Still no overall plot...

[MonsterMash]

1. You do not NEED a single, overarching, uniting plot.

2. Every time a bad guy escapes, remember him and work out what he might do in the future, and whether he holds a grudge against the PCs.

3. Every time a bad guy is brought to negative hitpoints, but not brought to -10, check to see if he stabilises. Do this even for nobody-grunts. Then go to step 2.

4. Whenever a bad guy's plot is destroyed, see if you can think of a plot that would have required that plot to be destroyed. ie - if the characters save the city, that would benefit the evil creatures intending to suck the city into an alternate dimension. Etc. Then rewrite NPCs so they were working towards this new group's plot when they helped the PCs. Note that this could be wittingly or unwittingly...

My campaign doesn't have any single overarching plot thread, and I like it that way. There are always lots of hooks from odd rumours and potential for defeated bad guys to come back to haunt the PCs so who needs the big plot as its an episodic game not a novel.

 

[Templeton580]

*

 

[rogueattorney]

How about asking your players what they want to do? Do they want to quest for the Great MacGuffin in the Sky? Do they want to save the world from the Ancient Big Bad Guy of Pure Badness? Do they want to forge their own kingdoms, get rich, marry the princess, explore the world, create new and fabulous magics? Ask them for ideas and you might be surprised by what you get. It sure a heck of a lot easier than creating a big story plot and having your players uninterested in it.

R.A.

 

[helium3]

Maybe this is beside the point, but it actually might help to know why they decided to up and leave for an entirely new location. That provides some insight into what the party is interested in doing. And above all else, you better hope your party is into your over-arching plot, whatever it ends up being.

 

[Dark Jezter]

Campaign: (several definitions)
[n] a series of actions advancing a principle or tending toward a particular end; "they worked in the cause of world peace"; "the team was ready for a drive toward the pennant"; "the movement to end slavery"
[n] several related operations aimed at achieving a particular goal (usually within geographical and temporal constraints)


I think games do not need a connecting plot, but a campaign requires it.

I say tomato, you say tomatoe. In D&D terminology, I've always used campaign to refer to any D&D game where the PCs and setting carry over from session to session. It dosen't matter if the campaign has one big, overreaching storyline, or is a series of unconnected adventures.

 

[The_Gneech]

Actually, I've decided to try an experiment with my game, inspired somewhat by my recent playing of Neverwinter Nights, and looking at my huge stack of Dungeon magazines, which is the "Adventure Hub" model.

Instead of deciding, "Okay, here's my adventure, how do they fit into it?" I've set up their home base and picked a handful of roughly-level-appropriate adventures going on in the neighborhood. They can do them in whatever order they please, or do some and ignore the others, and all it takes is a little tweaking for each to tie them into one another. (Got a kidnapped daughter in Adventure A? Have her father be one of the NPCs from Adventure B, and give him the Stolen Item of Stolenness that the PCs are looking for in Adventure C, etc.)

This gives a wonderful feeling of "overall plot," even when really there isn't one. I ran "Vanity" and "Totentanz" from Dungeon back-to-back, connecting them by having a background brewing of a necromancer's plot, and they clicked quite well even though as written they had nothing to do with each other.

Now, my group is 6th-going-on-7th, so I'm setting up hooks for them to choose from a few homebrew scenarios plus Curse of the Emerald Cobra (from the "Dungeon Crawl Classics" line), "Cradle of Madness" from Dungeon #87, "Beast of Burden" from #100, and "The Seventh Arm" from #88, doctoring them to connect with previously-established NPCs and tossing in more connections to the necromancer plot as appropriate. The heroes can chase any or all of these, pretty much in whatever order they like, but whichever way they go it'll FEEL like they're taking part of the overall plot because I've tied them together in small-but-pivotal spots.

-The Gneech