A hundred years ago it seems, I wrote a post about setting the scene, and how the way a scene is described provides motivation for the players to invest themselves. There's little worse than the DM having someone use the words "help us" when introducing a potential adventure; it fairly screams the DM's intention here.
Consider, if you will, a scene from Silence of the Lambs; it runs one minute, eleven seconds and it's safe for work. Buffalo Bill doesn't ask for help. He doesn't introduce himself or even glance at the woman; instead, he sets the scene to make himself look pathetic ... the sort of person in a situation that is in desperate need of help, but is "too proud" to ask for it. His arm is in a cast. He tries to lift the couch and fails, grunting like someone who's been at this a while. He appears weak, which is easily equated with "non-threatening," and the girl jumps in like a good Samaritan. The scene is fairly upsetting because it's easy for the viewer to imagine jumping forward to help like her.
I've counselled often against DMs setting up traps like this. It's far to easy for a DM to manipulate circumstances to make something look innocent that isn't — and this isn't fair to players. Moreover, going to the well just once seriously damages the trust between player and DM, which can easily end a campaign even if the players admit the DM's "right" to take the action. Trust is crucial to a campaign and should never be thwarted over a cheap opportunity.
Still, the actual incident recalled above, if legitimately a person in trouble, offers other opportunities that work so well with D&D. There are endless possibilities: a sleeping child falls out of a wagon ahead of the party and the family doesn't notice; a priest is walking along the road with a burden that's far too large for his or her tiny frame; a shopkeeper is being intimidated by a ruffian; a cart has overturned; a soldier is carrying a wounded companion. Any of these are a perfectly ordinary sight; and where trust exists in the campaign, the players are sure to act in some manner.
But the method takes some subtlety. When the players offer to take the two soldiers on board their wagon, the well soldier does not suddenly spool out a story about a salt marsh dungeon, a treasure under a smoky mountain or a borderland citadel! Um, no. What we do get is the set up for a narrative that pulls the players in a little bit ... which we can follow by another event, and then another, until we have the actual adventure on its feet.
Consider: Hans, the well soldier, is carrying his younger brother Friedrich back from a battle that took place hundreds of miles away. Hans is friendly, describes how they're trying to get home, while Friedrich sleeps. Quaint, simple, a few moderately interesting tidbits about the war, who's fighting it, where the brothers live and what they do there. A good five or ten minutes of role-playing.
One of the players naturally tries to cure Friedrich and discovers that a cure spell won't work. What? There, now we have a mystery. Hans admits that Friedrich was struck with a cursed weapon, causing this effect ... and that, in fact, the brothers are deserters. Here we have need; we have sympathy. Yet the boys do not ask for help. In fact, Hans urges the party to abandon them on the road. "We'll manage somehow, once we get home," he says. He's proud. Brave. Refuses help when it's offered. This stuff is catnip for a party.
To take the players in the online campaign out to a dungeon in the wild, I had them learn about a cow that had disappeared; and not the first cow, either. The players ventured out, found a trail of blood ... and from that point on, nothing I could say or threaten with could dissuade them from delving into a very nasty, very uncomfortable dungeon full of undead. Because this is how the appetite for adventure works. As soon as the players feel they have a handle on what's happening ... they don't need someone else to give them marching orders. Cow, missing, probably find out by following this trail of blood? We're in!
It's ridiculous to invent complex unnecessary tales about what this princess did a hundred years ago that caused the invention of this cursed item that has produced this horrible consequence that's lasted for generations. Lead with this kind of story and expect the players to sigh, roll their eyes and commit to the campaign because they're expected to. "Whatever. Yada, yada, princess, cursed item, yeah, we've heard it. It's your world. We're just here to do what we're told."
But have the players start hunting for food, find a glade, catch a fish, stumble across a frightened old man in the bushes who begs not to be killed ... it all feels perfectly ordinary. As the old man gratefully sits down to eat the player's fish, because he's obviously starving, all we need do is have him hesitate before answering the player's questions about anything. "Where are you from, old man?" The old man's eyes veer towards the distant umber peaks in the distance, full of aching and longing before he answers, "Nowhere special."
"How long has it been since you last ate?" The old man's stomach grumbles; his expression reveals pain. His hand quivers as he reaches for another bite. "This morning," he answers.
This sort of contrasting exposition is both compelling and frustrating; it hooks the party in, makes them anxious to understand what's really going on ... and before we know it, the players are hanging on every word of our description about the generational curse, the item and the princess. It just needs to be filtered through the old man's hesitation to give details, and the details being doled out with an eyedropper.
What's more, the process of "helping" produces relationships between the party and the people being helped ... relationships that establish the player's role in the game world. One relationship leads to the next, as we meet Hans' sister Joanne, whose friend Silvia is being forced to marry Olaf, who doesn't love her but wants the money that Silvia inherited from her father ... and now with the help of Hans, Friedrich and Joanne, we're learning what makes Olaf such a horrible person ... and so it goes, building the party's ties with the community and adding new adventures in service of new people to whom they're introduced. The players become invested in these people, in the local town ... and when we have a new character arrive, hat in hand, to actually ask the player's help directly, it's not some stranger, it's Silvia's cousin Jacoby. "You helped my cousin; she said I should come to you."
This takes foresight and awareness on how to "play the party's" heartstrings ... but so long as trust is maintained, the players want to be played this way. It feels "right." Each person who comes forward to gain the party's help makes the party feel more and more important ... as the line goes in Conan the Barbarian,
"... he began to realise his sense of worth; he mattered."
The players can possess this feeling only when they're running the show ... if the DM dispenses every adventure from "on high," then it's the DM who matters and the players are merely pawns in the DM's game. DMs who cheer for this approach, who proclaim proudly about how "I ran the party in such-and-such, which I've run before," are assuaging their own ego and not building it in their players.
When the players "find" the adventure, buried under the leaves on a trail somewhere, when they let their interest decide their path, when they make the decision themselves to see where it goes ... then they see themselves as the choosers of their fate; they see themselves as succeeding or failing at THEIR expectations rather than those of the DM.
What's funny is that, for the most part, modules are often written to give the sense of the players stumbling across an innocent village, or climbing to a fairly innocent set of caves or the like. The sense is that the players are being surprised that the cave leads into this unexpected and amazing dungeon that unveils itself as a paced mystery ... but then we slap a title on the module like "Horde of the Mountain King" and blow the reveal.
How much better it would be if the module were titled, "Old Man in the Woods" or "The Wounded Brother." Then we have no idea what we're getting into. We only know we're getting into something, and that it's sure to be good.
It's refreshing when "just normal" stuff happens. It's that extra little spice of realism that gives the setting some grit. It's not just here to serve the player's fantasies - it's a tangible place with people who have their own desires and trials outside of the party.
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