GreenDamsel: *snip - continued
try to find a basic story you can work with. If you're going to have to sacrifice originality in favor of that *hey, I can really work with this and make it fun*, then so be it. It's better to me to be able to work out fun things with a cliche story, than being stuck in an original story which I can't keep interesting, or which won't give me much inspiration to keep adding quests and progression. If you can combine an interesting story with originality, that's far better of course, but simply pick something you can really work with as a DM.
It's up to you on how t ointroduce the story. You can drop hints through suspicious background events the players could take an interest in (which is something I'm working out at the moment); when they investigate, the might come across the tip of a bigger plot perhaps? they could come on to something threatening, a deep running conspiracy of which they lift the top veil... .
You could present the story up front, someone follows them/ aproaches them with the question wether they would like a job at investigating something. Perhaps the players own someone a favor from the prior campaing?
Or perhaps they just land in the middle of it at some point; this happened in the fading suns quest as they got caught in a firefight between guild mercs and noble guards in a suburb. After that it became apperent through a messenger from the official rulers who found out about their involvment that they could be of further assistance .. against good compensation ...
Of course, you can't keep a single story up full time; sometimes the players need a break (or, equally likely. you do). At that point you could introduce some local quests. This is really handy if your players aren't under time pressure (which sometimes works, but often doesn't; let evil bide it's time a bit ;) ). They come across a village where cattle is being raided by goblins from the nearby foothills, and the hunters have been butchered when they try to retort.
Whilst seeking the goblins, the heroes find out that they have aid from a troll, and they have to come up with ideas to stop them with minimal risk (as a lower level idea). The goblins could be led by a wizard, who is part of a coven of warlocks in the area who have some very special plans for the province *fill in said idea*
While the players are underway for the story, you could shove some of these their way (whilst they are passing through the village). They could be witness of some occurence (a caravan being raided by outlandishly garbed hedge knights). The caravan really is a cover up for the transportation of a mighty item/ some weapon/ technology to a insidious corporation/ vain local ruling baron. let the players find out "through sheer change" - nudge-nudge; and leave it up to them to investigate/ get mixed up in it. Never force them though.
The best thing is, if they don't indulge you can rework the script/quest so that it appears in a different way later on. You didn't wnat to help the goblin-plagued village? well, this one has a problem with warlocks trying to bring the region under their fist (and they have aid of the goblins). And if the players find out about that, make it very clear that it's all part of a big subplot with goblins and warlocks, and no, I didn't copy paste that part from the prior village ;)
My players are clever, and they never noticed, and they have always been sure that I had subtly woven intertwined quests for every region they passed through XD
And another point is intrigue and talking sessions. Sometimes there will be more combat, sometimes more talking; you should know the right balance for your players ;)
Combat is, to me, just spicing up the pace and a great chance for gory fun to be had. We always keep our combat very cinematic and fluidly paced, going as far as reanacting certain moves. don't just throw dice, but say what kind of moves you do, what you aim for, give very baroque over the top descriptions of the combat or of what you try to achieve; and put in lots of bad 80'ies action movie situations. Feed the players every now and then too ;)
The ability checks are the limit! (if a player wants to try a backflipping triple kick, land like trinity in the second matrix after a midair twist and stab at the reeling enemies exposed neck, let him ... if he fails, he fails in a freak accident you can all get a laugh out of, if it works, double the awesome (it gives the player a great sense of achievement - especially if they are fans of such movies - talking from experience -))
Intrigue takes some more working out, but is the most rewarding thing to get right. I really can't offer advice here, you have to fit into the rest in a good way, and there are so many options. Murders, conspiracies, threaths, election campaigns and frauds (also: financial fraud of merchants can be great fun to expose, especially if that merchant has friends in high places who profit from his profit!). Throw these in as spice, plot devices and side quests, there's no end to the possibilites really. Think up a premises with some characters, what happened, and then proceed to tie the ends together (what happened how between the characters of the intrigue, and what loose ends remain for the players to latch on to). Nothing is rewarding like solving a big juicy deep- running difficult intrigue. And it's actually twice the fun putting it together and guiding the players through it as they try to solve the situation.
And that's about all the advice I can give. No tl;dr, a lot of effort whent in here, and I want it to be respected >:)
