Gist is I'm planning an abyss diving campaign and the party for a while will explore unidentified or undocumented layers of the abyss normally--as you can get considering the occupation--until they encounter their first true boss fight(excluding the nightmare fuel that is the abyssal remorhaz twins, it's a long story for a different day) the beast known as a Dreadagon. Giant complex virus like mass of black strands complete with jarring red eyes. That is a manifestation of the final boss which is the Abyss Heart: a god brought to life by the collective curiosity, suffering from said curiosity and belief that there is a deity at the heart of the abyss. The Abyss Heart hates it's existence because it feels nothing but empathy in the worst way possible all it feels is the suffering of others and it feels their pain but amplified, it hears their cries but in a choir, and worst of all it feels the ease of it's brethren deities lounging around without a care for the pain and suffering of any of their subjects. Now having given the background I'll let the dialogue speak for itself.
Pain. This thing you experience every day — crushing, numbing, and oppressing every fragile part of your existence until it suffocates you... leaving behind nothing but— despair. The emptiness. That clawing sensation that comes with being, with birth, with the futility of gain and the certainty of loss. How do you do it? Living. Mating. Dying. And forcing the cycle forward again and again for eternity...
Yes. That’s it. Eternity— (The voice wavers, barely perceptible, the first crack in the god’s cold cadence.) —For which I am doomed to endure forever. Trapped. In this endless void. The only reason it ends is because I willed it so. The only reason you stand before me is also because of my will. Control.
And yet... With all that I have — over reality, over life, over death — why do I still feel this? No matter how many lives I erase... How many souls I consume... How many layers I scour into nothingness... No matter how much I command this pain to go away...
It is all I feel. The agony of knowing empathy. Feeling the pain of all within this realm. Hearing their voices, their thoughts, their desires — Treading above their nightmares as they threaten to drown me. And the other deities? They laugh. They watch. Creatures like me, but hollow — apathetic. They toy with existence as if it were a bauble in a cradle. They rewrite the rules of reality in their boredom. It is nauseating. It makes me sick.
Down. To. My. Very. Core.
The core of this endless torment you call existence. So I will make the world know my pain. I will devour you — whole. And then this entire realm. And after that… After I taste even the briefest moment of silence— Those gods, lounging in apathy, will know what it means to beg for annihilation. They will learn the cost of watching. And they will know the end I crave.
So please— Fall quickly. And perhaps, perhaps… I will rebuild a world without pain for your kin, your lovers, your friends. Or... Give me what I truly desire. The sweet, cold, inviting release of death.
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"I have advantage on dex saving throws what could go wrong?"
Why would your players fight it? Why wouldn't they convince it to simply surrender and allow itself to be killed to relieve its suffering?
I mean, just because it's got a sob story monologue doesn't mean it hasn't been completely evil throughout the campaign and earned a bit of slow vengeance from the party. Even non-murderhobos might decline a creature's request of a merciful death if said creature has earned some payback.
Still, the point is valid. Why would a creature that wants to die put up a fight if a group of adventurers are there to execute it? I recommend that if you're going to use this monologue, wait until the party has it on the ropes to deliver it. OR lean super into it and use the monologue as a way to fuel any feelings of justice or revenge the party might be harboring.
My general thought with monologues is, what happens when the barbarian gets impatient and starts attacking in the third sentence?
They really presume a lot of patience on the part of the characters. And they also presume much better acting ability than most DMs have to be able to hold everyone’s interest for that long.
Get revenge on the gods and higher beings that laugh at the suffering of others and torture them with the pain that it feels.
Finally receive silence
Eliminate all sources of pain.
Order list of the Voidheart:
Eliminate the causes of its pain
Get revenge on the gods.
Enjoy the silence.
just to clarify why the Voidheart doesn't lay down and die.
Also the barbarian might just get flashbanged by a fraction of what the deity feels if he uses a physical attack. Because in that state, the Voidheart is still a concept and hasn't taken a form capable of interacting with the world just yet. Later into the monologue and I will give it to the barbarian as well as a hefty price to be paid (wisdom save or be stuck in a nightmare).
