That new book

With the recent release of the PHB 3 players are likely to be oohing and awing over the new classes. As a DM you probably don’t want your players to drop their current characters in the middle of your awesome character central story. You can still give the players what they want though. I’m going to cover a few ways to let your players play that bad ass battle mind while you can keep your campaign.

The basic idea is that you create a [insert campaign name here]: side story .  Create a story that takes place in your campaign setting that has some bearing on the plot.

The direct side story: the new characters go on an adventure that directly relates to what the main characters are doing. Maybe the side story characters even meet the main ones. This would be useful if you need something for the players to see but the main characters are not there to do it.

The alternate reality side story: Show what the characters could have been and what could have happened if things went a different way. This would be good if you want to let your players know what the stakes are without messing with your story anymore than you have too. You could do this in a dream or maybe some group hallucination.

The time warp side story: show the history behind a important character, item, organization, or place. Make your players a friend of the character or an important player in the organization. Be careful when you use this though because your players could actually change the history from the way it was supposed to happen. This would be useful to use if you want to give your players the history of something but instead of  them having to listen  to some guy tell them they get to “live” it.

So there are my tips on creating side story’s that add something to the story and let your players experiment with new races/classes.