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Message: <blockquote data-quote="overgeeked" data-source="post: 9046234" data-attributes="member: 86653">It's honestly not as hard as it sounds.It sounds overly simplistic, but all you need is to keep asking "who?" and "why?" and to keep in mind action-reaction.You want to give the PCs a hook that leads them to a kobold cave. Okay, cool. Who gives them that hook and why? You decide it's the bartender who gives them the hook, okay but why? Something personal to the bartender. Maybe because the kobolds stole a shipment of booze for the bar. Okay, then why did the kobolds steal the booze? Again, something personal. Maybe they're starving and were bribed with food by someone to steal the booze. Cool...but who and why? Maybe there's another bar that's in competition with the quest-giving bartender's bar. The new bar bribed the kobolds to steal the booze. They will sell the booze, make lots of money and drive the quest-giving bartender out of business. Cool. Then comes...why? Maybe make it personal...spin some kind of link between the two bars...or just let it be greed. But then there's also the starving kobolds. Why are they starving? What happened there and why?You just need to drop clues that the PCs can discover to make these connections. A note in common for the kobolds, big bushels of grain in their cave, the quest-giver's booze in their cave, an NPC from the second bar there making the payment, etc. It can be anything really. Just something to let the PCs connect the dots.That's the who and why, but what about action-reaction?The PCs bite the hook and get involved. They go find the kobold cave and do their thing. They find clues, talk to NPCs, etc. They discover that the kobolds are starving, that they were bribed, and they discover the shipment of booze. Okay, now what? It's up to the PCs. Do they keep the booze or deliver it to the bartender? Do they pursue the leads about who bribed the kobolds? Do they follow up on the kobolds lack of food? It's not up to you, it's up to them. But, as the DM you control the NPCs and the world. So you have to keep in mind how the NPCs and world would react to the PCs' actions. What does the bartender do? How would he react to the PCs keeping the booze or trying to sell it back to him? What do the kobolds do (if there are any survivors)? What do the owners of the second bar do? What happens to the kobolds' cave? Something's going to move in there, but what?You start with "kobolds in a cave" and "bartender quest-giver" and end up with...well, whatever it is you end up with because a lot of this depends on what the PCs do. But it doesn't take much to spin out a complex inter-connected setting from the ground up.</blockquote>

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