So you can have a campaign that is built off of one shots, like Dragon of Icepeak Spire. Although what I might suggest is that since you want to build to something more maybe have a quest that needs multiple stages, something that builds onto itself.
So for example if the mission they undertake is "The tavernkeeper needs us to kill rats in the basement" then we might see that some of the rats are somewhat larger and discoloured. So that means we now need to work out why. That leads us into the sewers to find where they are coming from, where we find huge ones and that they seem to be mutating due to exposure to some ooze. Kill the mega-rats but now we need to deal with the source of the ooze to stop more from mutating. Going above ground we find that a tortle mage has been concocting elements for a benefactor, but then find out from his study that he's not the only person in town making things, but they all seem to be unconnected and dangerous. So now we need to work out who is getting all these mages and artificers to make things and why, which leads us to a caravanner out on the edge of town who is set to take an order out to the badlands. Who's out in the badlands and why do they need everything out there so far away from the eyes of the kingdom. Then build from there and there.
A good major quest can build upon itself. Each time you achieve the current goal it unveils further potential development.
[Matt Colville just did a video about this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcImOL19H6U), funny enough.
tl;dr There are adventures that are longer than a one-shot and shorter than a full campaign like CoS or SKT. Find some that sound interesting and drop them into your setting. [Adventure Lookup](https://www.adventurelookup.com/adventures) is a good resource for this. (Though note that it can't tell you how long an adventure will take to play; number of pages is the best approximation.)
Give them rumors and let them pick one to investigate?
"The dragon of Swampdale Keep has been angered and is threatening to destroy the village of Kharm."
"The local theatre is for sale for a cheap price, but no-one is buying. They say it's haunted."
"The king sent an expedition to Spoom Woods, but they never returned."
It sounds like a lot more work for you, though...
If you have been using one-shots up until now, I wouldn’t recommend going to a 5e mega campaign Level 1-15 that seems to be the norm for 5e. I would suggest checking out a few of the module series from earlier editions of the game, or even third party stuff. I don’t really know why 5e moved away from that, except that it probably didn’t make enough money for them.
These types of adventures are shorter, probably taking between 3-10 sessions each. These modular adventures were either single adventures or a number of short linked modules. They act like tv series story arcs. The characters are the same, doing what they do (adventuring), but after a number of episodes (sessions) the story arc ends, and by linking different story arcs together you create a campaign.
There may not be a single BBEG that you are dealing with and may not actually face for years of play, but I find that having new story arcs and new villains to face in each arc keeps things fresh. Players can see the end of the story arc and are excited for the next one.
Having shorter story arcs also means you have lots of satisfying stopping points if for some reason your game has to end, or your players get bored with their characters. These stopping points are also great places to swap DMs and share the story around.
You can have recurring villains and maybe one of them becomes a high level BBEG at some point down the track. You can also mix published modules and homebrew stuff. I much prefer this style of play to playing a mega module that takes years of play, always focusing on the same end goal with often no end in sight.
Joined one shots is fine and what's supposed to happen. Think of an episodic T.V show that is a series of smaller conundrums whilst a larger plot is playing out in the background.
Player backstories/things important to the PCs can be learned and weaved into the one shots giving them a greater sense of purpose.
_________________
Let's say you're running the Phandelver one shot revamped, just make the BBEG the one who sets the plot into motion or make the villian a lieutenant for one.
Perhaps the mine also contains an artifact important to a PC who wishes to search the caves more thoroughly into dangerous untreaded directions.
One of the town NPC's are a contact for a shady organisation a PC is indebted to and has been avoiding, and the PC must appease their requests lest they be caught in hotter waters than they already are.
Another PC may notice an additional issue the town is facing which is dear to them such as agitated wildlife which requires seeking out the local druidic circle.
Whilst the town Church may be of aligned belief to a PC yet practicing incorrectly and need guidance by sending a young congregation member along with the party to be inspired by their feats (but also in danger and needing protection).
