Campaign pitch too intimidating?

[magnusmalkus]

I want to formulate a campaign idea/hook that carries the players from 1st lvl on that involves them directly and puts them on course with a big bad evil guy (BBEG) from the start.

How do you propose to 1st lvl characters that their enemy is Lord Big Bad Evil Guy, notoriously powerful and has his finger in every pie, and not expect them to cower and say "Why us? Don't you have someone more powerful to take on this job?" "If not, how do you expect us to do it? Peck away at his minons until he's weak enough and we're powerful enough to tackle him? What happens if he catches wind of our plans to topple his regime of terror and squashes us like bugs?"

I understand you have to get the players to WANT to take him on. How do you do that with players who really don't give you much to hook on to?

 

[Paka]

Tell 'em the campaign concept:

"How about a game where the first level characters rise up and eventually destroy Orcus?"

Add some color:

"He's gained a foothold on this prime material world due to a vicious plague that gained a foothold and brought many a great empire low in the past century."

Add some direction:

"Make a character who has been effected by this plague and has a major hate-on for Orcus and his minions."

And be flexible, realize that Orcus has his own enemies and allies who the players can whack on on their long trek from 1st to 30th and that eventual battle.

 

[timbannock]

1. Don't tell them.

2. Don't reveal the big bad guy for a while. Make the PCs face off against several enemies which have a mysterious connection. At about level 12ish, that connection comes front and center. By then, the PCs should be the major power in the land.

3. Give the PCs tons of allies. Maybe not even powerful ones, but useful ones, or many of them. PCs could be either the champions destined to do this (once they find X, where X is something that takes up a long time and a lot of levels, but is necessary to fight BBEG), or could be working from the underground if the BBEG is the known ruler of the lands. If they are working from the underground, they'll have to keep a low profile until they get powerful enough to storm the gates.

4. If the PCs are intimidated by the possibility of facing a powerful enemy, killing it, and stealing its loot, then should they really be playing D&D?

 

[helium3]

I would reccomend you read the first couple of chapter of the new 4E DMG. They've got a lot of good stuff there.

Basically though, make sure that the first adventure thematically fits with who you know the BBEG to be. Also, don't be afraid to drop pretty strong hints in your campaign handout where you provide campaign specific limitations and general setting knowledge. You do not, however, have to tell them directly if you don't want to.

 

[SweeneyTodd]

I think it's plenty enough foreshadowing to just have the "theme" of the eventual Big Bad in the challenges you face at low level. Think Buffy -- the big bads evolved naturally out of what was going on in the series.

Your "big bad" for a lvl 1-3 adventure, heck it could be a crazed madman using some dark ritual to raise undead. Yes, he's being influenced by Orcus, but it's not like he knows the game plan -- he got a peek of Things Man Should Not Know and it broke his brain. Stuff like that. There's no harm in starting simple.

The way I like to handle it is to have lower levels involve fleshing out the characters, what they stand for, their goals, things like that. Give them time to feel some ownership in the game world before it's threatened.

The Dungeon magazine adventure paths seemed to do a pretty good job of having relatively self-contained threats going on that had been brought about because of the stuff that would eventually be the Big Bad of the campaign; those might offer some advice.

I do really like the advice of talking to the players about what kind of theme you'd like to do, to gauge their interest. A lot of people might say "well that spoils the surprise", but what I've found GMing is that if the folks at the table know up front where things are eventually heading, they really enjoy picking apart clues and reading into foreshadowing.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Why us?

It's personal. All PCs are required at the char gen stage to desire the overthrow of the BBEG. This might be because he killed friends/family, destroyed their home village, is the biggest challenge around or whatever.

how do you expect us to do it?

Go up levels and acquire magic items until you're strong enough. How else? This is D&D ffs. Alternatively the BBEG might have a single weakness, perhaps an artefact that needs to be found or a secret to be uncovered.

What happens if he catches wind of our plans to topple his regime of terror and squashes us like bugs?"

If I decide here and now to overthrow MicroSoft I doubt Bill Gates is going to lose much sleep over it. The BBEG has plenty of other concerns - real current threats (liches, dragons, demons, 20th level paladins, etc), evil plots to move forward, concubines to enjoy. Five 1st level guys who hate him aren't worth one iota of energy. He'll wait until they become a real problem. After all chances are they'll get eaten by a bulette or something and he'll never have a problem in the first place.

I understand you have to get the players to WANT to take him on. How do you do that with players who really don't give you much to hook on to?

Require that they do give you much to hook on to. Otherwise they're really not engaging with the game. Players have to understand that you work on your plots and you need the PCs to be motivated to follow them otherwise the game doesn't function.

 

[LostSoul]

"The encounters will be level-appropriate."

I understand you have to get the players to WANT to take him on. How do you do that with players who really don't give you much to hook on to?

It's a matter of trust, I guess. How can you get the players to trust that you won't screw them over? You can't - just show them you won't.

 

[Family]

How about an evil cleric attempts to open a portal into the realm of his Demon Lord, and the PCs are sent into the area to investigate the rumors of said cult in some ancient ruins. <--note the Demon Lord bit, it can be a running theme and he can eventually be the BBEG.

 

[Lizard]

As others have said...don't tell them. Or, perhaps more technically, make sure their CHARACTERS don't know. Whether the players know or not is part of your social contract. (I'm assuming your players know how to distinguish between player knowledge and character knowledge.)

The PCs might know of BBEG as a distant force, or not even suspect he/she/it exists. What they do know is that orc raids have increased and they need to do something about the local orcs. Once they find the orc chieftain who has claimed he is the destined king of the orcs and slay him, they find evidence showing he's the pawn/puppet of a cunning stone giant warlord. It takes a while to battle to the stone giant's mountain fortress, and there, they discover the presumed mastermind is himself an agent of an even greater power...and so on, until you finally reach Vecna/Orcus/Elminster/whoever.

Ideally, there's plenty of red herrings and side trips, so it isn't as obvious and simplistic all-aboard-the-plot-train as above. Indeed, the best thing to do is listen to the players speculate, wait for them to come up with something WAY cooler than you ever could, and swap some stuff around. And if the players quickly figure out the plot and rush to head it off...change it. They decide it's Vecna and immediately load up on Swords Of Vecna Slaying, then they find out someone else was acting like Vecna precisely to fool enemies into taking all the wrong precautions...

(One of my favorite villains was a half-fiend medusa who left hints and rumours that he was a mind flayer...gee, all those anti-psionic precautions sure came in handy, didn't they? Heh heh heh... (Like it mattered. Bastard PCs not only took him down without *anyone* getting petrified, but made him cry like a little girl and pilot his flying boat for them...))

 

[Pbartender]

"It's defenses are designed around a direct, large-scale assault. A small 1st-Level Fighter should be able to penetrate the outer defense..."

"...the Empire doesn't consider a small 1st-Level Fighter to be any threat, or they'd have a tighter defense."