How to keep my PC on track in a fixed time campaign?

Question

Let's say, my PCs are going to start a new campaign where the boss would only show up after the ritual of the evildoers is complete. That requires some material, enough manpower, and a special date.

The PCs would need to learn during their exploration that they should not prevent the ritual (or there's no way to permanently prevent it). Instead, they should wait until the ritual to be finished and then defeat the boss once and for all. Otherwise, it's just the matter of time that this boss would be summoned again.

But it seems "let PC wait for something without anything better to do" is generally a bad idea. PCs are tended to be active and occupied by tasks. I wonder how should I handle this as a DM, or is it just a bad idea?

PS. I have read the Elder Evil and what it does is basically adding a villian that would be competing the PC during the process, making the PCs feel that they are "trying to stop someone doing something", although they always fail to actually prevent that from happening (otherwise the boss won't show up and they won't have a chance to fight it). I wonder if there're some other ways to do that.

Answer 1

As you said, simply telling the players that they have to wait x months until the ritual time will likely fall a little flat - if it's a world-ending threat, the players will feel like their characters should be doing something to prepare.

So give some thought towards story actions the characters could take between learning how the ritual works and when it actually occurs that might influence how difficult the final boss fight is.

Ryan_L's answer covers ways they could prepare on their side. But as another option, maybe the cultists conducting the ritual have preparations on their side, beyond just the ritual itself, that the players could interrupt?

Maybe the creature being summoned will expect a sacrifice when it first appears, and by disrupting the collection of innocents by the cultists, the characters can ensure that the creature eats a few cultists as well when the time comes. Perhaps there's a powerful magical weapon or artifact that the cultists will offer to the creature to make it even more powerful - the players could make sure that weapon isn't in play in the fight, or maybe even steal it for themselves.

Or, if you feel like any of this is just going to be padding the campaign with busy-work, you could always just push the date up. Maybe when the players finally figure out everything about the ritual, it turns out it's happening a week from now, and they're 6 days travel away - now it's an immediate threat.

Answer 2

Make them have to work to learn how the ritual works. Don't just tell them to wait until after the ritual, send them on quests that will investigate how the ritual works, which will include them finding out that they need to let it happen.

One thing they should also learn along the way is that the Big Bad Guy will be really tough. Tough enough that they need to prepare. Maybe by bringing allies, maybe by bringing some magic hard-to-find artifact. The Big Bad Guy's buddies can try to block all these things. Or maybe there are 3rd parties in the way; maybe the person who owns the magic sword you need is busy using it for his own purposes and doesn't want to just hand it over.

Answer 3

It is generally unwise to give the PCs a very familiar situation (somebody wants to summon a Big Bad) and expect them to react in way that goes against every trope (nothing we can do about it). Especially if they want to stay in character, after all what action-prone individual would not try to stop the ritual, even if it seems impossible?

I see two options:

1. What consequence should you introduce that would make them think, "OK, the ritual is bad, but stopping it would be even worse"? So the Big Bad might be big and bad, but not finishing the ritual would have even worse consequences. Maybe the ritual itself pulls the negative energy from the land, and if it's stopped, everything will die. So they put all that energy into something/someone. Maybe it keeps the axis of the world turning, and the big bad is just a side effect. This would mean, that the ritual itself is more important than the boss, and that should be communicated clearly and early. Hell, they might even be roped into helping with the ritual.

2. The ritual is already done. The Big Bad is coming. It's just not arrived yet. Maybe they are waiting for it to hatch from a different plane (and the PCs can fight over the location and try to prepare for its coming). Maybe it is descending on the top of a mountain (and the PCs are frantically trying to work out where it is coming). The end result is, that the ritual is already done, the big bad will arrive, so they have time to find it/prepare for it. You might even start the campaign with them disrupting the ritual and learning, that they haven't managed it fully, but bought themselves a few months to prepare...

Answer 4

Have the special date happen frequently (enough).

For example, if summoning this demon needs the combined dread of a population not wanting to go to work after a weekend, it could only be summoned in the night from sunday to monday.

So at first the players would probably prevent the ritual by chasing off the cultists and knocking over some candles. But soon they'd realize that they would need to spend every sunday night for the rest of their lifes to prevent that ritual over and over again.

This would put a slight pressure on the players because they have to do their research and preparations while also staying close enough to the ritual site to prevent the ritual until they feel ready. And once the players have all the artifacts/knowledge/McGuffins they need to defeat the monday demon, they have to wait at most 6 days until their next chance.

Ofcourse the exact interval between two rituals could be fine tuned to give the players the neccessary time to travel wherever they need to go.
It doesn't even have to be a fixed interval, the wizard of the group could sit down and calculate the next time the stars align for the ritual, after each time they prevented the ritual.