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Post by kurtpotts on Mar 7, 2013 15:36:21 GMT -8
Man I am digging Isis as a patron for Cassandra. The whole mother part and having to go and collect the pieces of her daughter after she was beheaded in order to make the ritual happen. I'm also thinking about having her switch into one of the npcs that are close to the pc's to draw out an emotional response. I'll have to wait for char gen for that though.
The comment about it being too railroad-y has been bugging me. I usually prep very little and make up a lot of stuff based on the players actions, but I haven't "finished" a campaign in a while. They usually just kind of peter out after about a year. So I was going to try to make it more tight and limit the amount of sessions it will go. I don't want to railroad them but I also don't want to underprep and have another game without a resolution. Maybe I should make a new thread about that.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 7, 2013 16:08:11 GMT -8
Man I am digging Isis as a patron for Cassandra. The whole mother part and having to go and collect the pieces of her daughter after she was beheaded in order to make the ritual happen. I'm also thinking about having her switch into one of the npcs that are close to the pc's to draw out an emotional response. I'll have to wait for char gen for that though. The comment about it being too railroad-y has been bugging me. I usually prep very little and make up a lot of stuff based on the players actions, but I haven't "finished" a campaign in a while. They usually just kind of peter out after about a year. So I was going to try to make it more tight and limit the amount of sessions it will go. I don't want to railroad them but I also don't want to underprep and have another game without a resolution. Maybe I should make a new thread about that. If you are worrying about the game petering out then I’d suggest deciding on an end point from the start. Not an ending, but an end point. For instance I ran a game where from the moment the game started a great evil was set to be unleashed upon the world in one year of in game time. If the party failed to stop the evil the game would end when it was unleashed. If the party stopped the evil the game ended with their success. Either way from the moment we started I had a decent idea of when the game would end but I had no idea how we would get there. So come up with your end point parameters. For instance with your plot outline I’d say either Cassandra manages to resurrect her daughter, or the party stops her. Your goal is to guide the party by dropping plot hooks and clues, and then let them work through them. Since you want a short campaign don’t bother with any red herrings and make sure all the plot hooks lead back to your main plot line. Then since you don't want it to feel railroady let them wander a little and then guide things back to the main story. You won’t be giving them a true sandbox to play in, but by giving them some freedom you give the illusion of even more and it won’t feel like a railroad to them. The easy way to do this is of course to make sure your clues aren’t location dependent, so no matter where the party decides to go you can feed them some clues. They need to learn about the crimes, could be from your cop NPC, could be from a reporter at the local paper, maybe its an underworld snitch one of them knows. Want to give some info on the ritual, maybe they find a book of Cassandra’s, maybe they talk to a friendly spirit like Bob, or perhaps they catch a cultist who tells them. Basically roll with their decisions and gently guide the party rather than slapping them on the rails and having them ride the story.
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Post by kurtpotts on Mar 7, 2013 16:22:45 GMT -8
What if anytime I reference the party I said Warden Gomez and used this as Cassandra's plan. These are the things she is doing to draw in the Warden to finish her ritual. It just happens that the party can follow the clues just as well as the warden. That removes any assumptions about the players from the plot. I also don't have enough info to get specific since we haven't done character/City gen yet. I'm sure some things will change to accommodate the themes and threats put in place.
As far as clues go I had planed on making them be where the players are. If they are location specific it can lead to a lot of floundering before they get to the right place.
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Post by jazzisblues on Mar 8, 2013 6:55:14 GMT -8
What if anytime I reference the party I said Warden Gomez and used this as Cassandra's plan. These are the things she is doing to draw in the Warden to finish her ritual. It just happens that the party can follow the clues just as well as the warden. That removes any assumptions about the players from the plot. I also don't have enough info to get specific since we haven't done character/City gen yet. I'm sure some things will change to accommodate the themes and threats put in place. As far as clues go I had planed on making them be where the players are. If they are location specific it can lead to a lot of floundering before they get to the right place. When it comes to clues that people need to find, I don't worry so much about where they are as I do WHEN they are so that whatever the pc's are doing (there's always an opportune moment in game play) they can find something that will be useful for them. JiB
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