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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ilbranteloth" data-source="post: 7187575" data-attributes="member: 6778044">I think that you've probably hit the nail on the head as to why the BBEG was never really a thing in my campaigns. In fiction or the real world, you rarely fight the BBEG directly. If you do, it's almost always under their terms. How do you end WWII in Europe quickly? Kill Hitler. Except that it couldn't be done. Or at least nobody figured out a way to do it.The Bond villains? Also rarely a direct fight between Bond and them until the end. And it's their technology and minions that are there to protect the villain. If the Bond villains need to learn anything, it's to remember that they stayed alive for the first 3/4 of the movie by not confronting Bond directly. Villains - real villains - like Capone or other mob bosses for example, are very, very hard to get to directly. Oh sure, you might get a chance to talk to them directly, but in a place and time of their choosing, making it virtually impossible for you to do anything and escape if you succeeded. It took three movies to get to Vader directly, and in the end it was Vader that destroyed the emperor, not Luke. He wouldn't have succeeded had he simply tried to kill Vader and Palpatine. And in a world with monsters and magic, such bosses would leverage those too, or at least make sure they are protected against them.Even Sauron couldn't be destroyed directly. I don't know if it was video games, or what that started steering gamers toward the idea that there is a BBEG to beat at the end of every adventure. Certainly a lot of published adventures had that, but not quite in the same manner as we saw later on. Personally, I prefer the idea of S.P.E.C.T.R.E., or in the Realms, the Zhentarim, where you know you can't defeat the entire organization, much less Manshoon and/of Fzoul. You could only hope to foil the organization's latest local plans. Yes, there are bigger guys in charge, but if they are really intelligent enough to be that important, they will also have escape plans. If you actually do get through all of their defenses and minions and corner them where they can't escape, it's the final victory that's the climax, not simply another combat to kill them.</blockquote>

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