Here, I'm trying to develope a couple of plot hook that relate to the players characters. So actually I'm designing the template for PCs' for the players to choose.

The Plot
A band of goblins begins to act organized. There has been organized attacks on the Village of Grondal for the few last months. This is extreemly odd, as the goblins tend to be very unorganized.
The reason why is that a banditgroup of Stone People, with an odd looking dwarven creature as their leader (actually the first guy to come to this world through a portal from another world), is communicating with these goblins and making them attack and steal for them.

I need to make the PC's so they are compatible to this plot, and so that they are related to this problem in some sort of way


PC Ideas

Thief
a thief whos' last jobs has turned out wrong, and decides it's a good time to leave his town. He hears about this attack and turns up as "an adventurer" to give himself good reptuation and to have an oppotunity to leave the town

Wizards apprentice
an apprentice who's interrest in creatures from other world leads him towards the banditgroup (in some sort of way)

Hunter in the hills
This guy has had his first experience with killing creatures on two legs, as he easily kills a group of two goblins that tries to steal from him. This gives him the eager to kill more of these goblins. A a group of goblins leave their organized attack and ventures back into the hills. The Hunter follows them and attacks them (in some sort of way)

Guard at Grondal
This says itself.


OK which characters sounds cool and which ones aren't? and can anyone help me with more ideas for interresting guys?

Take a step back for a moment. Why are you creating the players' characters at all?

Is this a tournament adventure?

Quote from: Black Vulmea;589731Take a step back for a moment. Why are you creating the players' characters at all?

Yeah I guess the players make their characters completely..
Do you guys always create an adventure depending 100% on the players' characters?

Goblins making a nuisance of themselves and PCs who are actively looking for work are a match made in heaven. Merchant caravans and bands of pilgrims might need armed escorts. Local rulers and constabularies might place a bounty on the goblins or retain the services of mercenaries to launch investigations or to bolster their ranks for a punitive raid. Maybe a private citizen has had a prized possession or valuable cargo stolen by the goblins (or even a loved one captured) and hires the PCs to rescue the person or object in question.

This stuff writes itself, really, as long as the PCs have a minimum of initiative.

Quote from: Ganesh77;589791Yeah I guess the players make their characters completely..
Do you guys always create an adventure depending 100% on the players' characters?

Oh no, not always. I've run mission-based campaigns (in which a regular patron or commanding officer hands the PCs assignments) in the past, and I'm sure I'll yet do so again. But like many other posters here at theRPGsite I'm an enthusiast of so-called "sandbox" play, in which you seed the setting with adventure hooks and let the PCs go where they will.

Most of the time these hooks don't have to custom-fit each and every PC. Stuff like goblins on the warpath (or dragon ravaging the countryside, or shadowy cult murdering people and planning to take over the city, etc.) is fairly universal adventuring material. Things can become personal as PCs engage with them, and I think PCs' reactions and mannerisms ("as a Paladin of Mitra I am particularly outraged that the orcs have allied with a necromancer and his undead minions!") are their way of telling you what they want to see.

Quote from: Ganesh77;589791Yeah I guess the players make their characters completely..

One would hope.

Pre-gens aren't always a bad idea, but if you're at the point where you're writing the characters to make sure that they fit the plot, it sounds less like you're prepping a game and more like you're writing a short story.

Loose hand on the reins. Adapt to what the players come up with.

Quote from: Ganesh77;589791Do you guys always create an adventure depending 100% on the players' characters?

Most of my prep is made from behind the veil of ignorance, which means I'm preparing the game-world without reference to a specific group of player characters. Only once the player characters have adventured for awhile do their actions start to generate complications specific to them.

Quote from: The Butcher;589805Goblins making a nuisance of themselves and PCs who are actively looking for work are a match made in heaven.

Thanks for your comment. I've just spoken to my player, and he wants to play a 16 year-old prostitute.. She has an interrest in creating poison and medicine, but isn't the ideal adventure character..

I've thought about having the city drugdealer/pimp, chase her down, and therefore giving her a reason to leave. While the other PC, a drow thief, who's also been chased, thou by the town guards, needs to leave the town..

But then what? haha
thx for having an interest

My first step is to create or select an environment. The cities, locations, and background. I have many of these that I use on a routine basis, and some that I just run off-the-cuff as needed.

My second is to let the players create and configure their characters. I usually start a game by introducing them together via some sort of happenstance that can bind them as a group, even if they have vastly differing personalities and motivations. Try to figure out what they have in common.

I present them with opportunities in the story. Once the story is moving, I let their actions partly direct it, and try to generate detail based on their goals, as well as create scenarios where they can either influence the outcome, or must take action to protect their interests.

