Hi all. New DM here.

I'm wondering if anyone has any tips for concealing your campaign's BBEG from your players? Specifically I'm thinking about how one goes about hiding them in plain sight, such as behind an assumed identity that interacts with the party on at least a semi-regular basis. An example that comes to mind is senator/emperor Palpatine in Star Wars. What measures would you take to prevent him/her from being discovered far too early with a lucky insight check or something? On the flipside I know discovering something like this "ahead of time" could potentially lead to something really cool and interesting for my players, even if it isn't the dramatic plot twist reveal I had planned. How would you guys approach this?

Thanks!

Here's an idea: The BBEG suffers from multiple personality disorder, and their other person hangs around the party as an npc, unaware that they share a body with the villain the party is after. Once this is discovered the party will be forced to make a choice, kill the bbeg and their friend? Or let them live... 

You basically have two main options:

(1) Plot Armor. Attempts to discern the BBEGs true nature with skill checks automatically fail. (Treat it like legendary resistance. The BBEG can simply choose to win contested checks x times per day.)

(2) Hindsight. If you don't know who the BBEG is, then you can simply declare that it is whoever it needs to be when the time is right. Have the players interact with several morally grey NPCs and have their evil machinations all be implied, but vague. Plant enough seeds of doubt that the players can connect the dots to justify any story you feed them.

If the campaign is going to last for a while, then you have plenty of time to build the story around whatever wild conspiracies the players imagine.

If the campaign is nearing the endgame, then discovering the true identity of the BBEG is basically just the trigger for an alternate ending, or accelerates the final conflict.

Quote from Rage_All_Day >>

What measures would you take to prevent him/her from being discovered far too early with a lucky insight check or something?

 PCs don't get to make insight checks at will. Just give him a passive Deception that's higher than any PCs passive Insight. And realize that insight has serious limits to what it can do, and most of the time he won't actually be doing anything that insight will actually help with.

There isn't really a need to keep it a secret. It could be anybody they PCs run into or interact with, whether they do so often or not.

When the campaign progresses, then decide which of the NPCs the party knows is the BBEG. You don't have to establish it at the beginning.

Reverse the good story telling convention and "tell don't show." They know of a BBEG, but it'll take a campaign before they're in the same space.

I also don't think BBEGs are essential to campaign design, similar to Wysperra's point.  See how the party gels in initial adventures, then build a BBEG worthy of them.  Reverse I feel is DM vanity, which is fine and actually old school, or what folks think old school is, but BBEG identifying adventure structures are a lot of DM ground work for campaign which (according to debated stats) may never get there.

Current campaign structure BBEGs in increments: 

1.) bioweapon that they didn't defeat so much as secure

2) wanna be dread domain type trying to earn his bones, so to speak, in the necromantic overlord club

3.) Tiamat

4.) Guy named Gerald, whose never seen a dragon before, so no real through line from 3.  Gerald more of a symptom of a larger problem, but likely will exist until the larger problem is dealt with.

That's all tenative and subject to change.

Part of the reality of having a chatty, involved BBEG is that there is a chance they will be found out. It's just the cost of using that particular plot structure. That being said, a successful Insight check - even a crit - doesn't tell you an NPC's whole life story. It just reveals the intention or motivation behind that particular interaction. Give the BBEG more complex motivations than just blatantly duping the party and you can survive a peek behind the curtain now and then.

My players unleashed the bbeg during the first session. Now the bbeg uses true polymorph to interact with them and even go with them time to time helping them out. 3 months later and they still have no idea. Just taking my time with the slow burn. 

The options already said - pick an NPC they've already met and it fits for, and plot armouring them from being found out, all work. Another option is to have the BBEG sending an agent, so if they do get found out (IE, you want to avoid plot armour) then they can be without the story being shorted out. They find the agent, who refuses to talk, or disappears in a smkey puff, and the party is more on edge now.

My current campaign has 2 BBEG currently, the Tier 1 they are intended to discover and fight by level 6 is an Aboleth who is slowly enslaving key members of the town having already taken over a nearby mine where it was discovered. 

Aiding it is a Wizard, this wizard is level 20+ far to powerful for the party to deal with, he is a bumbling old man who runs the magic shop and has sold a number of magic items to the party, advised them and given them a few jobs. He is immune to the Aboleth enslave ability, but is helping to create multiple issues in the town to throw anyone off the scent of the real threat. He is trying to get information from the Aboleth (no idea what for yet but it will be something big). 

We are 7 months into playing now, the party are level 4 and we have no idea what is going on, 3 sessions ago one character (minotaur int of 7) took a satchel the party had been trying to retrieve straight to the wizard for identification, after the same wizard (under disguise) had had that same satchel taken while he was giving it to someone. 

