D&D campaign advice?

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Hedgehog Wizard
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D&D campaign advice?

Post by Hedgehog Wizard »

Hello folks. I'm not really sure this is the right way and place to post this, but no harm in trying, right?

First, a little prelude:
I'm relatively new to tabletop RPGs and completely new to being a DM. However, my local D&D (using this as a broader term) community has been so scarce that I decided to hop right into the fray and host a campaign for two of my friends. We're 2 sessions deep right now, and I could use some advice as to how do I develop the storyline now. If this was a painting, I would find respite in knowing that I could just toss it if I failed. But this is an experience shared by three newcomers, and I would really hate to spoil that by going the wrong way.

I'm using a custom dark-fantasy themed world. The story so far goes as follows:
A council of druids, the one and only of its kind, commonly occupied with keeping balance and relative peace throughout the realm, has received news of strange happenings in the Borderland Forests. People have gone missing, animals are reported to go feral, and dark magic has been suspected by some superstitious souls. As part of the initiation rite, a young druid has been sent to investigate the area -- there we have the first player. Prior to delving into the forest, the druid arrives at a large village of the Lizardmen, a wild, fierce, but ultimately honorable folk inhabiting vast swamps near the Borderland Forests. Here, another initiation rite has been conveniently prepared - a young adventurous lizardman (actually being the character of the second player) has to fight his old master to win the tribe's respect and receive the right to see the wide world. There's a twist to the rite, however - one additional participant is allowed on each side of the fight. The druid is "coerced" to participate by a subtle whim of his mind, and a grim human wanderer, appearing from the scaly crowd, gladly agrees to balance the odds. The fight ensues, the players win and set out to unravel the mysteries of the Borderland Forest.

On their way, they enter a second Lizardmen encampment. There they complete their first two "quests":
  • - track down bandits who stole some of the lizardmen' food
    - find the remains of a hunter group killed by those bandits
Having done that, they head into the forests and soon enough find a dungeon and enter it. The last, second session ended at this point - only a couple rooms have been explored. The dungeon itself, as I currently have it designed, holds the following things:
  • - it is of dwarven origin. This is already known to the players, but everything further below is yet undiscovered and thus subject to change
    - the dwarves are dead and gone from this place
    - kobolds from the depths of the mountains are responsible for this, having invaded the place around 40 years ago
    - there might be a treasure somewhere in this dungeon
    - there is a tomb down below all the other rooms. some hints about the history of this place can be found there
    - there is a library on the lower levels
    - there is a necromancer, actually responsible for all the discord, holed up in the library
    - the necromancer might be connected to a broader circle of evil-doers, that has recently become more active for some reason
Here is some additional knowledge which might prove useful for the matter:
  • - (I find this a rather interesting thing) the human, the one who agreed to fight in the rite of the lizardmen, had a strange amulet on his neck - a round pendant with a figure of a fish. I have the idea that this human might have belonged to a circle of wandering monster fighters (think witchers, watered down a bit), who have exiled him due to some misunderstanding or moral differences. This might prove rather interesting - imagine the players stumbling upon this group, seeing their amulets and having the grim wanderer float up in their memory. Moreover, there are probably more adventures to be had alongside the fighters' circle.
    - there is a large area populated by humans, located on the other side of the swamp. The players have not contacted these people yet, so it's completely flexible for now
    - on the other side of the mountains, there might be a moderately large stronghold populated with a variety of warmongering species such as barbarians, minotaurs, harpies and maybe even dark elves and other monstrosities. Think "Dungeon" town from HoMM III
    - one of the dwarves has escaped from the dvarven dungeon when it was pillaged by kobolds, and can, in theory, be found by the players somewhere in the world
I'm in need of ideas, so that I could chisel them out and remove everything that's not necessary. My main question is: how do I expand from here? Maybe I should bend some of the things my players don't know yet, before it is too late? What are the primary sources of fun, excitement, adventure and story that I can draw from in this kind of situation? I would be happy to receive advice and engage in discussions in order to make the game more memorable.
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Sophia
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Re: D&D campaign advice?

