Struggling with DMing

[davethegame]

I'm not a sandbox guy at all, but if I were in your position with those parameters, I'd focus a lot on the short-term on using random generators to fill things out a bit beyond what the PCs are likely to encounter in the next few sessions, then work with the players to decide what they want to see and to help create those middle arcs. Their feedback (as well as plothooks based on their characters) should help with that middle step.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Every time you create an encounter, link it to something else that's already appeared in the campaign. Like there's an orc ambush so the orcs turn out to be worshippers of a demon prince whose cult has previously been mentioned. Or they are working with some bandits the PCs encountered previously. Or one of the orcs is a half-orc and he's the son of a local lord.

That's sort of what I did for my last campaign. I just tried to create interesting NPCs, locations and events, often without having any kind of long term plan for them. Then I'd re-use characters that appealed to me, come up with more info about them and make connections. Like one session the PCs encounter cyber-jaguars menacing a Colombian city. They were created for a local crime boss, which the players learned but didn't follow up. Several sessions later, that same crime boss has an electrical supervillain working as his hitman, a villain who turns out to be connected with a Golden Age-style cloud city whose masters are creating monster-men, and so on and so forth. It never ends, just gets more complicated.

 

[Oryan77]

As a group, ask the players what their next immediate goal in the campaign is. Ask what each PC wants to do next as an individual

This is what I was going to advise. If time is an issue and you refuse to use published material, then you might just be making it worse for yourself. But if that's cool, then I'd just ask the players what their goals are and go with that. Use those goals as the filler.

 

[fba827]

In my prep time for a similar style campaign, I usually write down:
1) detailed info on one-two encounters that i expect are highly likely to happen based on previous sessions (i.e. an enemy that will hunt them down, or a hideout the players have been wanting break into and plunder, etc)

2) a large list of what I call 'setup hooks' These are hooks that set things up in the background so that plot hooks can be used in another session or two. Think of them as pre-plot hooks i.e. the seamstress is an elf with auburn hair, it is noteworthy because there aren't many elves in this part. Or, the mayor of town X isn't able to see anyone because he has been sick, so the PCs will have to come back later - which may setup some situation for the mayor next session, was he really sick or something else wrong, ormaybe it is a setup for a plague situation when the pcs come back the next session more people will be sick..

3) a list of plot hooks. these are proper plot hooks that attempt to draw the PCs immediately into a plot should the PCs decide to follow up on it. i.e. "if the PCs go to town X, they'll be approached the seamestress elf they met before and she tells them her back story as to how she came to be here and that she needs help doing something..." or "when the PCs go back to visit the mayor who was unable to meet them before, they find that he hasn't been sick but has been missing.... or not only has he been sick but now more than half the town shops are closed due to illness..."

4) i stat out a bunch of henchmen for a couple power groups just in case...

5) i stat out a couple potential random unrelated encounters (i.e. the owlbear that attacks the party camp at night if they camp in the darkwood forest)


from there it is just improvising.

Anything that doesn't get used in a session is just copy/pasted to the next sessions planning notes. I find that i don't have to spend more than a couple hours preping for the next session because lots of stuff carries forward OR at least some of the work is done for me and i just need to update stats/ideas (i.e. move a starter hook to the plot hook session since the PCs bit that hook).

that's just how i do it anyway.

 

[Doug McCrae]

2) a large list of what I call 'setup hooks' These are hooks that set things up in the background so that plot hooks can be used in another session or two. Think of them as pre-plot hooks i.e. the seamstress is an elf with auburn hair, it is noteworthy because there aren't many elves in this part. Or, the mayor of town X isn't able to see anyone because he has been sick, so the PCs will have to come back later - which may setup some situation for the mayor next session, was he really sick or something else wrong, ormaybe it is a setup for a plague situation when the pcs come back the next session more people will be sick..

That's called foreshadowing.

Good advice, btw.

 

[innerdude]

I can only echo what other people have said here, which is that the way to make the "threads" of each hook connect is to create inherent motivations for the major players in the world that aren't PCs.

What are the various organizations doing? How are they responding to the PCs actions? What do the various government/religious/magic entities want to accomplish, and are the PCs helping or hindering those goals?

What this does is change a random set of encounters into, "We had to beat encounter A to stop NPC X from achieving his goal. However, now we have to stop NPC Y from completing action Z, and so we'll probably have to face encounter B."

One of the best things the original Baldur's Gate I and II computer games did was they built the illusion that the various groups at various locations were acting without regard to the PCs, allowing the characters to intervene in fun ways.

The PCs, then, can base their decisions on whether or not they go along with, or try to prevent those events from happening.

Even if the PCs don't particularly care one way or the other, at some point they're going to run afoul of an NPC with an agenda of his/her own--and then be forced to deal with the consequences.

 

[Barastrondo]

This. I'd add that your players also could make your life easier if they told you in advance which plot hooks they intended to follow. That lets you focus your limited prep time on what the players actually want to do for the next session or two. You can put off developing the rest until such a time as the players get around to pursuing them.

