Introduction to villains and clues

[amerigoV]

The Alexandrian Blog Archive Three Clue Rule will help you on the clue side.

 

[Quickleaf]

Lots of good advice and theory so far. Here's an example of how I introduced and ran a mastermind villain over the course of 10 months of gaming (about 10 levels):

The premise of the adventure/campaign was a wicked prince was about to inherit the throne from his ailing father, and the PCs were looking for a way to prevent this.

1. PCs fought off the prince's redcoat lackeys and learned the prince was going after his bastard son. This set the mood, gave the PCs insight into the ruthlessness of the prince when interrogating a captured redcoat captain, and showed the prince really wanted his bastard heir under his control.

2. PCs faced a crony of the prince, a corrupt magistrate collecting exorbitant taxes. They learned the prince engaged in nepotism and wasn't above dealing with slavers and monsters to acheige his ends. Clearly the prince is raising money for some nefarious scheme.

3. PCs face another crony of the prince, this one a noble warlord who shares the prince's fear of invasion by foreign leaders during a time of interregnum. However, this warlord goes too far and attempts to spark outright war with a false assassination attempt. The PCs stop him, and realize that while the warlord was operating with the prince's sanction, the warlord overstepped his bounds and committed treason.

4. The PCs meet the prince for the first time when they escort the bastard heir to the kingsom's capital, and are invited to dine with the royal family. It's a very tense meeting as the prince attempts to trick the PCs into revealing their plans, and the PC bard and the Prince trade barbed witticisms (without alerting the rest of the royal family). A tenuous truce is established between the PCs and the prince as the PCs are hired by the king to stop a monster haunting the capital. Of course, it turns out the prince is manipulating the monster to kill his political enemies, but the PCs can't gather proof.

5. When the king falls into a coma, the prince attempts to convince the council of nobles to name him king, but he is tasked with recovering the lost holy crown to prove his worth. This is sort of a cutscene, as only one PC was able to attend and didn't get any input as he was disguised as a servant.


Anyhow, long story short, I introduced the main villain in a manner appropriate to his nature (cunning aristocrat), in a seting where combat wasnt a real option. I repeated this again at a tournament where the prince and the PCs traded barbs but didn't come to blows - the prince worked thru his lackeys and couldn't be caught conspiring against the heroic PCs, while the PCs needed to gather sufficient compelling evidence to expose the prince's evil scheme.

 

[GM Dave]

Ways to introduce a villain.

1> The direct and in your face method. Someone denounces the person and tells the players how they were wronged and that the other person is a villain. Everyone and their cousin knows Sauron is evil.

2> The personal confrontation. The villain tells the players they are evil and their master plan to destroy the world. The villain is so sure of their power that they are calling the heroes out in a challenge to prove they can't do anything to stop the villain. This method is popular with Evil Gods and major Demons. Dr Doom will often follow this pattern just because it would be too easy to win by stealth without anyone appreciating his brilliance.

3> The Oops, did I step on you method. The villain inadvertently catches the heroes in part of their plan. The villain might have a problem with a king and drops a mountain on top of the castle as the players are in a tavern in the nearby village. The blast of the crushed castle wrecks much of the town and awakens the players to the villain's presence. Red dragons that attack out of the sky burning up towns and villages are similar troubles.

4> The 'So that what that was' method. This gets to be more subtle. The players see something going on like giants throwing rocks at something or you see a pair of ships battling while on the shore. It is too far away to interfere in the events and the identification of the villain in the storyline might take time to find out who was doing what in the events. This is how Star Wars starts for Luke. He sees the battle in the sky but doesn't know that Vader was involved in the attack.

5> Look at the Bones! This method is again a subtle style. You have the players see the wreckage or carnage of what the villain or monster has done. Villages destroyed, powerful dragons ripped apart, ships broken in half, and Kraken left on the beach (Pirates of the Carribean). These are all signs that something powerful has occured.

6> Look to the sky! Omens are another way to hint at evil or change. Celestial changes or un-natural weather patterns. Rain, thunder, snowstorms, comets, missing constellations and more signal trouble. The Game of Thrones and Avatar the Last Air Bender have a comet in the sky. Major magical trouble is often marked with the land responding like when Arthur was wounded.

7> Strange Luck is another method. This method features some event occurring near the players that is the byproduct of a villain's actions. I gave this example to Sharkbone Podcast recently. The player's are sitting in their favourite inn when a griffin crashes through the ceiling crushing several patrons. The next moment a large scaly claws scoops up the griffin and hauls it away. The group now knows their is a dragon in the area and it is big. Other ways this can be used in say a super hero game is to have a major hero come smashing through the group's secret HQ or have some criminals of a major boss choose your star ship to shipjack.

