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Message: <blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 6063864" data-attributes="member: 22424">Okay, since you don't know how long it's going to run, my advice is this: if there is anything you feel must be in the campaign, make sure it's in there right away!However, for the most part, I would recommend just assuming it will run about as long as average*, and not worry about it too much. You will need to accept the risk that the campaign may fold before some plots come to fruition, but that's always a risk, and anyway you can recycle them.* For me, that's between 6 and 12 months. Obviously, you're likely to have a different answer.Rule of thumb #1: You probably want to start seeding things by the second adventure. (The first adventure would be even better, but that adventure already has a lot of ground to cover.)Rule of thumb #2: Most PC background stuff tends to be quite personal, small-scale stuff. In D&D, then, it's generally a good idea to deal with it while still in the low-levels in 3e (1-5), or in the Heroic tier (4e).Neither of these is absolute, of course.For my current campaign, I have a significant number of ongoing mysteries. I try to ensure that the PCs learn something in every session. Additionally, I make sure to seed lots of clues, so that they're free to miss them and still have a good chance of getting the information they need.The net effect of this is that 18 months into the campaign (it's a long one), they've managed to unpick something like 90% of the mysteries I've laid down. And, crucially, they worked it out without prompting by me. Which has proven to be immensely satisfying.I recently read through the Lankhmar stories, and one of the things I noticed was that Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser tended to go off in all sorts of random directions... and wherever they went, adventure was there waiting for them. Of course, they weren't necessarily the same adventures, but there was always something...I recommend doing much the same - seeds loads of campaign points all over the place, and that way the PCs are likely to encounter some wherever they go. They won't necessarily be the same seeds, but that's fine. (Of course, it helps if you have more than one thing going on in the campaign world at a time.)Depends on the players. IME, though, you could hit them with a stick and it could be too subtle. <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=":)" />More seriously, I advocate adopting the "three clue rule" (which I got from the <a href="http://thealexandrian.net/" target="_blank">Alexandrian</a>) - for every conclusion you want the players to reach, seed three clues. They'll likely miss one, misinterpret one, and finally "get it" with the third.I hope some of that helps!</blockquote>

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