A Land Far Away

As the summer draws to a close, I'm starting to try and poke my toes back into the murky waters of DMing. I've got a fair bit of free time the next half year, so slowly trying to sketch together a few plot ideas. At the moment most relate to trying to tie together my old, unfinished lines together, but am looking to bring some new things in as well.

So if you've got any ideas of things you'd like to see ticking around the server - open to any ideas, but am not going to promise anything. They have to set of that inspirational spark for me to go with any.

Got one request for some Monk-stuff at the moment.

Something that sets the tone for the marches, not just the PCs.

I know it's asking a lot but something like a zhentarim threat, or even netherese, that may be even better. Something that tests the cohesiveness of alustriels new confederacy, the effectiveness of the argent legion as a military force abroad, tests the internal politics of eahc signatory city state.

Behind the scenes thsi story could be told in rumours and threads, setting a tone on the serve rwith PCs participating only ins econdary or tertiary roles that are somewhat related to this overarching story.

Siege at Sundabar,
Forest burned near Everlund,
Some big magic hurled at Silverymoon's mythal that's repeled in no small part due to alustriel and the spellguard.
Free towns petition for entry into the confederacy
Free towns capture quaervar and minor skirmish/war
etc

Above anything else I want to SEE Alustriel. In all the source material she is a wonderfully open woman who hold open court for all to see, she should be seen around town, her high officers should be seen around town. Head of the spellguard, high marshall aerasume, the heads of sundabar adbar and felbarr... hell even bruenor battlehammer now and then.

I'd like to see marches personalities, marches politics, marches law, marches war. Something that really draws ont eh flavour of the server as a wild frontier that alustriel has crafted in this fragile confederacy. I want to see the epic NPCs out acting, I want to have PCs be able to affect what's goinjg on, but over all I want it to feel utterly connected to the marches, it's factions, it's interests, and it's goals.

The legion, the spellguard, the political players always take a back seat to the PCs, which is understandable when running things FOR the PCs. But I want to see them reacting in realistic ways, responding by threats by posting more guards in different towns, more political meetings, alustriel jetting off in the night on her fiery chariot.

Alot of this flavour could be made through judicious use of the rumour thread even, not even in game, but I really really want to see more marches personalities taking part in marches affairs, or hearing about their decisions/actions state of the confederacy in the rumour mill.

Now that is a details post. Thank you for taking the time there, Audark. It's the sort of thing I'm looking for - whether they be big or small.

Haunted mansion or ruins…

Something slow that builds over time…with a lot of investigations, twists and drama…

Some of the village children reported strange events in the old ruins or castle they used to play around for years. Some says they heard voices of weeping women, and some claim they even saw ghosts. Few of the children are too terrified to even talk…

The party would start investigation that would involve all the classic elements of haunted places. A terrible crime of love or passion that led to a murder, a restless soul seeking peace. Party could slowly discover bits from the story as they travel through the ruins or mansion. It can be by finding diaries of those who were involved that only reveal tiny bits of information, or maybe even face some unexplained flashbacks and visions that are stuck in endless loop in time in few of the mansion rooms (hints to events that took place in the mansion and might give a lead on what happened there….like mute conversion between two ghosts , flashbacks would be triggered by the party actions….etc….)

Of course the entire story will be framed by local legends and folklore of the village. The village’s old woman would supply some vague details of evil family that lived in the castle generations ago, and how she always told the children not to play there…
Few of the farmers would try to convince the party that “some secrets are best to be left alone…”

All that to create a formula that the PCs slowly advance and reveal more info about the mansion. Of course as they reveal more they need to speculate more as well , and even doubt their sources of information.

The idea is to create atmosphere of “dark suspense” and uncertainty for the PCs. Such plot would demand heavy investigation and interaction with NPCs, there would be little or no fighting at all. It could probably be stretched between few days to few weeks. You do not ALL the players for every session, some of the party members can conduct investigations on their own and try to learn new things, then inform the rest of the group.

Players can also join and leave the plot / adventure as they wish.

This is the general idea… the core of the story can be anything like ‘crime of passion’ , ‘forbidden love’ , ‘molested child in the basement’ or dirty family secret (of of the family members is werewolf)… the plot is solved once the PCs discover the trigger of the events and fix the wrongness.

Perhaps I'm weird or something, but I'd like to see more small stuff.

• A cottage on fire, giving one or two PCs the chance to be heroes (and/or looters) and thus have a small, personal connection to a single place in the module.
• A mysterious peddler, selling strange items with some small benefit but weird side effects.
• Morality issues: using undead to rescue people form a cave-in, Sunites demanding to be exempt from a law the Tyrrans have pushed for or a public fight between a paladin and a druid of a single faith. Things that encourage PCs to take sides on issues, even if only in their conversations.
• Anything, anything that actually makes adventuring worth while. Financially and emotionally. Saving the Realms is nice. Saving the cooper's children is better.

Since I (and some others) rarely see any DMs at all, I would ask for events that have ramifications for the PCs themselves - and the PCs among themselves - long after the DMs have picked up their NPCs and VFXes and logged off.

A nice mix of what Audark and Holly propose would be ideal. If you can somehow weave Holly's one shot type sessions into an overarching plot that would be great. I approach DMing totally ad hoc at first, coming up with one or two session stories. If something really sparks my interest or that of the PCs I am DMing then I try to build that into a grander story. By doing it this way, I find I tend to avoid predetermined outcomes (which I really dislike), and give the PCs the opportunity to have a meaningful impact on events and the progress of the story. To me the real beauty of this game is when the DM and the players get to "write" the story together, with all of the randomness and creativity that goes into it and lies at the heart of DnD in general. My advice would be to create a few individual NPCs, or a group, with their own agenda and get them interacting. Sometimes the ideas that arise spontaneously from a good back story and future goals end up being the more memorable in my experience.

Since my next PC when Corio dies or retires will be a monk, I second the request for something monkish. Silverymoon is one of the places in canon that monks are likely to be found, and there is not a lot of content on the server for them to pursue as far as I can tell.

+1 to The general Gist of OGR's post..I find the deepest Rp motivations usually happen from random unlooked for events..that then take on a life of their own.

Im in agreement with Holly and Audark. Some kind of background events going on that we aren't so much involved in but hear a lot about, and maybe have the odd thing crop up where we can get involved would be a lot of fun.

The idea of small plots that are begun and finished in a session, but provide some entertaining RP and moral decisions would also be quite enjoyable for a lot of us I think.

of course I doubt anyone will complain about a few extra coins coming most folks ways also