Do scenarios need a BBEG?

[Whisper72]

The climax of defeat usually is a campaign buster. Not necessarily a bad thing, but in my experience, this usually results in all players rolling up new PC's for a completely new world/campaign. 'and now, for something completely different...'

A very few times, what we did was to allow the players to go for a real revenge 'one shot' game where the players 'roll up' new PC's at a very high level just for this very purpose, plan a strike against the BBEG, and beat the krap out of them... This is mainly for pure entertainment / feel better purposes, not in any effort to 'restart' the ongoing campaign...

 

[Elfdart]

And you dress funny.

Good call insulting about 3/4 of the people on this thread, though.

Oh please.

But gangs, raiding parties and wolf packs being anarcho-democratic communes without a leader, that would make more sense to you?

I think Ourph summed it up nicely.

Those are good examples of why the BBEG is not needed. Pirates, bandits and other miscreants often (a) don't have leaders at all or (b) swap or overthrow leaders at the drop of a hat. What's more, I see nothing inherently more important about fighting off a pack leader as opposed to any other wolf in the group

As for "storyline", there's no place for that nonsense in a game. If I wanted to do group storytelling where you stick to a script I would have joined a drama club or something.

 

[Elfdart]

I've seen a lot of "as long as there's some kind of climax" posts, but how do you handle the end of a session, adventure, or campaign where the PCs actually lose? While anti-climatic endings leave PCs feeling disappointed, what about losses?

A huge, Final Fantasy 7-type campaign occurs. The BBEG, his Lts, and his minions do heinous things to the PCs (and of course the PCs do a lot to thwart their plans). It comes down to the end, and the group is facing the last guy and his two warriors. Not only has this guy burned the towns where the PCs have come from, he's managed to murder people dear to them (family member, spouse, ect) for all they've done in ruining his plans. The battle is too heated, too bitter to end with mere words. Blood must be drawn.

And... the PCs lose. One escapes with his life, while the others died heroically. This one (the rogue haha) has no plans of going back for revenge because, quite frankly, the beating they took scared him enough that he's not going back after that BBEG again.

So, you're sitting there after what the players have considered an epic game, but they lost and it's over. The BBEG will rebuild and carry out his evil plan, and it would be too cheesy to have each player roll a new character to take up the exact same battle. You fold up your DM screen and you notice your buddies all looking forlorn, as though you just kicked their new puppy. A few grumble, some look away, and one of them is looking at your head like it's the bag of doritos.....

How do you handle THOSE kinda climaxes? The bad ones.

The same way one should handle losing a hand at cards, a football game or a chess match: You win some; you lose some -so take it like a man! Sheesh! If people get so sad over coming out on the short end of a game session that they're going to just quit, then the precious little dears are too fragile to play games of any kind. They'll probably get depressed if they lose a game of Candyland, too.

Smart players will have their PCs recruit henchmen and other followers, so they will have a "second string" if their main PC gets killed and can thus continue playing and maybe get some payback (they are his followers after all). Or they can experience the joys of rolling up a new 1st level character.

 

[Parlan]

Pirates, bandits and other miscreants often (a) don't have leaders at all or (b) swap or overthrow leaders at the drop of a hat. What's more, I see nothing inherently more important about fighting off a pack leader as opposed to any other wolf in the group

Where are you getting this from? All the pirates, bandits and (especially) miscreants that *I* hang out w/ have leaders!


Seriously tho, take pirates. Someone has to decide where they're sailing that ship. There has to be someone calling the shots.

And if they crew could mutiny to decide another captain that's all the more reason for the captain to be a tough hombre. In a lawful group, the leader could gain leadersip due to noble birth etc. The rest of the group would accept the authority of a lvl 2 Aristocrat even if they were level 5 Ftrs. For a bunch of (Chaotic) buccaneers, it doesn't work that way: the captain keeps his position by kicking a lot of butt on the way.

So Blackbeard certainly would qualify as a BBEG in my book.

(And how often the leader changes isn't really relevant. All that matters is who is wearing the captain's hat when the PCs arrive.)

If you want to say that the pirates are all level 5 Wars and the captain is a level 6 War, and this one level difference is to small to qualify the captain as a BBEG, well, I guess we're using different definitions of BBEG. I fail to see why some exact level of increased bad-a**ery is necessary to qualify as a BBEG, but YYMV.

 

[Parlan]

The other advantage of a Leader type in any group of mooks is that it gives someone for the PCs to focus on and bring it down to the personal level. It's a lot more satisfying to smack the crap out of Blackbeard and his 30 pirate mates than to smack the crap out of 31 pirates.

It doesn't matter so much what level Blackbeard is relative to the mates, as long as he's wearing the Captain's Hat

 

[DonTadow]

I've seen a lot of "as long as there's some kind of climax" posts, but how do you handle the end of a session, adventure, or campaign where the PCs actually lose? While anti-climatic endings leave PCs feeling disappointed, what about losses?

A huge, Final Fantasy 7-type campaign occurs. The BBEG, his Lts, and his minions do heinous things to the PCs (and of course the PCs do a lot to thwart their plans). It comes down to the end, and the group is facing the last guy and his two warriors. Not only has this guy burned the towns where the PCs have come from, he's managed to murder people dear to them (family member, spouse, ect) for all they've done in ruining his plans. The battle is too heated, too bitter to end with mere words. Blood must be drawn.

