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I hope this is an okay place to put this request.
I'm running a PF2e campaign loosely based on Ruins of the Grendleroot and I have some an issue that's bothering me and I wonder if you'd mind helping act as my brain trust.
Here's the issue, with as few spoilers as I can manage:
It's an Underdark campaign wherein the ultimate bad guys are
What I want help with is why she doesn't take a more active part in the story? Why isn't she blasting minions and giving the heroes gigantic buffs?
I think part of the reason is that if the bad guys know she's around, they'd pay much closer attention and join up to stomp her. But there has to be more. She's not off doing something altruistic, that's for sure. So what's stopping her from being more active (and ruining the game by taking over for the PC's)?
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I always like the pixar get-unstuck advice: asking yourself "What wouldn't happen?" or "What didn't happen?" usually makes it easier to get to where you want to go.
The first suggestion that comes to mind?
Maybe she's brokered a deal with the actual Queen, who she convinced of the danger; or maybe she's kidnapped or killed the Queen. Either way, she's now in a position with a lot of influence and power she can use to get back at the villains... but it's a position with a lot of scrutiny, so she's limited in what she can do without arousing suspicion. Hence the restraint.
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1. White Queen has taken great pains to ensure the three believe she is dead. She doesn't want to reveal herself until the PCs prove they can win. So you might set up a point where she starts helping more as the PCs achieve goals to victory. She may even disguise who she is as she gives quests and has the PCs work to end the threat.
2. Enemy has an item that protects them from the White Queen's power. Until the PCs acquire or remove it, she can't help. It might even be able to kill her, so she stays clear of them until the PCs remove the item.
3. If you wanted to be mean, maybe she's deceiving them and she's still in league with them. She uses the PCs to acquire items they need to summon the outer god under the guise of defeating it. Her three allies continue to harass the PCs to keep making them think they are enemies, but once the Pcs acquire the items to summon the god the deception is revealed and they must defeat all four.
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I always like the pixar get-unstuck advice: asking yourself "What wouldn't happen?" or "What didn't happen?" usually makes it easier to get to where you want to go.
The first suggestion that comes to mind?
** spoiler omitted **
Piggybacking this response, how "high-profile" is this White Queen? Is her true nature known (I'm assuming not)? If she's got to spend a significant effort to cover up her true nature, that might not leave a lot of "budget" for helping the players against the BBEGs.
Hmm.
Is she plotting their deaths, or is her goal to stop the ritual, stealing their relics, redeem one that she cares most about?
Like if there is a complex set of relationships there maybe she doesnt want to directly fight all of them.
Maybe one she seeks to turn back to her way of thinking.
Maybe one of them is far more powerful than her and direct opposition would be a bad idea. So she pokes at the edges.
Maybe a third is ambivalent about the ritual but follows for some other benefit promised. So she might believe there is room to maneuver and get him to quit.
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The queen might be under some form of magical Geas which may prevent her from directly opposing members of her former party. They might mutually be blocked from direct opposition overt action against her, but this magic may not be so ironclad that it prevents her from affecting one another indirectly by agents that are not truly theirs.
Whatever the other three are doing, it likely indirectly negatively impacts her and therefore she doesn't want them to succeed. Maybe it will call down some great magic that would either be 'associated' with her, or would be quickly 'blamed' on her and cause the surrounding forces to cause her no end of trouble she isn't prepared for. But by leading an independent group of heroes towards a path that will intersect and eventually collide with their plan, and her providing enough information and resources that they have a reasonable chance to foil the plot, it isn't truly her stopping them, Just like their plot would truly be considered them causing her the trouble she foresees.
If you don't like the Magical Geas route, another option is a bit simpler. While she may personally have reasons she doesn't want them to succeed, and she is the leader of her nation, she may realize that too many of her subjects may be sympathetic to the instigators of the plan she opposes personally to publicly and officially oppose it. The act of officially opposing it might cost her too much politically/socially for her to commit to it. Her people can follow instructions to stay out of the way of a strange band of outsiders, and they may wonder why, but then they don't have to associate that band's actions as all being intended outcomes of their leader. It buys her enough plausible deniability to keep herself within her safe zone.