8> Competing for the prize. This can be direct or indirect. The direct style is to have the players seeking some object and have the villain send people to retrieve the exact same object. This is the Raiders of the Lost Arc approach with the call to oppose the NAZIs efforts to get the Arc of the Covenant. The indirect version of this is having the two groups just be in the same location at the same time but for different reasons. This is common in things like Snatch and Pulp Fiction. The villain is not planning on a confrontation but the presence of the players provides a third group to complicate a mission. Think of a bank robbery where the villain is planning to deal with the police while the players are in the bank to get into a safety deposit box.

9> Rescue force or We lost Jones. The players are hired to rescue someone or explore a spot where people have gone missing. The Alien and Aliens movie use this method. Usually it is an NPC type of person that is not personal to the characters that goes missing. Any finding of the person is usually to recover a messy corpse. This follows the philosophy that when in doubt on what to do give the readers a body.

10> The Invitation. Again, it requires a powerful and assured villain but they can attempt to hire the players by showing off their operation. It is a chance to go for a ride, have a nice lunch, and discuss nuclear annihilation.
Players often represent a step up from the usual members of the organization so an offer of employment can benefit the villain. It is up to the players to see if they can stomach the future choices if they accept the position. This is often done in super hero comics but can be found in other stories.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Introducing villains:
1. Use a cut scene, just like they do in the movies. Personally I've not found these to be very effective.

Heh. Amusingly, I was going to post "In our Star Wars campaign, the GM used cutscenes to great effect"

It meant that the players-as-audience had some more detail and foreshadowing to work with than the characters-as-participants did, but the GM never gave away too much.

It just meant that when we finally confronted the villains in-character, a lot of the mental imagery for the scene had already been developed.

-Hyp.

 

[pneumatik]

One option for introducing villains is for them to do something blatantly evil yet impossible for the good guys to stop, like conquering the PC's home country and enslaving everyone. This won't feel forced (unless maybe you do it for every campaign) and both the players and their PCs will hate the villains.

 

[The Red King]

Introduce the villain before they become a villain.

I like to make the villian an NPC who is close to the PC's. Perhaps that NPC cleric healer. And isnt revealed until the PC's have had their butts handed to them, and they REALLY need some healing. Thats when the cleric turns on them and leaves them to die... after dropping hints as to his big plans.

If you're building towards a mastermind-type villain, I think it's good to have the players knock over a few of his lackeys first. e.g.;

Mr. Capone Isn't Going to Like This: The players attack and shut down a slaving ring/drug dealer/smuggling group/whatever. The people running it are astonished, because it's run by the villain who has carefully paid off the local authorities to turn a blind eye. A short-term antagonist can drop the name of their opposition or provide hints of who the real owner is.

Message Intercept: Dispatched baddies can have written instructions carried on their person from their leader- though the leader will probably use a false name or a cipher to disguise the content.

Survivors: I quite like the idea of a villain who destroys villages or carries out other dirty deeds before the heroes ever get there- they show up at the last minute only to see a mysterious figure riding off, leaving his lackeys to slow the heroes down, or else just encounter a few survivors of the attack who have only sketchy impressions of who or what attacked them.

Luka Bratzi Sleeps with the Fishes: Have the villian send the players a direct message in response to a setback. They've knocked over a minor business interest of the villains, or otherwise inconvenienced him, so the villain responds by killing or abducting an NPC who is friendly to the players and sending them a direct threat to stay away.

Very good ideas. Making the big guy angry makes YOU the next traget.

Make the villain someone whom they have wronged. In my current campaign, one PC started trying to cause trouble for a particular religious group (he was a follower of a trickster god) and ended up seducing a young matron who was a regular follower of the temple. Eventually her husband realized what was going on, and began to persecute the PC. He responded by causing the wife to discover that her husband had a lover, as well. She ended up leaving him and blackening his name around town. HE nearly caused the cleric's death, and to this day despises all the PCs. Little do they know he's also selling weapons to the orcs, and is in league with the local bandit group...

He also wants to become mayor of their town.

I like that, but my party has too little an attention span, and a few too many kids for something that..... adult. But I will remember it for later.

 

[howandwhy99]

Anyone else have this problem? How have you introduced villains?

The advice I've gotten for introducing clues generally involves "keep it obvious".

I'll give you the opposite advice: Don't make it obvious. Obviousness is obvious (said Cpt. Obvi US). And it gets pretty boring real fast to relay details repeatedly.

Remember how the term Monster was to refer to everyone in the game, even fellow players' PCs? They aren't you or your PC, so they could always turn on you.

