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<blockquote data-quote="Whizbang Dustyboots" data-source="post: 9248997" data-attributes="member: 11760">Let's do it with fantasy fiction.In both the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, the main villains are mostly off-stage presences that are pretty passive until the ending of The Hobbit. They're dangerous, but dangerous in the way that volcanoes are dangerous -- the chance that, at some point, they will explode into violence, but just a smoking mountain on the horizon otherwise. Both stories, which are archetypal for D&amp;D campaigns, are driven by adventures on the road, essentially random encounters and interparty conflict. They're sandboxes that are moving, more or less, towards a fixed point, but at any point, could definitely wander off and do something else. (Most of the party in LotR wanders off and completely forgets about the main mission in favor of finding their own fun, splitting again after that.)Similarly, Game of Thrones has many &quot;villains,&quot; in the sense that Risk does. Many of them are very compelling, but you could remove any one of them from the campaign -- and, indeed, that happens repeatedly -- without the campaign grinding to a halt. Other than the DM having some trouble wrapping up the campaign, I don't think anyone would find GoT/ASoI&amp;F to be an unsatisfying D&amp;D campaign at all. It's just driven by court intrigue, periodic mass combat and, again, random encounters and interparty conflict (and once again, the Stark kids party completely falls apart early on, giving the poor DM a lot more work to do) instead of a singular villain behind everything.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Whizbang Dustyboots, post: 9248997, member: 11760"] Let's do it with fantasy fiction. In both the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, the main villains are mostly off-stage presences that are pretty passive until the ending of The Hobbit. They're dangerous, but dangerous in the way that volcanoes are dangerous -- the chance that, at some point, they will explode into violence, but just a smoking mountain on the horizon otherwise. Both stories, which are archetypal for D&D campaigns, are driven by adventures on the road, essentially random encounters and interparty conflict. They're sandboxes that are moving, more or less, towards a fixed point, but at any point, could definitely wander off and do something else. (Most of the party in LotR wanders off and completely forgets about the main mission in favor of finding their own fun, splitting again after that.) Similarly, Game of Thrones has many "villains," in the sense that Risk does. Many of them are very compelling, but you could remove any one of them from the campaign -- and, indeed, that happens repeatedly -- without the campaign grinding to a halt. Other than the DM having some trouble wrapping up the campaign, I don't think anyone would find GoT/ASoI&F to be an unsatisfying D&D campaign at all. It's just driven by court intrigue, periodic mass combat and, again, random encounters and interparty conflict (and once again, the Stark kids party completely falls apart early on, giving the poor DM a lot more work to do) instead of a singular villain behind everything. [/QUOTE]

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