It has come to my attention recently that my campaign might be weighing down a bit on my players. A pair of them are frustrated with how events have gone in the story for their characters (got explosive collars for doing heretical things while working for a puritan inquisitor). It doesn't help that another of the players has recently recieved a power boost, and for story reasons is carrying the switches to the collars. Then another pair of my players are having problems because they're tuned to spontenaity and not having to think too much about what to do next. Essentially they're used to open-ended campaigns made up on the fly. My last player has no problems with how I run things (he being the one holding the switches) but does sympathise with the others.

If you were to compare GMing style to video games, I run my campaigns more akin to say the Final Fantasy series as opposed to the Elder Scrolls series. That is to say, where-as my players aren't necessarilly free to run about willy-nilly doing as they please (they see their inquisitor quite often actually) I run them through an epic story arc that builds on their backgrounds, and changes according to their actions. It could not, however, be described as open ended. It is a story telling experience after all, and I tell a great story. It is my strength as a writer afterall.

Anyway, I've talked to the players to ask what they would like to see more of in the campaign and my GMing style, as I do from time to time. From their responses I decided that I'd like the next couple of sessions to be more open ended. Though the scope of the campaign is quite large (a crusade to retake a sub-sector from the Tyranids), their next stop will be something rather large, but still well contained. They're going to be investigating an Emperor Class vessel that was once at the command of a powerful inquisitor (now KIA from crusade). I feel the ship will be large enough to allow the players some breathing room to flex their muscles a bit, yet contained enough that anything that occures will mainly only affect their storyline.

The thing is I need some help, even just tips would be appreciated, for open ended role-play. I'm not very good at coming up with developements from scratch. Im the type of GM who makes up extensive notes before the session. I mean I improvise stuff often, you can't GM without it, but nothing ever completely open. So, if you're willing I'd appreciate some help. I intend on organizing the situation on board the vessel, then dropping the PCs in to do as they see fit. If you're willing to help, I'll be making a second post for this thread with story details. For those of you who don't, you can stop reading here (of you haven't already) or I'd also accept ideas for developements, as I have a slightly horror vibe for this session.

WARNING: Long

PC Situation:
-An arbitrator rumored to be a saint because an angel appeared on the same battlefield that he assisted the late Inquisitor Ironstar in luring a Dominatrix into the line of fire for the naval ships in orbit. He holds the kill switch to the other players' explosive collars because of this fact, though his Inquisitor Domina, takes no credence to his reputation, only values his lack of corruption at this time.

-A guardsman who fancies herself a sniper. While formerly the leader of the acolytes, willingly got herself infected with a xenos virus transforming her into a vampire for all intents and purposes. (a tribute character to Rip van Winkle from Hellsing )

-A noble born assassin who was unwittingly the mother of a purestrain genestealer as her influential boyfriend turned out to be a Genestealer Cult Magos.

-A gypsy/thief from a feudal world turned assassin under the tutelage of the above mentioned woman.

-A sanctioned psyker who through freak accident got herself stranded on the same feudal world for 11 years, developing her powers without guidance. On her returned to civilized space, bartered with the Tau, for a pulse rifle, which she promptly began covering with carvings of the Aquila.

-Inquisitor Domina, is very strong willed, very old, very puritan, but practical. She went underground to investigate another inquisitor of the crusade who she expects of heresy. Due to her need for acolytes, she allowed her more heretical followers to live (the four above) but strapped explosive collars to them. She does not go on missions due to her aged body (does not believe in augmentation, though rejuvenation is accepted), but is still mentally quite powerful. Assisting her in overseeing the players are two senior acolytes...

-A guardsman sergeant from the New Tanith 3rd (my homage) who plays the flute and also helped bring down a dominatrix.

-A female psyker with the attitude of Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream and is an expert in divination. She predicted for her mistress that one of the crusade inquisitors would bring about the destruction of the entire sub-sector.