And... the PCs lose. One escapes with his life, while the others died heroically. This one (the rogue haha) has no plans of going back for revenge because, quite frankly, the beating they took scared him enough that he's not going back after that BBEG again.

So, you're sitting there after what the players have considered an epic game, but they lost and it's over. The BBEG will rebuild and carry out his evil plan, and it would be too cheesy to have each player roll a new character to take up the exact same battle. You fold up your DM screen and you notice your buddies all looking forlorn, as though you just kicked their new puppy. A few grumble, some look away, and one of them is looking at your head like it's the bag of doritos.....

How do you handle THOSE kinda climaxes? The bad ones.

It's the climax. I think if you make the climax exciting and grand, win or loose the pcs will appreciate it.

If you've done a good job, the PCs will want to start a campaign in the same world, where they will get another shot at the big bad. The pcs in my game are headed for such a climax and i have four different scenerios in my head of what will happen if they loose. All of them will make for a good sequal.

 

[DonTadow]

Oh please.



I think Ourph summed it up nicely.

Those are good examples of why the BBEG is not needed. Pirates, bandits and other miscreants often (a) don't have leaders at all or (b) swap or overthrow leaders at the drop of a hat. What's more, I see nothing inherently more important about fighting off a pack leader as opposed to any other wolf in the group

As for "storyline", there's no place for that nonsense in a game. If I wanted to do group storytelling where you stick to a script I would have joined a drama club or something.

??????

That's just crazy. This is a role playing game where players take on the roles of charachters with stories to them. Else you might as well just be playing dungeons and dragons the board game. There are DMs in this world whom just roll items off of tables and there are DMs who put effort into making the "game" an experience as it was meant to be. Whether you're a hack and slasher or serious role playing group there should always be a reason to the madness, a story to why its being done.

 

[DonTadow]

The same way one should handle losing a hand at cards, a football game or a chess match: You win some; you lose some -so take it like a man! Sheesh! If people get so sad over coming out on the short end of a game session that they're going to just quit, then the precious little dears are too fragile to play games of any kind. They'll probably get depressed if they lose a game of Candyland, too.

Smart players will have their PCs recruit henchmen and other followers, so they will have a "second string" if their main PC gets killed and can thus continue playing and maybe get some payback (they are his followers after all). Or they can experience the joys of rolling up a new 1st level character.

My point exactly

To add to this and my last statement, if you just create the leader out to be a slightly more powerful version if his minions, you are not going to get a good BBEG. If the PCs fight the BBEG on the first encounter, you're not going to get a good BBEG. BBEG's are difficult and rewarding task of a DM to create. You plant seeds of them early in a campaign or path and let it marinate. Heck, in my current campaign, the PCs, after two years, just met several of the senior minions of the BBEG. So scared they are of the BBEG that even though they were going to attack one of the senior minions strongholds, they spent up the wazoo to prepare. You have to make the pcs anticipate the upcoming battle so that when or lose, they have a good time.

 

[Imagicka]

What's more, it's not realistic: Power structures imply someone at the top, probably served by lieutenants. It's not only more dramatically interesting and more satisfying to have the player characters conquer a lieutenant at the end of a long game session, it makes more logical sense than "OK, you kill all the faceless bureaucrats and search their file cabinets. Cross-referencing the results of last year's audit with the most recent census, the group discovers the next place to go." In real life, there'd at least be a middle manager guarding that file cabinet, surrounded by his army of temp-mooks.

Have you been playing Paper & Paychecks again? -- No more Dilbert/Office-Space ~ D&D cross-overs m'kay? Otherwise we're going to start compelled to bring our home-made katanas to work.

 

[Imagicka]

I for one would like to see a moratorium on BBEGs and Dramatic Climaxes and all that nonsense. It's a cliche that's been done to death and is usually a crutch for those who lack imagination.

Yeah, it's a cliché that has been used since the beginning of... hmm... literature... and we don't need anymore good literature! We've got enough already.

I remember once our group accidentally went through a module backwards. We missed the obvious starting point, but somehow found the secret entrance to the vampire's tomb instead. So we killed the vampire and spent the rest of the adventure scared you-know-what-less because we were expecting even tougher monsters later. When we found out the vampire was the toughest thing in the tombs, we felt kind of stupid at first, but laughed out loud because the DM had put one over on us.

This sort of adventure you can only pull off once or twice, if you plan for it, and not have it happen serendipitously. It's like setting up the party to kill each other, or running the occational hömage to something inspiring, like having the party run through scenes of an adventure backwards as in Memento. Those are nice one shot deals. But aren't the meat and potatoes of good storytelling/roleplaying.

I'm just sick of every gang of bandits, every goblin raiding party, every ogre or werewolf being part of some Grand Plan by some BBEG.

Well, first I would say that there is something wrong with the fact that every entity that your encountering is under the control or employ of the BBEG. But, on second thought... If I was the BBEG, I would be the kind of guy who wants to control everything. I'm going to want to have in my control every goblin, ogre and werewolf that I can bully, recruit, or employ that is in my territory.