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Message: <blockquote data-quote="shilsen" data-source="post: 3436706" data-attributes="member: 198">Well, here goes:I'd started the campaign off with "Ok - roll initiative", in a battle between the PCs and three NPCs in an abandoned warehouse in Sharn. One of the NPCs was a unique warforged with metal claws on its fingers and an arm-cannon that fired a blast of fire (mechanically, warforged with the half-dragon template). The PCs were there to recover something the NPCs had stolen from House Cannith, which was a schema that had to do with warforged construction.Since I had intentionally started the campaign with no preplanned overarching arc but wanted one to arise out of PC choices and actions, I threw a bunch of plot hooks at them in the next session and the PCs chose to go to New Cyre, accept an offer by Prince Oargev to bring back important items from the Mournland, and did so. There, they were captured by forces belonging to the Lord of Blades, who took the items. By the time the PC escaped, they had discovered that the LoB was likely creating new warforged, and that he had probably created the one they killed at the start of the campaign.After returning to Sharn, the PCs got involved with the warforged there, both trying to help improve their situation politically and aiding in tracking down someone who was murdering warforged in the Cogs. The murderer(s) were leaving signs threatening the warforged and many of the slain warforged had three holes in the backs of their necks. The PCs assumed that the murderers were people in Sharn opposed to warforged emancipation and worked hard to find them, but never did.Eventually, the PCs ended up back in New Cyre planning to head back into the Mournland. They learned something about a couple of unusual warforged having been seen in the area heading southwards and figured they might have been created by the LoB. The big set of deductions was when they managed to work out that the claws on the first warforged they killed would have fit the holes they found in the murdered warforged, realized that the LoB was sending out warforged to secretly murder other warforged to create dissent and unhappiness among the warforged community and against them, that this was happening at various places around Breland and possibly elsewhere, and that some of the documents they had lost during their capture in the Mournland had actually expedited the LoB's plans.I think the bit that was really shocking to them was the fact that it tied a significant amount of their past into one great, interlocking whole. As I mentioned, since there was no preplanned overarching campaign plan, the players knew that they were free to do anything and pick their own directions. There had been numerous times when I'd thrown out anywhere from 5-10 plot hooks at once and they'd gone after one which had no evident logical connection with what they'd done before. So there was both player surprise and PC surprise at finding that I'd managed to create an interlocking plot thread stretching all the way back to the beginning, and made all of their actions have a relevance and importance far beyond what they'd thought it had. All in all, it was just one of the most satisfying moments I've had as a DM, and what made it especially good was that the players loved it and were talking of it all the way to the end of the campaign, over a year later.</blockquote>

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