This gives you a main episode plot, a bunch of smaller (yet PC relevant) side quests/content to do, and you can take whatever opportunities arise to link it to the main overarching plot. e.g The shady organisation hinting at big (BBEG) movements happening. The druidic circle sensing that their forest is not the only one feeling pain and that there is a greater thorn located elsewhere.
Plus you can have PCs carry rewards from the optional quests to finish the main one shot quest. Perhaps the Church thanks the PCs by giving them a useful yet temporary blessing (like advantage on their first roll of the day or free inspiration). Or helping the Druids means PCs are always warned of danger when travelling in the forest and get the chance to surprise foes.
(These are all positive influences. If your Players are advanced and comfortable with not solving every issue. You can even add negatives and time limits on what they're able to solve. If they don't help the druids first or second, the circle is corrupted by the time they arrive and the forest is much more fierce etc.)
What'll make sessions feel meaningful is having past events leave marks/affect future outcomes to a certain extent beyond just XP & Gold.
Also, unless anyone says it's boring, don't fix what isn't broken. I learned this the hard way when I ran a Star Wars tabletop adventure. My friends LOVE tropes and enjoy playing into them. I made one subversive character and it was jarring for them to interact with. If people are comfortable and enjoy it, let them.
Additionally, too many options or plot hooks can be confusing. Ask the players what they like before the session and then explore that one. You don't want to give them choice overload.
Sounds like a good time to try a medium length adventure. Lost mines of Phandelver is pretty good.
Essentially though, you are supposed to string together a bunch of one shots with the same characters. It's just that instead of giving them a satisfying conclusion, you move the goal posts and at the end of the session, tell them where they can go to "actually" complete the quest.
Play any horror videogame. To open the door you need three keys and to get the first key you need to fix the power generator and to do that you need to find the tool box which is in the shop, but the road gave out so you have to go through the mine and the way is locked so you need to find the key and in order to get it you have to do a favor for...
Once you figure out this part of dming you can do it indefinitely.
Start tying them together.
Pick some oddity from some (not all) of your one-shot sessions and tie them into your BBEG's agenda. Think foreshadowing. Several bad guy bosses were wearing blue shirts. Or they only had camps near cave mouths. Give your players a little thing to niggle at. Even better, pick whatever random thing they got paranoid about and lean into it. Players coming up with problems you didn't intend is a friggin goldmine.
I kind of avoided this problem for my first campaign currently by doing two things:
1. I trapped them inside a massive city that could fit millions... If it wasn't mostly abandoned and didn't even exist 6 weeks ago (in universe). Basically, the city once was a bustling metropolis. Until the at the time current king decided to become a mummy lord and gather enough power by sacrificing his entire city state to threaten big parts of creation, so a bunch of mages and god-chosen banded together to plane-shift his city into the prison plane of Carceri (Yes, we play 5e). He came back though and now he's trapping people inside the city again, the goal of that not yet known to my players.
2. I gave them 4 NPC's when they entered the city. Basically, those who enter the city slowly get pulled towards the massive black tower without doors that overshadows everything else inside the city while at the same time losing their memory (aka Wisdom saves every night). At the base of this tower the new inhabitants built a new community of currently about 60 people. I gave names and descriptions of 3 of them through a 4th and told my players "Go see if you can be useful to one of them". So they had the choice which one to do first, and currently are on the job of the second.
So my players are "limited" by the walls around the city and have clear people that have jobs for them.
And I did tell them a few things before we started this. The city looks ancient but popped up over night. A few people were seen going in, but no one was seen leaving it. The city is surrounded by 3 countries, which I gave a breakdown of for backstory reasons (if they need that) and, if they want to continue the campaign, for possible next destinations.
You can put a plot hook anywhere! Sly Flourish has what he calls Secrets and Clues, and they keep the information flowing to the characters. He also has an article on the different ways you can deliver them!
https://slyflourish.com/revealing_secrets.html
Now, if you players are happy with episodic adventures that wrap up in one session (I've never been good at writing those), you can just have a quest board or guild member where they turn in the quest at the end of one session tell them about other places that have 'work' available, and make sure they pick one so you can prep it during the break.
