What do you do to lead into the next adventure?

[dreaded_beast]

My group is probably gonna finish up the Burning Plague module next session.

Haven't really decided what adventure to follow up with after that, but I was wondering how other people out there lead into the next adventure.

 

[Crothian]

We are a DM's best friend. We make friends with churches and governemnts and say if there is anything they need done, we will be happy to help out. So, our adventures are set up by a well known NPC coming to us and requesting our help for something. And we go do it with few questions asked. It is great fun trusting the NPCs and just helping out for really no reward excpt for the knowledge of a job well done. It also makes it really easy on the DM which is an added bonus.

 

[Samothdm]

I cheesed out on that one and had a friend of a bard who used to belong to the group (a player who had quit our game) say that he had information on where to find the bard character. It was a strong bit of railroading, but I was a little tired that night...

I got them into the Burning Plague by setting the stage earlier during the previous module. I had a few people in the main town turn up sick with the same kind of plague and it eventually came out that they had all come from the little mining village featured in the Burning Plague.

Generally, that's how I try to bring my players into something like that. For the Banewarrens, I started dropping clues while they were still 1st level and I changed the concept a little bit so that the Banewarrens are actually hidden - nobody knew where they were although everyone knew they existed (they didn't know what the big tower sticking up out of the ground was, either). So, from 1st thorugh 5th level, I had my players running all over the place trying to find a map that would lead them to the Banewarrens. Anytime I needed them to go to some other place to fit in with a published adventure I was using, I'd just tell them, "Someone in the tavern mentions that there's a huge library in XYZ City. They may have ancient texts and maps there that you could use to pinpoint the location of the Banewarrens."

Worked like a charm.

 

[Mark]

< -- (name) at (custom title) Email me, d-beast.

My group is probably gonna finish up the Burning Plague module next session.

Haven't really decided what adventure to follow up with after that, but I was wondering how other people out there lead into the next adventure.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

In the beginning of the session/adventure I drop a hook for one possible follow up adventure, another hook to a different adventure in the middle, and another hook to a third possible follow up adventure near the end. Of course, if the conclusion of the current adventure leaves the characters with a rival that could pop up again in future modules, that makes for a fourth hook.

 

[Psion]

I tend to plant seeds for one adventure in the prior adventures.

For example, the party in my river of worlds game are on the river of worlds seeking an abducted elven prince... but to get a guide to help them, they had to help their guide (a member of the Memento Mori) explore a god's death site. Once they find the yuan-ti that abducted the prince, they will find that the yuan-ti sold him to a group of corrupted elemental elves. When the players travel to the realms of the elemental elves (the lost homeland of one PC), the party will get wrapped up in discovering why the elemental elves have cut off all contact, and why the party's wind elf turned into a drow elf (along with the elf prince they were supposed to save). After they deal with that situation, they should return through a portal to the port city just in time to see it overrun by the forces of chaos....

And so on.


Another alternative is to give the PCs a patron who gives them a job. Keep it simple at first, but later on, start to make the patron's involvement in affairs questionable or complex.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Pick out what adventures you're going to use and foreshadow, foreshadow, foreshadow. My PC's in one campaign are 5th level now, I set up an adventure plot for them that they might not get to till 7th level. They don't even know it was set up. They're currently going to a Mardis Gras-like festival; that was mentioned in the very early going - and the reason they're going is to resolve an issue from a PC's backstory that dates from before the game started.

I just dropped another adventure hint in a game a couple of sessions ago, and its very up in the air when they'll go back to that - it could be anywhere from 7th to 12th level.

Every little bit of history that I create for the world includes at least some small tidbit that could develop into an adventure. If you know you're using one adventure, and the PC's will need to be friendly with a particular NPC, introduce that NPC beforehand, and make him helpful so when he becomes a plot point, the PC's care. I introduced an NPC in "Of Sound Mind" that I knew would go missing in the followup Dungeon adventure I was using - I wanted the PC's to feel a personal connection to that NPC.

 

[deltadave]

Throw random hooks into all your adventures, that way they can show up again in the future when the current series is done. NPC's from the past are always a good way to remind PC's of those hooks.

 

[the Lorax]

The seeds of the future are placed in the present. I try to build a campaign in such a way that the players have at least some idea of what is comming, or that the PCs know an area before the adventure happens. Last year I began running 3 campaigns at roughly the same time, all taking place concurrently in different areas of my campaign world. One of the groups began in the town from the Iron Satyr Dungeon Adventure. That adventure is for fairly high level characters, and I still have yet to run the adventure for those players, but at some point I will.

If the players and you dont have an idea for what comes next, or how to segue to the next adventure, then perhaps it's time to schedule some down time for the characters. Let them go to town, spend their money, do some social activites, use those item creation feats they took. Pretty soon, they'll be lookin' for an adventure and you won't have to lead them anywhere.