Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Peni Griffin" data-source="post: 3373633" data-attributes="member: 50322">Both of you need to tailor your hooks to your parties, and it'd be hard for someone unfamiliar with them to help you.  Since what I'd told my players about the geography of the campaign world was a little hard to squeeze Elsir Vale into, and the party is not formally bound at the hip, I needed to produce individual reasons for all of them to want to make a long journey.  One of the PCs is a paladin attached to a monastery that is a paladin training facility; no such facility exists in Elsir Vale; therefore, I planted a wannabe paladin from the Vale at his monastery, killed him off in the line of duty, and put Sir Tib in charge of escorting the body back to his family in Drellin's Ferry.  The rogue's errant mother, whom he hasn't seen since he was 8, is getting married in Brindol and sent him an invitation.  The dwarf cleric has bossy relatives with business in the Hammerfist Holds, and since Wulfgrim has friends going that direction anyway he might as well conduct it.   I put an Eisteddfodd in Dennovar to attract the bard.  And the fighter, whose player is into drama, has a mysterious boyfriend who is being blackmailed by his mother, Lady Kaahl, into returning to Brindol against his will.  Once in Drellin's Ferry, events overtake all these goals rapidly, but each hook keeps tugging at them and provides a framework within which the players move and make decisions.  Aunt Wulfina's money is being embezzled to pay for magic items, the rogue is worried about his mother, the fact that the fallen paladin was the nephew of Kellin Shadowbanks presented them with an automatic friendly local tie, and so on.Your players might not need anything so elaborate, but if you think about what motivates each of them and their characters individually, you should be able to construct a hook that will genuinely hook them, so that they don't decide that they've done enough for these people and really just want to bust past the roadblocks and head for the hills.  Mine their backstories, if they have them.  Players love it when you use those.  If your players are the sort who are in it for the loot and have no functional past before meeting in the bar, what has happened in the campaign that can lead them here?</blockquote>

Verification