D&D 5E Building A Campaign Around The BBEG

[aco175]

Which is fine - The Gold Dragon Emperor who dispenses Law from its high mountain but leaves enforcement to its corrupt Paladine Inquisitors can indeed be the top of an evil empire, but is He truly the antagonist or is that his Vizier who does oppression and draconian tyranny in the Emperors name?

This is more what I was thinking. The dragon set up things and ran it for 100 years or so leading into the golden age. Then it went to sleep for a while on the mountain home leaving people in charge. People corrupt things and make things oppressive. Some leaders claiming they can dreamspeak with the dragon and know its wishes and such.

The end of the campaign leads the PCs to wake the dragon and deal with the fall out. Maybe fight the dragon, but maybe show it what the kingdom had become in hope of changing things.

 

[MarkB]

NOTE: This is tagged 5E but in reality I plan to run this in 2024 5E just to give the system its shot. I might also run it in SWADE. Who knows.

NOTE 2: This is a working idea, so I am hoping for feedback on how to make the premise work. I am not looking for people to argue with the basic premise, thanks.

THE PREMISE: The campaign is centered around a villain -- specifically a very powerful villain that exists in the open and has influence on top of raw power. The entire campaign is based on the PCs wanting to take this villain down, with them starting at 1st level. Every PC will have a (player chosen or randomly rolled) reason for their hatred of the BBEG, and that is what binds them together. Otherwise, the game is a sandbox, full of NPCs, factions, locations and secrets. It will be up to the PCs to decide how they want to finally get to the point where they can try and legitimately take the BBEG down. There is no predetermined path.

First off, I need to decide what the BBEG is. What would make a good villain? An ancient dragon? A wizard-king? A demigod on Earth? What would you use for a blatant, open villain that is exceedingly powerful?

The great saviour of the last age, who defeated the dread evil that threatened the world and set all to rights. Only a select few, including the PCs, know that this is a facade and this 'saviour' is a tyrant in disguise, and proving it to the world at large would be an extraordinarily difficult task.

Second, I want "leveling up" to be something that actually happens in the fiction of the world. That is, the PCs know, in character, that they have to get more powerful before they have a chance to face the BBEG. And they know what sorts of things can provide power of that sort. I am almost thinking of a "soul energy" or something. Whatever it is, is something that exists in the world for everyone, not just the PCs.

Make it something that can use game-mechanical nomenclature - something like "Existential Potential" if you're using XP-based levelling. But try not to make it something that one simply "loots" by defeating any foe - just because the PCs know that they need to work at gaining levels, it shouldn't devolve into them just going out into the wilderness and "grinding" encounters for XP.

 

[Piperken]

I don't think PC classes make particularly good BBEGs. Can you articulate how that might work?

Most of the examples you provided initially are fantastic creatures, monsters or (possibly) otherworldly; a wizard-king could fit what I mean.

By someone like the PCs, I mean a villain that is like them, is openly a villain (who doesn't feel a need to conceal themselves), possesses power and has great influence.

If this steers away from the gamut of what you'd like, then no worries!

 

[BookTenTiger]

I have a lot of thoughts about this, so I'm going to break it up into three posts.

First off, I ran a pretty successful BBEG-centered campaign loosely based on Curse of Strahd. I'm pretty terrible at running prepublished adventures or campaigns, so after the Death House I wound up just taking some of the components of Curse of Strahd and making my own campaign. The characters all received visions to come to a secluded valley which was ruled over by a vampire queen and her undead kin. Each character had a reason to wish for the vampire queen's destruction: she cursed their mentor, oppressed their people, had killed their previous adventuring party, or they were a direct witness to her atrocities.

I was inspired by the Tarokka cards to create a system for creating adventures. I made my own cards, in three categories: Settings, Goals, and Complications. In their first adventure (after the Death House, which was a shared dream), the characters rescued Madam Zolenka, a tortle mystic who could read the cards. The cards revealed the path the characters had to take in order to defeat the vampire queen. She could only do three readings per new moon, which allowed me to have three different adventure seeds ready for the players.

Just for fun, I put the cards onto a spreadsheet so I could see what possible adventures awaited the players. You can check it out here. (Just press delete in order to refresh it.)

Madam Zolenka also told the characters how the people of the valley used to pray to, and received magic from, the stars. But the vampire queen's curse kept the stars obscured by an ever-present miasma of clouds and fog. Whenever the characters completed a task laid out by the Tarokka Cards, they were blessed by the stars with power, and leveled up.

