Do scenarios need a BBEG?

[DonTadow]

Eh, obviously this is escalating so lets just agree to disagree. I have my suspicions why you dont want to use the word story and you have your reasons. No use in analyzing it anymore. Bottom line is most people use the word, its not going anywhere. Most people acknowledge the story in a d and d game, thats probably going to continue to be as popular as its been for the last 30 years

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

The OP can speak for himself (and apparently has spoken quite a bit), but, actually, gangs, viking raiding parties, pirate ships, bandit camps, and wolf-packs being local anarcho-democratic autocracies makes plenty of sense to me. Sure, there's a leader who probably rules with an iron fist, but he was probably put in his place by the popular acclaim of the people and can be removed from his place by the same means. If slain, his particular qualities will be missing (and if he's a man like Black Bart Roberts, then the pirate fleet won't be what it was without him), but the gang, raiding party, pirate ship, bandit camp, or wolf-pack will go on without him. And, generally, said local autocrat doesn't owe his allegiance to anyone or anything.

Now maybe that's not the same thing banning BBEGs from your adventures, but a campaign can do just fine without them and will sometimes even be well served without one.

That said, I think that long-term campaigns lend themselves toward the eventual discovery of a BBEG for one reason: long-term campaigns tend to turn into high level campaigns. And when characters are high level, they are considerably more self-directed than at low-mid levels. An army of orcs on the march? No need to flee the city; we'll take them on by ourselves. 1000 to 1? So, you're saying it's a fair fight . Was the character's life long goal to build a tower and create a school for young wizards? When you're 15th level, that's fairly easily accomplished. So, high level characters in a consistent campaign world can accomplish a lot of their goals and no longer need to adventure in order to gain the experience, wealth and fame necessary to do so. Furthermore, high level characters need each other less than low-level characters when it comes to dealing with the general challenges of the world. If your fifth level paladin wants to stop that company of 50 orcs, he's going to need help. If the rest of the party isn't on board, he won't succeed. On the other hand, when a 15th level paladin wants to stop a company of 50 orcs, it doesn't matter if the rogue would rather loot the crypt of the invincible overlord. Alhandra the 15th level paladin can defeat the orcs by herself. And, while 15th level characters can't do everything they want by themselves, they are much more capable of picking and choosing their companions through the use of their influence, feats, and wealth. Lidda might not be able to find someone as skilled as Alhandra the 15th level paladin to help her with the tomb of the invincible overlord, but she can probably use the guild connections to find someone who's good enough to meet the challenges that she needs to face.

So, what keeps the party of high level characters together and on track? Shared goals. Loyalty to each other (generally earned at lower levels). Shared enemies. That last one is the big one. If the forces of the BBEG are mustering in the east, that's probably important enough for Lidda to put her designs on the invincible overlord's tomb on hold for a while. It's also likely to be enough for Alhandra to put her crusade against the wild orcs of the west on hold too. (Orcs will loot a few villages; the BBEG will enslave entire kingdoms). A BBEG provides a shared goal that is challenging enough that a high level party actually needs each other and important enough for them to put personal goals aside for a while. If you ask yourself what kind of thing would create a shared goal for a group of high level characters and would also be sufficiently challenging that they could not take it one individually (or, to put it another way, is sufficiently challenging to provide the players with interesting and challenging encounters), it starts to take on a lot of the characteristics of a BBEG.

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

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I think the problems on this thread seem to be coming down to disagreements about what certain terms mean, specifically "BBEG" and "story."

I don't think that adventures/scenarios/whatever need to all be part of a big over-arching plot. I agree with the folks who find that silly, and best left to conspiracy theorists.

However, I use the term in a different way, that there are multiple BEG (leaving off the first B, I suppose) running around. Some of them aren't even E. In my campaign, there are multiple forces working on multiple things, sometimes in conflict with the heroes, sometimes supporting them, oftentimes opposing each other. And as of yet, most of them are unknown to the heroes in my Midwood campaign. (They've even met one of them face to face and I don't think any of them realize that he's more than what he seems to be.)