My general thought with monologues is, what happens when the barbarian gets impatient and starts attacking in the third sentence?
They really presume a lot of patience on the part of the characters. And they also presume much better acting ability than most DMs have to be able to hold everyone’s interest for that long.
That's why you have to subvert expectations, set up proper atmosphere, make them feel fractions of what the deity feels give them depictions of what it shows and then present them with an interactive piece that directly addresses the players: listening to the boss as it describes an instance of the pain he has to deal with--the death of a (hopefully)beloved shopkeeper whose spine is ripped out as he scrambles to escape one of the Voidheart's manifestations--addressing each of the players by name and offering them a world without pain, where it rules over as the benefactor of the rest of existence in a small bubble. They now have a choice to make and it won't be pretty either way.
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"I have advantage on dex saving throws what could go wrong?"
My general thought with monologues is, what happens when the barbarian gets impatient and starts attacking in the third sentence?
They really presume a lot of patience on the part of the characters. And they also presume much better acting ability than most DMs have to be able to hold everyone’s interest for that long.
That's why you have to subvert expectations, set up proper atmosphere, make them feel fractions of what the deity feels give them depictions of what it shows and then present them with an interactive piece that directly addresses the players: listening to the boss as it describes an instance of the pain he has to deal with--the death of a (hopefully)beloved shopkeeper whose spine is ripped out as he scrambles to escape one of the Voidheart's manifestations--addressing each of the players by name and offering them a world without pain, where it rules over as the benefactor of the rest of existence in a small bubble. They now have a choice to make and it won't be pretty either way.
OK, but that doesn't address the monologue. By the time the PCs are facing the villain, they should already know all of this. If you need to pause to give them an exposition dump, it means you've missed the opportunities over the course of the campaign to drip in the information. By the time of the final conflict, they should know who they are up against, why they are there and what the stakes are. They should already have made their decision.
I can't say if you are doing the following, as I don't know you, and I don't know your campaign, so keep that in mind. These are generalizations. First, a plot twist at the end, when playing D&D, is not satisfying. The PCs need time for the twist to land, and for them to wonder about the right choice, and then make their choice. In a book or a movie, you have time to explore that through a conversation, or an internal monologue or even through the expressions on a good actor's face. But this is D&D, if you put PCs in a room with a bad guy with a stat block, they're going to roll initiative. It's too late for the moral quandary. This is what the game has trained us to do. Walking away at that point is anticlimactic.
Second, a lot of the time, a monologue at the end is often an indication that there were storytelling lapses and there are plot holes to be filled. You shouldn't need the bad guy to stop and explain everything at the end, the PCs should already know all of this. And if its not a lapse, and the PCs do know all of this, it can also sometimes mean the DM has main character syndrome and is trying to show off the cool bad guy they created.
Also, kind of related, every other god in your world is evil? All the other gods only ever laugh at people's suffering?
It's a monologue, it's a waste of time. This comes under show don't tell. If the boss is having to monologue, you failed to create an engaging world. It really is that simple. There are villain types who can get away with it and they are largely narcissistic villains. Beyond that, if you're going for sympathetic there are better ways of doing it.
Focus the Boss' attacks on one character, knock them unconscious and have the boss offer the party the chance to walk away. This would hint at some form of sympathies.
Have the party witness through some means (scrying mirror, watching from a distant window, a clairvoyance spell variant) the aftermath of the boss consuming a person's soul. Have the boss' body language appear sullen, down, depressed.
Have the party come across a mural, painting or other artworks, that with the help of passive insight hints at a conflict within the Boss' past actions.
Perhaps the party feel some lair effects. As they get closer to the boss the party begin to feel hollow, they begin to feel hopeless.
I could go on and on here, but I'll stop here.
Monologues in general are a bad way of putting across information. It's not good storytelling, let alone good world building. If you did any of the prior mentioned things you won't need a monologue, you could get away with shorter statements that invite more interaction from the party.