Now you don't have to do a random element like I did (I just enjoyed the challenge of adventure design), but you could definitely plan out your adventures by laying out some locations, goals, and complications. The characters don't have to accomplish all the goals, but each one they do makes the job of facing the BBEG a little easier. You could think of something like...

Location	Goal	Complication
1. A place connected to a character's background.	1. Retrieve a powerful weapon.	1. There's a curse.
2. A place connected to the BBEG's backstory.	2. Recruit an important ally.	2. It's even more dangerous than usual.
3. A place connected to a character's family.	3. Eliminate an ally of the BBEG.	3. The goal has been split into two objectives.
4. A place where history can be learned.	4. Gain knowledge about the BBEG's vulnerabilities.	4. Another powerful organization has taken possession of the goal.
5. A place that is a safe-harbor for the characters.	5. Enact a magic ritual to gain more power.	5. The item retrieved must be repaired; or the person must be healed.
6. A place of great danger for the characters.	6. Gain a powerful magic item.	6. The location of the item or person is unknown.

Overall this wound up being a really successful campaign that took the characters from 1st to 11th Level. There were some weaknesses to the model, which I can lay out in another post. As a DM, I had a ton of fun designing adventures that were randomly generated.

 

[BookTenTiger]

When thinking about who your BBEG should be, there's something I read about in an article once that I've always wanted to try. You make a list of enemy types you really want to include in a campaign. Here's mine:

Medusa
Green Dragon
Hill Giant
Archmage
Lizardfolk
Minotaur

Then you assign each enemy one of the following titles:

The ___
The ___ Brothers/Sisters/Twins
The Three ___
The ___ Cabal / Council
The ___ Gang / Family
The ___ Army

So maybe I'd do something like this:

The Archmage
The Green Dragon Sisters
The Three Medusas
The Lizardfolk Cabal
The Minotaur Gang
The Hill Giant Army

Now in my campaign, I'm going to have just one Archmage (the BBEG), two Green Dragons, three Medusas, a half-dozen Lizardfolk, a few dozen Minotaurs, and a whole army of Hill Giants. I can adjust the numbers, group names, and their CRs as needed. Maybe instead of an army of Hill Giants, it's an army of wildlings, orcs, and ogres lead by Hill Giants? Maybe the Lizardfolk are also powerful spellcasters?

This can help me design a possible campaign path. In order for the characters to defeat the Archmage, they first have to overcome the Hill Giant Army, foil the Minotaur Gang, defeat the Lizardfolk Cabal, deal with the Three Medusas, and slay the Green Dragon Sisters. It doesn't have to be in that order, and it doesn't have to be a railroad either. I could set out locations being threatened by each faction, or combine them, or place them in dungeons. I can start to think of why they all work for the Archmage, too. Maybe the Archmage has gained power by taking an artifact from each faction? Or maybe he has used enchanting magic to charm their leaders?

Anyways, it's just one way to design a BBEG-centered campaign.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

The villain is a Wizard-King (suggested BBEG on your list) who rules over the mainland empire. Several years ago, he compelled the rulers of your free island (contained settings) to choose between being eradicated by his magic or give him what he wants. Each years, he wants 20 healthy young males and females sent to him so he can turn them into larvae and bargain them for demonic power. He could sacrifice his own people, but he has common sense, and know that being evil to your own people tend the favor the emergence of heroes to dethrone you -- he's taxing them a lot to ensure his lavish lifestyle and the well-being of his armies, but he isn't taxing them to the point they'd have nothing to lose. He needs innocent souls, so he can't just empty the kingdom's creason. So he's an efficient and rational evil Overlord, who was read the Evil Overlord list. On the other hand, he administrate his kingom from a well-known seat of power, his palace, which is well defended, but where access is possible if controlled like in a forbidden city organization (includes a large metropolis).

He has taken measures to block several spells that would allow scry-and-die, like instant transportation or planeshift (maybe he Wished them away) so the setting can stay contained even at higher levels.

Your PCs are related to one of the drafted person that was to be sent to be sacrificed or to someone who volunteered to replace a draftee (hatred as a motivator). They know they can't do anything at level 1. They also know they gaining a level will be a measurable increase in their power but can be detected -- beware if the BBEG has some plans to make a yearly divination to locate people above level 15 and preemptively remove them from the roster of potential enemies, so the players might want to first find the way to dissimulate their power growth.

