I now just throw random shit at my players and see what the engage with. Last week they decided the frog must be up to something so the frog lead them to a bog full of bog mummies. Anyways I almost TPKed the party and now they are hell bent on killing all the frogs in the swamp.
this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2026
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the frog lead them to a boy full of bog mummies
I'm sorry, a what full of bog mummies?
Bog. Although mummies bursting out of a child's chest has been add to the list horrors to use on my players
listen, the boy is actually a thousand year old dragon and knew what they were getting into
I love Gizmo and would die to defend him.
How dare you suggest that the fate of the world is more important.
What if were to tell you the fate of the world could decide if Gizmo lives or dies?
which is why i don't really do plot. No longterm plan could withstand the whims of my beloved chaos monkeys.
dunstabzugshaubitze@feddit.org This is why I did not plan long term plots for my family game, and then the chaos monkeys decided they wanted one.
So I put one together.
They ignored it.
i think, players think they want some grand plot behind it all, but thats actually not it. i think players want mostly two things out of "the plot"
- they want to discover connections, and that's something i can easily provide as we go along by looking back at what happened in previous sessions and tie it to something they are interacting with now.
- they want the feeling stuff is happening in the world
and by for example having crates with the sigil of some noble they did not like turn up in a cultits lair i can achive both. and i have to prep less stuff that never comes up at the table and when i can't decide on what exactly to do i can allways role on my list of factions/npcs to decide that.
yeah, Sir Peters Guards always had dealings with the thieves guild... let's put one of his men in the hideout with a bag full gold or let them find a blue print of the Mansion of Sir Peters rival there.
that way factions and their relations grow some what organically without me having to invest a ton of time into something that might be used and those random encounter tables so many people dislike are suddenly super cool and useful, because i can use the freaking bandits later if they encountered them.
dunstabzugshaubitze@feddit.org Oh, no, I mean they literally told me "I thought this was going to be like being characters in a book, where there's a clear plot we're following. Can you make it more like that?" And so I did.
Then they found The Thing during one of the sessions I was running while trying to actually structure things in the background. It was something I didn't think was significant, but I probably should have seen it coming.
It... was not part of the restructuring work I was doing. It was part of the holding pattern "random bullshit" I was throwing at them for a few weeks.
Anyway, the campaign is about that now.
if MrBeast can run the numbers and maximize kids attention what’s your excuse MrDM?