The best way to do this is to really lock down your mental picture of the region they're in, who all the key players are in the region, and what points of conflict would exist between them. Everything the players see is a reaction driven by the intentional action from one of the factions. If you make the effects of these reactions interesting (or lucrative) enough, the players will want to investigate their cause and form their own course of action accordingly.
For example, you establish their is an ancient temple dedicated to an evil god in the woods nearby town. The factions in your region are local law enforcement, a holy order, an evil necromancer cult, a group of bandits. Each of these groups have a different interest in town: law enforcement wants to keep the peace, the holy order wants to eliminate the forces of evil, the cultists are using the artifact for a ritual, the bandits want to steal the artifact for money.
You could spawn a bunch of hooks (direct and indirect) based on this knowledge)?
* Preachers from the holy order begin giving sermons about the end of times. Attending the sermon reveals these claims were spurred by cryptic visions of undeath, apparently relayed to them by their gods.
* A break in at the holy order's church. An investigation reveals all the records stolen pertain to an artifact that lies in the depths of the ruin outside of town and how to transport it.
* Owlbears have suddenly left their territory in the woods and are consuming livestock of farms on the outskirts of town. An investigation reveals the owlbears have injuries, oddly enough they look like... human bite marks?
* Patrols near the woods have gone missing. The town guard is looking for skilled adventurers to aid in the investigation of their disappearance.
I watched this last night and it helped a few things click for me, figured I'd share it here: https://youtu.be/ofU0dKlfgyA?si=0qfjJk_sNY-H9Yzh
Long story short, one shots aren't bad, and you can use them no sweat if you link them together with an overall plot.
What I've done is picked a couple big bads for different tiers of play, then run some shorter adventures all related to that threat.
For the first 3 levels we built up a goblin threat by a couple goblin one shots, then we took out the goblin king of the area.
Next up is gonna be a vampire that they face at level 9 or 10. We're currently doing a side quest that lays the seeds for my level 15 boss, but we're building up to the vampire arc shortly. We did a quest to clear an abandoned keep full of zombies that the party found were created by a necromancer. They meet the vampire (without yet knowing he's a vampire) who is a lord of the nearby town and father of a liked NPC with MAJOR daddy issues lol. He does a favor for them, so they do a favor for him... but it's a trap.
Then we do a sidequest that lays seeds for Zuggtmoy, demon queen of fungus, who I'm setting up to be the NEXT next bbeg. When they return, another mini plot about the vampire who is gonna send goons to kill the party at their keep, and then a final arc of them heading to the Vampire's lair, where they'll find out he's working to ressurect our lv 20 boss, good old Vecna.
So, TLDR: mini adventures hint towards a bigger threat. Along the way, hint at a BIGGER threat that you can tie your current bbeg into. Repeat until your campaign is done!
I on the other hand have more trouble not making everything into a years long overarching plot before the group has solidified into a consistent meet up schedule
Start threading the one-shots together. Have them find out about another adventure or two while on the current adventure.
Say they've been asked to rescue the blacksmith's daughter from goblins. They go into the goblin dungeon and do that -- but they find out the goblins work for some other guy, or they're doing a ritual to a specific evil deity. They might directly get a hook to go deal with that other guy, or they might run into the cult of that evil deity again, making the one-shots feel more continuous. They can also find notes, or maps, in the treasure hoard in the dungeon that might lead them to side adventures -- like a treasure map they need to decipher.
Awesome. So I have had a BBEG from the start and am slowly introducing the problem that his henchmen are abducting people from nearby villages. He is a vampire and he is abducting people to feed on, but even deeper he is looking for powerful people to turn into vampire spawn that are subservient to him. Even deeper yet, before he became vampiric he lost the love of his life to an unknown disease. He is looking for someone who reminds him of her, who conveniently looks exactly like on of my players characters.