I have given little hints and clues, things that once they realise the wizard is evil they will look back on, I am prepared for them working things out, or just being nosey, or just wanting to steal from him. The wizards plan for the party is to use them to destroy the aboleth once it has outlived its usefulness, he has no intention of giving the Aboleth what it wants but intends to use the confusion of the discovery of it's affecting the town, along with the party being distracted in trying to kill it to allow him to make his escape and disappear. There will be some clues left for the party to follow up and find out more about him if they want, or they can be free to go and follow any one of the 10 other plot threads I have set up ready for post this story. 

For a game with levelling up and the big disparity in power levels between starting PCs and those who will eventually confront the BBEG, there are issues with the BBEG interacting with the party whilst also being a BBEG.

If the PCs look capable of disrupting or even stopping the BBEG's plans, then the question must be asked: if they are capable of interacting with the PCs regularly, and the PCs don't suspect them at all, then why does the BBEG allow them to continue doing so?

Nobody is a BBEG until such a time as they are in conflict with the party. If they were, then they would just wipe the party out very easily. You need to have a convincing reason for why the BBEG doesn't just wipe out meddling PCs when they are too low level to contend with them. It's fair that the BBEG may not know exactly how powerful PCs are, but a level 20 Wizard or Sorcerer, a Lich, or an ancient dragon is going to be able to assess combat prowess pretty easily and can make a reasonable assumption that they are not on a comparable level. Unless they need the PCs for something, then they should deal with them when they become annoying. So you need some sort of story element that shows why they need the PCs to do things for them, or why killing them off would be contrary to their own plans.

PCs typically survive by the BBEG not knowing where they are, moving from place to place. In Curse of Strahd, Strahd always knows where the PCs are an conveniently enjoys letting them live to see what they'll do out of a perverse sense of entertainment. You can design a villain to have a specific character trait that means that they deliberately don't believe that the PCs can do anything to hurt them. Arrogance only stretches so far, though - again, as soon as the PCs actually start disrupting their plans, they will get involved.

I'd advise not putting the PCs face to face with the BBEG very often. Have them communicate using the Dream spell or otherwise communicate through mouthpiece NPCs that can do their communicating for them. My current BBEG is a non-corporeal entity bound to a demiplane and the campaign revolves around its growing plans to escape coming to fruition.

If you want a BBEG to be hanging around and directly interacting with the party, you've got some tricky manoeuvring to do to stop them choosing an opportune moment to destroy their enemies. 

Quote from Sanvael >>

For a game with levelling up and the big disparity in power levels between starting PCs and those who will eventually confront the BBEG, there are issues with the BBEG interacting with the party whilst also being a BBEG.

If the PCs look capable of disrupting or even stopping the BBEG's plans, then the question must be asked: if they are capable of interacting with the PCs regularly, and the PCs don't suspect them at all, then why does the BBEG allow them to continue doing so?

 

 In many cases true.

But you have examples in Palpatine and in Matt Colville's novels (spoiler) where the BBEG interacts with the PCs on the regular.

For a campaign the BBEG  can be a quest giver sending the PCs out to take care of competition. They could also send the PCs out to their doom =)

Quote from Sanvael >>

For a game with levelling up and the big disparity in power levels between starting PCs and those who will eventually confront the BBEG, there are issues with the BBEG interacting with the party whilst also being a BBEG.

If the PCs look capable of disrupting or even stopping the BBEG's plans, then the question must be asked: if they are capable of interacting with the PCs regularly, and the PCs don't suspect them at all, then why does the BBEG allow them to continue doing so?

Nobody is a BBEG until such a time as they are in conflict with the party. If they were, then they would just wipe the party out very easily. You need to have a convincing reason for why the BBEG doesn't just wipe out meddling PCs when they are too low level to contend with them. It's fair that the BBEG may not know exactly how powerful PCs are, but a level 20 Wizard or Sorcerer, a Lich, or an ancient dragon is going to be able to assess combat prowess pretty easily and can make a reasonable assumption that they are not on a comparable level. Unless they need the PCs for something, then they should deal with them when they become annoying. So you need some sort of story element that shows why they need the PCs to do things for them, or why killing them off would be contrary to their own plans.

PCs typically survive by the BBEG not knowing where they are, moving from place to place. In Curse of Strahd, Strahd always knows where the PCs are an conveniently enjoys letting them live to see what they'll do out of a perverse sense of entertainment. You can design a villain to have a specific character trait that means that they deliberately don't believe that the PCs can do anything to hurt them. Arrogance only stretches so far, though - again, as soon as the PCs actually start disrupting their plans, they will get involved.

