D&D 5E Where's the Villain? and other musings. Why some published campaigns are great and some aren't (Spoiler alerts)

[Paul Farquhar]

But that’s not true. Only two of the adventures have anything to do with Candlekeep at all. CKeep and the npcs in it might as well not exist. None of the adventures are linked to each other. It’s purely episodic.

So the only constant factor between stories is the players. Ergo, it's the players that make it great.

Like it's Kirk, Spock and McCoy that make TOS great.

 

[TheSword]

My point is your presumption is that a campaign can only be great if it’s a sandbox and must be a serial story.

Neither of which is true. It might be true for your preferences but neither are actually necessary.

An episodic campaign where each adventure begins in medias res or close to it, with zero choice as to what the next adventure will be is a fantastic way to run a campaign. None of this faffing about trying to figure out what to do next. Super high pacing with nearly zero slow times.

Sign me up.

I’m not sure a series of unrelated adventures is a published campaign. It’s an adventure anthology.

It sounds like what you’ve done is combine a series of individual published adventures into your own campaign. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s awesome. But that doesn’t make it a great published campaign.

For instance if I run Haunted Hall of Evenstar, then Four From Cormyr then finish with one of the adventures from the adventure booklet in the Ruins of Myth Drannor that would make a great campaign of published adventures but I don’t believe it’s a published campaign. Night Below is a published campaign. Anthologies aren’t unless they are clearly linked - a la Adventure Paths, Against the Giants etc.

 

[Baron Opal II]

I think serialisation is an interesting issue. I can see it working if linked together properly to constitute a serious enough impetous to keep the players and DM engaged. Maybe. I’ve not seen a serialisation that was strong enough to do that to be honest.

Serialisation works well when you have rotating characters. The goal of the campaign is decided by goals the characters have, and the adventures are a means to that end. So, when Dagda earns enough gold to buy his house, marry Maddie and be a father to her kids, and be comfortably retired, that the end for him. Players gain their fulfillment separately rather than all at once.

You can also tie separate adventures together; N1 - Cult of the Reptile God, I2 - Tomb of the Lizard King, I1 - Dwellers of the Forbidden City make a great series. You just need to tie them together, and the Yuan-ti can be the masterminds that set the rest into motion.

All of which to say, yes, a strong BBEG with an organization and evil plots is great! But there are some other paths that work as well, although they take more work.

 

[Shardstone]

5E modules are trying to tell stories in addition to being adventure games. However, I believe that WotC is a little bit reluctant when it comes to really giving DMs all the tools they need for a very compelling story.

A villain doesn't have to be a character, it can be a setting, institution, law, and so on. However, given the nature of D&D, there need to be memorable antagonists for the PCs to fight. What D&D adventures usually fail to do IMO is to create a good Rogue's Gallery and use it. I think Descent Into Avernus is the best example of this.

In Descent, there are three three different gangs in Hell (ala Mad Max) with really cool Warlord characters. These characters have almost 0 to do with the adventure and are only used in one small part of it. Instead, most of the adventure has you dealing with one-off devils or demons, and it's only really at the end that you start getting cool evil characters with staying power. But those characters have no impact on the EARLY game; things like the Dragonborn Paladin of Tiamat or Tiamat herself, or how the Demon Princes at the end of the adventure have no echoes in the early part. In this way, the great villains introduced in the adventure aren't just constrained to a tier, they're constrained to single session moments (maybe two or three if you're lucky or play for fewer hours each game). And even then, the main villain of the whole thing -- Zariel -- barely has any screentime at all till the end of the Adventure; and the Baldur's Gate villains, who were really well written, have no impact on anything in Hell (except for one PC).

Overall, these problems can be found in differing amounts in all of WotC's adventures. Dragonheist doesn't have as much of a problem (and it's popular IMO for that reason), but many of the adventures past it do. Even the early adventures, like Princes of the Apocalypse, don't make great use of their really cool villains either.

By not giving more tools to turn these great character concepts into great campaign villains, WotC ends up sabotaging the "story" aspects of their adventures. Strong DMs don't have this problem, but even then, I think a strong DM would be better served by more robust villain tools then what we get now.

 

[pukunui]

By not giving more tools to turn these great character concepts into great campaign villains, WotC ends up sabotaging the "story" aspects of their adventures. Strong DMs don't have this problem, but even then, I think a strong DM would be better served by more robust villain tools than what we get now.

That ‘sabotage’ is deliberate. WotC knows that the majority of DMs run homebrew worlds and that what they really want are modular set pieces they can cut and paste into their campaigns.

Therefore, their big hardcover adventures are really, at heart, modular set pieces with a thin veneer of story laid on top that gives them a theme, which makes them more easily marketable. (Hence why even the compilations have unifying themes.)

Case in point: STK has a thin plot about rampaging giants being stirred up by a dragon in disguise. Ignore that and what have you got?

An interesting starting town that could really be used to kick off any campaign.

A kooky cloud giant wizard’s flying tower that can be used in any campaign.

An interesting lair for each of the five main giant types plus an ancient giant temple and an ancient blue dragon’s desert lair.

A mini sandbox full of little encounters

Three well-fleshed out towns (Bryn Shander, Triboar, and Goldenfields).

A riverboat casino with ties to an ancient kraken.

And so on!

Another example: OotA is ostensibly about demons rampaging through the Underdark. Ignore that and what have you got? A sample drow city, a sample drow prison outpost, a sample duergar city, a sample haunted deep gnome town, a corrupted myconid grove, a sample kuo-toa town, a sample Underdark trading post, a magical library run by stone giants, procedural rules for traveling through the Underdark, plus a bunch of other cool encounter locations.

