D&D 5E Where's the Villain? and other musings. Why some published campaigns are great and some aren't (Spoiler alerts)

[TheSword]

Regarding my third requirement of NPCs that can be meaningfully interacted with. This is so important to me. I’m nearing the end of Age of Worms and intelligent NPC after NPC is asking to be freed and we have this little conversation with them before each fight - where I know the PCs are never going to make a deal with this worm creature and let them go. It’s never going to happen. So all I have left is the equivalent of naming the lobster in the hope that the PCs feel anything about the creature.

I compare this to the third volume of the Enemy Within - where the party are meeting various members of the Elector’s court in order to recruit allies to oppose the taxes that risk weakening Middenheim. Trying to find out what motivates them, what their secrets are and how they can get leverage over them or mitigate the leverage the villainous Purple Hand has over them. This level of influence is rare and requires a lot of set up to work, but surely something between the two extremes is possible.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Contrast Night Below with Rime of the Frostmaiden though. Where Auril is ostensibly the BBEG causing the horrible situation but little of the campaign has anything to do with her. She’s background noise.

Background noise is exactly what she is - after all, she is the personification of natural calamity. The plot is really about the rivalry between arcane brotherhood wizards and their quest for a certain spell book. They are the antagonists, Auril is a speed bump.

Auril's role in Rime is rather like Shar's role in BG3.

 

[MerricB]

Not all adventures treat villains in the same way.

In Curse of Strahd and Princes of the Apocalypse, you've got pretty strong villains that work best when the DM takes the material and runs with it. I have problems with the structure of PotA, but I had huge amounts of fun running the different villain factions - who deceived the players, sent them to attack other factions, betrayed them again, claimed to be allied agents working to take the temple down from within - only for the players to learn later that it was the second-in-command using them to eliminate his superior so he could take over!

The ideas are there in the adventure as to some uses you can put the villains to, but because the adventure structure is more open-ended, it's very easy to use the villains in such a manner - for the DM to inject their own personalities into it.

Then you have more linear experiences where the villains are more constrained in their appearances. Shadow of the Dragon Queen is of that sort, and after hearing about the leader of the Red Dragon Army (and seeing how her armies lay waste the land), you finally meet her in the final encounter of the campaign and kill her. She's not that interesting, but it provides good closure for the campaign. (I rate Shadows of the Dragon Queen as an excellent adventure which is also a terrible representation of the Dragonlance setting).

Likewise, in Tomb of Annihilation, you only see the effect of Acererak. He only appears in the final encounter. That's fine. It works well.

One of the real disappointments to me is Descent into Avernus. It has a great villain, and if you read the final chapter first, you get all excited about the adventure and how it can end. Then you play through the extremely linear and shallow previous chapters first, and the enthusiasm wanes - the set-up doesn't support the potential brilliance of the villain.

Cheers,
Merric

 

[humble minion]

I suppose the classic structure for using a recurring villain in a narrative where protagonists are expected to advance in capability, is Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy.

First act, when they encounter him, early on when he can easily crush them, he doesn't even really pay much attention to them because he's focused on other issues (the Rebel base and then Obi-Wan). They score an expected success against him as a result, and after that they're on his radar.

Second act, he's hunting them but not necessarily looking to destroy them, he's got other things in mind which stops him just flat-out killing them. He wants to use Han and Leia as bait to get Luke, and he wants Luke to try to turn him. When they do get to face him, he's just way too strong for them and the closest they can get to a victory is escape.

It's only the third act when they can face him on something like equal terms.

That's probably a model you could generally follow in an RPG campaign, although it's a bit harder to implement there because of pacing among other reasons. If you want the bad guy to stay engaged in the story, you REALLY have to stretch out stage 2, and that's not always easy to do. PCs don't want to spend an entire tier or two of the mid levels running away. And that's assuming you have a group of players who WILL run away, rather than a group who assumes that the DM wouldn't have had them meet any bad guys that they couldn't kill.

