War between the Gods

In my current game, I have set the party up around The High Forest in the Sword Coast area of Faerun.  There is a paladin of Mielikki
and a pair of Tiefling siblings that are hellbent on causing as much chaos as possible - to the point that the paladin player considered retiring his character in favor of a PC that fit in with the Tieflings better.  I urged him to wait another game session as I had a brainstorm for an event in the prior game session that had not fully played out.  That event was the discovery that Yeenoghu had ordered his gnolls to start hunting Unicorns, which is going to piss off Mielikki and lead to a pretty interesting war.




At the same time, the fiendish mother of the Tieflings contacted them with instructions to assist the paladin in his fight against Yeenoghu's forces as much as possible while also trying to corrupt him and get him to fall.  She feels that weakening Yeenoghu might open a door for her to gain more power and a fallen paladin is a nice little trophy. 


While I like playing players off each other, especially when they are so opposite in manner and play-style, I feel like I may have overstepped my control of the game.  Originally, the main story-line was supposed to focus on the PCs saving their adopted town from gnoll raiders that would lead them into The High Forest and a Centaur/Elf conflict that had pushed the gnolls out of the area.  But this story seems so much more epic.  I am tempted to drop the Centaur/Elf war story as they haven't really had a chance to get into it other than seeing a few skirmish groups of Centaur.

Thoughts?

Downtime activities

So my current game also happens to be a lunch game with my co-workers.  Save one person, they are all brand new to tabletop rpgs, though most have experience in digital rpgs.  The party make-up is as follows:

Half-Orc Paladin - raised by Elves
Drow Bard - raised by Humans
High Elven Wizard - no real background story
Tiefling Rogue (sibling to the Barbarian) - raised by deceased, Human Father
Tiefling Barbarian (sibling to the Rogue) - raised by deceased, Human Father
Dwarf Fighter - orphaned to the military

Under normal circumstances, I'd just throw them in a couple dungeons and not worry about the social situations.  However, as it is a limited time-available game where players may not be able to play due to work requirements, I have set-up the theater of action to be close to a Human town.  This allows me to "excuse" players easily.  Also, I have allowed them to create a justification for absences so that they stay engaged in the story.  For example, the Dwarf had to miss the last two sessions where the party escorted a caravan back and forth from a trade center, bringing in the last of the winter supplies.  He spent the time preparing the cave system the town uses for storage.

So why am I telling you this?  Because we all need some downtime activities.  So here's some ideas I had.

1. Training with a local expert - martial or skill oriented.
2. Prepping the ______________ for the upcoming ________________.
3. Researching a particular topic.
4. Creating a new piece of equipment.
5. Attending to a family members needs.
6. Attending to a professional organizations needs.
7. Being sick.
8. Training animals.
9. Summoned by local nobility - good or ill.
10. Constructing/repairing a building. 

Mostly just some random thoughts on a random Monday.