Bit villains hijack the campaign!

[Psion]

Hey all.

Looking back at the course of the campaign over the last year and a half, an interesting phenomenon has occured.

In my campaign I tend to make long term villains that aren't easily defeated. But then, the players need to overcome some obstacles, so I try to make some defeasible villains as well.

The central villains in my current campaign are the followers of a death goddess (human and drow), and an oppressive empire threatening the kingdom. However, I made up a cabal of evil mages called the arcane alliance that was intended to be a defeasible challenge.

However, seemingly due to my willingness to mix it up with the party more regularly than with the high-ups of the other groups, the arcane alliance has become more of a personal vendeatta for the party, especially where one particular villainess is concerned-- a female summoner named galea. Given this, I sort of stretched the role of the arcane alliance in the campaign way beyond what I had intended, and they have become staple villains in my game.

Anyone else have minor villains that have taken on a life of their own?

 

[alsih2o]

sorry to not reply directly to what i believe will grow to an interesting thread, but WAY COOL! sig you got there

 

[Maraxle]

Yeah, that happened in my group in a big way. I wish I could give some details, but it got so big that it became one of my submissions in the WotC open call.

My advice: Just go with it. You could fade your other villain group into the background. Then, when the players least expect it, or just when they say "Hey, what ever happened to...", they can make a reappearance. Who knows what kind of damage they've been doing while the players have been concentrating on that other group...

 

[Frosty]

In the adventure path our party-paladin found a Holy Anvenger. He is a paladin of Kord but the sword had once belonged to a paladin of Heironous. The clerics of H seized the sword from us, in a very unjust way. You see, we were fighting the next worst thing and the H-folk harrassed us over the sword. Which we had recovered! By the use of overwhelming force, in a threatening way, they made us hand over it to them.

This created a long enmity between us, the heroes, and a the rigid, inflexible church of H. The church of H turned out to be great villains as we couldn't touch them. At least they were our enemy's enemy but they didn't appreciate our work one bit. Made us feel like Spiderman!

 

[CRG]

This happens so often with us...we keep a book of grudges. Every time something happens, we write down what the quest / adventure / etc. is.

That way we stay on target (in theory anyway), but very often the players will sit around trying to determine what they think the most threatening and therefore-first-priority foe is, all the while the GM is shaking his head because they don't even have the cool big-bad on the list...

 

[Davelozzi]

This happened big time in an old FR campaign that I ran in college. The party (mostly escaped slaves from Calimshan) was in southeast Tethyr (before the reunification) and was paid to help reforge an abandoned trade route from from Saradush to Hlondeth on the Vilhon Reach (this was a more sensible trade route before all the mountains moved in the transition to 3e). At any rate, the main villian was supposed to be a clan of yuan-ti merchants in Hlondeth but along the way I set up an encounter with the forces of a robber baron who had set up in a castle that used to be a border outpost in far eastern Tethyr. He was being secretly funded by the yuan-ti (who wanted to keep this route closed as they had a monopoly on the nearby trade route from Riatavin to Hlondeth and didn't want any competion). But the real reason I put him there was just to demonstrate the chaotic situation in Tethyr at the time. The party began to focus on this guy to the point where they abandoned their main mission and began to rally a force to seige his castle. The campaign focus changed to "Free Tethyr." Two of the party members were captured while sneaking around the baron's castle on a reconassaince mission. One of them was killed when he refused to give up his friends while being interrogated. The other survived only because he made his save vs. a Detect Lie spell and so the baron believed his story. Unfortunatley, before he was rescued, most of my players dropped out of school (UMass ) so the campaign fizzled out.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Familiarity breeds Villainy.

In one of the games I played in in college, this happened. The chief baddie was a drow sorceress, but although we knew of her, we rarely encountered her. Instead, we were opposed primarily by her right-hand man, Varen. Varen was a shade, a formerly powerful warrior. He flew about on a psionic dragon that could teleport from place to place. The dragon rarely involved himself in fights - he was neutral, and actually on rather good terms with some members of the party.

The shade, however, had an item that allowed him to bother and taunt us in our dreams, with damaging but rarely deadly effect. So we ran into him constantly from 2nd level on, until we finally took him out around 8th level.

We met him on such a regular basis, at points (with occasional droughts of time in which we merely wondered what the hell he was up to) that we grew to absolutely despise him.

The Drow was only encountered once or twice, and killed the second time - Varen outlived her and took on her quest, becoming the chief baddie for a while.

It was one of the best villains I've ever encountered.

 

[Furn_Darkside]

Anyone else have minor villains that have taken on a life of their own?

I had it happen for one player in the group- I created a kenku pirate named Iron Beak. He also had a bad habit of getting the party to do his dirty work (though he would always leave a hint it was him by his initials). He foiled the party once or twice, and would always escape when personally foiled - mostly due to bad rolls on the party's part.

Well, the party fighter came to hate this guy so much that he made it clear he was constantly on the look out for him and his crew.

I went along with it and he found a seedy bar where Iron Beak did his drinking. He immediately gathered the party, stormed into the bar, walked to the back and sat across from Iron Beak.

The fighter immediately went into a list of threats and demands of the pirate. However, the rest of the party looked around and noted the whole bar was filled with IB's armed crew.

Before the party could stop him, the fighter threw a drink in the face of IB. They quickly decided to grapple their own party member and drag him out of there- instead of being killed by the pirates.


In another campeign with another group, the party were trying to start a spelljammer mechant company. They had enemies that were a married pair of kenku (man, I am noticing a trend here) who owned their own company.

I had planned them to be only minor enemies, but the party went out of their way to screw the kenku after the kenku did it to them once.

This led to a back and forth battle between the two companies, but the kenku went overboard once and when they meant to only scare one of the pc's grandfather.. they accidently killed him.

Well, that pc knew the kenku had a sick child that desperately need a cure. He went out of his way to gather every available amount of it- and destroyed all but one dose.

Which he burnt right in front of the kenku at their next meeting.

FD

 

[Number47]

Minor villain? I had a minor plot device become a major villain!

The first session of the game, I set it up that the town was looking to hire adventurers. The main competition for the party was a large group of seasoned mercenarys called the Lions Heart Brigade. I made the party come up with a sealed bid that the town would compare to other bids for the job. The Lions Heart Brigade got the bid. Then, in the middle of the night, they simply disappeared from town with all of the advance money from the job. This made the town come back and accept the groups bid.

All of this was planned. What wasn't planned was the reaction on the part of the party. They had to do the mission right away, but all they ever talked about was going and getting the Brigade. Although the game is currently on hiatus, they Brigade have now become top on the list. They were never supposed to be villains at all! I just wanted something to give the party a reason to come up with a decent bid.

 

[333 Dave]

I haven't had a minor enemy become major, but I have had a major enemy become minor. My group seems to think that they're not supposed to follow up on leads unless I tell them to.
"There's a cult to an ancient green dragon."
Party destroy's one small cell, finds a book saying that there are more and larger cells.
"Eh, we give the book to the local church then skip town."