Hi everyone, this is my first time on Paizo so I'm like that weird gal at a party hoping to overhear a conversation I can contribute to. :P
Anyway, I've GMed only a couple times, and none have ever gone more than 2 sessions.

I'm currently running a campaign with 4 players. We're coming up to the elusive 3rd session and I must admit, I haven't really thought this through. I'm not that great with puzzles and traps and all that so my hubby keeps giving me ideas, but as he's in the group playing, I don't want to use any of them.

Does anyone have any ideas I could use for perhaps sidequest puzzles or anything?

I guess anything that's generic enough to be shoved into any game would be nice, but if you would like to know what's going on with the campain to be more specific, please let me know...because I could totallyuse help on my plot too.

Thanks a bunch for any advise!

TLDR:
Looking for puzzle, trap, etc. ideas to incorporate into game.

Hi, and welcome to the boards!

There are a ton of Pathfinder products chocked full of inspiration and examples to help you come up with new and interesting encounter ideas. If you're looking for perilous dungeon traps and treasures, I recommend both Dungeons of Golarion and Lost Kindgoms. The upcoming Dungeoneer's Handbook is also a great resource in regards to crafting traps and dungeon adventures.

If you're looking for more metropolitan intrigue, consider either Cities of Golarion or Magnimar, City of Monuments. Each of these has a ton of awesome ideas for running city adventures or even entire urban campaigns.

Of course, the entire Adventure Path line contains numerous plots, monsters, puzzles, and treasures to either use in their entirety (making GMing a breeze) or drop into your own campaign as you see fit.

Last, but certainly not least, I highly suggest taking a look at the Pathfinder RPG GameMastery Guide. I recommend this book for all new GMs, especially since I was one too at one point. This is a fantastic resource for virtually every scenario at the gaming table, from coming up with exciting puzzles and chase scenes to handling a problematic player.

Anywho, I hope these suggestions at least give you a nice starting point. Good luck GMing and enjoy the messageboards!

Holy, wow. I mean, I didn't really look through the GM guide so I suppose I should. Thanks for the book suggestions, Hubby is looking at prices right now.
But off-topic...I'm a total advertising nut and that sir, was an impressive sales pitch.

Thanks ^^

To go a bit deeper, I've also got the dilemma of my plot...

The 4 players have entered a city for varying reasons. Each gets a room at a large inn. Upon waking, they find that all candles are out and they are the only people in the inn. Character intros ensue, not without much shenanigans as one of our players is a jester.
When they go outside, they find that there are no people or animals here either. The sky is overcast and there is a light breeze.
Fast forward to the interesting bit.
The drunk of the group goes for the good stuff in the tavern. When he moves the bottle, he finds a wooden pressure plate in the wall with a carving of a hand with an eye symbol in the center. He takes the bait and pushes the plate with his left hand (which is the hand carved).

The symbol moves forward and brands his hand.

More to come.....

Hey Fancy... why don't you tell me a little about the game you want to run, the ideas you already have, and me and the rest of the forum can jump in and help you connect the dots?

I am also going to give you a great resource for beginning GMs... a non-system specific Random Generator.

Link:
http://donjon.bin.sh

Explore this site, and generate a bunch of random stuff to help give you ideas and populate the ideas you do have. For example the third generator from the top has NUMEROUS options, one of which is random QUESTS.

Sublink in case you have difficulty finding it off the bat:
http://donjon.bin.sh/fantasy/random/#quest

I went there and got 10 ideas for quests that were all pretty interesting.. and you can mix and match! If you have a laptop you can game with, you can even use online tools like these to create , name, and detail NPCs, Quests, and places on the fly!

In addition to the random quest generator there is a random adventure generator that gives DOZENS AND DOZENS of tropes and popular themes for adventurers, settings, villains, plot twists... the rest is making the story yours and coloring it sufficiently.

So take that link, explore it, and jotting stuff down you can come up with innumerable original stories or just co-opt directly the best permutations you find.

People like me on the site will be happy to help you flesh things out or tell you which threads have already covered the info you seek!