All of that stuff can be cut and pasted with minimal fuss thanks to the thin veneer of plot. As annoying as it is for those of us who actually want to run the stories these hardcovers present, if their plots were thicker, they would be harder for the cut-and-pasters to ignore. It’s done this way on purpose.

 

[Shardstone]

That ‘sabotage’ is deliberate. WotC knows that the majority of DMs run homebrew worlds and that what they really want are modular set pieces they can cut and paste into their campaigns.

Therefore, their big hardcover adventures are really, at heart, modular set pieces with a thin veneer of story laid on top that gives them a theme, which makes them more easily marketable. (Hence why even the compilations have unifying themes.)

Case in point: STK has a thin plot about rampaging giants being stirred up by a dragon in disguise. Ignore that and what have you got?

An interesting starting town that could really be used to kick off any campaign.

A kooky cloud giant wizard’s flying tower that can be used in any campaign.

An interesting lair for each of the five main giant types plus an ancient giant temple and an ancient blue dragon’s desert lair.

A mini sandbox full of little encounters

Three well-fleshed out towns (Bryn Shander, Triboar, and Goldenfields).

A riverboat casino with ties to an ancient kraken.

And so on!

Another example: OotA is ostensibly about demons rampaging through the Underdark. Ignore that and what have you got? A sample drow city, a sample drow prison outpost, a sample duergar city, a sample haunted deep gnome town, a corrupted myconid grove, a sample kuo-toa town, a sample Underdark trading post, a magical library run by stone giants, procedural rules for traveling through the Underdark, plus a bunch of other cool encounter locations.

All of that stuff can be cut and pasted with minimal fuss thanks to the thin veneer of plot. As annoying as it is for those of us who actually want to run the stories these hardcovers present, if their plots were thicker, they would be harder for the cut-and-pasters to ignore. It’s done this way on purpose.

I think that's a mistake by them though; I think having more robust tools for a rogue's gallery would help homebrew DMs even more then how they do it now.

 

[pukunui]

I think that's a mistake by them though; I think having more robust tools for a rogue's gallery would help homebrew DMs even more then how they do it now.

Oh, I'm not saying it's the right or the best way to do it. I find it frustrating at times myself.

They do frequently sabotage their good ideas - like Call of the Netherdeep's rivals. Great idea. Terrible execution. Dragon Heist's modularity was an interesting idea that was also executed terribly.

However, WotC is not alone in sucking at making great villains. Isn't one of the biggest complaints about the MCU how there are so few good villains? Most of the villains are just there so the heroes have someone to punch, right?

I agree with @TheSword that Curse of Strahd and Tomb of Annihilation are probably the only two 5e adventures that use their villains well. Strahd is a good example of an active villain who frequently shows up to mess with the party, whereas Acererak is a good example of a lurking villain whose presence is felt indirectly while being foreshadowed effectively for most of the campaign before finally showing up in the 'flesh' at the end.

 

[payn]

Cool thread! I cant add much because I only played in a single WotC published adventure for 5E.

Generally speaking, I find the best adventures are ones in which a kit provides the GM the necessary tools to make a memorable adventure. Often, the journey is more exciting than the destination, so count me among those who think needing a good villain isnt a requirement. The social and Exploration pillar often take second place but a good published adventure needs to lean into them heavily to make sure that journey is worth taking.

 

[jgsugden]

When all else fails, steal.

The first adventure I run for a new group in my primary homebrew steals a huge amount of design from Babylon 5. Not so much that the PCs get a blueprint on how to win out, but enough that you can see the weaving. However, the first five levels have a lot in common with the first season of Babylon 5, levels 6 to 16 essentially take them through the end of the Shadow War. Then levels 17 to 20 are a tighter way to tie everything up.

Many a DM right now might steal the model of BG3. Your PCs face a problem at low levels. Around level 5 they start to see who is behind it ... but realize around level 9 or 10 that there are greater forces at work and they need to deal with those greater issues. They spend the rest of their career on the hunt for the greater threats... but you can see how the threads of their entire adventuring career was leading up to that point through foreshadowing, misdirection and solid storytelling.

I try to not dictate the story to the PCs. In my homebrew there is a clear danger - but there are a lot of players involved in the story that can end up being forces for good, forces for evil, or just chaotic interference. The direction they take will often be influenced by what the PCs do. Some people have called it 'shades of grey' characters, but I tend to think of them as black and white outlines that the PCs will color in with their impact. As such, they could become villains, or they could become powerful allies. Similar to Essek Theyless - someone that Matt Mercer introduced into the campaign in a dark role, but that became a powerful ally of the PCs, my NPCs can be developed by the PCs to go in a variety of directions.

 

[Hussar]

I’m not sure a series of unrelated adventures is a published campaign. It’s an adventure anthology.

It sounds like what you’ve done is combine a series of individual published adventures into your own campaign. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s awesome. But that doesn’t make it a great published campaign.

For instance if I run Haunted Hall of Evenstar, then Four From Cormyr then finish with one of the adventures from the adventure booklet in the Ruins of Myth Drannor that would make a great campaign of published adventures but I don’t believe it’s a published campaign. Night Below is a published campaign. Anthologies aren’t unless they are clearly linked - a la Adventure Paths, Against the Giants etc.

Ahh, we're just having a semantic difference then. Sure felt like a campaign to me when I ran the adventures. And, it's not actually that hard to tie a lot of them closer together if you want. It's just that the module isn't going to do it for you. I wound up adding and moving stuff around to make it a coherent story.

But, that aside, you're basically saying that a published campaign cannot be episodic, which is something I strongly disagree with. A "published anthology" is an episodic campaign. Ghosts of Saltmarsh is another fantastic episodic campaign. Outside of the 3 modules, most of it is totally unconnected as written. Still a great campaign.

Just not a serial one.