What's Going On:
The inquisitor that Domina is investigating is Inquisitor Kal Vennrich, the crusade forces' expert on Tyranids, who has also gone underground to pursue his own ideals. He believes it is possible to replace at least pocket of the hive mind with exceptionally powerful imperial psykers. He has to date successfully, and secretly enslaved a Hive Tyrant to his will. With this tyrant, a noble woman power fencer, and a former Space Wolves Scout, he has been able to capture and enslave more tyranid synapse creatures, along with their broods. He's not very good at it yet, and its started to affect him mentally. Unfortunately his aim of increasing his web of influence has been slowed until he can unlock the secret to tyranid mutation and procreation. As such, he dispatched some of his new forces to retrieve the remains of the dominatrix's brain from the crusade forces. In order to obtain better facilities in which to study the brain, he has boarded the Emperor Class battleship belonging to the now dead Inquisitor Ironstar. He's cut the ship's communication off from the rest of the crusade and is slowly rounding up all the humans to be converted to his aims or frozen for food later. Now his brood isn't terribly big, probably between 50-100 tyranids, the most notable of which being the hive tyrant, a pair of carnifexes, three warrior strains, and a lictor. Those not yet rounded up do not know what’s abducting their fellow crew but are quite frightened that their locked out of the ship's systems.

What the PCs Know:
Inquisitor Ironstar is KIA, while Vennrich is MIA. Inquisitor Domina knows him to be the pupil of an infamous radical who was killed by his fixation with the Dark Eldar. Vennrich was the leading expert on tyranids, and the new leading expert says that the "late" inquisitor was more concerned with studying the nature of the hive mind than how to better kill the enemy. The late Inquisitor Ironstar's head of security sent a message to the arbitrator using Ironstar's personal comm. frequency. He said that people are disappearing in droves and they are locked out of the systems. He implores for help, and prays the message got through.

Domina will find this suspicious and dispatch the party to infiltrate the ship with the Puck-esque psyker serving as chaperone. Their mission will be to quickly determine the source of this disturbance and report if there is any connection to Inquisitor Vennrich.

What is intended to occur:
Though the PCs will be left largely to their own devices once on-board, I intend for a couple of things to eventually occur. They discover that an old comrade thought to be dead is on board (their old tech-priest), and Vennrich captures them, asks them to join his mission, then leaves them to think it over in a prison. Now there's already a nice horror set-up with the unknowns that I think I can play with. (One of the players is convinced that it's Necrons.)

At this point any advice, tips, and feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Drop the Intended to Occur part... completely . You need to have no goal . The NPCs in the place can should have goals, complex and conflicting goals if at all possible... but you, as GM, should have no vested interest or preference in the outcome.

Rather than working out notes of what will/could/might happen, just work up a good, detailed description of the place and the people in it. Focus on the major features and significant players, and have enough concept of the minor details and bit characters so you can wing them. Make conflicts between some of the characters, conflicts the PCs can be involved in or ignore at their whim,.

Now, insert the players and allow them to act as they see fit. Don't give them a mission. Let them create their own. Have the various NPCs react to the PCs in accordance with the NPCs personalty and goal and the PCs actions. From there, just let things flow.

There are ways to have a set goal and still have an open-ended game session.

When starting my Dark Heresy campaign, my players were given the task of locating a Librium that was in part of the lower hive that had collapsed about a hundred years ago, and retrieve a tome from inside. They were given some credits and a dataslate with a guide to the hive and a passkey to open the Librium's doors, and that was about it. They went down to the lower hive and asked various people about how to get inside the collapsed area, or if anyone knew where the Librium was located. I had an idea of a few different NPCs who could help them, but I didn't have any set way for them to meet them - I let them decide the direction of the story, and introduced whichever one was most appropriate for the situation. Once they got down to the Librum, however, they discovered that someone had already been there, and stolen the tome they were sent to retrieve. So they gathered clues and tracked down the people who stole it, and found out a fence they were supposed to take it to, interrogated him, and found out that it was going to be auctioned off next week as part of some antiquity exhibition in some noble auction house. Again, the players were given complete freedom to decide how to get the books - were they going to use the invitation provided to them by the fence, to try and buy the book? Were they going to sneak in with stolen goods from the fence, to try and add more to the auction, only to leave with things they didn't come in with? As it turned out, they decided to go to the preview for the auction, and the psyker caused a distraction while the tech-priest disabled the lock on the display case and took the tome.