So my players tell me, when I'm wrapping up an adventure, what hooks in the setting they're interested in next (current votes are for poking at the Wizard of Green Mountain some and finding out what's beneath Midwood Pond that is causing people to disappear), and I flesh things out. That said, both do have more stuff going on than is immediately obvious (although the players are rightly very suspicious of the wizard, although he unfortunately knows it) and in one case, will eventually lead up to a BEG of sorts.

Each adventure stands on its own, without Blofeld coming out from behind the scenes, stroking his white cat. But I like my adventures to have a climax, whether it's discovering who's been masterminding the thefts from Blackberry Ridge or putting down the ghost of a haunted abbey (the two climaxes coming up now in the two forks of my Midwood campaign). And, just as importantly, the players seem to like them.

There's no railroading involved -- no plan for an adventure survives first contact with my players -- and I'm not trying to force my players to act out the scenes from some great unpublished novel, but a lot of the elements that work in fiction work for a good reason and make for satisfying adventure games. I suspect Joseph Campbell would have been a heck of a DM.

As for gangs/pirates/thieves guilds, the organization will probably go on, but fighting the gang leader/pirate captain/guildmaster is likely to be a tougher fight, requiring more character resources, with higher stakes and potentially longer term consequences (not killing the guildmaster of assassins is likely just as bad as doing so) than just Assassin #3. And that's the sort of stuff that makes the nice wrap-up of an adventure to me. Just wandering out of the local hole in the ground filled with stuff to fight and rob when the players get bored of it seems at least as artificial as having a climax to an adventure apparently feels to other people.

But hey, the odds of any of us being in each others' games is pretty slim, so no harm, no foul.

 

[Sejs]

A scenario needs closure, but it doesn't necessarily have to come in the form of a big guy you fight.

A big thing you do, an important widget you get, or a sinister plot you unravel can all be as satisfying as trouncing a significant foe in combat. All just depends on how you do it.

Edit/Additional: *blinks, looks up* Wow. Lot going on up there. Guess I should've read the thread before just responding to the OP, heh.

 

[Li Shenron]

But does it *really* matter? Can one design a satisfying adventure that doesn't require a climactic confrontation? I use the word 'confrontation' because you could, theoretically, resolve matters non-violently (think of all those 'put the gun/detonator down, son' stand-offs in film and TV drama), but it would still involve a climactic situation of some sort.

Depends how you structure your campaigns. Some make them a sequence of adventures, in which case a climax confrontation sets the end of a chapter. But it could be also be an intervowen mix of storylines, in which case there are more dramatic moments but nothing that actually "resolves" the whole story.

 

[Gold Roger]

For me the matter of a climax isn't one of story, nor one of realism.

It's a simple matter of pacing. A good game has rising and falling action. The climax is simply that tipping point between raising and falling. Without it the whole thing falls flat.

Doesn't mean there needs to be one at the end of every session- but it means for me in a game that isn't one of freeform exploration, which is a very viable approach that doesn't rely on raising and falling action, there needs to be a climax at the apropiate point.

 

[greywulf]

I was going to add in my two penn'orth, then read the furore higher up this thread, so didn't. I've changed my mind again. Decisive, aren't I?

I don't think a BBEG is needed for every scenario. Sometimes the best scenarios are the ones where the BBEG is a threat in the background, a distant rumble of thunder that annoys the heck out of the players but is untouchable - for now. I'm thinking the Aboleth in it's lair, the Evil Power Behind the Throne or the Half-Fiend Prince. The ones that are too powerful (either level-wise or politically) for the players to touch. That way, when they do finally get to do the asswhupping, it's done with a real sense of achievement by the players.

Most of my scenarios run for several sessions, sometimes ten or more. Along that way they'll encounter a variety of challenges that vary in difficulty. I'm not sure I'd call any of them BBEGs though. It's that final, climactic, campaign-changing finale that marks the end of the story arc, and that might only happen after many, many individual scenarios.

