looking to polish my first quest / campaign

[Declindgrunt]

hello im a ok dm and im making a campaign for my friends they will be starting at lvl 5.

first quest:
the first quest starts as the players arivve at a town thats situated on a hill with a very quick river runing through the town, the river is so quick that the town has somewhat modern plumbing, runnign focets, showers, etc. they will be coming to the town as it is the time of year when a particular type of fish swims up stream, the fish is very tasty and very fruitful. after a day the water becomes infected although the water shows no changes. I plan for the water to upon the first ingestion to reduce the age in which someone pass's way by one dc12. (this will in turn end the life of a great thinker who disgined the pluming and has protected the water source of the town through a dungeon he designed. upon the third day the water will visibly become brown, as the town awakes to the great thinkers outside shack is burned down and the great thinker is on his death bed. in the wake of the fire the great thinkers journal with the layout and notes on the dungeon are missing. the town is then asked to investigate the water source as they seem to well equpied.

upon reaching the end of the dungeon they will find a well and at the bottom of it will be a book that is eminating darkness, upon further examination they will find that someone is traped inside the man has grave information that will change the world, unfortionately the person who traped him in book also cursed the book so he cant talk about it in any way shape or form. The man will then offer them one of his fortress's he had to set up a base of operations.

The Campaign:
the group will then need to recover a gem of power from several powerful genies 1 of each element+1 human element gem upon collecting the gems they will free a funny dwarf who will tell them that the armies of giants have join forces and are planning an assault on several human capitals and they are being led by specific giant and if they can infiltrate the giant city and take him out they the giants will be direction less and there petty disputes will get the better of them crisis averted etc.

so im looking for advice and sugestions on how to make the first quest better and to flesh out the campaign

[Declindgrunt]

anyone?

[rrllmario]

my advice is that it might be alot to put into one session, i dont know what your group is like but i dont think ppl enjoy having a huge story thrown at them all at once so if you pace things good have them find their own way to you story points. drop the hints and clues like cookie crumbs and have the effects(the great engineer guy wouldnt be the only one to die) is it if they eat the fish or drink the water a lot of those fish would die too you would think(maybe a river full of dead fish would be more ominous) just keep it easy and if the party wants to go a completely different way just have what they do be affected by this event so they have to start wondering whats going on.

[Ar'ruum]

dude, that could easily be like 8 months of gaming ... unless there's like a hall of elemental genies that just happens to have one of a genie of each element... even then, most combat encounters take a bit of time... unless your characters are one hit wonders, THEN it might could happen in one session...

if it did... that's alot of story that could have been a pretty epic type quest, that can last for quite some time...

however, on second read, you never said anything about a single session...

I think the "Turtle Wax" your looking for here will be found in the fleshing out of the adventure. One bit of advice I was given in regards to DM'ing was cover 3-4 of the 5 senses anytime a new area is encountered. Leaning towards a bit of a plot guided sandbox of a game, will force you to have the town "built", and the locations of these genie's. You'll have to have decided on how your adventurers will be able to discover where the genie's are.

For example, there's the ONE guy who happens to be a genie expert and could plot the map to each one... but he happens to be the town magistrate and would either require a hefty payment to give the information, delaying them with his busy schedule and assistants intercepting the adventurers when they try to achieve their goal of getting the information. Or there may be some local adventurers (NPCs) who have at some point seen or heard about one or a couple of the genie's and what it takes to get to them. Those NPCs would frequent one of a couple inns or taverns that your adventurers would have the option of entering.

My point is, that when you get down to the point of actually constructing the adventure, the polish is found by how intricately you decorate the experience with details, not in additional plot elements or "crazy awesome wow" abilities, treasure, or whatever.