Does Your Campaign Have a BBEG? Does it Need One?

[Lanefan]

As a player, probably the Man on the Silver Mountain, a bad guy in a campaign I played in in 2e.

Full props to the DM who managed to work that in! Were there other references to the song in the campaign?

 

[Lanefan]

I don't think a campaign needs a single BBEG - but several more localized BBEGs based on antagonists that PCs may take on in the course of the campaign are probably going to crop up. It could be the dragon sitting as the apex predator of a wild region, a guild master of a city thieves guild, a mummy lord serving as the central curse in a haunted tomb, a giant chief directing his forces to raid the local farmsteads, etc. Sooner or later, PCs are going to encounter a situation with a focal motivator that will only be solved by neutralizing that motivator.

Pretty much my take as well, with the proviso that when one of those localized BBEGs is taken out it is not the end of that campaign; there's always another adventure, and always another BBEG waiting out there somewhere.

For more overarching threats, I tend to use Big Bad Evil Cultures rather than individuals. The main one in my current campaign is Elves, as a large part of their culture has been corrupted from the inside out over the centuries by Mind Flayers, who are in turn working for even bigger threats that are far above the paygrade of any mere adventurer.

 

[Lanefan]

The real BBEG was the friend we made along the way.

Shouldn't that be the fiend you made along the way?

 

[HaroldTheHobbit]

I usually run pretty sandboxy campaigns where I start with a rough sketch of a first plot arch. This always get changed, since the best creative tool for me as GM is party stupidity, wrong conclusions, paranoia and bad planning. Usually that makes for campaigns with lots of intrigue, roleplaying and webs of conspiracy, and so there tend to be a hierarchal opposition structure in the campaign archs - which mean BBEGs.

Now, I try to nuance and grayscale as much as I can, but my players like really bad bad guys and I enjoy mustache twirling monologues, so watcha gonna do, right.

 

[the Jester]

Full props to the DM who managed to work that in! Were there other references to the song in the campaign?

There were other song-based villains, including the Necromancer (based on the Rush song) and the Queen of Spades (a false identity of Lolth, based on the song by Styx).

I'm pretty sure that the "Silver Mountain" was a demiplane or otherwise isolated prison for him, equivalent to the Demiplane of Imprisonment for Tharizdun.

 

[Umbran]

In games that have significant power advancement over time, not having a BBEG can generate plot holes, in much the same way Elminster and the Avengers do.

To wit: When you have a powerful force that could have been involved, it brings up the question of why they weren't involved.

Like, this powerful, cunning, magically advanced dracolich with a massive support structure of servants just happened to manifest now, and had no impact on the world prior to the characters achieving a level high enough to defeat him? Or, with all the skullduggery the PCs have been involved with, they have never heard of this threat until just now? Really? Is that plausible?

More common in my experience is the GM who, in worldbuilding, has several different things that might be threats later in the campaign. They are not idle while the characters are young. So, the PCs will stumble over some of their works, and eventually choose which of them they intend to deal with - they choose their own BBEG.

 

[TheSword]

Need is a strong word. A BBEG might not be needed, but a campaign and

I also think that you have to treat the two meaning of the acronym differently.

Big Bad End Guy: Most dungeons or adventures benefit from having some kind of climax and resolution. Defeating the end guy can be satisfying. It can mean the dungeon or adventure feels completed even if not every square inch has been cleared which is satisfying. It lets players move on. It can also act as some of the most interesting combat encounters players come across where the DM can use more interesting creatures and really test their creative juices. If a dungeon or adventure didn’t have this in some form i think it would seem weaker for it.

Big Bad Evil Guy: I’ve said before the best campaigns and adventures have great villains. They’re the ones driving the conflict, the true cause of whatever woes the PCs are trying to undo. I really can’t think of a great campaign that hasn’t got a master villain in there pulling the strings somewhere. I don’t think they have to necessarily be evil, though it simplifies things. They do have to have very different goals to the PCs for a large part of the campaign (even if they come together temporarily to fight a greater threat.