Here is a collection of netbooks of riddles and traps - generic for all ocassions

http://www.adnddownloads.com/riddles_traps.php

Dont overdo it

I forgot to mention that when the players entered the town, it was in the middle of a grassy-plain area and the city walls are the height you'd expect.
When they went outside, the walls are about 3 stories higher than the buildings.
Anyway,

The jester improvises a sort of cannon, to launch a grappling hook which is attached to a spool of rope. She successfully shoots it over the wall and they all climb to the top. The wall is noticeably thinker than normal. Upon looking over the terrain they notice that there is snow to the North and to the South-East they can see a structure. They travel to the SE.

It's a stone dome which encloses a town. There are people and animals here, but they don't seem to be effected by the players. The people continue to go about their business and plow right past the players, although the inanimate objects can be effected.
The tavern is exactly the same as the other town, inch for inch. They move the top-shelf bottle and find another pressure plate. This time the eye symbol is slightly different. Another player puts his hand in.

The jester wants to go back to the other town to investigate further.

More soon...

I should long-story-short this....

There are four different brands in four different towns, all which must be burned onto the hand of a traveler. The 4 were basically randomly picked by...someone I haven't figured out yet.I'm not sure how they ended up in this weird plane of existence or what I would even call it.
I wanted the brands to each represent a Deity. 2 CE and 2 LG. The summoner will be basically using this obscure spell...or something...to summon said deities to cause a war...

That's all I have. Ug

.

Link:
http://donjon.bin.sh

BEST LINK EVER!!!!!!

One last thing, I forgot.

I failed to read the Jester's back-story and didn't realize she had her face tattooed in harlequin against her will by her former master and will not get branded. I don't know how to progress the story now without a fifth player.
Also, the 4th town they entered had people that they were able to interact with and who had a Grand Elder who clearly had the use of magic.

As far as "the fourth character who will NOT get branded" -- you can totally use the fact that she already has a tattoo to your advantage! How to do it:

The Brands don't all necessarily go onto the characters HANDS... that way it won't be a surprise when they go through a quest and learn that the final "brand" is actually a mirror that the Jester looks into -- SHE'S ALREADY BRANDED, and the god/prophesy/whomever already ordained that they have the brand as a trick on the trickster. The person who branded her may not even have been party to this, gods work in mysterious ways. So the bottle could be the hand brand, a chest or back brand could be gotten from wearing a special breastplate, a neck brand might be formed when somebody puts a necklace on and activates the back part branding them... but the final mark which they are desperate to find has been with them all along... a "joke on the jokester" as it were... make the god responsible for that mark have domains/powers partaining to prophesy/forsight/fortune/whatever that would justify such a cosmic coincidence. If the mirror idea is too contrived or you just don't like it, then the mark can be a mask which "brands" right over her exact pattern on her face... causing no cosmetic difference whatsoever -- but like a key in a lock, the "brand" covers her tattoo letting her know it was pre-ordained.

I would advise when talking on the forums to share everything and hide nothing -- your players shouldn't be reading your posts here, and we shouldn't be trying to piece together your mystery, but instead following behind you and helping you elaborate it!

Glad you like the DonJon link -- if you want to become a good GM you have to keep working and refining your craft and there is no better way of doing that then getting random jumbles of stuff and tying it together. Given enough practice you can start seeing patterns in other random stuff -- like things your characters do. When you on the fly improvise some event of significance based on things the players were doing deliberately without forethought and they have that moment of "Did she just come up with that or has she been planning that all along? Maybe I only THOUGHT I was acting with my own agency but I was playing into her hands the whole time!" -- that's when YOU KNOW you've got them by the scruff.

Make the who branding thing be the attempt of some evil guy to cause the events of some obscure prophesy. You can write a prophesy around the four characters which would explain why the seemingly random people were thrown together without ever meeting prior. The prophesy would basically precipitate an awful horrible elder god to be reborn in the world, with the four gods in question charged with returning to the prime material plane to destroy the world and start creation over to prevent said horror from being thrust back into reality. You can have the prophesy sound like a good goal to pursue at first (by vagueness) but have the players find out the true nature of the prophesy so they have to actually work against the original goal to stop the world from ending, and instead get the bad guy that tricked them.