 

[Hussar]

I’m struggling to think of a campaign without a strong villain that I would consider to be really great.

I’d say it is the biggest flaw of the original Kingmaker for instance and the best thing they revised for the Owlcat release.

Genuinely interested in whether someone can come up with a really great campaign without a strong master villain.

Speaking purely personally here, I'll hold up my recent Candlekeep Mysteries campaign against anything. My player really liked the campaign, it engaged and was very well received. Yet, it lacked any sort of strong villain, or, rather, had a lots of villains across lots of pretty unrelated adventures.

You are presuming that a campaign must be serial and not episodic in order to be great and that's a presumption I would strongly challenge.

 

[humble minion]

You are presuming that a campaign must be serial and not episodic in order to be great and that's a presumption I would strongly challenge.

Is what you really need strong continuity rather than a strong villain then? Candlekeep is a strongly location-driven adventure. PCs hang around the place the majority of the campaign, get invested in recurring NPCs etc. I suppose the key to a good campaign is emotional involvement, and that's something that comes through repeated contact, whether it be with places, allies, or enemies.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Is what you really need strong continuity rather than a strong villain then?

I don't think there is anything you really need. Good players are highly desirable though!

 

[TheSword]

Speaking purely personally here, I'll hold up my recent Candlekeep Mysteries campaign against anything. My player really liked the campaign, it engaged and was very well received. Yet, it lacked any sort of strong villain, or, rather, had a lots of villains across lots of pretty unrelated adventures.

You are presuming that a campaign must be serial and not episodic in order to be great and that's a presumption I would strongly challenge.

I think serialisation is an interesting issue. I can see it working if linked together properly to constitute a serious enough impetous to keep the players and DM engaged. Maybe. I’ve not seen a serialisation that was strong enough to do that to be honest. Usually I see DMs improvising some kind of recurring threat or forced link (an early episodic villain that hits the mark and keeps coming back). The problem with such serializations is how does it end? Does it have a satisfying conclusion or does it just continue until DM or players get bored? What does it build to? Not saying it can’t work, just that I haven’t seen it published. I would add that Golden Vault has the theme of the Far Realm running through it. Perhaps a strong enough goal could make up for the lack of a villain.

My gut feeling is is Candlekeep Mysteries have been better if there had there been a recurring villain or threat scattered throughout the adventures? Even a rival party or a traitor within the keep. A meta-plot if you like. Very challenge with multi-author anthologies. My intention with Golden Vault is to use one of the Daelkyr. The other reason I would struggle with is the lack of flexibility on where to explore - each adventure is a small parcel of space and time and that would prevent the campaign being truly great for me as per my second point.

 

[Hussar]

Is what you really need strong continuity rather than a strong villain then? Candlekeep is a strongly location-driven adventure. PCs hang around the place the majority of the campaign, get invested in recurring NPCs etc. I suppose the key to a good campaign is emotional involvement, and that's something that comes through repeated contact, whether it be with places, allies, or enemies.

But that’s not true. Only two of the adventures have anything to do with Candlekeep at all. CKeep and the npcs in it might as well not exist. None of the adventures are linked to each other. It’s purely episodic.

 

[Hussar]

.

My gut feeling is is Candlekeep Mysteries have been better if there had there been a recurring villain or threat scattered throughout the adventures? Even a rival party or a traitor within the keep. A meta-plot if you like. Very challenge with multi-author anthologies. My intention with Golden Vault is to use one of the Daelkyr. The other reason I would struggle with is the lack of flexibility on where to explore - each adventure is a small parcel of space and time and that would prevent the campaign being truly great for me as per my second point.

My point is your presumption is that a campaign can only be great if it’s a sandbox and must be a serial story.

Neither of which is true. It might be true for your preferences but neither are actually necessary.

An episodic campaign where each adventure begins in medias res or close to it, with zero choice as to what the next adventure will be is a fantastic way to run a campaign. None of this faffing about trying to figure out what to do next. Super high pacing with nearly zero slow times.

Sign me up.