I'm resuming a month-long game of D&D tomorrow, and I've been reflecting on what I need to do to make the session go well.

Right now, the players are in a massive subterranean region called "The Rift" (creative, I know!) and they've been down there for four or five sessions now.

They spent most of their time going from Arrival (the drop-off point for people magically teleported into the Rift) to Hope, and then hunting down bandits.

Now, they're headed toward Hivesgate.

I've actually updated the map a little since this, but I haven't actually exported it to a final image file.

Setting the Scene

Hivesgate is the next step in the adventure, and I'm still nailing down some of the details (I don't procrastinate, I promise).

There are really three things that I need to deal with here:

The players rescued a noble, Arndwen (descendant of the guy for whom Fort Arndwen is named), from bandits who had set up on the way from Arrival to Hope. They're escorting him to Hivesgate, and they will probably get a reward for taking him there successfully.

They also have a personal motive to be there, since Hivesgate is sort of a regional hub of learning. The Hive, to the west of the city, is basically home to an odd mixture of mushroom farmers and eccentrics, many of whom have magical training and some of whom teach apprentices in Hivesgate.

The players have also been made knights of the realm by the king (for saving Arndwen), and the king's spymaster, Ilidar, has decided to bring them into action against a conspiracy plot. The "Shadowborn" are a seccessionist group that may have begun to plot against the kingdom under the command of a disgraced aristocrat, Markus of Irondwell.

What Should I Do?

I know what the players want to do, so the question is how to deliver it.

My plan is for them to have some meetings with the less scrupulous members of Hivesgate. The idea here is that it'll tie into all three things, since some of them will be posing as academics.

Another thing that's important is to figure out how to make the magical training meaningful without having it bog down the game in terms of time. I don't have a desire to run a magical academy arc of the campaign. I'm thinking about including a powerful NPC who can help the players awaken to their true nature, maybe one who is not immediately obvious.

Finally, there will be some action. The players have taken their characters down a somewhat unscrupulous path, so I think there's some great opportunity to see things go a lot of different ways here. It may even be that they go entirely off the rails for the planned adventure.

The idea here is that they should be able to make some significant choices, maybe even siding with Markus of Irondwell or instead going with the original plan.

Of course, there's also the chance that not having a game for just over two months might cause some issues and players won't remember anything. Fortunately, I record audio of all my sessions so I can review it later.