el-remmen
Moderator Emeritus
In my current Ghosts of Saltmarsh+ campaign, a recurring antagonist is actually the estranged husband of the party druid. The party went from thinking he was a victim of the bad guys, to thinking he was one of the bad guys, to. . .well, something more complicated.
In the last 3.xE campaign I was a player in, the big bad claimed to be my character's mother, but the campaign ended before that was ever confirmed - it seemed like a dodge.
In a 2E campaign I ran back in the day, the party visited one member's family, since it was not far from where they were seeking out an adventure. Unfortunately, when the party bailed out of their assault early because the priestess lost a limb and then spent a night back at the family farm before heading off to a distant big city (a trip of about two weeks) to see about regeneration, the bad guy necromancers had traced the interloper PCs to the farm, transforming most of the family into undead. It was tragic. One of the older of the PC's younger siblings managed to get away and was encountered as an urchin in a later campaign, and the two youngest were kidnapped by the necromancer to raise as wards. I have to admit these days I hope I'd come up with something different than kill off the whole family, but at the time - the PCs leaving such a clear trail to something they cared about immediately after trying to raid this place and killing various guards and stealing some stuff in the process seemed like a bad choice and it was all I could think of as a natural repercussion of their choices.
In a 2E campaign I was a player in, I wrote session recaps in the form of letters sent back home to my halfling rogue's sister.
In the last 3.xE campaign I was a player in, the big bad claimed to be my character's mother, but the campaign ended before that was ever confirmed - it seemed like a dodge.
In a 2E campaign I ran back in the day, the party visited one member's family, since it was not far from where they were seeking out an adventure. Unfortunately, when the party bailed out of their assault early because the priestess lost a limb and then spent a night back at the family farm before heading off to a distant big city (a trip of about two weeks) to see about regeneration, the bad guy necromancers had traced the interloper PCs to the farm, transforming most of the family into undead. It was tragic. One of the older of the PC's younger siblings managed to get away and was encountered as an urchin in a later campaign, and the two youngest were kidnapped by the necromancer to raise as wards. I have to admit these days I hope I'd come up with something different than kill off the whole family, but at the time - the PCs leaving such a clear trail to something they cared about immediately after trying to raid this place and killing various guards and stealing some stuff in the process seemed like a bad choice and it was all I could think of as a natural repercussion of their choices.
In a 2E campaign I was a player in, I wrote session recaps in the form of letters sent back home to my halfling rogue's sister.