Mind you, there's nothing wrong with following the BBEG rule. Then you'll know when to break it. I ran a modern CoC game once that started with the players defeating the BBEG serial killer. They then had to race and find where he'd hidden the bodies before they turn into ghouls and decimate the city. I guess that was a BBEG adventure in reverse (not that I thought in those terms at the time)

 

[Rel]

For me the matter of a climax isn't one of story, nor one of realism.

It's a simple matter of pacing. A good game has rising and falling action. The climax is simply that tipping point between raising and falling. Without it the whole thing falls flat.

Doesn't mean there needs to be one at the end of every session- but it means for me in a game that isn't one of freeform exploration, which is a very viable approach that doesn't rely on raising and falling action, there needs to be a climax at the apropiate point.

This closely mirrors the way that I run a campaign.

But I think that, as with almost every element of roleplaying, a huge amount of this is dictated by your players and their playstyle. What I've discovered about my group is that at least half of them fall a bit on the passive side if they're not given some kind of direction. I also know that at least one of them will generate his own plots and storylines given the slightest bit of fodder (I'll call him my Alpha player).

The general pattern that has evolved as a result is that I will run some sort of relatively pre-plotted adventure to start out the campaign. The little bits and pieces that result from this scenario are usually enough to get my Alpha player to spin off some plots of his own. I run with these and also look for ways to tie in the other PC's. But I also try and toss them some ideas that don't have to do with Alpha because I don't want the campaign to be all about his character.

What I've described is all about the broader elements of campaign structure. But the way that the sessions are structured also relates to this. If I just sit back and let them self direct the flow of the session, they frequently will wallow in indecision. Despite the fact that the power is in their hands, they really aren't having as much fun as they could be.

(I'm not really like this as a player and I don't have an easy time understanding it. But it's not all that important that I understand it. I just need to deal with it.)

As a result I will help propel the game toward some kind of "critical moment". Maybe I should call this a climax but I associate a climax with the ULTIMATE critical moment. How about "mini-cimax". Whatever you want to call it, I try and have something meaningful take place in the session (frequently near the end) that will set the stage for the next session. This event is often a turning point of some kind that gives the group two or more options about how to proceed.

So this leaves me ending the session with the question, "So where are you going from here?" And this is where some of the more passive players engage better. Given a set of options that the players have dictated for themselves, they are good at weighing and debating these options in character. They pick a direction, advise me of their choice and then I'm able to prepare for the next session.

My point is that whether, when and to what extent you push for climactic moments is probably going to be dictated by all the players involved, including the GM.

 

[Dr Simon]

There are definitely climaxes in the games I run. I guess the main point I differ on is the phrase "events are pushed to one critical situation where the outcome changes everything", which indicates to me that the DM is orchestrating a specific climactic moment.

Yes, I could perhaps have phrased that better. The pushing could come from DM or players, depending on your preferred play style.

Although, I guess when I first though of my original question, I was thinking more in terms of *dungeon* design specifically.

Looking at the real old school stuff, most of the lairs in KotB had a humanoid chieftan somewhere, *but* the dungeon wasn't always designed so that they were encountered last. You could, theoretically, remove the biggest threat early in your exploration and spend the rest of the time cleaning up giant rats and shriekers.

Now, that's kind of fun in it's own way, but can feel a bit anti-climactic.

Theoretically, one could design a dungeon where the challenge in each 'room' was equal to all the others. There would be no escalating risk, no obvious high point of danger. Would it work? You could probably have fun with it, yes. Would it be more or less satisfying than if the dungeon funneled the PCs somehow to a goal of some sort? How about if there was some major challenge that was unrelated to their goal, which was entirely optional for them to pursue (quite common in older modules).

Here's where, really, we get into the story-telling vs. gamist argument, I guess, which is entirely a matter of taste and not what I'm interested in. But even in a strictly gamist sense there can be a different feel to different periods of the game. In chess for example, playing endgame is almost a different skill to opening or mid-game.

 

[DragonLancer]

IMO, you can end a scenario or campaign without fighting a BBEG, but IMX without that you don't have enough closure. Players expect a Big Bad, even back before computer games made it compulsory.