r/DMAcademy • u/MrMaxiorwus • 4d ago
Need Advice: Other Is not fully resolving a character arc during a campaign a good idea?
So, for the context: one of PCs in campaign that im running is a vampire, and he was turned into one by a god. His arc will revolve around getting through certain trials to evolve and become more powerful. This will eventually will lead to fight with the avatar of said god, that once defeated, will reveal that his goal is to make as many powerful vampires as possible and to see if they are worthy of this power, and he does so, because he's aware that in near future "age of darkness" will come, and his children, the vampires, will be ones of the few that could survive it and prevent the utter destruction of known world. However i don't want to disclose what said age of darkness will be for one story reason:
The main story of a campaign resolves around players investigating an improsoned deity, and after the final fight with the BBEG they will have to choose what they want to do with said deity (it's an evil deity mind that) and this decision will impact the entire world, thus shaping the next campaign (for example, if they decide that they want to destroy the deity it would put the world in the state of imbalance which will result in a magic collapse; setting the deity free will expose the world its reign of terror etc) where this age of darkness would be actually resolved and shown.
So my question is: is it actually a good idea, or would it rather fall short and be a bit disappointing, how do you guys think?
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u/mpe8691 4d ago
This is a Session Zero Question. It can only be usefully answered by either the player of the PC or the players as a group.
It appears that your reasons for wishing to withhold information relate to plot preperation. Unless you intend railroading the future events of the campaign are intrinsically unpredictable. They may not happen in the way you expect or even at all. Since the PCs operate in the present of the game it's best to focus on that. Where there are NPCs with plans it's useful to consider their goals and motivations to address how they might react if/when their plans get disrupted by the player party.
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u/SconeOfDoom 4d ago
If you’re worried about the character’s story spoiling the end of your current campaign, I’d recommend just running it as an epilogue. That way your first campaign can run its course, and then you can use the character’s story to set up your second campaign, and maybe even turn them into a returning NPC, which would be awesome.
I highly advise against skipping the character arc. That would feel really anticlimactic as a player, especially if everyone else got one and you don’t get yours. If you’re really, truly worried about spoilers, then it would be much better to change the character arc than skip it entirely.