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Classic RPG adventures suffer from chronic flaws. When PCs should to go somewhere, they don't. When they should take interest in an item, they ignore it. Any NPC who will lead them to a secret cave in Chapter IV gets stabbed in Chapter II because the players thought he was up to something. After all the carnage, they decide to flee to some random area they heard of from last session, leaving the DM totally unprepared.
I made the Side Quest system to solve these problems. I'll start with an example, and explain afterwards.
1. (Town) The players hear rumours of goblins raids happening throughout the villages.
2. (Forest) The players encounter bandits who use traditional goblin weapons, such as spears and slings. They have shoes with soles shaped like goblin-feet, so they can leave goblin-like footprints.
3. (Town) A bounty is offered for anyone who can track down the lair of the goblins causing so much trouble in the local area.
4. (Villages) Goblins raid the village where the players currently sleep.
Okay, we have an adventure, and it looks pretty normal, but note a few points.
Each adventure can take place in a type of place (Town/ Forest/ Village). Part 1 does not need a particular town, it can take place almost anywhere in any town.
No matter how an encounter goes, the next encounter can proceed. Whether the players kill the bandits in part 2 or not, part 3 will still play out, and the players will know about the bounty on the goblin lair.
Let's add another side quest into the mix.
1. (Forest) The players encounter a VERY NORMAL HUMAN TAVERN by a river. In fact, everyone there is a polymorphed elf, practising how to appear human. Once the players are caught, the elves surround them and discuss whether or not to kill them.
2. (Town) The crier announces a bounty on all elves, as well as declaring a number of new laws which now have a death sentence, all from the local Duke.
3. (Villages) The party spot one of the elves in human form, acting as a trader.
4. (Town) The party spot the palace guards, on their way to the Duke's citadel. Half are elves in disguise.
Now we can run two side quests side-by-side. Let's assume the party start in the town.
...and so on.
The two side quests play out at the same time. In fact, I've had up to six side quests playing at once. This might sound like total chaos, but most of these quests are not being actively pursued, and the players make no plans. Most active quests start with a rumour, or some other foreshadowing.
You can even play two side quests together, at the same time. If multiple rumours are being handed out, give the town crier a bit of a speech. If dwarves want to offer the party a deal while bandits want to raid a village, interrupt the dwarves' conversation, complete the battle, then conclude the conversation.
Wherever the party turns - Mountains, Villages, Forest or Town - something new will pop out at them and engage with them.
Some rare places, such as the goblin lair, must be hunted and found by the players. Other locations, such as the elvish tavern, appear wherever the players happen to wander (but after that, they remain there).
Despite side quests being written such that one encounter generally cannot change whether or not the next one plays out, players still have agency when it comes to the last one, and can still change details about how each one plays out.
For example, if the players managed to talk the elves down from doing anything dangerous when they first encountered that hidden tavern, then the elves might react to them better in later encounters. Or if they fought the bandits who were pretending to be goblins rather than hiding, they could find out that the bandits would raid places and make it look like goblins had done it because they know that real goblin raids are occurring in places, and they simply wanted to blend in rather than get hunted.
Rather than having thousands of notes about different adventures, and trying to memorize them, the GM should simply have a list of encounters in each area, like this:
Give a '✓' to any part once it becomes available, and a 'X' once that part is done. If the players reach the forest, consult the list of what they can do in the forest.
Many of the side quest parts I write will say 'run this at the same time as the encounter below'. Consider the following encounter:
In part 1, hearing about a rumour won't take up much time, and making it the focus of a full scene really feels like taking a hammer to the plot. However, we can combine this with just about any other encounter in the Town. The characters might be at a tavern, or might be uncovering machinations of some local nobles and then attempting to pull information from them - anything at all can serve as a way to tell them a little about this travelling mage.
If the mage dies in part 2, no big deal. But if the party stop and help him, he can help with another encounter (perhaps when goblins are invading a village).
From the outside, it might sound like mayhem. But once you run with the system, you find it leads to rich encounters which feel natural. These crossovers also help to tie the various threads together, pulling them into a more cohesive story.
I've used this Side Quest system for the BIND fantasy and a Vampire: The Dark Ages chronicle. It's always worked well, and provides easy foreshadowing.
The examples above always include three terrain-types: Forest, Villages, and the Town. This focus makes the areas interesting, and determines the campaign's focus. With this in mind, you can make other areas.
A James Bond style campaign might have the following areas:
Having 'all of Russia' as the place that players might find Dmitri, or might run into an evil Russian Oligarch, makes the campaign-world feel massive.
Conversely, a tight thieves-guild fantasy campaign might contain mostly town-based areas:
The villages might contain only a couple of encounters. The forest doesn't even enter into the picture. Of course, the party may wander outside the map, but the world becomes less and less responsive, the further they go. Meanwhile, any time they attempt to move outwards, events tug at their interests.
Consider a party hell-bent on ignoring the plot, and simply journeying to a forest. First, they must pass the walls through a gate, and another encounter assaults them. They ignore it, and move outside, then journey to a nearby village. No matter which village they find, an encounter awaits them, and likely leads back to some point of interest inside the city. If they continue, they villages haven't ended, and the DM runs yet another village encounter.
If the PCs wander in some random direction, they will find more plot; always. If they run into the woods, they find a forest encounter. If they remain in town, there will be other side quests which pop up continuously. The DM knows every new part, just as long as the players stay roughly within the area, and don't wander off the face of the map.
When the team ignore an item, the DM can just continue to the next part of the story, since most side quest parts should not rely too much on the previous part. And if the PCs kill someone integral to a story, the DM has only lost one small side quest; no real tragedy. Many can assault the players all at once, so a loss of one never hurts the campaign.