I'd advise not putting the PCs face to face with the BBEG very often. Have them communicate using the Dream spell or otherwise communicate through mouthpiece NPCs that can do their communicating for them. My current BBEG is a non-corporeal entity bound to a demiplane and the campaign revolves around its growing plans to escape coming to fruition.

If you want a BBEG to be hanging around and directly interacting with the party, you've got some tricky manoeuvring to do to stop them choosing an opportune moment to destroy their enemies. 

The comments above are important, I only made the final decision to make the wizard in my campaign such a high level so early on in the characters story because there is a clear reason the Wizard will not kill them at all, he is powerful enough to escape easily (he has variations on the teleport spell), he is over 1000 years old having cloned himself multiple times, but the most important thing is that if the party work out he is not what he seems and openly fight him he will do just enough damage to make them think twice about chasing him down straight away but will also ensure they can easily find all his notes about the aboleth, where it is and some of what it has been doing. He is relying on them taking the time to go and kill it and free the town from it's enslavement and prevent a diplomatic incident that could lead to open war between 2 nations, vs chasing him when he could have gone anywhere. He has no wish to fight the Aboleth on his own, or be anywhere near it when it is fought. He knows that on his own it is too risky to take on the Aboleth and it's combined forces (Chuul, enslaved dwarfs, etc). 

This is the only reason I was willing to have such a high level NPC that is a threat to the party was that I could create a clear defined reason that he would not only want the party to remain alive, but would support them by selling various magical items to them and also selling them various spell scrolls. 

I think the classic BBEG is already in fact known, but the PCs are largely unknowns.  The BBEG is usually at the top of a power structure and has literally more important things to contend with (in game terms) than the PC, until they reach the BBEG's level.  It's not narrative rocket science.  

Strahd is a great game example of a slight departure from this where he takes an interest in the party, because he likes torment.  Many fiends, either MM defined fiends or just fiendish in character, would take a similar delight ... while the party sees themselves as rising up or uprising (depending on your game world's power structures), the BBEG sees the hero's journey as quite Sisyphean, which was very much the Palpatine point of view (arguably arrogant and inaccurate, but no one's seen Episode XII yet so who knows ;D).

Zariel is another BBEG who has a war to fight so has no time for a group of characters wandering her domain seeking a vulnerability which she isn't aware has been exposed.

My take is at lower levels a true BBEG is best defined as a horizon, and let those lower levels be used for the party to come to know the world, then when they're larger than life they have a sense of what they;'re fighting for rather than simply completing the BBEG campaign equation.  

Something I’ve been using, that has been working well for us, is the spell Nystul’s Magic Aura.  My party have become reliant on the paladin’s Divine Sense ability, always assuming that whatever they encounter, he will always be able to identify it for them.  They’ve been hunting for a succubus, and a few werewolves, and have become cocky when dealing with unknown NPCs, because they consider Divine Sense infallible.  So I let them have the werewolves (since that plot arc is almost over anyways), but the succubus has cast NMA on herself, and is about to start interacting with them on a regular basis (upcoming plot arc).  I’m really looking forward to the day they realize that they aren’t immune to being fooled!  Their cockiness is getting annoying at times.

Thanks everyone for all the great suggestions and insight! It definitely gives me a lot to play with.

My intention is to have the the BBEG enter as an unassuming quest giver at lower levels, with only occasional contact with the PC's. He'll be attempting to mislead them and use them to achieve his goals and in the process the party will come into contact with much more suspect NPC's, though they won't be blatantly evil or too obvious. Just enough to throw them off the scent as to the identity of the villain. I also want to try to make the players sympathize with the persona he's hiding behind to make the eventual reveal more of a shock. I presented Palpatine as an example, but in truth this character was heavily influenced by him. I like the idea of him pulling the strings behind the scenes until his designs come to fruition and he makes his grand entrance. Or until the party forces his hand lol.

Thanks again for all the great feedback!

My advice is don't do this.  This kind of thing works in movies where the audience has info the characters do not.  This usually ends up being too obvious or so concealed that it doesn't seem plausible.   If you've already decided that there wont be enough info to figure it out ahead of time no matter what, then then it might seem extremely lame when it's revealed.

The way this kind of thing works when its pulled off well, when the reveal happens everyone say "how did I not see that, all the clues pointed to this, it's so obvious now".

If you do end up doing this, you have to at least make sure there is a good Duku, and at least have some way/ clues that would let the players figure it out, and another plot line for if they do.

Quote from Bodanger >>

My advice is don't do this.  This kind of thing works in movies where the audience has info the characters do not.  This usually ends up being too obvious or so concealed that it doesn't seem plausible.   If you've already decided that there wont be enough info to figure it out ahead of time no matter what, then then it might seem extremely lame when it's revealed.

