A key components for the quest to work along the campaigns narrative was the delivery and pace ,thus, after putting some thought into the matter I concluded that the best way to inject players with their stories would be in chapters, for each milestone of the campaign achieved players will come across with events leading to the continuation of said story.
The main reason of taking this approach is the volume of activities players can take on in the city of Waterdeep and the compatibility with the campaign narrative.
An overwhelming amount of activities, as well total freedom without guidance can lead to negative experiences, and sometimes during the campaign players found themselves saturated or without any immediate goals, I choose those specific moments in each of the main campaign chapters to introduce the story quests, filtering content by priority of necessity (when huge amount of activities presented to players) and created events with the following resources(if the party is halted) :
Already known characters, mainly met during the introductory chapter, also unexpected allies which joined the party in consequence of players decisions, an example of this would be Krenz, a Xanathar member which players encountered, its role was suppose to be the one of a simple enemy , but the outcome of interactions made of the character an allied which is used by my as a city knowledge source, emotional push and pull actor (given to the attachment of the party with him), and as a problem solver when the party is stuck in someway or management of undesired task ( for a fantasy setting experience (common and not “fun” tasks).
Given that players have stablished its origins as waterdhavians, plus affiliations with certain factions, they will be able to interacts with contacts that might offer them an integrated invitation to the their quests.
The context and situation which players are matters in order to define how the following quest will pop out, and given that each decision might change future events, I have not defined a fixed structure for the quest. But I have used various methods/tools repetitively with different shapes throughout the sessions.
While players are exploring the city or any other activities, I will feed them some information related to their background with the intend to make player thinks of possible futures encounters and plot. This Hint can take different forms, dialogues from NPCs , observable events, loot, etc
Used as an invitation to follow a given clue which eventually will drive them into Main chapter section.