New GM, Looking for Backstories

[MosBen]

This will involve spoilers for the AP, so if you're a player, best to click out of here quick!

I'm a brand new GM, and I thought that it would be a good idea to jumpstart my GM-ing skills by running two Age of Ashes campaigns at the same time. While I'm sure that my players will be happy with the story in the AP, I'm looking for story hooks to involve their specific characters in the plot in some way. The problem that I'm running into is finding ways to move those stories forward throughout the story.

For example, one of my characters is a Dwarf Oathkeeper from Gerduhm, sworn to protect the bloodline of King Taargick. I've got some good ideas about how to tie him into the story in Book 4, Fires of the Haunted City, but I'm not sure how to have it play out in the earlier books, as well as keeping it going in some form afterwards. My idea is that in their adventures the character will learn that Taargick had an unknown heir, and that that heir's lineage has continued to this day, with the modern day member of the family line on an expedition in Saggorak, only to have been captured and sent to Katapesh, and then Hermea. I have some more ideas about how to flesh it out more, but I'm having a hard time thinking of how to work ideas into the earlier parts of the story. I'm not worrying about planting too many seeds in Book 1 because I'm still finding my story-telling sea legs, but it doesn't seem like a natural fit to have information about this stuff laying out in the Mwangi Expanse.

Is it normal for a character's story to only really take off in the latter half of the adventure? Alternatively, I also have a character who's from Katapesh, and another whose story hook will play a role in Book 2. Is it fine if the PC story hooks in a book focus mainly on one character? Anyway, thoughts are appreciated.

[Ruzza]

MosBen wrote:

Is it normal for a character's story to only really take off in the latter half of the adventure? Alternatively, I also have a character who's from Katapesh, and another whose story hook will play a role in Book 2. Is it fine if the PC story hooks in a book focus mainly on one character? Anyway, thoughts are appreciated.

Absolutely! Personally, I feel like it's more "normal" to have individual character spotlight just so the story doesn't get bogged down. Occasionally dropping breadcrumbs to their overarching story is enough until they get their turn "on stage" so to speak.

Packing every single book with character hooks, to me, feels strange and forced at times. That doesn't mean I avoid tossing in a little bit here and there or foreshadow upcoming events, but divvying out story involvement in every book isn't important.