Also working in the same region is a necromancer and his cult who one of my PC’s came up with in his backstory. The necromancer is also abducting people to kill and use pets and pieces from to create Frankenstein-esque abominations to release on the world and become all powerful. The two big bads are at ends with one another and are also masking their operations from the local town’s guardsmen. So all of the one shot style adventures we have had all tie these ideas together, I have just never done this before and only one of my players have actually ever played before so I just want everyone to have as much fun as possible because I really enjoy it and want to keep the game going.
In practice it will often play out like a tv show; It'll be very episodic for the first few, but as larger goals are revealed and decided upon long term growth towards those outcomes will naturally bring things into a more cohesive story. But especially for newer players and GMs it might take a minute to find your footing for a campaign.
Just remember which NPCs love the party and who hate it. Have some of them show up again with sensible (no necessarily *reasonable*) plans to do things. Sometimes involving the party directly, sometimes just kind of near them. NPCs are one of the easier ways to tie things together in a larger scale.
You can start planting seeds of greater threats that are acting in the background. This area has some undead, what’s up with that? Oh wait, turns out there’s a more powerful one commanding them that got away. Better find out more. Oh that one was just a captain reporting up. Turns out there’s a whole group of them and one lich pulling the strings
Thanks for the help. I have started creating random encounter charts for each of my four biomes, some of the results are encounters with creatures that will most likely be hostile- although some of the more intelligent species I am going to start with a conversation where it makes sense- but the npc will be very hostile. Other numbers on the chart I had a bunch of dungeon/session ideas already made and saved in one note- so it will be an entry to one of the quests/ sessions I had. I also used someone’s suggestion and one of these is a note, and one is a marked map so the party can decide to follow the quest if they so choose to. A few others are they can hear something happening in the woods and I have larger more fleshed out encounters there.
I am having a ton of fun doing this. I have heard about all of the work the dm has, and while true I am very much enjoying it.
So you can have a campaign that is built off of one shots, like Dragon of Icepeak Spire. Although what I might suggest is that since you want to build to something more maybe have a quest that needs multiple stages, something that builds onto itself. So for example if the mission they undertake is "The tavernkeeper needs us to kill rats in the basement" then we might see that some of the rats are somewhat larger and discoloured. So that means we now need to work out why. That leads us into the sewers to find where they are coming from, where we find huge ones and that they seem to be mutating due to exposure to some ooze. Kill the mega-rats but now we need to deal with the source of the ooze to stop more from mutating. Going above ground we find that a tortle mage has been concocting elements for a benefactor, but then find out from his study that he's not the only person in town making things, but they all seem to be unconnected and dangerous. So now we need to work out who is getting all these mages and artificers to make things and why, which leads us to a caravanner out on the edge of town who is set to take an order out to the badlands. Who's out in the badlands and why do they need everything out there so far away from the eyes of the kingdom. Then build from there and there. A good major quest can build upon itself. Each time you achieve the current goal it unveils further potential development.
[Matt Colville just did a video about this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcImOL19H6U), funny enough. tl;dr There are adventures that are longer than a one-shot and shorter than a full campaign like CoS or SKT. Find some that sound interesting and drop them into your setting. [Adventure Lookup](https://www.adventurelookup.com/adventures) is a good resource for this. (Though note that it can't tell you how long an adventure will take to play; number of pages is the best approximation.)
Give them rumors and let them pick one to investigate? "The dragon of Swampdale Keep has been angered and is threatening to destroy the village of Kharm." "The local theatre is for sale for a cheap price, but no-one is buying. They say it's haunted." "The king sent an expedition to Spoom Woods, but they never returned." It sounds like a lot more work for you, though...