With the limited info you've given so far (a jester and a drunk in the party) here is my start on an adequate prophesy.

"The four Fools"

The drunk will hand-hold "(First god)'s spirits" ...
(the bottle, with spirits being the wine, but open to misinterpretation)
...The Clothes-Horse will be clad in "(Second-god's) chains"
(the necklace but also sounds like a prison)

...I don't have a third clue because I don't know your party composition, and am merely using the clothes-horse example because there is often a character in a group that is most vain, but will proceed with the fourth verse:

The Fool does a routine that that she already knows" (this is referencing the mask/tattoo that she already has)

The kicker? The way to undo the prophesy once it gets started... will be to enact a different interpretation of the prophesy in a special plate (perhaps another pocket-dimension where the bad guy is hiding, with it being his intention to hide in this prophesy-place to ride out the destruction of existence so he can return and be present after the gods remake existence, and as such assert himself as a god of sorts over the new fledgling creation.

So the NEW interpretation of the prophesy becomes
"The drunk will hand-hold (first-god's) spirits" -- in the pocket dimension this character actually has to restrain or capture a spirit that kicks off the apocalypse
...The clothes horse will be clad in (Second god's) chains" (instead of a reference to the branding necklace, that hero must willingly manacle themselves to a divine anchor or some such, and by doing so the divine anchor cannot fall through "the veil of time" or whatever that will allow the apocalypse...
(you/we can work out the third prophesy akin to the final player (if you like the idea, if you don't you can scrap the whole thing if you like something better, but for now this is a nice mental exercise for me so I'm going to run with it, and if you DON'T have a vain player we can tweak the prophesy.)
And "the fool does a routine that she already knows" - have the jester learn some kind of inexplicable dance or answer to a puzzle but no puzzle to go with it... something that is obviously of some significance but what that significance nobody knows... but in the context of the REAL prophesy (the prophesy to stop creation from ending as opposed to precipitating it) they will do their part and with all of them doing the RIGHT interpretation as opposed to the WRONG interpretation of the same prophesy, the world is saved and the BBEG is either dealt with by the party or is hoist on his own Petard, as it were (undone in the failed apocalypse, called to judgement, whatever)

Not a bad idea off the top of my head, let me know what you decide to run with...

Thought of the "Third Stanza" as an idea... The "Third Fool" could be called "The Brute" which would be the fighter-type in the party.

If you don't have a "Clothes-horse" or vain character per-se, you could have a class-specific item that was an awesome looking outfit for that character so they were playing the part of the vain/well-dressed fool. Alternatively the Party face can be this character.

As far as the "Brute's" stanza it could be something like

"The Brute bears (third god's) protection to his chest" -- this could be a magical breastplate putting the seal on the party-fighter in the bad prophesy, but in the good prophesy to undo the bad one, "Protection to his chest" will have him assigned to a lockbox that contains some kind of evil item the BBEG needs to complete the ritual, so while all the other guys are doing their steps of reversing the prophesy, he has to hold off all sorts of lesser minions who are trying to get at the item in this chest.

So the whole adventure is them getting the seals, discovering the prophesy, and thinking it's something great (allowing the gods to appear and deal with the awakening evil god) but then discover that they've actually forced divine intervention to destroy the world, and the final battle is actually them in that tiny dimension and having to figure out (or figure out in the process of learning how to reverse the apocalypse) the alternate meaning of the prophesy that undoes the damage they've wrought... It would be cool to just thrust them into the pocket dimension or have them follow the BBEG in there, only to have to piece together the alternate prophesy (they know there is an alternate interpretation but it's not spoon-fed to them?) and they enact the new prophesy and the gods appear to stop the timeless evil, which in this case is the BBEG who is going to be punished forever for his crimes.

Yay! Hope this stuff helps, it was fun for me take it or leave it.

You'll get just as good cobbling stuff from little random details with a little practice.

-V

As far as "the fourth character who will NOT get branded" -- you can totally use the fact that she already has a tattoo to your advantage!

0.o ...Awesome!

