D&D General World Building Theme and idea theft

[AmandaBarbarian]

So I asked for general DM advise, because hello I am new to Dming. However I would like to start a series of specific posts asking about different parts of world building. This isn't a plus thread per say, but if you think I should not world build that is not very helpful.
Also Warning, I ramble when I am excited even in text.

(if you want to see part 1 https://www.enworld.org/threads/world-building-commerce-and-gold.698360/ if your want to see part 2 https://www.enworld.org/threads/world-building-army-building.698375/ and there is a part 2b someone else spun off https://www.enworld.org/threads/wor...-in-military-application.698390/#post-9051859 )
Part 3 https://www.enworld.org/threads/world-building-tech-magic-and-society.698394/ (and 3b spin off again where I get told that a cantrip can't do what a cantrip says https://www.enworld.org/threads/worldbuilding-destruction-and-siege-via-mold-earth.698457/
And another spin off about the mechanics of spells https://www.enworld.org/threads/wor...ics-of-spellcasting-tell-us-of-flavor.698470/
Part 4 https://www.enworld.org/threads/world-building-did-magic-evolve.698479/


Okay, so wind up to question 5: How do you foreshadow and hint

So this one sounds vague so I am going to try to not go too far out with rambling. I have been in a few games where we realize 5 6 even 35 sessions in that something from history that seemed like flavor and almost forgettable has been brought up a few times. We then also realize where that bit of information is important now in the live game.
In real life I have heard it said that even if history doesn't repeat it sure rhymes, and as such I think that makes sense. On the other hand I really adore mystery in novels and movies that when the answer comes up you know the cluse were there from the jump. So I want to try to include these types of things.

But there is more to this. I can obviously say (and I am) just right off the jump "I am taking from stargate a lot for this game" but what if I wanted to make it not obviusly? What if I wanted a session to happen where it dawns on a player mid game "Hey, this is like star gate?" is there a good way to do that?

And is it cheating to have things that are set to a theme that can only be realized by finding out of game information? Like the characters never saw SG1 or Atlantis, so the players realizing it and saying "Hey, I bet that means there is an Atlantis type thing around here somewhere that could help us!" that seems to boarder on meta gaming… BUT on the other hand playing into themes and tropes from the show seems less so.

 

[RoughCoronet0]

So I take inspiration from a lot of random sources, often time without knowing all that much from the franchises I’m taking inspiration from.

For example, one of my Continents called Multa, was inspired by a combination of Horizon Zero Dawn, Transformers Beast Wars and the more animal transformers from the live action movies, and the movie Mortal Engine among other things.

Basically, Multa is a vast landscape rich in minerals and elemental power where roughly half of the flora and fauna are mechanical, living machines that consume, breathe, breed, and live in a delicate yet harmonious balance alongside their organic counterparts. There are few stationary townships or settlements, and instead the largest and most well known cities are the great moving cities, kingdoms and civilizations that thrive on the back of a kaiju-sized mechanical or elemental beast that roams the land. The machines are so crucial to Multa’s ecosystem that several Druidic sects that reside on the continent consider them just as vital to the natural order as organic creatures and have formed the Druidic Circle of the Forge that exist to learn from and protect these beautiful mechanical species, and many other Multa natives hunt, farm, raise, and tame these creatures for mostly the same reasons as they would normal animals and plants.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

"If you steal from one author it's plagerism; if you steal from many it's research."

 

[jmartkdr2]

It's really hard to foreshadow in DnD because you never actually know what directions the players will go. I like to seed hints all over the place and some of those will end up retroactively becoming foreshadowing, but it's rarely intentional.

As for making a Stargate-themed campaign: that's an awesome idea and I wish I could play in it. On the other hand, to keep it from being predictable (not just to people who've watched the show but also to you) I would try to find 1-3 other things to be major influences and try to mash them together. Go nuts with that - for myself, I might try to mix us Stargate with Wheel of Time and a bit of Warhammer - basically Stargate-like structure (home base, part of a larger org, travel via portal) but the alien factions would be totally different and pulled from different sources. No brain snakes.