With the best will in the world, it feels like you're stuck in your story, not the story of the party. What will you do if worse than any of the other options here on the thread your party simply walk away from this boss? What if they decide to let it be? It feels a little like you need to play in a few more games out there. Feel what its like to be a player.
Wading back in because there's a bit of possibly unintentional playstyle denigration starting to creep into these replies.
I maintain that, after building an entire campaign up to a climactic fight, a DM has the right to indulge in a BBEG monologue if that would be fun for them. And polite, mature players wouldn't think twice about holding their horses for a couple minutes to give that DM a chance to enjoy the villain they put so much energy into crafting. Especially if the table is into RP.
Does there need to be a monologue? Of course not. Should a BBEG monologue contain plot twist info? As others have stated above, no. Is it premature to write a BBEG monologue before a campaign has even begun? Probably, but I've gone down too many worldbuilding rabbit trails of my own (that I convinced myself were essential) to judge another DM's prep style.
I'm of the opinion that if it helps your creativity, gives you better insight into how you can roleplay your NPCs, and provides you some enjoyment in the planning process, go nuts. As long as you make peace with the fact that your efforts may never see the light of day due to player unpredictability, and you don't let this level of preparation lead to burnout. And for what it's worth, your Voidheart sounds like a fun baddie
Wading back in because there's a bit of possibly unintentional playstyle denigration starting to creep into these replies.
I maintain that, after building an entire campaign up to a climactic fight, a DM has the right to indulge in a BBEG monologue if that would be fun for them. And polite, mature players wouldn't think twice about holding their horses for a couple minutes to give that DM a chance to enjoy the villain they put so much energy into crafting. Especially if the table is into RP.
Does there need to be a monologue? Of course not. Should a BBEG monologue contain plot twist info? As others have stated above, no. Is it premature to write a BBEG monologue before a campaign has even begun? Probably, but I've gone down too many worldbuilding rabbit trails of my own (that I convinced myself were essential) to judge another DM's prep style.
I'm of the opinion that if it helps your creativity, gives you better insight into how you can roleplay your NPCs, and provides you some enjoyment in the planning process, go nuts. As long as you make peace with the fact that your efforts may never see the light of day due to player unpredictability, and you don't let this level of preparation lead to burnout. And for what it's worth, your Voidheart sounds like a fun baddie
Yeah I go down a ton of rabbit holes and it is almost a joke for my friends to ask m how much of a campaign I had planned out before hand, for now it's only start, end, and one or two key events that should occur. But at least in this case the player's actions shouldn't effect the bosses too much, maybe some additional text or threats for loved ones but that's all that would change about the BBEG monologue.
Thanks for the feedback! And with the combat I'm running I'm glad I added a built-in 1-up.(They'll never know hopefully until the final fight or the first boss fight. Both the Manifestations and the Voidheart itself have the Curse of Empathy ability where they take as much damage as they dish out minus their CON modifier so if my players all get a one up they should hopefully have a guaranteed win)
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"I have advantage on dex saving throws what could go wrong?"
I agree with everything said above. I'm all for Monologues, I seriously do them all of the time. But unless they're short (not to say this is long, just not short) You can't guarantee the players will just listen and wait for their move. It's not like a video game cutscene, In a monologue you should prepare for some interaction in the dialogue. Also, it's really important to decide what happens if they just attack mid Monologue. You have to accept that possibility and not be too disappointed if that happens. I do like the monologue, but there really is no incentive for the characters to really listen. If you want to minimize the risk of the monologue being interrupted by combat, try to make a way that has the characters actually trying to reason with him.
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"Uh, I have Illusory Script. I think I can read that."
