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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Paul Farquhar" data-source="post: 9286460" data-attributes="member: 6906155">The point is to make it hard for them to miss. But never underestimate the obtuseness of players.Stuff the DM hasn't prepped in advance with interesting characters, narratives, lore dumps, pretty pictures etc.Why not just have the monsters keel over dead the moment they spot the PCs? Finding the monsters, just like fighting the monsters, is part of the fun of the game. Of course, if the players are only interested in combat, I would suggest keeping the detective work to a minimum.If you like. The current adventure. I start with the basic set up. In this case, the PCs have been hired to find the archaeologist husband of an NPC friend they met in a previous adventure, who's expedition has been missing for four years. The players do not know that he has been transformed into a lycanthrope-like monster after eating some strange herbs he found on the dig (the movie The Relic was a vague inspiration). I also know the setting is Ravenloft and the PCs are level 7. But none of this is written down (until now). What I actually write down is I started by creating a hex map of the swamp-like Ravenloft domain where the expedition disappeared. I seed the map with stuff related to the plot, such as a couple of dig sites, and ancient ruin, along with locations that are either interesting, useful or rewarding, such as an inn run by lizard-folk, a dragon lair, a strange colony of mycanoids living on a dragon-turtle spore servant, etc. I also create a random encounter table, some of the encounters are "creepy swamp" generic but others are related to the story, such as hunters who are also after the monster, or previous adventures, such as zombie pirate assassins hunting the PCs because they betrayed them in a previous adventure. I place the missing arachnologist along with clues to help the players find him, as well as clues and items that could lead to the PCs either curing or killing him (this being Ravenloft he is almost unkillable otherwise). There are about three different ways the players could cure him, although one would involve someone else becoming the monster, and another requires a trip to Barovia. So, having placed the pieces, I let the story unfold as the players interact with them.</blockquote>

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