I've been GMing for a couple years, but I've only just started bugging my players for in-depth goals and the like and am really attempting to incorporate them into the story. Having never run a game that's primarily driven by the *player's* stories (been mostly running APs for the past few years), what I'm wondering is, when you design these sorts of campaigns, how do you let the players progress their personal stories without resolving them too quickly?
For example, one of my players wants to find and kill the man who killed his father. How do you suggest letting the player progress that story in a meaningful way without essentially having just one adventure where the bad guy is located and another adventure where they kill him?
Or the one who's being hunted by a certain villain, after I have the villain send some goons to attack the player how do I make the resulting story more complex than "Interrogate goons, go to villain's hideout, stab villain"?
I'm asking because it seems like, if I let the goals be resolved this quickly and easily, the resolutions will be somewhat anticlimactic but I can't think of how to logically extend the resolution process beyond maybe 1-2 sessions.
Thanks a bunch.
Is there any connection between the nemeses of these player characters?
Maybe they are both henchmen of the bigger bad guy that you are planning for the party to take down at the climax of your campaign. So the player characters might achieve their personal goals fairly early, but in each case the find that a common villain is the ultimate source of their problems.
I usually try to tie as much of it together as I can. I take their backgrounds and look for interesting ways to create a bigger plot line. And draw it out to add suspense.
They come across villain goons and uncover a plot. But when they get to the villain, they are gone and all that is left is another clue.
Encounter the villain during the middle of a major story arc and the player is forced to make the decision to let his rival go for the greater good. For now.
Over time, you end up going through different players pieces and eventually they all kind of tie together in some way to make sense into your storyline.
You're going to need to develop the killer like a character. Who is the killer? Where did he come from? Why kill the player's dad? What does the player think they know? Will it be enough for the PC to kill the killer?
Hi Johnico. It sounds like you have a great 'problem' there. It's fantastic that your players want to invest more into their characters than just collecting a high score.
I would suggest you start by storyboarding each story separately. Taking the father killed story, you could have a storyboard, which runs: Find a clue to an organisation connected with the father's murder (character may start with this) - find the organisation - find a member who knows something about those involved in the father's murder - find a member who was involved - find the ringleader - find who the ringleader carried out the murder for - find that this person is also an intermediary - find the person who actually wanted the murder. That is 7 steps, assuming you are planning a campaign levels 1-20 that is about one step every 3 levels.
Now take the second player story and write a similar storyboard. E.g. Character gets tracked by goons - Goons give up boss's location - Boss is working for someone else - Someone else is tasked with recovering something from character (his blood, soul?) and delivering it to his boss - Big Boss wants his x for something terrible. That is 5 steps, about 1 step every 4 levels.
Now, as others have suggested, flesh out the antagonists in the overall plot and at each stage and write linkages between the stories. Maybe the ultimate BBEG is the same person and the Father's murder was for his x as well. Even though the plot stages have averages, you could speed up one story and slow down another to make the whole fit.
Once you have the connected stories, the overall plot and the villains fleshed out you will be able to fill in the adventures and pace to suit.
I agree with David Knott, connecting it to the overreaching story helps a lot. Like I took the vengeance feat in Kingmaker and my dm made the guy who enslaved me also be the boss of the first book.
I don't know this in character, but when we fight him, I'll realize it, allowing me to complete that story arc for my character without having to go off solo or derailing everything else.