| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| EricMinde |
Posted - 19 Aug 2022 : 15:07:05
I'm trying to incorporate clues into a story. Innocuous moot points at the time with huge significance later on.
What's your favorite example of this in stories you've read?
Obvious examples would be the scent of fresh pipe smoke in a crypt no one has been to in 200 years or the out of place BBEG thief king signature in amongst other signatures on a tax document while the party thinks they need the book to get a tax rebate from a local baron.
How do you add those in to a story successfully without giving away too much? |
| 4 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| DoveArrow |
Posted - 07 Sep 2023 : 18:13:44
By the way, the movie Back to the Future does what you're wanting to do masterfully. I would say watch that movie and notice how they seed things throughout the plot and set design. |
| DoveArrow |
Posted - 28 Aug 2023 : 17:22:56
The best way to do it is to work your way backwards. Let's say your primary villain is a doppelganger wizard who has killed the local noble and taken his place to try and get close to the king and take over. The players might encounter the doppelganger posing as the noble. Then they find the real noble's body a couple days later, but it looks like it's been rotting for some time. The doppelganger has the area magically warded, so he gets an alert as soon as they find the body. He disappears as soon as they discover it and takes some new form.
If you want to push it back even more, maybe the players start the game attending the funeral of someone the doppelganger impersonated briefly to get close to the noble. Maybe that person was poisoned, but nobody realized that. They think she got sick. Maybe the doppelganger infiltrated an orc tribe before coming to the village. The orcs found out and the doppelganger fled to the village. Now the orcs are attacking the village, to try and kill the doppelganger, but nobody knows that either.
By the time the characters figure out what's happening, the doppelganger has already replaced the king. Meanwhile, you've seeded these little easter eggs throughout so that when they get to that point in the game, it's not a complete surprise. That said, there might be easter eggs they missed and you can then reveal that either through the villain or as the DM when the adventure concludes. |
| sleyvas |
Posted - 03 Jan 2023 : 23:40:18
Using synonyms to describe something helps. For instance, if everyone knows "this creatures skin is blue"... and every reference says "blue".... call it azure. Sometimes a subtle word change may make people not realize WHAT something is. |
| pancakewizard |
Posted - 02 Jan 2023 : 13:34:45
My favourite trick is with food and drink. Ed clearly *loves* inventing new dishes and beverages, and they're easy to pepper into the writing whether it's a story or an adventure and they're purely incidental to anything that's actually happening so aren't distracting. If you want to get more overt, poisons are another good one. There's a ton and they all have different origins and methods that FR fans hungry for references will devour. |
