A wild game group appeared!

Monday nights may now be game night again for me, huzzah!!
For 3.5 d&d, we have a dwarven cleric of pelor, assimar paladin of illmater, fire loving tiefling sorcress and a human wizard of undecided schooling.

now i just need plot, and things to make them all die very slow and painfully ironic or dramatic deaths of amazingness!

who wants to help me brainstorm hook or plot ? :) @shakka -- they are in Daecorta, probably closer to the current timeline in place.

What direction to do you prefer going in? Wild and crazy? Plane walking? Undead? Demons? SO MANY OPTIONS!

Well one's 1/2 celestial, ones 1/2 fiendish. two are divine, and undead unfriendly to boot..
it seems like the group so far is geared towards combat (it's local so of course, the only other DM's around don't do much RP so they're not exposed much to it). but, i'd like to give them story to develop with combat that's not just random monsters - if you want a hack and slash we don't need d&d, we have AAA gaming for it :x .

Undead may be a thing, but is very cliche, so i'd want something deeper if it's undead :)

Given the assimar and tiefling, you have a great story hook: the war between angels and demons. You have a cleric who can act as a godly conduit, and a human wizard seeking greater magical knowledge. Your story writes itself. A few quests on the material plane, where you find out about odd happenings caused by various celestials or fiends, followed by trips above and below to solve bigger issues, accumulating with a massive fight against a huge enemy of either kind (or finding out another force was manipulating it the whole time!)

I accept cash donations in exchange for writing stories for you.

haha, but that would mean they're working for a specific deity if the cleric is a conduit for his god. Since he and the paladin don't worship the same gods. Ilmater is one of martyrdom and self sacrific and such, pelor is of the sun and healing and goodness. The tiefling is more of a con-artist sort and loves fire.
It could indeed be a grand planar adventure for the nine hells and celestial fields, but not at level 1. there would need to be things leading up to that ^-^

Congrats on finding a new live group. Maybe you can get some of them to play here as well!

Level 1 games generally do not delve into the grand schemes of diabolicals. Despite the mystical nature of D&D worlds commoners by and large are not exposed to monsters and magic. If they are it is humanoid monsters and still rarely. Level 1 characters are exceptional true, but are still close to what a commoner would be. Early adventures usually involve bandits, raiders, criminals, or small orc threats. Maybe a minor undead incursion, such things can always be early or far flung machinations of greater threats, but that shouldn't become evident until later. Let low level heroes be the small heroes they need to be for small communities and as they grow they may realize they have been fighting a greater threat all along.

Yah, like I said, low level characters would work on the material plane, going through various normal seeming things that don't seem to clean up properly.

And they don't have to be working for a specific deity necessarily. Don't forget that deities, like the average schmo, have inter-got politics, and you could have the cleric be receiving messages from a scion of the gods or an intermediary on behalf of Pelor, as part of a larger coalition. It could also simply be that Palor has some specific interest in stopping this fiend/celestial war, or a corrupt follower of Palor is the one who's instigating it.

The problem isn't in figuring out what grand schemes to delve into, the players have a lot of say in that aspect of what their characters do will reflect lots on what happens to them.

I'm usually stuck figuring out an initial plot hook that would bring them together in the world, when usually they wouldn't know or work with one another. mercenaries is good sometimes, or spies, diplomats, or explorers as well. Just need to figure out that first adventure hook and then things can fall into place and be planned accordingly by myself or players decisions on what to do.

What alignment is the tiefling? If anything neutral or good, and if the wizard is knowledge hungry, start out with each going after a particular religious tome, having been hired from a neutral, unnamed source (which turns out to be the same guy). The tome can be lost in a cavern, stolen by thieves, etc, its up to you. It gives a good reason for them to come together without being together, and provides a plot hook for future quests (if you go down the religious line).