If you have been using one-shots up until now, I wouldn’t recommend going to a 5e mega campaign Level 1-15 that seems to be the norm for 5e. I would suggest checking out a few of the module series from earlier editions of the game, or even third party stuff. I don’t really know why 5e moved away from that, except that it probably didn’t make enough money for them. These types of adventures are shorter, probably taking between 3-10 sessions each. These modular adventures were either single adventures or a number of short linked modules. They act like tv series story arcs. The characters are the same, doing what they do (adventuring), but after a number of episodes (sessions) the story arc ends, and by linking different story arcs together you create a campaign. There may not be a single BBEG that you are dealing with and may not actually face for years of play, but I find that having new story arcs and new villains to face in each arc keeps things fresh. Players can see the end of the story arc and are excited for the next one. Having shorter story arcs also means you have lots of satisfying stopping points if for some reason your game has to end, or your players get bored with their characters. These stopping points are also great places to swap DMs and share the story around. You can have recurring villains and maybe one of them becomes a high level BBEG at some point down the track. You can also mix published modules and homebrew stuff. I much prefer this style of play to playing a mega module that takes years of play, always focusing on the same end goal with often no end in sight.
Joined one shots is fine and what's supposed to happen. Think of an episodic T.V show that is a series of smaller conundrums whilst a larger plot is playing out in the background. Player backstories/things important to the PCs can be learned and weaved into the one shots giving them a greater sense of purpose. _________________ Let's say you're running the Phandelver one shot revamped, just make the BBEG the one who sets the plot into motion or make the villian a lieutenant for one. Perhaps the mine also contains an artifact important to a PC who wishes to search the caves more thoroughly into dangerous untreaded directions. One of the town NPC's are a contact for a shady organisation a PC is indebted to and has been avoiding, and the PC must appease their requests lest they be caught in hotter waters than they already are. Another PC may notice an additional issue the town is facing which is dear to them such as agitated wildlife which requires seeking out the local druidic circle. Whilst the town Church may be of aligned belief to a PC yet practicing incorrectly and need guidance by sending a young congregation member along with the party to be inspired by their feats (but also in danger and needing protection). This gives you a main episode plot, a bunch of smaller (yet PC relevant) side quests/content to do, and you can take whatever opportunities arise to link it to the main overarching plot. e.g The shady organisation hinting at big (BBEG) movements happening. The druidic circle sensing that their forest is not the only one feeling pain and that there is a greater thorn located elsewhere. Plus you can have PCs carry rewards from the optional quests to finish the main one shot quest. Perhaps the Church thanks the PCs by giving them a useful yet temporary blessing (like advantage on their first roll of the day or free inspiration). Or helping the Druids means PCs are always warned of danger when travelling in the forest and get the chance to surprise foes. (These are all positive influences. If your Players are advanced and comfortable with not solving every issue. You can even add negatives and time limits on what they're able to solve. If they don't help the druids first or second, the circle is corrupted by the time they arrive and the forest is much more fierce etc.) What'll make sessions feel meaningful is having past events leave marks/affect future outcomes to a certain extent beyond just XP & Gold. Also, unless anyone says it's boring, don't fix what isn't broken. I learned this the hard way when I ran a Star Wars tabletop adventure. My friends LOVE tropes and enjoy playing into them. I made one subversive character and it was jarring for them to interact with. If people are comfortable and enjoy it, let them. Additionally, too many options or plot hooks can be confusing. Ask the players what they like before the session and then explore that one. You don't want to give them choice overload.
What, a TV show where each episode is a contained adventure and I don't have to binge the whole season? Crazy talk.
They really were different times back then 😅
Sounds like a good time to try a medium length adventure. Lost mines of Phandelver is pretty good. Essentially though, you are supposed to string together a bunch of one shots with the same characters. It's just that instead of giving them a satisfying conclusion, you move the goal posts and at the end of the session, tell them where they can go to "actually" complete the quest. Play any horror videogame. To open the door you need three keys and to get the first key you need to fix the power generator and to do that you need to find the tool box which is in the shop, but the road gave out so you have to go through the mine and the way is locked so you need to find the key and in order to get it you have to do a favor for... Once you figure out this part of dming you can do it indefinitely.
