I came up with an idea for a futuristic campaign that I was excited about, but I was having some difficulty imagining how the villain of said campaign would operate.
The villain in question is a self-proclaimed god of knowledge whose main source of villainy is their complete disregard for ethics and the feelings of others they deem 'expendable'. They're amoral and emotionless, believing both morals and emotions get in the way of research and contribute nothing to the pursuit of knowledge. Basically, they took the 'knowledge is power' statement way too far. They're the head of a large company-like faction devoted to creating more robot workers and siphoning souls from the Spirit Realm to cram into said robots, and don't really care about their accumulated wealth for any reason other than to fund more of their atrocious experiments or their growing mechanical legion.
However, I'm struggling to think of how they would operate as a BBEG. Having the villain sit in their lair all day doing lab tests and overseeing construction of factories hardly seems like the most engaging thing story-wise for them to do, but I can't really imagine them doing much else that would make sense for the character. Is there a better way to make the villain more of a prominent and intimidating character, or should I tweak some things to make them easier to run?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Former Spider Queen of the Spider Guild, and friendly neighborhood scheming creature.
"Made by spiders, for spiders, of spiders."
My pronouns are she/her.
Web Weaver of Everlasting Narrative! (title bestowed by Drummer)
This sounds a lot like the BBEG in my previous campaign. And it was probably the best way to have told that story.
The party only met her face-to-face once in the entire campaign - at the final battle. She cast Sending to them twice before that, and their first glimpse of her was at a distance for a brief moment, halfway through the campaign. In spite of this, she was prominent in the narrative, and feared and loathed by my players. Not because she reveled in her evil, or was constantly showing up to ruin things, but because her distance and lack of emotion put her deeds in such stark contrast.
My villain lost the ability to feel emotion after gaining forbidden knowledge, so her motivations changed from "I've been wronged by the gods and will have my revenge" to "I'm curious what the universe would be like if the gods lost their worshippers." Literally everything she did, from raising apocalyptic threats to committing genocide, was in the name of science. Aside from a couple experiments in the field, she spent the entire campaign in her dungeon laboratory and sent mooks or allies to do the rest. I didn't need her constantly in the party's faces when her symbol was carved into victims, her name kept popping up in interrogations, a beloved NPC turned out to be enslaved to her via a warlock pact, and a PC's mother's soul was stolen in one of her experiments. They knew the villain's name, her influence and the reach of her destruction long before they knew her face. If anything, the fact that they couldn't escape the ripples of her demented acts but weren't able to confront her in person made them want to take her down more.
My villain was bringing the entire world to ruin because of a thought experiment. Tell me that isn't intimidating.
This immediately reminds me of hojo from ff7, he was interested in knowledge and testing on living subjects. For him everything is an experiment.
if i was running this villain, i’d make them oppressive, they see the party as lab rats and want to experiment on them and see the results. They also want to push their buttons just to see how they react. So they might throw moral predicament at the players to see how they react.
they might just be evil to see how the party react and be in their face to see if the characters can keep their cool.
for me id consider it successful if the players can paranoid, the players should question every situation and NPC, are they legit or part of the BBEG’s current experiment. Are they directly involved, or just a patsy who will also be burned by the BBEG. They should be looking for loopholes and alternatives as their actions have negative results either way.
ironically this dynamic should be the BBEG making the character stronger, the BBEG doesn’t see them as a threat but a potential resource to be experimented on. This will make the characters stronger as they level up and survive, these massive worldwide experiments. Eventually style of the moral decisions etc the players will learn more about the BBEG and learn how to beat them.
another potential influence you could look at is Glados from the portal games. A sentient AI who devised challenges for the player until they reach a point to see behind the curtain and stop playing by their rules
Could the party be of interest to the BBEG? The BBEG is after knowledge, and this party is destroying creatures, boss monsters, raiding parties, but not for their own individual means. "studying" the party, by sending spies or being there in person, to understand why 4 or 5 people would want to work together to achieve a goal rather than do it for themselves. The BBEG wants all power, so sharing it or cooperating is an alien concept and could allow for you to throw in opportunities to display your BBEG without killing them, giving the players a target to work towards.
To be honest, I'm a fan of showing my players the BBEG but only in glimpses throughout the campaign, so they can see a taste of the power that it will have when the time comes, but only fleeting moments. Hence trying to find reasons to make it show up, but not in a proper battle where they will clearly TPK.
Eventually, the god will need to leave the lab to oversee some projects on their own. Maybe something isn't working right, and they decide to get involved personally.
And, similar to what tlawerence is saying. Over the course of the campaign, the PCs will be disrupting the BBEG's plans. eventually, they'll do the old "It seems I need to handle this personally." and go meet them.
