Legacy. What is a legacy? Its planting seeds in a garden that you may never get to see, or become so powerful that you live for eternity to see yourself crumble.
Some of you may have spotted the Hamilton Reference at the top, but when I heard that line of lyric, it so expertly encapsulated the planning of stories as a DM. We plan our worlds, with all the intricacies of a tapestry. To some extent I've always found that world building is story building. We play with a blank canvas, that only we can see the picture on. We see the outline that is just the geographical placement of the continents, the kingdoms, the principalities, the keeps, castles, towns, villages, warzone, jungles, forest, islands and so much more. But it isn't until we add the color of our stories that the map becomes a picture and the true meaning of the story we wish to convey becomes visible and real. This picture we create with all the detail that we wish to convey becomes the springboard to which we can elevate and portray the the play of the mind. Decisions that we make on the fly become easier because we know the what, when, how, where and why it would happen. With these restrictions, we find the freedom to improvise.
We may never get to see the coming of stories. They may never get seen by anyone, but it is important to remember that like a garden, they can flourish and enhance the world in more ways than just being explored by your players. They can add shading and vibrancy to your world, like the image of a setting sun. It isn't just yellow, red and orange, you have purple and blue and black and green interweaved into the picture.
So with this in mind lets get to the question at hand for this week's blog.
How do I plan my story arch?
When I sat down to start my second campaign, I wrote out all of the potential adversaries that my player could face or that I would like them to combat, this is a great time to create some new dangers in the world that you could use, any cool ideas you've always wanted to use. Like the idea of lichs? put them down. Dragons kicking up a fuss? add them to the list. Always wanted to have an invading army of Motifs? scratch it on the paper. I found you could either choose monsters according to the place you're setting your adventure or you can choose any creature and try and fit a particular story around it, either one is totally valid.
I did this irrespective of the tier of play that the players should combat this adversary. Because I had run a game in my world before I had more than most people would if they were coming up with a new world from scratch, I had old player characters that could become potential allies and enemies, and all the old enemies from the last campaign that were perhaps looking to escalate their plans.
I would say that I had perhaps thirty different stories to choose from. And while some of those maybe several continents away from where the players begin, they can still influence the story that the players are playing in.
Once we have our main bad guy for this arch lets start to think about what they want. This a great time to read through the flavor text in the monster manual and to do some research into the real world lore behind most monsters, either through fairy tales, folklore or other recorded accounts of those creatures. Doing this gives you more of an idea of that particular creatures, wants needs, and desires. For example, we are well aware of the cliche of a dragon wanting a massive horde of gold and taking over a dwarven keep/city, But what if those two things were a just happy circumstance for the dragon. Some dragons are highly magically adept and with the exception of the white dragon, are intelligent beings. Maybe that dragon is searching for something hidden, for something far beneath the city.
Brainstorm some ideas at this point. A trap that a lot of DM's new and old can fall into that that they write there villains or their story arcs from the beginning. I know this may not make sense but let me explain.
Every story has three components to it.
A beginning
A middle
An end.
( The writing on the graph is bit small so here is what its says)
1. the black dragon, tired of being hunted, hides and grows in power.
2. as the dragon grows he releases that the only way for him to grow in power further is to live forever.
3. to gain even greater lifespan , he decides he needs to find a way into the layers of the abyss to imbue itself with demonic power.
4. Dragon knows about the dwarves on the northern planes that mine so deep in the mountains they almost fall into the under dark
5. after doing research by capturing wizards, dragon gains knowledge of portals in the Underdark to the realms of the abyss
6. dragon takes over the dwarven citadel and uses local populous to make the mines deeper.
7. dragon gains access Underdark and uses new slave army to wage war against people of the Underdark to gain knowledge of the layers of the abyss.
8. finds the portal to the abyss and finds the domain of the abyss to call its home, and one day take over the material plane with the power its gained
Traditionally we like to start at the beginning of the story and work through the middle and then to the end, But what if we started our adventure with the dragon already heavily entrenched within the dwarven halls, but they haven't been seen for many years. And while the players know the dragon is their they didn't see the catastrophic event happen before the player's eye.
What is that dragon doing? Why is it here? where was he before? How do we find out what he is up to? When should find out?
These are just some of the questions that your players could be asking themselves. You could drop your players at any stage of that dragons story, and create a story hook that could lead to interesting storylines for your group. If the players are wondering why the dragon is entrenched in the dwarven city, and the players here of a man who use to be tortured by the dragon and got away, that could be a great hook for your players to go through a city-wide investigation mission to find this person. The man could promise to take the adventures to the dragons old lair with all his old research in return, the adventures need to do something for him.
There is a wide variety of thing you could do if you drop your players in the middle of this dragons story, you will find once you have something to focus on and to latch on to, creating tendrils of the story for your players is far easier, because you have a foundation to base there story from. The players may never get to see the dragon go into the Underdark, they may never see him find a portal to the abyss. Maybe you don't use that demonic power imbued black dragon for a couple of campaigns when its several years down the line in your world and only now, it has drawn enough power from the abyss does it rears its head and look to make its home on the material plane.
This may seem weird but I don't plan story arcs for my players to follow, I create stories for them to take interest in and then from there its the parties job to find solutions to the problems.
How would the party deal with the Dragon in the dwarven keep? They could sneak past its defenses and take it one on one, they could go and try and raise an army. If they get information about its plans in the Underdark they could try and cut him off at the pass and foil his plans there. The possibilities are endless, but I leave that up to the players. It's their adventure they should have the possibility to try anything, and if they screw up they feel even more responsible and connected to the game for letting down the people within it.
At the top of the page, I used that quote from Hamilton about legacies. To me, a good villain always wants to leave their legacy upon the world, they act in accordance with what they believe will lead them to never be forgotten. If you keep that in the back of your mind while creating your stories, you will be surprised at how realistic and creative you can be.
Thanks for reading guys, and until next time.
Bye!
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