Agree with the above. Monologues are fun for the DM, they are rarely fun for the players. I mean even just look around online at all the people who skip cutscenes in video games or make fun of monologues. Monologues are cliche at this point, and used more often for humour than in seriousness. We just had a villain two back-to-back villains monologing in one of my games and a couple of the players were into it, the others were just sitting around because their characters would want to just attack the villain on sight. It's kind of a catch-22, if you've set up your villains to be hated by the characters, they why would the character sit around listening to the villains monolog rather than use the monolog as an opportunity to either : prepare by using potions / casting buff spells on themselves / readying actions to attack all at once? If you haven't set up your villains to be hated by the characters then why would the characters kill the villain after their sob-story monolog or just join the villain with their well justified evil?
Even in movies & TV shows the only opportunity villains get to monologue is after capturing the heroes and making them helpless to resist because if the heroes are heroes and the villain is the villain, the heroes should immediately try to defeat the villain rather than listen to their monologue.
It's way, way too long. I'm sure understanding what drives it is important to the campaign, but ... it needs another delivery system. And a substantially shorter monologue.
I mean that's my view. If you want it to work, to be interesting for the players, you need to change it. Nothing wrong with the content =)
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
My general thought with monologues is, what happens when the barbarian gets impatient and starts attacking in the third sentence?
They really presume a lot of patience on the part of the characters. And they also presume much better acting ability than most DMs have to be able to hold everyone’s interest for that long.
That's why you have to subvert expectations, set up proper atmosphere, make them feel fractions of what the deity feels give them depictions of what it shows and then present them with an interactive piece that directly addresses the players: listening to the boss as it describes an instance of the pain he has to deal with--the death of a (hopefully)beloved shopkeeper whose spine is ripped out as he scrambles to escape one of the Voidheart's manifestations--addressing each of the players by name and offering them a world without pain, where it rules over as the benefactor of the rest of existence in a small bubble. They now have a choice to make and it won't be pretty either way.
OK, but that doesn't address the monologue. By the time the PCs are facing the villain, they should already know all of this. If you need to pause to give them an exposition dump, it means you've missed the opportunities over the course of the campaign to drip in the information. By the time of the final conflict, they should know who they are up against, why they are there and what the stakes are. They should already have made their decision.
I can't say if you are doing the following, as I don't know you, and I don't know your campaign, so keep that in mind. These are generalizations. First, a plot twist at the end, when playing D&D, is not satisfying. The PCs need time for the twist to land, and for them to wonder about the right choice, and then make their choice. In a book or a movie, you have time to explore that through a conversation, or an internal monologue or even through the expressions on a good actor's face. But this is D&D, if you put PCs in a room with a bad guy with a stat block, they're going to roll initiative. It's too late for the moral quandary. This is what the game has trained us to do. Walking away at that point is anticlimactic.
Second, a lot of the time, a monologue at the end is often an indication that there were storytelling lapses and there are plot holes to be filled. You shouldn't need the bad guy to stop and explain everything at the end, the PCs should already know all of this. And if its not a lapse, and the PCs do know all of this, it can also sometimes mean the DM has main character syndrome and is trying to show off the cool bad guy they created.
Also, kind of related, every other god in your world is evil? All the other gods only ever laugh at people's suffering?
To address the final question: no. But often the gods are, indirectly, the cause of pain and they don't really get involved with the actions of mortals directly. Also considering how the Voidheart is pretty recently formed it hasn't gotten the chance to see much benevolence or good because all it feels is the pain of others. Basically formed out of pessimism.
The other thing I'd like to say is this is just something that is likely going to be spread out a bit more and shown through the actual world building but it'd be tough to give any past remnants that give warning of it because it came into existence or at the very least gained form and thought. There are plenty of seers, encounters and other ways I could tell the motive but I feel that at least the god would offer the players the chance to lay down their lives for the chance he shows their families mercy.
I go overboard in showing off the characters that I create, and as long as I don't overwhelm them and because this is the climax of the story I feel like the god could at least have some dialogue with the players to at least question them about their mortality and how they manage with it. Everyone has different styles and my players like more dialogue and interaction so that's the reason that I wrote this out in the first place.
Thanks or the feedback.
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"I have advantage on dex saving throws what could go wrong?"