Yes, yes indeed. I tend to ask my players what they want to do next as early as when they're packing up after a session, and harass them again so I have a general idea of what their next plan well before I have to start planning the next evening's session. If they request more information to make an informed choice, I try to give them a paragraph or two over email, hopefully seeded with enough intriguing emphasis that yes, this is an interesting plot hook, that they bite fully.

As for specific tricks to mid-level plots apart from "carefully tail player motivations..." Mostly I tend to start exploring possible connections between smaller plots, or hooks the players pick up on. For instance, I knew for one game that recently I wanted to have a troublesome bandit problem, and I wanted to have an agriculture-goddess temple taken over by plague-priests. The "mid-plot" came about when I started trying to figure out how to link the two. Before long, I put together something about a land-grab in which the bandits were paid to harass this one estate, and the "backup plan" was to hire the plague-priests to blight the land (temporarily, of course). Of course, plague magic is a little more dramatic than a blatant land grab. So the person who wanted the land was clearly more of a patsy in the grand scheme of things, and his realization of that might lead to some interesting desperate moves on his part, and stir up more activity from the pestilence-cult... and after a bit of musing, bam, there I had something to tie together several weeks of adventure.

They don't just have to be adventures, mind. I tend to keep a small book in which I jot down any idea that occurs to me as befitting a given theme. So, for instance, I might jot down "succubus imprisoned in a mirror," and then later decide I want to tie that in somehow. The structured challenge of using a "secret ingredient," Iron DM-style, will sometimes provide interesting ideas for ties between otherwise unrelated things. Of course, it helps to have a long list of ingredients so you can find something that works. But that's why I keep the book around at all times, so I can grow those lists at any point.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

A lot of nice advice in here, especially the stuff about making lists of significant people/places/things/etc, and their relationships.

One thing that helps me is to make the process very visual & interactive. I jot these items on sticky notes (different colors are useful) so I can arrange them on a large piece of paper or whiteboard.

Then it's very easy to see everything at a glance, shift things around, draw connecting lines, and so on. When you've more or less sorted it out, you can transfer the result to your reference document. BTW, the nice thing about using stickies on paper is that you can just fold it all up: the stickies are the master document.

There's a lot software that does this kind of thing, as well (perhaps Masterplan does?), but I'm too old fashioned to know much about that

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Sometimes when I struggle to convert from BIG IDEAS to encounters I use a simple flowchart to layout what encounter can lead to what encounter and how success and failures at encounters (or scenes not involving fighting) affect the plot at a whole.

A simple 4 ending plot with three planned encounters might read as follows..

BIG IDEA: Some orcs are attacking a castle. The PCs might intervene for the king. If the PCs fight for the king this is the plot.

1. PCs defend castle walls from orc army. (Giant set-piece battle involving siege warfare and coordinating different untrained troops)
PASS: goto 2
FAIL: goto 3

2. PCs are asked to harass/destroy the regrouping orcs. (Stealth, traps, ambushes, or assassination of the orc leader. Anything goes that hampers and hurts the orcs)
PASS: goto ENDING 1
FAIL: goto ENDING 2

3. PCs are asked to help the royal family escape the castle. (Chase scene through the sewers with the PCs acting as royal guard.)
PASS: goto ENDING 3
FAIL: goto ENDING 4

ENDING 1: The PCs are true heros of the castle and are treated royally by the king. They have a new home base to launch adventures from. (Campaign takes a "seeking adventure" turn as the PCs are relatively free from immediate danger.)

ENDING 2: The PCs are thanked and rewarded by the king. The orc army is still around and may show up later in the campaign. (Campaign still at its "War sometime in the near future and the PCs can be mercenaries" standing)

ENDING 3: The castle falls to the orcs but the king lives on. The PCs may pass the king off to some other castle and move on or help plot to retake the castle in the next adventure. (Campaign switches to a "Citybuilding with the new king" mode)

ENDING 4: With the castle overrun and the royal family killed, the PCs have totally left the area ripe for the picking. The orcs have moved up a slot or two on the "movers and shakers" list of the world and the PCs have lost a bit of their reputation as heros. (Campaign switches to a "PCs on the run an in hiding" mode)

DS

 

[Janx]

One of the things I try to do is make the game world intersect and involve the PCs.

In the orcs and castle example, don't just put a castle over there that needs help.

When the PCs are in the castle (or wherever they are), they find out that place they are in needs help. It's more immediate, and has a direct chain of consequence and interest to the PCs.

I also recently came to the idea to consider creating things in the game space as threats and opportunities for the players.

If the players have something of significant value (land, title, object), you might make a threat to take it away. This is of direct interest to the PC.

If the players are interested in a goal, item, etc, present an opportunity to get it. This opportunity of course has its challenges.

In either case, these threats and opportunities form your plot hooks.

Be wary of using too many threats and too often. However, a player almost always enjoys having more opportunities.