Welcome to Vos, a land of intriguing characters, secret plots, and serious dungeons.
The goal here is to create an immersive and unique setting for any set of rules that you might want to play. I put this in the D&D universe, but you could easily put it anywhere with a fantasy bent. I want to give you complex characters that the DM will enjoy playing as just as much as the players enjoy their own characters. I want to give you a basic storyline that fits all these characters, and the players, together into what ought to feel like a mystery epic that constantly keeps everyone on their toes. It should reward exploration and creativity, have noticeable side-effects from nearly every choice the characters make, and present real moral decisions to test the alignment of your players. This should be a world that is constantly changing and evolving thanks not only to the players decisions, but how you as the DM manage your cast of characters in their response to the players, or even what they are doing completely independent of any other impetus.
Your Players
Your players are thrown together by chance in a bar as described in the https://theauthordm.wordpress.com/2014/09/24/vos-player-guide/. They all ought to be level 1 with no possessions to their name aside from one rudimentary weapon (maybe 2, depending on circumstances and classes) and a few gold. Feel free to have some leeway here, but the main reason for starting with so little is to force them to begin to make moral decisions and show the quality of their character right from the start, as well as getting them to jump into the story. Let them know about these restrictions prior to character creation, as your people who like to roleplay nobles or wealthy heirs may have to explain their sudden poverty a little more carefully. Poverty versus riches will become an ongoing theme throughout their time in Vos, so without letting them know this, try to get them to explain their loss of wealth, because you may very well be able to insert a personal antagonist who stole their birthright into the story.
That said, the story ought to work just as well as long as your characters are not too high leveled, so do allow an existing group to come over to the island. You could have Lord Mandir send them a personal invitation; he heard of their fame and accomplishments and could use their assistance in his quest. I believe that the scope of the story and the implications it could have on the world ought to be enough to entice greater heroes and offer decisions and rewards befitting of their abilities, but for particularly high leveled characters it may begin to feel beneath them.
The First Scene
If your players are absolutely new, as in they’ve never played your chosen system (or any system) before, the One Trick Pony Inn is a fantastic place to introduce them to combat. All you have to do is have two parties form, rather than one, and then they can duke it out to see who gets to take the reward for the minotaur’s information. If the other group lives, they can even become a recurring set of characters that constantly compete with and act as a foil to the player group. The One Trick Pony Inn doesn’t need a map, just a moderately sized box with scattered chairs, tables, the actual bar, and stairs leading up to the rooms level. Try to show new characters the mechanics of the battle, especially creative things like throwing mugs at each other, jumping up on or over tables for tactical advantages, or whatever other unique combat choices your system offers but a new player might not be aware of.
The other goal is to determine the actual alignment of your party. While alignment might be determined by class, or whatever else in your system, this is a test to see how they actually react. The minotaur is the actual owner of this information, do they essentially steal his reward? Or do they let him claim it but try to find the book themselves? Are they willing to kill to keep this information to themselves in the previously mentioned combat encounter? Or would they use non-lethal violence, and in which case, how do they treat their prisoners? How they react to these basic questions will tell you a lot about how they will act for the rest of the game.
TheAuthorDM 