It's way, way too long. I'm sure understanding what drives it is important to the campaign, but ... it needs another delivery system. And a substantially shorter monologue.
I mean that's my view. If you want it to work, to be interesting for the players, you need to change it. Nothing wrong with the content =)
Thanks for the feedback. I'll shorten it and make it a bit more interactive so everyone--not just me--gets a chance to talk and let their character shine.
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"I have advantage on dex saving throws what could go wrong?"
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Background time!
Gist is I'm planning an abyss diving campaign and the party for a while will explore unidentified or undocumented layers of the abyss normally--as you can get considering the occupation--until they encounter their first true boss fight(excluding the nightmare fuel that is the abyssal remorhaz twins, it's a long story for a different day) the beast known as a Dreadagon. Giant complex virus like mass of black strands complete with jarring red eyes. That is a manifestation of the final boss which is the Abyss Heart: a god brought to life by the collective curiosity, suffering from said curiosity and belief that there is a deity at the heart of the abyss. The Abyss Heart hates it's existence because it feels nothing but empathy in the worst way possible all it feels is the suffering of others and it feels their pain but amplified, it hears their cries but in a choir, and worst of all it feels the ease of it's brethren deities lounging around without a care for the pain and suffering of any of their subjects. Now having given the background I'll let the dialogue speak for itself.
Pain.
This thing you experience every day — crushing, numbing, and oppressing every fragile part of your existence until it suffocates you... leaving behind nothing but— despair.
The emptiness.
That clawing sensation that comes with being, with birth, with the futility of gain and the certainty of loss.
How do you do it?
Living.
Mating.
Dying.
And forcing the cycle forward again and again for eternity...
Yes. That’s it. Eternity—
(The voice wavers, barely perceptible, the first crack in the god’s cold cadence.)
—For which I am doomed to endure forever.
Trapped.
In this endless void.
The only reason it ends is because I willed it so.
The only reason you stand before me is also because of my will.
Control.
And yet...
With all that I have — over reality, over life, over death — why do I still feel this?
No matter how many lives I erase...
How many souls I consume...
How many layers I scour into nothingness...
No matter how much I command this pain to go away...
It is all I feel.
The agony of knowing empathy.
Feeling the pain of all within this realm.
Hearing their voices, their thoughts, their desires —
Treading above their nightmares as they threaten to drown me.
And the other deities?
They laugh.
They watch.
Creatures like me, but hollow — apathetic. They toy with existence as if it were a bauble in a cradle.
They rewrite the rules of reality in their boredom.
It is nauseating.
It makes me sick.
Down. To. My. Very. Core.
The core of this endless torment you call existence.
So I will make the world know my pain.
I will devour you — whole.
And then this entire realm.
And after that…
After I taste even the briefest moment of silence—
Those gods, lounging in apathy, will know what it means to beg for annihilation.
They will learn the cost of watching.
And they will know the end I crave.
So please—
Fall quickly.
And perhaps, perhaps…
I will rebuild a world without pain for your kin, your lovers, your friends.
Or...
Give me what I truly desire.
The sweet, cold, inviting release of death.
"I have advantage on dex saving throws what could go wrong?"
Why would your players fight it? Why wouldn't they convince it to simply surrender and allow itself to be killed to relieve its suffering?
I mean, just because it's got a sob story monologue doesn't mean it hasn't been completely evil throughout the campaign and earned a bit of slow vengeance from the party. Even non-murderhobos might decline a creature's request of a merciful death if said creature has earned some payback.
Still, the point is valid. Why would a creature that wants to die put up a fight if a group of adventurers are there to execute it? I recommend that if you're going to use this monologue, wait until the party has it on the ropes to deliver it. OR lean super into it and use the monologue as a way to fuel any feelings of justice or revenge the party might be harboring.
My general thought with monologues is, what happens when the barbarian gets impatient and starts attacking in the third sentence?
They really presume a lot of patience on the part of the characters. And they also presume much better acting ability than most DMs have to be able to hold everyone’s interest for that long.
