Advice on new adventure I'm starting and my clever idea

8d ago in Advice

Hey gang! I have a brilliant idea, an incredible idea, it's so good. And when I'm caught up in my own brilliance, that's exactly what I'm most likely to fall facefirst into the obvious spike trap right in front of me—so I want to seek the sage advice of the fine folks here to keep me out of that metaphorical spike-lined pit.

(this came together in my head in the last day or so, so I don't have it more developed than this yet)

The situation is as follows: I'm starting a campaign with several players who are all experienced, but haven't played before. We're starting with a one-shot to check the group chemistry before getting into something more committed. I don't want to make the one-shot the beginning of the adventure, but I do want to make it part of the adventure.

My idea is this: to have the one-shot be with 5th level characters, and be the PCs getting hired by an elderly man in poor health to retrieve some sort of artifact that was stolen from him—I'm thinking stolen by goblins or barbarians or some out-of-mainstream-civilization group. So the PCs go fight with whoever stole it, retrieve the thing and (hopefully) return it to the guy.

They one-shot will end there, but it will turn out in the main adventure that the aformentioned elderly guy is actually an evil sorcerer who needed that artifact (that originally belonged to the goblins or barbarians the PCs stole it from) to rise to his full power, and the storyline will be about the sorcerer coming back to his full might through rituals and yada yada yada you get the gist.

So when we start playing the campaign, they learn about a tribe of barbarians or nest of goblins or something who recently had a deeply important sacred object stolen from them, and a trusted guardian was killed, and they need help getting it back. The PCs agree to help, and, you know, wackiness ensues.

So a big obvious thing is I'm counting on the PCs following my plan, which they never do, and another obvious thing is proactive roleplaying is like a big deal here and I haven't mentioned that yet.

For the one-shot I'm planning to railroad them a fair amount, including simply narrating that they're on this quest, and then retroactively role-playing the interaction with the guy (I'm a lot more okay with this kind of railroading in a one-shot bc there's so little time for anything to develop in any case)

Then, before we get into the adventure, we'll get clear on player backgrounds, goals, etc., so I can tie that in with the events I'm envisioning for the main story.

With all that said . . . . Any feedback on this is super welcome, and especially looking for 1. cautions about things I may have overlooked 2. suggestions for how to enhance any part of this and 3. comments on my brilliance.

TYIA!!!

7 comments