James Barnes's page

The bottom line is that some quests are silly. 250gp for "Moon Radishes"? Really? Magic items in exchange for killing a boar? Really? When did magic items become that pedestrian? My players are never gonna buy this. They also care a lot more about the story than how much treasure they get.

So, I need ways to motivate them with the story. For some quests (Bandits and Svetlana's Ring) it's built in so no problem. I can work others into PC backgrounds. (I've already done that for Tuskgutter, Falgrim Sneeg and the Kobolds.) But PC backgrounds only go so far. Wanted posters also get boring after about two have been posted. Treasure and monetary reward is a) unrealistic and b) boring for my players.

So, I need ways to introduce these quests to the PCs as they go without it being too obvious and in a way that makes a story. The next part of the AP has some more good examples inside the back cover ("Where's Tig?" and "A Lady's Desire").

Any other good ideas out there that can justify or replace the existing quests?

This is the dialog I don't want to have:

Players: We head out east over the hills
Me: You see more hills
Players: *fill in their hex map* Does anything else happen?
Me: Umm... the hills are getting taller and rockier as you get closer to the mountains.
Players: Anything else?
Me: No.

I don't think I can run Kingmaker unless every hex is a bit different. There needs to be something that happens wherever they go even if it's a bit of flavor. I can come up with that on the fly to a limited degree. But I can't do it all night. It seems like other DMs out there must also be facing this.

I refuse to run random encounters. I have stolen some of the marvelous additional encounter ideas from that other thread.

What I really want now is just minor unique features I can sprinkle into hexes. Have any of you come up with material like this?

Or is there some alternative approach I should use?