Post by Sophia »

Hedgehog Wizard wrote: I'm not really sure this is the right way and place to post this
No, not really. This is a forum about a computer game called Dungeon Master. Some people here play D&D so they might be able to help you, but that isn't the focus of this forum at all.
Hedgehog Wizard
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Re: D&D campaign advice?

Post by Hedgehog Wizard »

Ouch. Okay. I knew there was something wrong! :)
Then let that post float around here for a while, just in case someone comes around.
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Gambit37
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Re: D&D campaign advice?

Post by Gambit37 »

Hi Hedgehog Wizard. As Sophia noted, this isn't a D&D forum, but there are a few players of RPGs who post here. Activity isn't frequent, but the quality of conversation is much higher than many other places and I'm sure a few people would be happy to help out (I don't play RPGs myself).

Your post has reminded me that our forums aren't perhaps completely clear about their intent. A big logo saying "Dungeon Master Forum" doesn't really communicate that it's about an old computer game, unless you already know that logo, so I think we need to do a better job about that. I'll think about how to improve it.
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Ameena
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Re: D&D campaign advice?

Post by Ameena »

Hi, Hedgehog Wizard - that's a cool username :D. If you're still around then yes, this forum isn't really DnD-focused, but yes, there are those of us who play - me, for one ;). I notice you didn't specify which edition you're playing but I suppose that doesn't matter too much if you're only after storyline questions. For future reference, though, I'm mainly familiar with Fourth Edition (currently playing in one game and running another over on RPOL, an online forum-based site for RPing) but know bits and pieces about the earlier editions. Haven't tried Fifth Edition yet so don't really know how that one works.

Anyway, you want to know hwo to continue your story. Well, it looks like you have plenty of potential plot hooks there. Since you've had two sessions already you might have got some idea of what sort of things your players are looking for in the game, and their style of play. I would say that Rule One of GMing is that no matter what you have set up for the players, they will find a way to do something you didn't expect. They might mis the vital clues you've hidden about the place, try and talk to the bad guy instead of fighting him (or instantly go to hack him to pieces when they're "supposed" to question him about his boss or something), decide to take a random path into the forest instead of following the main road to the nice town you've got all set up for them, and so on. Basically it's probably adviseable to have some ideas of where you want the story to go (or not - even that is far from compulsory!), drop a few IC hints about it, and see what the players do with it. They might not be interested, but that's fine - if they don't want to go and steal the Amulet of Uberness from the red dragon who lives in the mountains and would prefer to poke around in the local caves because the rumours of kobolds sounded really interesting, then go with that - maybe the kobolds are working for the dragon and they end up getting involved with him anyway ;).

Since you have a bunch of things planned out in your dungeon, does that mean you've already mapped it out? You can just let the players explore and run into the various things you've laid out (or miss them completely!) and see what they end up deciding to do with whatever they've found, and then just go with it. It's not generally a good idea to have a specific path in mind for your players to follow, because then when they don't do that (and this will happen sooner or later, whether they realise it or not) you may find you have a problem ;). It's a game, after all, and is therefore suppose to be fun. For everyone, preferably - if at any point there's someone who isn't having fun (whether yourself or your players), it would probably be an idea to discuss this with your players to find out what's going wrong before it gets any worse and you potentially have people wanting to quit playing.

Gambit - Since every now and then we get someone come along who thinks this forum is about DMing rather than DM, maybe we could just have a section for that or something? I mean, you can call it something like "The place for people to post who think this forum is to do with DnD". We've had games of DnD run on this very forum, after all - Wuffy's one ran for what, two years or so? And that was really fun :D. I'm always happy to talk about this kind of stuff with people and it may bring a bit of activity back to this ever-quietening forum. And maybe we can convince them to give DM a go while they're here :twisted:. I don't see any reason to discourage people from coming here just because their subject matter of choice is only very loosely related to the forum's main topic. We talk about plenty of stuff that's not even related to gaming, after all ;).
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