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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Janx" data-source="post: 5954974" data-attributes="member: 8835">I like kitsune9's approach, because it meshes with some of my practices.Let's simplify for a moment.  You've got a party of level X.  Whatever thing you reveal may easily be decided on as their goal, especially if they are good guys and there's no clue to level appropriateness.  The party might be smart enough to know they can't take on a hugumbous red dragon, but they don't really know how to judge if Duke EvilHuman is in their range.So, one solution is to only reveal/create things you need.  Namely, stuff for the next adventure or two.  As Kitsune9's method describes, that means lower level bad guys who will later be revealed to be related to the next rung in the XP ladder.Now a twist on this is to place the high level villain in view, but don't reveal he is the SECRET mastermind behind it all.  This could be Senator Palpatine in those terrible movies, or the King's wizard advisor, who also happens to be secretly evil (because nobody in polite society broadcasts their evilness in public).  If he's a level 20 bad guy, you reveal his involvement with the last group of level 18 bad guys that the level 16 PCs took out at the end, when the party levels up and is ready to take him on.It may be tempting to reveal the Level 20 bad guy in the very beginning of the game to the Level 1 party.  Sometimes that can work.  But there are other factors to overcome to make that plausible.Look at the bad guys as a corporate or political structure of Evil.  The Villain (BBEG) is level 20, and is at the top of the command structure.  He's got a hierarchy of lower level bad guys to delegate and get stuff done.  The party in the beginning is level 1, and they amount to a paper jam in the printer that the Level 2 MailRoomBadGuy has to deal with.  His boss is NOT going to pass that up the chain to the CEO that there's a problem in mailroom 23 with some pesky PCs jamming up what amounts to some printers.  It's too small of a problem for upper management to care about.Likewise, for the PCs, if the Bad Guy Organization is big enough to justify a BBEG at level 20 and a huge organization, they will be spread out geographically.  At Level 1, the PCs are most concerned about their first few quests, saving Nancy the bar wench from some orcs who wanted some pie.  The party very likely doesn't know who the mayor of the town is, let alone, who the evil movers and shakers are, let alone, what's up the ladder at the city this starting village grows food for.It's a matter of scope, visibility, and scale.</blockquote>

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