I really wish I had taken Hubbies advise and posted here before the game started. You're whole idea is awesome. And don't worry about my players reading this. The only one who goes on Paizo is Hubby and he so rarely gets to just play (he's usually DM)that he doesn't want to ruin the experience by reading. He knows which post is mine and has been actively avoiding it. ^^

As far as the brands go...I've already had them all go on the hand as explained above. :( I really wish I didn't get that far yet.ug

Now, as for my party members, we have:

A drunken Barbarian. He's the one who discovered the first pressure plate, but the third to get his hand branded (in the solid-but-unmoving-people town).

A Witch (who can't seem to figure out her personality-the guy doesn't know how to play a female and fluctuates his style). She was the first to push the plate and be branded.(in the starting town)

An Inquisitor (this player also has issues, but her's is that she doesn't realize it's an armor-wearing class and chooses to wear a fancy dress). She pushed the plate in the second town (the dome).

A Bard (the Jester). All she wants is for people to have a sense of humor. Her shenanigans are usually harmless, like making the Inquisitor's dress polka dotted.

Also, I didn't think too far into it when picking my deities at the time. They are;

Lamashtu
Rovagug
Torag &
Iomedae

Frack, I can't get over how awesome this could turn out. You're really good. This is the kind of stuff Hubby comes up with and I can never figure out. (as I said before, if I use his ideas, he wont have as much fun, although he's pretty good at not meta-gaming)

This is more of a response to your first post than the rest.

If you want a nice creative trap, check out this boulder trap for a few rounds of adrenaline filled running.

If you are looking for interesting content, then I suggest you add rivals!

/plug

The rival idea could be nice... perhaps folks in this dimension trying fruitlessly to figure out the "GOOD" prophesy but not realizing it because they are not the chosen ones who will stumble into it by kicking off the "bad" prophesy?

You've got the right attitude, so you and your players will be FINE, better than, I'd bet.

The weekend is MY gaming time so I likely can't ponder out a prophesy fitting to your exact players... but you can use the witches Animus/Anima conflict " in the prophesy, and it sounds like your inquisitor is your vain character.

would talk more but players at the door, will hit you back on sunday and maybe I can chime something useful before you play again! ;D

Thanks for the compliment, delighted to serve!

Frack, I can't get over how awesome this could turn out. You're really good. This is the kind of stuff Hubby comes up with and I can never figure out. (as I said before, if I use his ideas, he wont have as much fun, although he's pretty good at not meta-gaming)

Two pieces of general advice:

Don't be afraid of making the obvious choices for your story. If you're alone and working on the game, just write down your first idea and work on it. You can ditch or modify it later if you need to. If its the middle of the session, picking the first idea that pops up saves time and effort and keeps the game moving. Not every idea needs to be innovative, exceptionally creative or Oscar worthy.

Second, I know you're avoiding your husbands suggestions, but don't be afraid to pickup on table talk by your players. If someone says "you know, it'd be really cool if..." and describes a plot twist, if you like the idea, totally steal it and make it true. I've done this with players all the time and it's a lot of fun. Also, if they guess your plot twist, don't feel like you have to alter it just to keep them guessing. Maybe add something a little unexpected as well, but don't bend over backwards trying to avoid their guesses.

I like Vicon's ideas too, I would totally steal them if I were you.

Irontruth is SOOOOO right there about "wouldn't it be cool if" -- as well. Knowing what your characters really want out of the adventure and the goals they want to achieve -- if you can't give them what they want, try to give them something similar or making pie-in-the-sky wants distant but achievable goals.

I've played and GMed quite a bit, and I can tell you NOTHING is more frustrating than a GM that doesn't care to endulge the player's objectives. That doesn't mean you must make it all low-hanging fruit or obviously attainable... but nothing takes the sand out of your players enthusiasm more than "I won't let you do/have that." -- if you know what they want to do or want to have, make them run the suitable gauntlet and face what you feel is an expense of sufficient effort to not just achieve the goals of the story but their personal goals.

The first idea that pops into your head is often enough sufficient as Iron says, keeping mental or paper notes of things and once in a while connecting some dots to make the bigger picture look cooler.

I'll keep an eye on this thread or you can PM me whenever, and I'll help you out if I can.

