As long as I’m enjoying myself it’s not a bad thing, right?
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I usually just kept a list of what the various factions are up to. If the players were like “ok let’s go see if we can convince Priscilla to smuggle the uranium with her drug stuff” I have a rough idea of what she’s up to and if she’d help, or help at what cost.
I gave up prepping “main quest” stuff when my players wanted to find out more about some curse affecting them, and decided the most logical thing to do is kidnap the head of their religion (who one of the players directly reports to), interrogate him, and hold him hostage. Instead of, you know, asking 😅
They eventually backed off of that plan due to concerns of some other PCs, but it was pretty close
I want to play again with a group that comes up with reasonable plans that play to their competencies.
I think a lot about how in a modern day magic game, the players wanted to contact another (NPC) group. They learned the NPCs were like double warded against magic, but spent a lot of time trying to punch through the wards to teleport to them. After two expensive, failed, attempts I was like “do you want a clue?”. They were like yes. I was like “if you just want to talk to them, why don’t you try calling them on the phone?”
I want to play again with a group that comes up with reasonable plans that play to their competencies.
I think a lot about how in a modern day magic game, the players wanted to contact another (NPC) group. They learned the NPCs were like double warded against magic, but spent a lot of time trying to punch through the wards to teleport to them. After two expensive, failed, attempts I was like “do you want a clue?”. They were like yes. I was like “if you just want to talk to them, why don’t you try calling them on the phone?”
- Think of a pun like “mathemagician” or “orcward”
- Build a joke NPC around the pun
- Shoe-horn the NPC into whatever is going on
- Think of some quest vaguely related to what they might like
- That’s the main quest now
God you just described my prep in a nutshell. This is how they ended up fighting an orchestra
One of my players offered themself up as a hostage to get the others out of a losing fight alive, which was a great twist in the story but now I need to run two branches until the others can attempt a rescue
the bad guys huddle a few feet away from the bound adventurer.
“What the fuck are we going to do with this asshole?”
“Uh… torture them and murder them?”
“Bob… what the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Well we’re not feeding them. We don’t have enough rations for each of us.”
“Let them go?”
“Let them go, follow them, then ambush the party and take their food. Or eat them.”
“Well, I guess that’s better than your first plan Bob.”
Fortunately we are playing Lancer, so it’s entirely in keeping with the setting for the others to drop from orbit in big mechs to explode things until they get their friend back!
In the meantime there was going to be a thing about working with some rebels behind enemy lines anyway, so they’re going to break the hostage out of captivity at the cost of not having the resources to help in a later conflict
so they’re going to break the hostage out of captivity at the cost of not having the resources to help in a later conflict
I like this mechanic but I hope you include some leeway for the player who can recruit their rescuer to their cause :D Think Han Solo driving a warhammer or marauder lancer equivs :D
They’ll definitely be working with the rebels beyond the rescue! He’s getting busted out by a disillusioned veteran of the army that captured him, and that guy is already geared up with a battered and customised mech stolen from that army. The other player characters are going to drop down and fight to rendezvous with the rebel and their friend, at which point they can drop a third mech prepared in advance for that player to join the fight. The rebel leader will definitely stay relevant, he’ll just have fewer forces to back the players up than he otherwise would have
Lancer has a system called “reserves”, which are basically special bonuses you can acquire by either achieving extra objective in a fight or securing something in the downtime between fights. Stuff like being able to call in an artillery barrage from allied forces, or a flight system with fuel for one fight. These are usually things only for the players, but I’ll be treating the loss of rebel forces incurred in rescuing the player as a reserve for the enemy — the rebels aren’t able to garrison the town they captured and it’s not longer a safe spot to rest, or they can’t take out the artillery spotters before a fight, something like that depending on what’s relevant and how they decide to approach things.
I see you’re new to DMing, if you think the main quest is more likely to happen :)
Main quest? Weird tangent? They’re the same picture!
Think of that bell curve meme, I think they’re actually very experienced.
Left side - thinks the main quest will happen, preps that
Middle - thinks side quests will happen instead of main quest, preps that
Right side - thinks about side quests but preps nothing, knowing that neither the main quest or side quests will happen, because the players latch onto a completely innocuous detail that you ad-libbed during a description
That’s exactly where I’m at too. The side plots are more self contained and feel easier to plan since they don’t have to tie in
