or disbelieved, but it certainly isn't illegal. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /></blockquote>

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