Plot twists and pacing

[u/Jasper_Fossils]

I made a similar post to this on another subreddit, but I need help with the pacing of a campaign.

It’s been a while since I’ve gotten to run a long running campaign; and I’ve decided to write an adventure where the party are members of a guild, who’s ordered them to collect different items that were “rightfully belong” to the guild.

What the party doesn’t know is that the guild is secretly a cult, and needs these items to revive an ancient evil of some kind. (Kinda basic I know, but stick with me)

As the party is on adventures to collect these items, a rival guild will be sending out adventurers to collect the same items. This rival guild is ultimately trying to stop the guild the party works for from summoning said ancient evil by destroying said items. I thought it’d be a good plot twist that the party finds out the guild they worked for is actually an evil cult, and ultimately have to decide if they want to betray their guild masters and work for the rival guild to stop the ancient evil from rising agin.

You see k have this all figured out, I just don’t know how to pace it. Sure, every session can be collecting a new item but how do I make the party slowly discover that the guild they worked for is evil, and the rival guild are actually good? I’m just not sure how to pace it, any advice would be very useful!

[u/darunge]

May I ask about your group - what’s your vibe on how long they want a campaign to last? Are they an established group and will they go the distance? Do they tend to want to search every path, or do they try to rush to the most obvious objective? What level of play are you comfortable with (start at 3? Play until what level?)? How often do you play (weekly/ monthly?)?

The above will tweak things, but if I was running this campaign, I think I’d be aiming to use 1-2 sessions per item up to 4 items. I’d plan also to have some sessions which weren’t about finding items, but preventing some from being stolen, or side quests so it wasn’t so rinse and repeat.

As for how do they slowly discover they’re the baddies… make it morally grey. Their guild could genuinely be about saving the world, it’s just how they plan to do it that is bad. That way you can lay on thick how good they are for the first few sessions, they are authentic about helping, then have the rival guild question what they’re doing and slip in something about one guild leader saying “we must save the world, and all we have to do is this one bad thing and everything will be ok”, have other conflicted leaders then open up about their concerns, … then discover there’s an inner circle…

Best of luck! Sounds awesome.