 

[AmandaBarbarian]

As for making a Stargate-themed campaign: that's an awesome idea and I wish I could play in it. On the other hand, to keep it from being predictable (not just to people who've watched the show but also to you) I would try to find 1-3 other things to be major influences and try to mash them together. Go nuts with that - for myself, I might try to mix us Stargate with Wheel of Time and a bit of Warhammer - basically Stargate-like structure (home base, part of a larger org, travel via portal) but the alien factions would be totally different and pulled from different sources. No brain snakes.

oh I have more, and building more every day...
https://www.enworld.org/threads/help-with-new-dm.698265/ this is what I started with... and real gods/avatars no brain snakes

 

[Voadam]

So this one sounds vague so I am going to try to not go too far out with rambling. I have been in a few games where we realize 5 6 even 35 sessions in that something from history that seemed like flavor and almost forgettable has been brought up a few times. We then also realize where that bit of information is important now in the live game.
In real life I have heard it said that even if history doesn't repeat it sure rhymes, and as such I think that makes sense. On the other hand I really adore mystery in novels and movies that when the answer comes up you know the cluse were there from the jump. So I want to try to include these types of things.

For this one my advice would be to have multiple plots going on, and have some be non-adversarial to start.

In one of my games it started off with everyone having a connection to professor Jones or his daughter Jessica Jones and session 1 starts with a letter asking them to be a pall bearer at his funeral.

I was running an adventure path knowing who eventual bad guys were and wanted to better get them involved in the story from module 1 instead of just showing up at module 6.

So I had one NPC at the module 1 funeral be a slightly creepy rich noble Christopher Walken who sponsored some of the professor's archaeology expeditions and makes an open offer of his help to the daughter and one of the PCs (the professor's on again off again girlfriend) before leaving the professor's country manor to return to the big city. Plenty of interaction with him and other NPCs and the PCs at the wake, but he leaves before things turn hinky in the country town.

Module 1 ends with ghost apocalypse which was set off by separate jerk war Dr. Jack Nickolson, who has left before the group deals with the ghosts, but they find out it was Jack.

Module 2 the party follows Jack's trail to big city, takes up Walken's offer of hospitality and shelter as they chase more problems left by Jack. Walken throws a party at one point with the PCs and lots of NPCs, one of who is a bit of a villain in module 2.

Eventually the party was going to catch up to Jack in Module 3 as the climax there, and then six was all going to be about Walken and the connections and differing agendas between Jones, Nicholson, and Walken would be revealed particularly with Jessica Jones and Walken.

Having NPCs show up earlier nonadversarially while visibly doing stuff and having connections and doing stuff on their agendas is useful, it is in the open so the player's will notice, they are unlikely to fight the PCs early, and it will come together well for the PCs when the NPC shifts into spotlight villain mode.

This is much easier to tie together if you are running an adventure path where you have an overall plot and know you want to foreshadow eventual boss villains or complications.

There are techniques for doing so with sandbox games, but it is bit tougher and requires some flexibility and active thinking about it as you go for things to make sense. In a sandbox game you could have different non-adversarial NPCs doing things with the PCs around and then later figure how to tie them in depending on how things go. Even things like "I am working on figuring out different parts of this incomplete prophecy, got to go!"

 

[AmandaBarbarian]

For this one my advice would be to have multiple plots going on, and have some be non-adversarial to start.

In one of my games it started off with everyone having a connection to professor Jones or his daughter Jessica Jones and session 1 starts with a letter asking them to be a pall bearer at his funeral.

I was running an adventure path knowing who eventual bad guys were and wanted to better get them involved in the story from module 1 instead of just showing up at module 6.

So I had one NPC at the module 1 funeral be a slightly creepy rich noble Christopher Walken who sponsored some of the professor's archaeology expeditions and makes an open offer of his help to the daughter and one of the PCs (the professor's on again off again girlfriend) before leaving the professor's country manor to return to the big city. Plenty of interaction with him and other NPCs and the PCs at the wake, but he leaves before things turn hinky in the country town.

Module 1 ends with ghost apocalypse which was set off by separate jerk war Dr. Jack Nickolson, who has left before the group deals with the ghosts, but they find out it was Jack.

Module 2 the party follows Jack's trail to big city, takes up Walken's offer of hospitality and shelter as they chase more problems left by Jack. Walken throws a party at one point with the PCs and lots of NPCs, one of who is a bit of a villain in module 2.