Alignment can be used to assess (if detected) how a creature might react to another. If they act to generally harm the other, then they could be construed as a villain. On the other hand, they could be a lower intelligence creature simply reacting to what it sees as an invasion of its territory. It was neutral to you (and is Neutral in general), but seeks to protect its own.

IMO per-determining the Players "villains" is akin to per-determining their goals. Let the players choose how they want their PCs to perceive the situation. Let them decide who's a villain and who's a hero / ally... or neither. Let them define the character for them.

However, I would also strongly urge not to let them define the character for you, the DM, at least once they've finished preparing it in a background per se. Let them have their perceptions, but keep the character existent in his or her own right, so the players can continue with exploring them as separate and not their wholly own imaginary friend. Be the difference they are not in control of, but don't attempt to determine their conclusions. Well, at least outside of character.

 

[kitsune9]

If I'm planning a campaign and I want a master villain, I would start multi-tier structure. As the players advance through the campaign, they deal with each tier within the structure.

For example, if I wanted to deal with a Dragon Cult and I want the players to deal with it all the way up to 15th level, I'll break the cult into five levels and toss in some alliances.

Then, here's the break-down:

1. High Priest/Inner Cult/Dragons
2. Second Circle/Dragons/Powerful Warcaptain
3. Upper Echelon Members (Nobility)/Dragon Spawn/Assassins
4. Cultists/Dragon Spawn
5. Thugs/Rogues/Gangs/Slavers/Merchants

Then it's a matter of allocating each tier to a range of levels. # 5 is for 1st through 3rd level, # 4 is for 4th through 6th level, and so on.

Secondly, we now need something as to why the Dragon Cult wants to do something really bad. The High Priests and Inner Cult is working to resurrect a Dragon God, or they are planning on destroying a good dragon god's temple, or they are putting together an artifact that turn everyone into dragon spawn and make them controllable, etc. How to do this? You'll need money, resources, and the means to get or use them. That's where you'll map out each tier starting at the top and then working your way down.

Lastly, you'll need to deal with issues of your plotline remaining intact when the players succeed at thwarting the bad guys. If you write that a relic is to be stolen from a museum in the 1st module that will be critical to the end game, your campaign will be busted should one of the players decides to destroy it.

 

[Janx]

If I'm planning a campaign and I want a master villain, I would start multi-tier structure. As the players advance through the campaign, they deal with each tier within the structure.

I like kitsune9's approach, because it meshes with some of my practices.

Let's simplify for a moment. You've got a party of level X. Whatever thing you reveal may easily be decided on as their goal, especially if they are good guys and there's no clue to level appropriateness. The party might be smart enough to know they can't take on a hugumbous red dragon, but they don't really know how to judge if Duke EvilHuman is in their range.

So, one solution is to only reveal/create things you need. Namely, stuff for the next adventure or two. As Kitsune9's method describes, that means lower level bad guys who will later be revealed to be related to the next rung in the XP ladder.

Now a twist on this is to place the high level villain in view, but don't reveal he is the SECRET mastermind behind it all. This could be Senator Palpatine in those terrible movies, or the King's wizard advisor, who also happens to be secretly evil (because nobody in polite society broadcasts their evilness in public). If he's a level 20 bad guy, you reveal his involvement with the last group of level 18 bad guys that the level 16 PCs took out at the end, when the party levels up and is ready to take him on.

It may be tempting to reveal the Level 20 bad guy in the very beginning of the game to the Level 1 party. Sometimes that can work. But there are other factors to overcome to make that plausible.

Look at the bad guys as a corporate or political structure of Evil. The Villain (BBEG) is level 20, and is at the top of the command structure. He's got a hierarchy of lower level bad guys to delegate and get stuff done. The party in the beginning is level 1, and they amount to a paper jam in the printer that the Level 2 MailRoomBadGuy has to deal with. His boss is NOT going to pass that up the chain to the CEO that there's a problem in mailroom 23 with some pesky PCs jamming up what amounts to some printers. It's too small of a problem for upper management to care about.

Likewise, for the PCs, if the Bad Guy Organization is big enough to justify a BBEG at level 20 and a huge organization, they will be spread out geographically. At Level 1, the PCs are most concerned about their first few quests, saving Nancy the bar wench from some orcs who wanted some pie. The party very likely doesn't know who the mayor of the town is, let alone, who the evil movers and shakers are, let alone, what's up the ladder at the city this starting village grows food for.

It's a matter of scope, visibility, and scale.

 

[kitsune9]

[MENTION=8835]Janx[/MENTION]. Thanks! Your analysis and approach is what I agree with as well!

I'll have to borrow Level 2 MailRoomBadGuy for a future mod though.