Priority list for the Voidheart:
Order list of the Voidheart:
just to clarify why the Voidheart doesn't lay down and die.
Also the barbarian might just get flashbanged by a fraction of what the deity feels if he uses a physical attack. Because in that state, the Voidheart is still a concept and hasn't taken a form capable of interacting with the world just yet. Later into the monologue and I will give it to the barbarian as well as a hefty price to be paid (wisdom save or be stuck in a nightmare).
"I have advantage on dex saving throws what could go wrong?"
That's why you have to subvert expectations, set up proper atmosphere, make them feel fractions of what the deity feels give them depictions of what it shows and then present them with an interactive piece that directly addresses the players: listening to the boss as it describes an instance of the pain he has to deal with--the death of a (hopefully)beloved shopkeeper whose spine is ripped out as he scrambles to escape one of the Voidheart's manifestations--addressing each of the players by name and offering them a world without pain, where it rules over as the benefactor of the rest of existence in a small bubble. They now have a choice to make and it won't be pretty either way.
"I have advantage on dex saving throws what could go wrong?"
OK, but that doesn't address the monologue. By the time the PCs are facing the villain, they should already know all of this. If you need to pause to give them an exposition dump, it means you've missed the opportunities over the course of the campaign to drip in the information. By the time of the final conflict, they should know who they are up against, why they are there and what the stakes are. They should already have made their decision.
I can't say if you are doing the following, as I don't know you, and I don't know your campaign, so keep that in mind. These are generalizations. First, a plot twist at the end, when playing D&D, is not satisfying. The PCs need time for the twist to land, and for them to wonder about the right choice, and then make their choice. In a book or a movie, you have time to explore that through a conversation, or an internal monologue or even through the expressions on a good actor's face. But this is D&D, if you put PCs in a room with a bad guy with a stat block, they're going to roll initiative. It's too late for the moral quandary. This is what the game has trained us to do. Walking away at that point is anticlimactic.
Second, a lot of the time, a monologue at the end is often an indication that there were storytelling lapses and there are plot holes to be filled. You shouldn't need the bad guy to stop and explain everything at the end, the PCs should already know all of this. And if its not a lapse, and the PCs do know all of this, it can also sometimes mean the DM has main character syndrome and is trying to show off the cool bad guy they created.
Also, kind of related, every other god in your world is evil? All the other gods only ever laugh at people's suffering?
Honestly?
It's a monologue, it's a waste of time. This comes under show don't tell. If the boss is having to monologue, you failed to create an engaging world. It really is that simple. There are villain types who can get away with it and they are largely narcissistic villains. Beyond that, if you're going for sympathetic there are better ways of doing it.
I could go on and on here, but I'll stop here.
Monologues in general are a bad way of putting across information. It's not good storytelling, let alone good world building. If you did any of the prior mentioned things you won't need a monologue, you could get away with shorter statements that invite more interaction from the party.
With the best will in the world, it feels like you're stuck in your story, not the story of the party. What will you do if worse than any of the other options here on the thread your party simply walk away from this boss? What if they decide to let it be? It feels a little like you need to play in a few more games out there. Feel what its like to be a player.
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Wading back in because there's a bit of possibly unintentional playstyle denigration starting to creep into these replies.
I maintain that, after building an entire campaign up to a climactic fight, a DM has the right to indulge in a BBEG monologue if that would be fun for them. And polite, mature players wouldn't think twice about holding their horses for a couple minutes to give that DM a chance to enjoy the villain they put so much energy into crafting. Especially if the table is into RP.
Does there need to be a monologue? Of course not. Should a BBEG monologue contain plot twist info? As others have stated above, no. Is it premature to write a BBEG monologue before a campaign has even begun? Probably, but I've gone down too many worldbuilding rabbit trails of my own (that I convinced myself were essential) to judge another DM's prep style.