Definately flesh out your story ideas next time on the forums before you begin and you'll have far more fertile ground! Never reinvent the wheel when there is so much out there people are willing to give! Imitation is the finest form of flattery, If your table is happier for our dealings I'm happy!

-V

Good Lord Vicon! I do believe that go take all the Pathfinder books, grind them to powder, cut them into lines, and snort them into your brain. You are absolutely amazing! +1 cookie for you, sir.

will hit you back on sunday and maybe I can chime something useful before you play again! ;D

I'll try to see what I can come up with and keep posting here. Our game nights are Wednesday so I have plenty of time...in fact, I'm not sure we'll even be playing this Wednesday since we're doing Thanksgiving that day. I think by the time we game again, I will have plenty awesomeness with all of your help. ^^

I think my biggest issue with DMing (other than the whole plot thing) is gauging treasures and encounters, but the DonJon seems like it's going to make that a lot easier.

I like the rivals idea, but with all the main stuff, I'm trying to stay less than overwhelmed. >.<
I totally forgot to look at the characters' back-stories. I think once I get the gist of the main plot line out, I'll fiddle around with side things.

And as for the prophecy, since I already hand the brands on the hands hehe, rhymed, I can't have the cool

"The four Fools"

The drunk will hand-hold "(First god)'s spirits" ...
(the bottle, with spirits being the wine, but open to misinterpretation)
...The Clothes-Horse will be clad in "(Second-god's) chains"
(the necklace but also sounds like a prison)

And I really wish I had spent more time on the Gods involved. I've got a lot of thinking to do. rawrg.

Okay, I can do this...I'm sure I can...you guys are great btw. I think I would have dropped yet another campaign otherwise. ^^

Something that a lot of people, even experienced GMs, are afraid to do is retcon things. Now, I wouldn't retcon something because it wasn't perfect, in GMing, close is good enough, just give it another shot next time. If you have an idea to change something inthe past to make the game waaaay better, go for it. Talk to the players, ask if they're okay with it and do it.

I do this a lot between sessions, I think of something that could be different which would set up a cool part of the plot in the next session. Particularly if it's in the details and not major changes, most people seem cool with it.

Well, if you tell me the names/classes/gods for each hero respectively I can try to come up with something off the top of my head... Though you might want to be the instrument of your own prophesies...

keep in mind that the Donjon site is a great resource for ideas, and has plenty of d20 D&D based-stuff, but that is not necessarily true pathfinder. So treasure tables and stuff like that may be harder to count on as 100% representative to pathfinder system, than say... you just using the generators for quick location descriptions, NPC generation, and quest/adventure ideas. Your husband or somebody else well versed in pathfinder can tell you if a particular treasure generator is a fit for your game. Don't over-reward and don't short them, it can effect game balance, and she's a tricky mistress.

Okay, so in answer to the above post:

The Witch was the first to get branded and hers was The Eye of Lamashtu. (this got them talking about the chaos and madness bit)

Second was the Inquisitor with The Eye of Rovagug (they see a correlation between the gods as CE, I'm not sure if they caught the war part.

Third we have the Barbarian with The Eye of Iomedae (they get confused at this part as she is LG. Again, I don't know if they caught the war part)

The last brand was The Eye of Torag and meant for the Bard/Jester
(I picked this one for the protection domain)

Now, I've been thinking about this it totally just hit me like 20 minutes agoand I think what I'll do is have the Grand Elder have the brand on his left hand. How high should that perception check be???

So he's going to tell them how when he was a young adventurer he and three strangers woke up at the large inn and no one else was there (sound familiar?) I think I should write down the PC stats, cause I want to make a secret roll for everyone's sense motive. I'd hate for them to roll, fail, and then be suspicious anyway...
His group had a fighter, a cleric, a wizard (he's the wizard), and a bard

Anyway, he's going to tell them how they found a prophecy in this town but were never able to find the Temple mentioned. He brings out the ancient text, or scroll...I think scroll will work, and reads aloud to them. (I still have to perfect...make up/adjust the prophecy)