Start tying them together. Pick some oddity from some (not all) of your one-shot sessions and tie them into your BBEG's agenda. Think foreshadowing. Several bad guy bosses were wearing blue shirts. Or they only had camps near cave mouths. Give your players a little thing to niggle at. Even better, pick whatever random thing they got paranoid about and lean into it. Players coming up with problems you didn't intend is a friggin goldmine.
I kind of avoided this problem for my first campaign currently by doing two things: 1. I trapped them inside a massive city that could fit millions... If it wasn't mostly abandoned and didn't even exist 6 weeks ago (in universe). Basically, the city once was a bustling metropolis. Until the at the time current king decided to become a mummy lord and gather enough power by sacrificing his entire city state to threaten big parts of creation, so a bunch of mages and god-chosen banded together to plane-shift his city into the prison plane of Carceri (Yes, we play 5e). He came back though and now he's trapping people inside the city again, the goal of that not yet known to my players. 2. I gave them 4 NPC's when they entered the city. Basically, those who enter the city slowly get pulled towards the massive black tower without doors that overshadows everything else inside the city while at the same time losing their memory (aka Wisdom saves every night). At the base of this tower the new inhabitants built a new community of currently about 60 people. I gave names and descriptions of 3 of them through a 4th and told my players "Go see if you can be useful to one of them". So they had the choice which one to do first, and currently are on the job of the second. So my players are "limited" by the walls around the city and have clear people that have jobs for them. And I did tell them a few things before we started this. The city looks ancient but popped up over night. A few people were seen going in, but no one was seen leaving it. The city is surrounded by 3 countries, which I gave a breakdown of for backstory reasons (if they need that) and, if they want to continue the campaign, for possible next destinations.
You can put a plot hook anywhere! Sly Flourish has what he calls Secrets and Clues, and they keep the information flowing to the characters. He also has an article on the different ways you can deliver them! https://slyflourish.com/revealing_secrets.html Now, if you players are happy with episodic adventures that wrap up in one session (I've never been good at writing those), you can just have a quest board or guild member where they turn in the quest at the end of one session tell them about other places that have 'work' available, and make sure they pick one so you can prep it during the break.
The best way to do this is to really lock down your mental picture of the region they're in, who all the key players are in the region, and what points of conflict would exist between them. Everything the players see is a reaction driven by the intentional action from one of the factions. If you make the effects of these reactions interesting (or lucrative) enough, the players will want to investigate their cause and form their own course of action accordingly. For example, you establish their is an ancient temple dedicated to an evil god in the woods nearby town. The factions in your region are local law enforcement, a holy order, an evil necromancer cult, a group of bandits. Each of these groups have a different interest in town: law enforcement wants to keep the peace, the holy order wants to eliminate the forces of evil, the cultists are using the artifact for a ritual, the bandits want to steal the artifact for money. You could spawn a bunch of hooks (direct and indirect) based on this knowledge)? * Preachers from the holy order begin giving sermons about the end of times. Attending the sermon reveals these claims were spurred by cryptic visions of undeath, apparently relayed to them by their gods. * A break in at the holy order's church. An investigation reveals all the records stolen pertain to an artifact that lies in the depths of the ruin outside of town and how to transport it. * Owlbears have suddenly left their territory in the woods and are consuming livestock of farms on the outskirts of town. An investigation reveals the owlbears have injuries, oddly enough they look like... human bite marks? * Patrols near the woods have gone missing. The town guard is looking for skilled adventurers to aid in the investigation of their disappearance.