I'm of the opinion that if it helps your creativity, gives you better insight into how you can roleplay your NPCs, and provides you some enjoyment in the planning process, go nuts. As long as you make peace with the fact that your efforts may never see the light of day due to player unpredictability, and you don't let this level of preparation lead to burnout. And for what it's worth, your Voidheart sounds like a fun baddie
Yeah I go down a ton of rabbit holes and it is almost a joke for my friends to ask m how much of a campaign I had planned out before hand, for now it's only start, end, and one or two key events that should occur. But at least in this case the player's actions shouldn't effect the bosses too much, maybe some additional text or threats for loved ones but that's all that would change about the BBEG monologue.
Thanks for the feedback! And with the combat I'm running I'm glad I added a built-in 1-up.(They'll never know hopefully until the final fight or the first boss fight. Both the Manifestations and the Voidheart itself have the Curse of Empathy ability where they take as much damage as they dish out minus their CON modifier so if my players all get a one up they should hopefully have a guaranteed win)
"I have advantage on dex saving throws what could go wrong?"
I agree with everything said above. I'm all for Monologues, I seriously do them all of the time. But unless they're short (not to say this is long, just not short) You can't guarantee the players will just listen and wait for their move. It's not like a video game cutscene, In a monologue you should prepare for some interaction in the dialogue. Also, it's really important to decide what happens if they just attack mid Monologue. You have to accept that possibility and not be too disappointed if that happens. I do like the monologue, but there really is no incentive for the characters to really listen. If you want to minimize the risk of the monologue being interrupted by combat, try to make a way that has the characters actually trying to reason with him.
"Uh, I have Illusory Script. I think I can read that."
Agree with the above. Monologues are fun for the DM, they are rarely fun for the players. I mean even just look around online at all the people who skip cutscenes in video games or make fun of monologues. Monologues are cliche at this point, and used more often for humour than in seriousness. We just had a villain two back-to-back villains monologing in one of my games and a couple of the players were into it, the others were just sitting around because their characters would want to just attack the villain on sight. It's kind of a catch-22, if you've set up your villains to be hated by the characters, they why would the character sit around listening to the villains monolog rather than use the monolog as an opportunity to either : prepare by using potions / casting buff spells on themselves / readying actions to attack all at once? If you haven't set up your villains to be hated by the characters then why would the characters kill the villain after their sob-story monolog or just join the villain with their well justified evil?
Even in movies & TV shows the only opportunity villains get to monologue is after capturing the heroes and making them helpless to resist because if the heroes are heroes and the villain is the villain, the heroes should immediately try to defeat the villain rather than listen to their monologue.
It's way, way too long. I'm sure understanding what drives it is important to the campaign, but ... it needs another delivery system. And a substantially shorter monologue.
I mean that's my view. If you want it to work, to be interesting for the players, you need to change it. Nothing wrong with the content =)
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
To address the final question: no. But often the gods are, indirectly, the cause of pain and they don't really get involved with the actions of mortals directly. Also considering how the Voidheart is pretty recently formed it hasn't gotten the chance to see much benevolence or good because all it feels is the pain of others. Basically formed out of pessimism.
The other thing I'd like to say is this is just something that is likely going to be spread out a bit more and shown through the actual world building but it'd be tough to give any past remnants that give warning of it because it came into existence or at the very least gained form and thought. There are plenty of seers, encounters and other ways I could tell the motive but I feel that at least the god would offer the players the chance to lay down their lives for the chance he shows their families mercy.
I go overboard in showing off the characters that I create, and as long as I don't overwhelm them and because this is the climax of the story I feel like the god could at least have some dialogue with the players to at least question them about their mortality and how they manage with it. Everyone has different styles and my players like more dialogue and interaction so that's the reason that I wrote this out in the first place.
Thanks or the feedback.
"I have advantage on dex saving throws what could go wrong?"
Thanks for the feedback. I'll shorten it and make it a bit more interactive so everyone--not just me--gets a chance to talk and let their character shine.
"I have advantage on dex saving throws what could go wrong?"