So he reads them the (fake) prophecy which basically says that they need to get their branded hands together at the Temple (there'll be some sort of alter they need to touch??)
This is to awaken the four Gods because while they've been away evil bad god is being released and the Four can defeat him and the PCs will be sent back to reality. (but then there's the problem of how old he is and the fact that they never heard of this evil god being let loose before....)
Anywho, I thought that maybe he would sacrifice his hand to the cause. It would get preserved with a spell?
When they get to the temple there's only space for three hands but the fourth spot has the mirror. They place their hands on the proper spots and the Jester looks in the mirror. The real evil prophecy is heard.
There's a rumble. The ground shakes. Then.....nothing.
They leave the temple to find themselves in a strange city. It's bustling with people (who they can interact with)and they are back in their own dimension.
They go on their adventuring way, but evil bad things are showing up everywhere. It's like there's a war happening. I'm thinking devils and angels periodically, but mostly just-plain-bad-stuff. Fights at every turn. This is where my PCs get to get to finally fight and see how well the work as a combat team.

The Witch is always going into libraries, so I think I'll have her find (if she rolls high enough) a scroll with a similar prophecy to the one they just fulfilled. Only this one is how to save the world from destruction. It speaks of The Aged Wizard (I have to get a name for him that's a little more obscure I think...actually maybe not?)
If they put things together properly, they'll see that the Grand Elder was behind everything and now must find him and destroy him to make things better (along with some other stuff?)

Okay... so the "War of the Gods" which you can imply is not necessarily a war of the gods of evil fighting the gods of good... but rather an ancient war long ago (perhaps during creation or many creations ago) between ALL THE GODS versus a god of madness from the "Dark Tapestry" -- you can look up pathfinder gods of the dark tapestry, they are basically ancient evil gods that make the modern evil gods look like candy merchants.

So here is my last crack at a prophesy, with explanations in parenthesis: This new prophesy calls for four hand-eyes and one mask, three given by your players, one by the grand elder (who's importance I'll get into below)

"Four Beings, Gods on high, kept an eye on one other -- lest opposed-ones lie"

"All worlds were threatened, old gods broke free, as evil leapt from tapestry."

"Iomedae protected, Rovagug slew, Torag forged prisons, and Lamasthu --"

"--Rose above the din, "Old gods, resign -- for the new god of madness, which is mine!"

"With foe defeated, victors in haste, locked the fabric in madness in one place."

First stanza:
(this is to work in the symbiology of the eyes, and how each player has an eye that will be, as part of the ritual/prophesy turned to face the eye of an opposing god, while the hands without eyes face the hands of players with like-aligned symbols, to indicate that in that ancient coalition they could trust their own camp, but needed to team up to defeat the ancient madness)
-- it will also be prophetic when the grand-elder, bearing one of the marks, reveals himself as the bad-guy, who intends to free madness once again. This will require those four gods to return and destroy and remake the world, allowing the Grand Elder, once he has killed the party, to start at the beginning of creation as the most powerful mortal/magic being and if not become a god in his own right, to dominate all of creation as a false-god.

Second Stanza:
(You can relate in your story somehow that the rebirth of madness from the dark tapestry would necessitate the destruction of all creation. What the players first thought was gods opposed Good vs. Evil can be learned as All gods against madness. This plague of madness can also be the justification for the constant fighting and "something's not right" after the first prophesy is completed. The prophesy as the players thought DOES allow the gods to come together and defeat madness -- but not to PROTECT the world, the prophesy FREES madness, and necessitates these four gods to come together again, END CREATION, and all the gods would start creation anew -- the only survivors of course would be in this pocket dimension of strangeness you've created, the only REAL person in which is the grand elder, who came here with another party to complete the prophesy long ago, and waits here to help cause the prophesy again, so he can finally leave this prison when creation is remade by the gods)

Third Stanza: The SECOND interpretation of the prophesy actually UN-MAKES the prophesy the grand elder tricks them into performing. By simply configuring the seals in the center/special place of this warped/weird reality/four towns/whatever it simply frees madness, but if the prophesy is taken literally rather than a rite in honor of the ancient god-war (there can be cues to support this all over the special central area where the madness ritual is performed) the prophesy is actually a ritual that can be used to contain madness before it escapes. One player will have to protect something (Iomedae seal), one player will have to slay something (Rovagug Seal), One character (The Elder with his Torag Seal) is SUPPOSED to re-seal the prison, but instead of doing so he reveals his true nature, tells the story explaining everything, laughing madly until the person bearing the mark of Lamashtu (who's true domain is madness and not THIS monologuing weenie) cuts him off (hopefully with a vengeful "madness is mine!" leading to:

