Do scenarios need a BBEG?

[Zelda Themelin]

I like big bads as player, but I am not always so found of using them as DM, depends a bit on style of game.

I like classics, like facing dragons, or evil outsiders or nasty undead, with occasional thing from beyond.

I don't mean, that facing them would always mean fighting them. They could be things looming on the other side of portal you are trying to close or half-manifesting when you go stop some nasty conjuration. Or meeting could be more diplomatic.

Big bad doesnt't me to me some evil mastermind. That I feel, is very different thing.

I kinda like games with "Monster of the week". And not all those has to be directly involved with major plot, because games I play always have such too. I also like possibility for that monster of the week becoming your ally against some future enemy.

I am currenly playing though Shacled city, which is nice, but a bit tedious. Reminds me why I like high level adventures. They have less useless rooms.

 

[Ourph]

It is a realism argument: In everything from families of meerkats to street gangs, the guy in charge is, in fact, Big and Bad. Otherwise, he wouldn't be in charge.

If the concept of BBEG simply denotes a leader (i.e. - the guy in charge) then why have a separate cultural term for him? Why not just refer to him as a "leader". My understanding of the term BBEG (which is translated, AFAIK, as either Big Bad Evil Guy or Big Bad End Guy) is that it originates in video-game culture from games like Super Mario Bros. where each level ends in a "Boss Monster". My understanding of the term is that BBEG refers specifically to a leader who qualifies as a "Boss Monster" not just whoever is nominally in charge.

 

[Rel]

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).

Actually I think that there could easily be an escalating risk and a high point of danger in a setup where every room had the same CR or even the exact same group of monsters. There are two HUGE variables outside the makeup of the monsters: The Party and The Dice.

A party is going to expend resources as they move from room to room. Presumably the third room with six goblins is more challenging than the first room with six goblins because they'll have fewer hit points, spells or any other expendable resource.

Then there are those pesky dice. How many times have we seen a fairly easy group of monsters pose a huge threat to a party or even TPK them? How many times have the PC's breezed right through a really tough challenge thanks to the dice? It happens all the time.

For those reasons I think that we will frequently end up with a "BBEG" even when one isn't planned. When the fighter goes down to a lucky crit and the Rogue and Wizard are left facing the creature with DR all of a sudden, that critter just became your BBEG. That goblin in the first room who rolled 20's three times in a row and that the fighter and ranger cannot roll above a 5 on? He's your BBEG.

I've seen it happen many a time that the most memorable encounter of an adventure wasn't against the BBEG but against one particular monster who just got very lucky with the dice.