Greg Wyatt's page

You are all outstanding. Thank you so much for the great advice. I've got some thinking to do.

The biggest problem I have with this group is that they could literally do anything. They could murder hobo through all of the noble houses until there is no opposition. They could spend their significant treasure to buy loyalties. They could use their CHA PC to roll some ridiculously high Diplomacy on everyone. Or they could just barge into a Council meeting and challenge the current ruler. Or some combination thereof. I have had to do a lot of prep for this side adventure to prepare for any and all contingencies. I currently have Roll20 maps setup for random city marketplace battles, random manor house battles, castle battles, tavern battles, street battles, and the set piece catacomb battle which may or may not happen.

The last time I GMd the adventure was far too much on rails. I had a story to tell and they went along with it. I'm trying to make this far more open world, which means I have to be ready for anything. Which means that every week it keeps getting more and more insane. Please, do not get me wrong, and thank you for reading this far as I vent my spleen, but I really do love doing this. It has been invigorating to GM this adventure, it's just also been challenging, and making a cast of character - a High Council - each with their own motivations and relationships with all of the others, this will be the biggest challenge yet.

Come to think of it, if I do it right these murder hobos might actually have to pay attention to the plot hooks and character details. You know, that could be interesting if I set it up where each of the Council members has their own unique hook and if they ignore it and approach that member incorrectly the whole thing goes sideways on them. Add some last minute backstabbing and insert a NPC who knows what they did from last adventure and we might have something.

I've Gm'd myself into a corner and could use some advice.

Our regular group has been playing a homebrew world for quite some time now and the creators of this world needed a break from GMing. I offered to take the helm for a few weeks with a side adventure I had in mind set in this same homebrew world.

Everyone, including the creators of this world, are all playing as evil characters, mercenaries for hire, and they've had a lot of fun running around and doing odd heists for the big bad. What started out as just a few weeks has turned into a few months. We're now coming to the end of the adventures I had planned out and I'm at a crossroads in this side story arc. In our last adventure I had them finally meet their employer directly, not through the usual cutout, and on a lark I tossed out the idea of them returning to their homeland and challenging the existing ruler for control. They seemed to like that idea, but didn't mention it again. My thought at the time was that the group could decide to extend my tenure as GM with this side adventure, or return to the main story with the creators resuming their normal GM duties.

After the game I was running over the events and realized that if they decide to take up the challenge to take over their homeland there are going to be pitfalls that I am unaware of. As a fairly green GM I've never run a game wth this type of complexity before.

I think I can constructing the story, the characters, and the internal politics of their homeland. I don't need to worry about the complexities of raising an army and mass combat - it won't be that kind of takeover as we have established their homeland as a place where honor rules and challenges are common. I think this is going to be a situation where they will need to work the internal politics of the council of elders and build a coalition to stage a challenge.

My question is, has anyone ever run a game like this, what should I watch out for, and what kind of plot twists can I build into this to make it more interesting. It should all wind up culminating in a big fight with lots of backstabbing, just not sure what to generate to get from A to Z.