I just had some notable NPCs statted out and had an idea of Point A, Point B, Point C, etc. for the campaign. How they got from A to B or met character D was entirely up to them.

maybe take a look at how such pc games as Knights of the Old Republic work, theres one core storyline but always 3 or 4 ways of completing tasks. I give my Accolytes an objective but not a clear cut way of achiving it.

best thing to do is have an objective and variuous ways of it being achived, think about the parties advisaries how they would react what they want and always keep an open mind be ready for your party toi completly diverge from the plot you have formed

What gives me a pause is that you are running this hodge-podge of heresy under a PURITAN inquisitor.

Honestly, if my complete group would be so willing / itching to use "radical methods" (xenos weapons, tainting the holy human form with xenos infestations), I would give them a radical inquisitor. Especially the "infected by xenos" should be dead under a PURITAN inquisitor. Doesn´t matter how "practical" he is. Turning "fire against fire" since "it is so usefull" is -NOT- the way of the PURITAN.

This put aside:
Anything involing a GM-plan to imprison the pc during the gm is not very "open end". By that, you force the pc into one direction, you start to "railroad". Why this is usefull (sometimes), it is not what you wanted to intend. Right?

Simply give them an objective they have to achieve on the ship (whatever it is), construct the ship and what is still on it... and then let them go.

As already mentioned: concentrete on "what is on the ship" "what happens without the pc"...and then allow the pc to interfere as they see fit.

Well, I'll offer my small amount of advice.

You say you're a good writer. Great. Write what happens if the PCs don't interfere. Learn the situation backwards and forwards if they don't become involved. Have a timeline or something.

PCs, being who they are, are pretty much flies in anyone's ointment. PCs cause things to happen in ways they "weren't supposed to."

Set the situation, and start keeping track in your head how the plot(s) are proceeding without PC interferrence. Once they start interferring (if they choose to), let the story organically grow. The trick is really to not try and extrapolate what the PCs are going to do. If you do that, you might find yourself unconsciously scripting them, which would go against your intent.

I try to do this myself when I think about upcoming events. It doesn't always work, I have to admit. I have a tendency to push my players towards an outcome I'm expecting. In fact, in the last game, after the fights, as the session was rounding up, one my players commented "This is the cutscene, right?" I laughed at the time, but...well, while it might not have been a criticism, perhaps I need to take a look at how I structure stuff in my games.

Sorry it's taken me so long to respond. I want to thank everyone who replied. You gave me some great advice. I wrote out the situation on the ship, came up with my NPCs, and their motivations, and an extensive list of bit NPCs. I found the advice for the bit NPCs especially helpful in this past session. Also, something entirely new occured this week. I have zero notes to write for next session, as all the "setting mapping" still applies. I found this incredibly amusing. So, thanks again to everyone, it really helped a lot.

Gregorius21778 said:

Oh and I'm fully aware of this fact. Three factors as to why Domina hasn't killed them outright. The first is the practicality. It just comes from being unspeakably ancient, and simply not wishing to expend unneccessary energy. (Even if you disagree with that, just the term "practical" opens doors for the second reason.) That second reason being the situation she is in. The crusade is under the eye of a much younger, tyranical puritan inquisitor, that she doesn't much care for. Which is why she chose to persue the heretical inquisitor in secret, as to not invite interference from the Lord Inquisitor. This put her in a position where her manpower was low. As such, when her tainted, yet still loyal, acolytes returned to her, she decided to give them nice explosive collars and make them useful while she still needs the assistance.

If you still don't buy any of that, the third reason is I'm lenient with character death. As I said before, I build and alter the grand story arc based upon the history and actions of the PCs. If they go and die, that's a lot of hard work down thw tube. Don't get me wrong, I through impossible odds their way all the time, and there has been quite a few burnt fate points, but I'm just not one of those GMs that finds any value in killing off PCs for any other reason than story developement.

Besides, the heretical Inquisitor Kal Vennrich, will be offering them a job shortly anyway. (I wonder what they'll do...)

Milova said:

Yeah, I love it when that happens. I've had games that, once started, essentially planned themselves... I got to just focus on enjoying the game along with the players.