The way this kind of thing works when its pulled off well, when the reveal happens everyone say "how did I not see that, all the clues pointed to this, it's so obvious now".

If you do end up doing this, you have to at least make sure there is a good Duku, and at least have some way/ clues that would let the players figure it out, and another plot line for if they do.

 This is a good additional point. The clues need to be such that they all tie together, but what do you do if one of your clues is actually a little too blatant - or if the PC simply decides that they don't trust the NPC and starts investigating? It needs to be possible for the PCs to unmask the villain early, or else it's all just so much plot armour.

I recently used an NPC who is not the BBEG, but was corrupted. He kept being absent at suspicious times during a long battle, his white robes were spotless while everyone else had been engaged in the fighting, and he always wore white gloves to hide his hands, which were silvered (which means something significant in the campaign and would have been a dead giveaway). Interestingly, he also had some of the world-corruption on his face, but since one of the PCs had suffered that before and been cured, they didn't clock it at first. Eventually they managed to realise that he was a traitor, mostly due to him not being at the crucial battle points, but by the time they were ready to go after him, he'd moved on to the final stage of the plan anyway.

In terms of Palpatine, part of the reason that he needs to stay hidden is that he can't take on the whole might of the Jedi and republic if they throw it at him. He works in the shadows until he has enough control to wipe everyone out. But bear in mind that part of the reason that people dislike the prequel movies is that a lot of Palpatine's doing is happening off-screen. He fosters war so that he will be given more and more power, and the main characters are kinda being used to further his ends as unwitting pawns. That can be a fun reveal later on, but your PCs may also be upset if they realise they've been working for the baddies all along! Some of my players get really upset if they feel they've been deceived about why they were taking certain actions or missions.

Quote from Bodanger >>

My advice is don't do this.  This kind of thing works in movies where the audience has info the characters do not.  This usually ends up being too obvious or so concealed that it doesn't seem plausible.   If you've already decided that there wont be enough info to figure it out ahead of time no matter what, then then it might seem extremely lame when it's revealed.

The way this kind of thing works when its pulled off well, when the reveal happens everyone say "how did I not see that, all the clues pointed to this, it's so obvious now".

If you do end up doing this, you have to at least make sure there is a good Duku, and at least have some way/ clues that would let the players figure it out, and another plot line for if they do.

 This is certainly an opinion to have but as someone who has successfully done this multiple times across multiple systems I will say it can be pulled off brilliantly. I had one campaign where for the entire first half (18 months of game time) the players where, unwittingly, acting for the BBEG and as a result helping destroy the magic powering a group of good individuals. At any point the players could have done something different, I gave them plenty of opportunity to discover the truth early on, but they didn’t. This made the revelation when it happened even greater, there was a genuine oh s**t moment in game which came across brilliantly and the characters had a deeper drive to them undo the damage they had done and defeat the bad guy. 

But you need to have everything worked out in your head for if they discover it too early, and it can’t be a situation where when you do the reveal the players then feel cheated because they did something early on that logically should have given them a clue but you withheld that from them because you where not ready for them to find out. 

Another campaign I ran involved a silver dragon who in trying to stop an end of the world prophecy became the thing that was going to end the world and cause mass genocide. That character appeared as a humanoid representing a treasure hunting organization and would hire the party to gain different magic items or spells. The dragon themselves tattooed all the spells to their body as runes carved in the skin, when in human form these took the form of tattoes that seemed to move. As time and the adventure progresses then these “different” individuals (all the same dragon) would have an ever increasing number of tattoes visible, but always just an addition to the same design as seen before.

This clue slowly permeated as the group realized that each time they did a task for this group the next time they met a representative then they would have an extra marking, they also started getting suspicious when they could never find the same individuals again despite looking for them. 

This kind of thing is important to do to prevent the party feeling railroaded to the reveal you want, or the ending you need. It is also therefore important, if your BBEG is overly powerful that you have a clear defined motivation for the BBEG to never want to destroy the party. Maybe one of them is needed for some prophecy further down the path, maybe there is a pact with the warlocks patron that means the BBEG won’t kill the party on return for some boon later on. Whatever it is it needs to be powerful enough to stop the BBEG going squash. Or alternatively scale your BBEG with the party so whenever they choose to fight him they have a chance of winning but accept your 2 years plans might be thrown under the bus after 3 weeks. 

One of the easiest ways is if you don't know who your BBEG is. So just decide afterward which ordinary minor NPC from early in the campaign was actually the BBEG. It's easy to keep a straight face when you don't know you're lying.

Then at about the midpoint of the game, the party will get suspicious of nothing and roll an Insight check. They roll high. Now this minor NPC who they've met once before wasn't hiding anything. But now he's the BBEG and he's hiding a very big secret.