I also put in special opportunities for each, that they must earn in some way. It's always a good idea to discuss with each player, on a one-to-one, private basis, the goals, both long-term and short-term of their character(s). This way, they neither wreck your game by working against the story, nor are they dissatisfied.

You will find that if you write a locked story, where only bi-linear (yes/no) actions are possible, that you both agitate good players, and find that they break the story at many point. If you simply say that 'No, you cannot phase through that wall with Passwall to avoid the monster in the room because I out it there to fight.'', then expect them to just walk out on your game.

Avoid forced encounters where the players can't just escape somehow.

Avoid forced plot details that are not in the interest of the players. If they don't find them entertaining, then it doesn't matter how fun you think they'd be. Learn from their actions, and create situations around their actions, and always remember causality. What they do influences the world around them for better or worse. If they screw up, it has ramifications. if they succeed, they might make enemies.

If they get wealthy, they become targets for thieves; when they become powerful, they become subject for attempts as assassination, manipulation or downright mind-control.

If you have a setting, with fleshed out areas and things to do, let them choose their path. Practice making u details--and remembering them--as needed. Play NPCs with differing personalities, with names, descriptions, and remember them. You don't need stats for every NPC, just enough story detail to make them interesting and real. if every commoner just groans and has nothing to say, and looks 'like a commoner', then they may as well not be there at all.

A long time ago, I started one game with all the PCs on an island, each with amnesia at Level-0; yes, zero. They each had 5HP (base for size), no skills other than language, and no idea here they were. They had to make basic tools, simple weapons, gather food, and fight to survive. As they progressed, what they did selected their class/profession, and developed their skills and abilities.

As they each did this, and portrayed or developed their personality, the adventure developed, and they could venture further and further on the island, discovering people who were still around, to discover it was all that was left of their planet after a catastrophe far in their future, as they had been flung far forward in time after an attempt to climb the Tower of Ascension.

They needed to decide if they wanted to re-try climbing the tower, to reverse what happened and prevent the catastrophe, or to work with the world as it is. Either option presented many opportunities for story.

I could wrap the entire story around the personalities they developed for themselves int he process. (X|S)

Thank you for sharing you're approach. It was very interesting

Quote from: MagesGuild;595149Practice making u details--and remembering them--as needed. Play NPCs with differing personalities, with names, descriptions, and remember them. You don't need stats for every NPC, just enough story detail to make them interesting and real.

What do you mean by "u details"
And do interesting NPC's come from your imagination and a complex setting, or are they prepared from the start in some sort of journal?

Your comment helped and inspired me a lot.

Quote from: Ganesh77;595857Thank you for sharing you're approach. It was very interesting



What do you mean by "u details"
And do interesting NPC's come from your imagination and a complex setting, or are they prepared from the start in some sort of journal?

Your comment helped and inspired me a lot.

Sorry; 'twas a typo. It should read  'Practice making up details--and remembering them--as needed'.

My NPCs are usually interesting in either case: Those that I created off-the-cuff for my SRPG chat game are highly-detailed, each with their own personality, quirks, and goals. Those that have a character sheet are those who are in the party, and only when I decide they need to have practical and fixed skills and statistic, rather than being a story element and an aid out of problems that the players cannot solve.

I only prepare NPCs as I need them. Preparing them fromt he tart means they are people that will be involved at the beginning of the game, as with Captain R'Lann in that SRPG story. I don't set or fix details on a villain or such in advance, until i know how the story is going to progress.

The only others are usually repeated across stories, like important political figures, such as Empress Saerena. I do not have a sheet for her though; just her backgroud, personality and position on a variety of subjects.

It's important to know this in order to shape the Empire itself, and its laws. I originally created her as an on-the-fly individual as well, but as she remained a constant in various games, she developed and I can use her as a story element in any situation or in any game that I later run.

If you keep track of NPCs, and keep notes on them after you flesh them out them--write any detailed notes between games, as to prevent slowing the game to a halt to record them--then you can reuse them indefinitely.

if you run multiple games with different players, or with the same players controlling different characters, they may interact with the same people, who could be in relatively fixed positions. If a character goes to Sito Atal, they may meet Qelaz, the Grand Biovizir in a vari3ty of time periods.

This also means that events in one game can affect those in another. I use a Living Universe and fluidic time.

As an example, in one of my games, the characters are in a time period where the Camdoli people are a slave-race in the Empire, after losing a war that they started.

In another story, that takes place in an earlier time-period in the same setting, but still after the war, there is a chance to abolish the slavery of the Camdoli, which if successful, may alter the timeline. In yet a third possibility, if characters prevent the war, then the Camdoli never become slaves.

This take a great deal more effort to track, but it presents man situations. If I am running two games in the same setting and same period, then characters in one game may hear about those of the other. I've done this at times, and eventually merged the games. On the other hand, i can also set up a scenario where two groups in two games strive to thwart the efforts of the other, so that players are working against other players, but the feel to each is that the 'other side' is a group of NPCs.