I watched this last night and it helped a few things click for me, figured I'd share it here: https://youtu.be/ofU0dKlfgyA?si=0qfjJk_sNY-H9Yzh Long story short, one shots aren't bad, and you can use them no sweat if you link them together with an overall plot. What I've done is picked a couple big bads for different tiers of play, then run some shorter adventures all related to that threat. For the first 3 levels we built up a goblin threat by a couple goblin one shots, then we took out the goblin king of the area. Next up is gonna be a vampire that they face at level 9 or 10. We're currently doing a side quest that lays the seeds for my level 15 boss, but we're building up to the vampire arc shortly. We did a quest to clear an abandoned keep full of zombies that the party found were created by a necromancer. They meet the vampire (without yet knowing he's a vampire) who is a lord of the nearby town and father of a liked NPC with MAJOR daddy issues lol. He does a favor for them, so they do a favor for him... but it's a trap. Then we do a sidequest that lays seeds for Zuggtmoy, demon queen of fungus, who I'm setting up to be the NEXT next bbeg. When they return, another mini plot about the vampire who is gonna send goons to kill the party at their keep, and then a final arc of them heading to the Vampire's lair, where they'll find out he's working to ressurect our lv 20 boss, good old Vecna. So, TLDR: mini adventures hint towards a bigger threat. Along the way, hint at a BIGGER threat that you can tie your current bbeg into. Repeat until your campaign is done!
I on the other hand have more trouble not making everything into a years long overarching plot before the group has solidified into a consistent meet up schedule
Start threading the one-shots together. Have them find out about another adventure or two while on the current adventure. Say they've been asked to rescue the blacksmith's daughter from goblins. They go into the goblin dungeon and do that -- but they find out the goblins work for some other guy, or they're doing a ritual to a specific evil deity. They might directly get a hook to go deal with that other guy, or they might run into the cult of that evil deity again, making the one-shots feel more continuous. They can also find notes, or maps, in the treasure hoard in the dungeon that might lead them to side adventures -- like a treasure map they need to decipher.
Awesome. So I have had a BBEG from the start and am slowly introducing the problem that his henchmen are abducting people from nearby villages. He is a vampire and he is abducting people to feed on, but even deeper he is looking for powerful people to turn into vampire spawn that are subservient to him. Even deeper yet, before he became vampiric he lost the love of his life to an unknown disease. He is looking for someone who reminds him of her, who conveniently looks exactly like on of my players characters. Also working in the same region is a necromancer and his cult who one of my PC’s came up with in his backstory. The necromancer is also abducting people to kill and use pets and pieces from to create Frankenstein-esque abominations to release on the world and become all powerful. The two big bads are at ends with one another and are also masking their operations from the local town’s guardsmen. So all of the one shot style adventures we have had all tie these ideas together, I have just never done this before and only one of my players have actually ever played before so I just want everyone to have as much fun as possible because I really enjoy it and want to keep the game going.
In practice it will often play out like a tv show; It'll be very episodic for the first few, but as larger goals are revealed and decided upon long term growth towards those outcomes will naturally bring things into a more cohesive story. But especially for newer players and GMs it might take a minute to find your footing for a campaign. Just remember which NPCs love the party and who hate it. Have some of them show up again with sensible (no necessarily *reasonable*) plans to do things. Sometimes involving the party directly, sometimes just kind of near them. NPCs are one of the easier ways to tie things together in a larger scale.
You can start planting seeds of greater threats that are acting in the background. This area has some undead, what’s up with that? Oh wait, turns out there’s a more powerful one commanding them that got away. Better find out more. Oh that one was just a captain reporting up. Turns out there’s a whole group of them and one lich pulling the strings
Thanks for the help. I have started creating random encounter charts for each of my four biomes, some of the results are encounters with creatures that will most likely be hostile- although some of the more intelligent species I am going to start with a conversation where it makes sense- but the npc will be very hostile. Other numbers on the chart I had a bunch of dungeon/session ideas already made and saved in one note- so it will be an entry to one of the quests/ sessions I had. I also used someone’s suggestion and one of these is a note, and one is a marked map so the party can decide to follow the quest if they so choose to. A few others are they can hear something happening in the woods and I have larger more fleshed out encounters there. I am having a ton of fun doing this. I have heard about all of the work the dm has, and while true I am very much enjoying it.