Due to his rather tolerable rule over his army, he's actual quite loved by his soldiers (has influence on top on raw power) and is a threat that can affect things the PC like. Legion XXII might not have the power to stop the heroes, but it could easily level a town on the hero's island where lived NPCs they were connected to. And they can't be everywhere at the same time (due to the aforementionned lack of high speed transportation). One of the strength of you BBEG will be logistics, not simply higher magic -- though it's quite possible that he made proviso in his wish to allow quick transportation for him.

The yearly sacrifices give the hero a time pressure. How many innocent will have to die because you took 214 days of downtime to create an Enspelled Hammer of Fireballs? Was it worth it? Winning in five years isn't the same as winning in two years: that's 120 more of your friends that will spend eternity in perpetual torment. I hope this hammer will be worth it.

Have the levelling be happening using the same idea of turning souls into larvae. Levelling is something that exist in the game, not unlike the above-mentionned highlander series. People can reach a pinnacle of power by learning (use milestone levelling to reflect their progression over the first five levels), then you need to feed on life energy through "worship" and become popular heroes (level 5 to 10) but they can't become world heroes because it would be visible to the Evil Overlord. So at some point, they can only progress by absorbing the life energy of someone who's more powerful than you. Sure, there might be monster, but they'd need to be researched, because they are not readily available as random monsters, or defeating key NPCs in the Evil empire's main cities -- at this point, the characters will have little interest in removing lower-level garrison captain, only the cadre of generals around the BBEG has enough levels to grant them enough energy to cultivate their qi further/gain a level. But removing them one by one is certain to alert the BBEG that foul play is happening... So maybe they can't just try to reach level 20 and should settle for facing the BBEG at an earlier level?

For added surprise in the final fight, the Evil Overlord used the larvae to appease a demonic creature that would erupt and kill everything, so when they finally think they removed the overlord, will they accept the same deal?

 

[MGibster]

First off, I need to decide what the BBEG is. What would make a good villain? An ancient dragon? A wizard-king? A demigod on Earth? What would you use for a blatant, open villain that is exceedingly powerful?

You really can't go wrong with any of those options. I just started a D&D campaign, and I'm trying to decide whether to make an ancient dragon the main antagonist or a god. I'm leaning towards the god being the antagonist with the dragon being it's lieutenant.

Second, I want "leveling up" to be something that actually happens in the fiction of the world. That is, the PCs know, in character, that they have to get more powerful before they have a chance to face the BBEG. And they know what sorts of things can provide power of that sort. I am almost thinking of a "soul energy" or something. Whatever it is, is something that exists in the world for everyone, not just the PCs.

In my very first 5th edition campaign, I had leveling up be an in-game thing. i.e. Their abilities were being taken to the "next level." It's a little video gamey, but maybe PCs absorb the "soul energy" of their fallen foes.

Finally, I want the setting to be contained. maybe a fantasy megalopolis? An island nation? A demiplane?

I've chosen to have the PCs base of operations the free city of Greyhawk. Most of the adventures will take place in the greater Greyhawk area but it afford me the flexibility to go a little further if warranted. Most adventures will start in Greyhawk but will likely take them out of town.

 

[Reynard]

<snip>

Thanks for the detailed response.

This can help me design a possible campaign path.

This is not a critique of your set up, I just want to say that one thing i really want to NOT do with this campaign is have any sort of predetermined path. There is a situation and a whole bunch of defined information and a whole bunch more undefined stuff, and the PCs with a specific motivation. Everything after is up to the players.

That's the hope anyway.

 

[bedir than]

I used Strixhaven's founding dragons for the bbeg when I run a campaign with a similar conceit.
There was a lot of political action so that the PCs wouldn't get overwhelmed by the various minions and factions that followed the founding dragons, which led to some interesting subsystems around militia actions, swarms, reputation and social play.

One of the things I think I needed to be better at was providing tiered targets that would indicate significant shifts in power for everyone.
A home base that is somewhat magically obscured was a necessity in my campaign.

 

[Reynard]

So I think I am going to use the evil wizard-king as the main villain. He manipulated the Royals for decades and corrupted the whole system until finally eliminating them -- except for the last heir who he keeps in thrall. He is a wicked, selfish, nasty, vindictive and capricious monster of a man, mad with power (temporal and arcane). All that is left in positions of authority in the realm are apologists and sycophants and cowards. I will let the players decide what horrors the wizard-king heaped on their loved ones or communities that has driven the PCs to swear revenge, and there will be lots of factions (both good and evil) they might find support from.

I will be running this in D&D 2024, so once the MM drops I will be able to build an appropriately powerful statblock for them to be forced to wait until late game to face. It looks like I am going to have to lean on experience and 3rd party products to build my sandbox, though, but I have time yet.