This may eventually lead to a special session where the players from both duke-it-out, but this is not a requirement. In yet another example, if someone is offering a valuable object for sale, and both groups know of it, one character may acquire it, and when the other group arrives, they find that the object has been sold to 'X'. This style of a living reality, where causality affects events as it does in normal reality, provides a much richer potential for storytelling.  

If someone in one game kills an NPC that was useful to the party in to other, then they will find that their contact is now dead. If a city is destroyed in one game, then it is also in the other.

Time-travel is a factor in my stories as well, and with fluidic time, this can cause very-interesting repercussions all-around.

In any case you can see how detail tracking is important. With NPCs, track the most important details first. I do it in this order:
Name, appearance, personality, ethics/morals, profession, important skill,  standing in society and personal goals.

In this fashion, the characters learn the details in the order that is natural. They are going to know the name or appearance of a person first, then their personality, either by word-of-mouth, general knowledge, interaction or research; from there, they may lean about the profession of the person, what they can do for them, how important they are, and if they spend enough time at it, the personal goals of the NPC.

The end-result is that you have an NPC that is fully fleshed-out over time, but with enough detail to make them interesting on first-meeting. If the character is a background-NPC--that is, someone influencing the story that the PCs don.t know about, or are unaware that this person or entity is in fact influencing causality--then you need to do it in a different order, such as: Goals, personality, ethics/morals, standing, important skills, profession, name and appearance.

This way, you are prepared to use the details that you need first, and then fill-in the the information later as it becomes known to the PCs and other NPCs.

In any event, I'm pleased that you find my suggestions useful, and I look forward to knowing which, if any, you use and how they turn out for you. (X|S)

Quote from: MagesGuild;596142This also means that events in one game can affect those in another. I use a Living Universe and fluidic time.

As an example, in one of my games, the characters are in a time period where the Camdoli people are a slave-race in the Empire, after losing a war that they started.

In another story, that takes place in an earlier time-period in the same setting, but still after the war, there is a chance to abolish the slavery of the Camdoli, which if successful, may alter the timeline. In yet a third possibility, if characters prevent the war, then the Camdoli never become slaves.

This is a great style of keeping track of time and using time in the game. I will definitly make good use of that! Also having two games at once, being played in the same time period and same campaign.

If you have some techniques or special places to draw ideas from, (others than your imagination ofc), then please tell. Movies? Books? History?
I'm just interested in your approaches
Seb

Quote from: Ganesh77;596327This is a great style of keeping track of time and using time in the game. I will definitly make good use of that! Also having two games at once, being played in the same time period and same campaign.

If you have some techniques or special places to draw ideas from, (others than your imagination ofc), then please tell. Movies? Books? History?
I'm just interested in your approaches
Seb

My goodness... Aside from my own ideas, characters and stories, my major resources of imported references, either for story or for anecdotal amusement are often:
Doctor Who (video & audio)
Dune (Books One throughEight and the machine Wars series)
Tolkien/Middle-Earth (incouding TS, BoLT, LoB, UT, etc.)
Poirot
Historical Texts
Cross-game/setting scenarios (i.e., games run by other members)
Arthur C. Clarke
Sir Conan Doyle
HP Lovecraft / Mythos
Ron E. Howard
DC, Marvel and 'Weird Tales'-era comics
Historical Lore, Epic, Legend and Religion
Victorian & Edwardian Science-Fiction & Horror Stories
Full-Metal Alchemist
Sorcerer Hunters
Bastard!
Slayers
Lexx
Stargate SG-1 & Atlantis
Star Trek (mostly technology)
Jules Verne
Folk Tale
Various short stories
........

I really have no end of resources for inspiration, in terms of making a setting more interesting. I include Stargate and DW canon in my main game, as additional areas of the Universe to explore, with race, cultuew and technology. The horror on a players face when a Dalek rolls into the scene is a beautiful sight indeed.

This does not mean that I don't have an endless selection of original content, but adding tie-ins that the players can reference means they can have some common-ground with story plots hat allows them to live out the idea of being in a DW story, and meeting a Biovizir makes the squirm in their seats.

I integrate these into the context of the story, so that the Universe is truly infinite, and so that the Saerenan Empire, while it spans three galaxies, is not the only region of space to explore. I believe it is an enriching experience. Eventually I hope to be able to present a the Saerosian & Saerenan Empires, and the Zorian Empire as a system-agnostic setting, in multiple volumes for different eras, including galactic maps, lists if planets and planetary systems with details, cultures, laws, and the like. I hvae some Saerosia law on paper and in document format, just to sicken and bewilder players when they research it in-game. (X|S)