Eventually the party was going to catch up to Jack in Module 3 as the climax there, and then six was all going to be about Walken and the connections and differing agendas between Jones, Nicholson, and Walken would be revealed particularly with Jessica Jones and Walken.

Having NPCs show up earlier nonadversarially while visibly doing stuff and having connections and doing stuff on their agendas is useful, it is in the open so the player's will notice, they are unlikely to fight the PCs early, and it will come together well for the PCs when the NPC shifts into spotlight villain mode.

This is much easier to tie together if you are running an adventure path where you have an overall plot and know you want to foreshadow eventual boss villains or complications.

There are techniques for doing so with sandbox games, but it is bit tougher and requires some flexibility and active thinking about it as you go for things to make sense. In a sandbox game you could have different non-adversarial NPCs doing things with the PCs around and then later figure how to tie them in depending on how things go. Even things like "I am working on figuring out different parts of this incomplete prophecy, got to go!"

that is amazing, and that is totally what I mean. I need to work on this

 

[Voadam]

For Paizo adventure paths it is generally six modules by six authors with an overall theme and tied loosely together by a plot, the connections can sometimes be really weak and little connections to later villains before they show up, which is an issue for the climax to an adventure path. The original 3.5 Dragon magazine adventure paths they did were particularly open to this as they were like 12 parts and very little known about the ends when the beginnings were written.

Often though there are great discussions on their forums about how to tie things together better from the beginning. Hindsight after reading the end and different people's experiences allows great opportunities for seeing how things could build to the climax better. If you are running an adventure path and have the time looking up such threads can be great resources.

 

[LordEntrails]

Okay, so wind up to question 5: How do you foreshadow and hint

I want to say I don't. But I do, sort of.

First and foremost, I don't develop a story line. So I never know what's going to come back in 6 months and be perceived as foreshadowing. I just lay out lots of things going on in the world and then as the players continue to interact with them or return to them then it's akin to foreshadowing.

For example, the 5+ year campaign I finished a few months ago. It started int he Undermountian, then moved into Dragon Heist. Ammalia Cassalanter escaped with the kids, so she became a recurring adversary in between other events. And became the force behind one of the factions working against the party. Then we went into Sleeping Dragons Wake etc and several of those NPCs became recurring threats. The minor leader Nixoxious escaped, so I had him come back, several times until they finally killed him. And Ebondeath, he was recurring and became the main BBEG the defeated at level 20. But also the Dreadnaught was a reoccurring villain because well, I could.

All through there were little flavor things. A trip to Myth Drannor, and then to the deserts of Anauroch to get a McGuffin to lure the dreadnaught into combat. Clues and adventures for Ebondeath's phylacteries, and a means to destroy them. Including a trip to the City of Brass. And, and killing the lich Iniarv.

But none of that, or the little tidbits that turned into the story, were planned or foreshadowed from the start. It all developed as the party pulled on some of the threads I placed. I could have done better, and given them more threads or recalled old ones they hadn't pulled on and re-presented them more often, but it worked for us.

In short, don't plan the story line. Build a world of factions with motivations and see what develops as you go. Present lots of threads (at one time I had several issues of the Waterdeep Wazoo newspaper with stories in it that were mostly all threads the party could pull on) and see what happens. When it makes sense, represent those threads, or even give news of the outcome from the thread. (Oh, did you hear that Frewn's Brews caught fire? It's said that the Watch had a fight with several wererats that fled the flames!)

 

[LordEntrails]

There are techniques for doing so with sandbox games, but it is bit tougher and requires some flexibility and active thinking about it as you go for things to make sense. In a sandbox game you could have different non-adversarial NPCs doing things with the PCs around and then later figure how to tie them in depending on how things go. Even things like "I am working on figuring out different parts of this incomplete prophecy, got to go!"

For me, it's much easier in a sandbox game. Players too often like to go off the rails and if I don't have any in the first place their is nothing to correct or worry about.

I just present factions with motivations and a few starting events and then let the rest of the story develop from there. Give them party an ignition event and then several threads out of it, and let them pull on the ones they wish. Then figure out what (in broad strokes) the various factions do next or in response and keep going.