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Where's the Villain? and other musings. Why some published campaigns are great and some aren't (Spoiler alerts)
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<blockquote data-quote="TheSword" data-source="post: 9249504" data-attributes="member: 6879661"><p>I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. The standard is onion layer hierarchy to a central conspiracy with the PCs peeling back a layer at a time. Let’s take the answer to [USER=6894926]@Distracted DM[/USER] ‘s question as an example.</p><p></p><p>So I feel the complete opposite, Night Below is a case where there is an absolute villain who’s presence is felt throughout the campaign. I don’t the villain <strong>must</strong> be interacted with directly for a great campaign but they do need to be felt. This can absolutely be done through agents. Tomb of Annihilation is another one.</p><p></p><p>From the disappearances that begin the adventure, to the orcs and their fishy control potions, to the illithid messengers, to the derro and Kuo Toa of the City of the Glass Pool, to Great Shaboath itself. The Grand Savant is behind the whole thing - with the assistance of Darlakanand. Incidentally Night below also includes free form exploration and some brilliant NPCs to interact meaningfully with which harkens to my OP.</p><p></p><p>Where Night Below struggles is that that the aboleth aren’t really given any individuality. They’re a bit like Ridley Scott’s aliens. There’s a queen but they’ll all pretty darn bad. The aboleth as a species certainly are brought to life though. It also struggles with the intermediate foes that [USER=7031143]@GuyBoy[/USER] mentioned. The bandit cleric Ranchefus is one, as is the King of the Glass Pool - but there is a hell of a lot of adventure in between these. If I was revising for 5e I would have more named villains that support that key aboleth plan and have them felt more within the campaign. Night below can become a slog and not all campaign finish (Matt Coleville’s for instance (and my own) my gut feeling is a lack of strong villains. </p><p></p><p>If being re-done I’d make the leader of the orcs far more well known - a famous raiding war chief with multiple atrocities to their name. I’d add in an Illithid fixer leading the patrols back and forth who would be quite slippery and meet and evade the players several times. I’d have the Kuo-Toa of the Glass Pool felt earlier on be suppressing all the other missing races - Drow, Duergar etc and have some key Aboleth personalities. Possibly one treacherous Aboleth who wants to see the grand plan fail.</p><p></p><p>One of Curse of Strahd’s geniuses is that the end villain does have reasons not to squash the PCs like bugs, and by the time he realizes he needs to it’s too late to do it easily. I do think 5e is very supportive of this (more so than any other edition) because of bounded accuracy and the likelihood of characters many levels lower lasting a couple of rounds at least. Whereas in 3e a single multiple target save or suck would be game over with no chance of reprieve.</p><p></p><p>Certainly in my mashup of Dragon Heist/Golden Vault those central four villains will be dancing in and out of the parties sphere of influence. My intention is that they each have a reason for not killing the PCs. Xanathar doesn’t care; Manshoon sees them as useful pawns; the Cassalanters want to recruit them, and Jarlaxle likes them. The art will be doing this while making the PCs still want to defeat them. Then again no-one said a great campaign was easy.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="TheSword, post: 9249504, member: 6879661"] I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. The standard is onion layer hierarchy to a central conspiracy with the PCs peeling back a layer at a time. Let’s take the answer to [USER=6894926]@Distracted DM[/USER] ‘s question as an example. So I feel the complete opposite, Night Below is a case where there is an absolute villain who’s presence is felt throughout the campaign. I don’t the villain [B]must[/B] be interacted with directly for a great campaign but they do need to be felt. This can absolutely be done through agents. Tomb of Annihilation is another one. From the disappearances that begin the adventure, to the orcs and their fishy control potions, to the illithid messengers, to the derro and Kuo Toa of the City of the Glass Pool, to Great Shaboath itself. The Grand Savant is behind the whole thing - with the assistance of Darlakanand. Incidentally Night below also includes free form exploration and some brilliant NPCs to interact meaningfully with which harkens to my OP. Where Night Below struggles is that that the aboleth aren’t really given any individuality. They’re a bit like Ridley Scott’s aliens. There’s a queen but they’ll all pretty darn bad. The aboleth as a species certainly are brought to life though. It also struggles with the intermediate foes that [USER=7031143]@GuyBoy[/USER] mentioned. The bandit cleric Ranchefus is one, as is the King of the Glass Pool - but there is a hell of a lot of adventure in between these. If I was revising for 5e I would have more named villains that support that key aboleth plan and have them felt more within the campaign. Night below can become a slog and not all campaign finish (Matt Coleville’s for instance (and my own) my gut feeling is a lack of strong villains. If being re-done I’d make the leader of the orcs far more well known - a famous raiding war chief with multiple atrocities to their name. I’d add in an Illithid fixer leading the patrols back and forth who would be quite slippery and meet and evade the players several times. I’d have the Kuo-Toa of the Glass Pool felt earlier on be suppressing all the other missing races - Drow, Duergar etc and have some key Aboleth personalities. Possibly one treacherous Aboleth who wants to see the grand plan fail. One of Curse of Strahd’s geniuses is that the end villain does have reasons not to squash the PCs like bugs, and by the time he realizes he needs to it’s too late to do it easily. I do think 5e is very supportive of this (more so than any other edition) because of bounded accuracy and the likelihood of characters many levels lower lasting a couple of rounds at least. Whereas in 3e a single multiple target save or suck would be game over with no chance of reprieve. Certainly in my mashup of Dragon Heist/Golden Vault those central four villains will be dancing in and out of the parties sphere of influence. My intention is that they each have a reason for not killing the PCs. Xanathar doesn’t care; Manshoon sees them as useful pawns; the Cassalanters want to recruit them, and Jarlaxle likes them. The art will be doing this while making the PCs still want to defeat them. Then again no-one said a great campaign was easy. [/QUOTE]
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