Fourth stanza: In a reflection of the old god war, Just as the four gods slew the force of madness and locked it in it's place, the players then turn to the reglected task of the Grand Elder and seal the prison of torag (perhaps using the literal severed hand of the now-unveiled evil mastermind, that bears the seal)...

Again, no need to use any/all of this, but if you like it and are unclear on any of it, we can hash it out here, I'll try to check a couple of times before Wednesday. I've really run quite far with your idea, but at it's heart all the scaffolding and support structure is yours! ;D

The coolest thing about this story-arc is you can give the players a level-appropriate item/award/power/whatever each in the theme of the gods they unwittingly served in ritual representation of their ancient battle. Too cool, and the players would totally love those items/abilities because they symbolized their triumphant success in a glorious adventure, that they could use in subsequent adventures!

-V

Don't limit yourself to just Paizo releases, either. They don't have a monopoly on good ideas. For example, you mentioned traps. I'll be generous, and say that Paizo has been very unimpressive when it comes to traps.

The Wurst of Grimtooth's Traps, as well as the original seven Grimtooth's Traps books, are a MUCH better take on traps than anything Paizo has put out on the subject (or is ever likely to).

Mind blown.

I'm going to work on some of the finer details and post what I've come up with in a day or so...I'm so excited! This is gonna be epic. ^^

I am also going to give you a great resource for beginning GMs... a non-system specific Random Generator.

Link:
http://donjon.bin.sh

Explore this site, and generate a bunch of random stuff to help give you ideas and populate the ideas you do have. For example the third generator from the top has NUMEROUS options, one of which is random QUESTS.

Sublink in case you have difficulty finding it off the bat:
http://donjon.bin.sh/fantasy/random/#quest

I went there and got 10 ideas for quests that were all pretty interesting.. and you can mix and match! If you have a laptop you can game with, you can even use online tools like these to create , name, and detail NPCs, Quests, and places on the fly!

In addition to the random quest generator there is a random adventure generator that gives DOZENS AND DOZENS of tropes and popular themes for adventurers, settings, villains, plot twists... the rest is making the story yours and coloring it sufficiently.

So take that link, explore it, and jotting stuff down you can come up with innumerable original stories or just co-opt directly the best permutations you find.

People like me on the site will be happy to help you flesh things out or tell you which threads have already covered the info you seek!

You sir just made my day!

You sir just made my day!

Right?! I added the DonJon link to my toolbar. Hubby's been DMing for years and he's all "I have been looking for something like this for AGES!"

I think I'll keep it forever. :P

Okay, so I'm looking stuff up and can't find it in any of the books I have...

Where can I find information on Gods of the Dark Tapestry?

Or is this something that I just have to make up and do myself?

Wake of the Watcher has the most extensive information.

Oooh thank you. ^^

Are all books with info regarding this topic going to be parts of specific Adventure Paths?

Ahhhh!!! I've got 45 minutes to find some good atmosphere music!!!!! Any suggestions?!

So, this is what I came up with: (thanks for all the ideas and help!)

Curiosity is King for this lady of light
a mark of the Gods brings short this delight.
A warrior sees, she'll soon follow suit
to continue the path of unknown persuit.
A brute of a man in a foggy way
Continues the path to a dismal day.
The war for the world rests in the hand.
A third eye is opened for the magical man.

From the darkness will come The Reflection of all
to put wheels in motion in the House of Pharasma.
Four Gods to arise, once foes, now unite
To fight back the madness and evil with might.
Lamashtu wants madness, but all to herself.
The need for War calls Rovagug to help.
Torag must protect, for that's what he does.
Iomedae wants back the peace that once was.

Now I just need to work on the "Real" prophecy and where stuff actually is and we'll be in business. ^^