Sometimes a leader is forced to use one Voice in public, even if the whispers they make after may seem to counter what was just spoken moments before. It reminds me of I believe it was the King and I where one of the King's many concubine's had fallen in love with a local monk, and they had tried to run away together but were caught. When the king's family tutor comes barging in and berates him in front of his nobles for him doing something he can't do, because the tutor's cultural sensibilities couldn't stand it. The king rebuffs them sending them away, and has the two lovers tortured and killed I believe. In quite, afterwards he again rebuffed the tutor saying he had intended to make the pair simply 'disappear' to no-where and anyone who cared would have assumed they were silently killed, but would have in reality simply been sent far away where none would know who they ever were. But because of the fuss made in front of the Nobles, and attempting to define what he could and couldn't do as king, he had to demonstrate to the nobles that he was not deferring to the foreign tutor's culture and dishonoring his own culture and position.
A similar thing could happen with the White Queen. Her people may not feel comfortable opposing the outward purpose her normal allies' plan seems to mean. But the Queen can see something bad in its future, but perhaps not in a way that would be 'appropriate' for the consumption of her people and public image. (take for instance if her public thinks she is invulnerable and none can ever be like her again, then if both of those facts would be revealed false by the 'plan' in the end, she can't let the plan succeed, but also can't acknowledge that the plan would prove such things, or the very thing she is attempting to stop would become true.
Another option could even be if she cares for one or more of them, and thus doesn't want them 'Harmed' but she can't allow them to 'succeed' for some self-preservation reason. If she came out and outwardly opposed them, they might fail to understand her continued 'care' for them. Thus she needs to manipulate another factor to oppose them, which she can't be squarely proven as responsible for.
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She is a vampire, you say. So, she is playing the long game.
She sponsors lots of groups of dupes ^X^X^X^X^XHeroes. Her expectation is that most will just fail but, in the process, both distract her enemies and prune back their forces somewhat. So, for almost no investment at all on her part she keeps her enemies in check. And, who knows, maybe one group will actually succeed or at least weaken her enemies so much that she can then take a direct hand and win.
Meanwhile, she is NOT directly acting against the wizards so that they don't directly act against her. Either some kind of formal treaty or, more likely, an informal situation where she is a fairly low priority to the Wizards and by not directly acting against them she STAYS a low priority.
This does all imply that the wizards have other issues than just her and the PCs. Maybe the traditional one that they're all jockeying for power amongst themselves. Or there are just other forces out there waiting to pounce.
Thanks for all the ideas!
To give you a full sense what's happening in the campaign you'd have to read Ruins of the Grendleroot and even then you wouldn't know about my changes to the story to fit my players and my own sensibilities, of course. But in brief:
Reminded of her former humanity by the PC's, one of the four (now a vampire renamed the White Queen) decides to help the PC's save the world from the looming doom. In the end, I plan to have her sacrifice herself in the moment of the PC's worst peril, dying a hero.
So my thinking is she needs to remain hidden. A bunch of low-level yahoos are beneath the notice of the archmages, but if they knew one of their own stood against them, they'd stop and nothing to kill her and her mortal descendants. So she works in the shadows.
I like Northern Spotted Owl's idea that she's weakened. She -did- just wake up after centuries and she -did- just put forth a lot of power to quell a powerful magic disaster, so that'd work.
Another thing I'd like ideas about is role-playing. As written, RotGR has lots of cool visuals and combat but beyond 5th level has quite a lot of "go-here-and-stop-the-bad-guy" quests. I want to eliminate some of that and insert some more roleplaying adventures.
I was thinking about an expedition to a hidden drow city to negotiate an alliance. Possibly the matriarchs of the drow demand the PC's prove they're worthy of having an alliance with. Any ideas along those lines?
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Farm their backgrounds for ideas you may want to work in. Players love to be the star of a side story tied to their backgrounds.
I agree, if you can farm ideas out of their backgrounds that helps integrate them into the story more. The Drow might head some prophecy and so something from one or more of the players paths might coincide with an element of prophecy, so they might send the heroes on a quest that might test if they pass a second stanza of said prophetic statement. That way the first element doesn't have to be entirely uncommon that the players feel like it was a prophecy that could only be them, and that they would have known about. Especially if the second part has them doing something they wouldn't imagine themselves being a part of (barring the circumstances now).
Importantly, the prophecy doesn't speak of giving the party party, but it being a sign that the Drow city might enter an golden age. Irony could of course even leave the golden age being something they wouldn't actually want. [Like a fissure cracks open above the city, revealing a radiant golden vein of magical metal which radiates around it causing them to grow a conscience they cant silence.] Sorry, I like little ironic twists to evil prophecies.
But definitely if you can find a way to draw in a story element from a couple of the players backgrounds. You don't have to grab a piece from all of them, but if you can at least grab a couple, it helps it feel a little more like a tailored story for them.
Good ideas. Thanks!