One of the cool things you could do with them being a god is to use avatars. They want to handle it personally, but they have lots of other things to do, so they create a smaller version of themselves at a CR appropriate for the PCs. The characters win, but then they meet the same villain again later. This time, its stronger, since it learned what the PCs can do. It could also let you have some fun with incorporating a hard counter to a favorite strategy, if the CPs have one. Not everything, just one or two things -- or whatever was last. If the avatar dies as a result of slashing damage, they're now immune to slashing damage. Died in a fireball, now its immune to fire.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I came up with an idea for a futuristic campaign that I was excited about, but I was having some difficulty imagining how the villain of said campaign would operate.
The villain in question is a self-proclaimed god of knowledge whose main source of villainy is their complete disregard for ethics and the feelings of others they deem 'expendable'. They're amoral and emotionless, believing both morals and emotions get in the way of research and contribute nothing to the pursuit of knowledge. Basically, they took the 'knowledge is power' statement way too far. They're the head of a large company-like faction devoted to creating more robot workers and siphoning souls from the Spirit Realm to cram into said robots, and don't really care about their accumulated wealth for any reason other than to fund more of their atrocious experiments or their growing mechanical legion.
However, I'm struggling to think of how they would operate as a BBEG. Having the villain sit in their lair all day doing lab tests and overseeing construction of factories hardly seems like the most engaging thing story-wise for them to do, but I can't really imagine them doing much else that would make sense for the character. Is there a better way to make the villain more of a prominent and intimidating character, or should I tweak some things to make them easier to run?
Former Spider Queen of the Spider Guild, and friendly neighborhood scheming creature.
"Made by spiders, for spiders, of spiders."
My pronouns are she/her.
Web Weaver of Everlasting Narrative! (title bestowed by Drummer)
This sounds a lot like the BBEG in my previous campaign. And it was probably the best way to have told that story.
The party only met her face-to-face once in the entire campaign - at the final battle. She cast Sending to them twice before that, and their first glimpse of her was at a distance for a brief moment, halfway through the campaign. In spite of this, she was prominent in the narrative, and feared and loathed by my players. Not because she reveled in her evil, or was constantly showing up to ruin things, but because her distance and lack of emotion put her deeds in such stark contrast.
My villain lost the ability to feel emotion after gaining forbidden knowledge, so her motivations changed from "I've been wronged by the gods and will have my revenge" to "I'm curious what the universe would be like if the gods lost their worshippers." Literally everything she did, from raising apocalyptic threats to committing genocide, was in the name of science. Aside from a couple experiments in the field, she spent the entire campaign in her dungeon laboratory and sent mooks or allies to do the rest. I didn't need her constantly in the party's faces when her symbol was carved into victims, her name kept popping up in interrogations, a beloved NPC turned out to be enslaved to her via a warlock pact, and a PC's mother's soul was stolen in one of her experiments. They knew the villain's name, her influence and the reach of her destruction long before they knew her face. If anything, the fact that they couldn't escape the ripples of her demented acts but weren't able to confront her in person made them want to take her down more.
My villain was bringing the entire world to ruin because of a thought experiment. Tell me that isn't intimidating.
This immediately reminds me of hojo from ff7, he was interested in knowledge and testing on living subjects. For him everything is an experiment.
if i was running this villain, i’d make them oppressive, they see the party as lab rats and want to experiment on them and see the results. They also want to push their buttons just to see how they react. So they might throw moral predicament at the players to see how they react.
they might just be evil to see how the party react and be in their face to see if the characters can keep their cool.
for me id consider it successful if the players can paranoid, the players should question every situation and NPC, are they legit or part of the BBEG’s current experiment. Are they directly involved, or just a patsy who will also be burned by the BBEG. They should be looking for loopholes and alternatives as their actions have negative results either way.
ironically this dynamic should be the BBEG making the character stronger, the BBEG doesn’t see them as a threat but a potential resource to be experimented on. This will make the characters stronger as they level up and survive, these massive worldwide experiments. Eventually style of the moral decisions etc the players will learn more about the BBEG and learn how to beat them.
another potential influence you could look at is Glados from the portal games. A sentient AI who devised challenges for the player until they reach a point to see behind the curtain and stop playing by their rules
Could the party be of interest to the BBEG? The BBEG is after knowledge, and this party is destroying creatures, boss monsters, raiding parties, but not for their own individual means. "studying" the party, by sending spies or being there in person, to understand why 4 or 5 people would want to work together to achieve a goal rather than do it for themselves. The BBEG wants all power, so sharing it or cooperating is an alien concept and could allow for you to throw in opportunities to display your BBEG without killing them, giving the players a target to work towards.
To be honest, I'm a fan of showing my players the BBEG but only in glimpses throughout the campaign, so they can see a taste of the power that it will have when the time comes, but only fleeting moments. Hence trying to find reasons to make it show up, but not in a proper battle where they will clearly TPK.
Eventually, the god will need to leave the lab to oversee some projects on their own. Maybe something isn't working right, and they decide to get involved personally.
And, similar to what tlawerence is saying. Over the course of the campaign, the PCs will be disrupting the BBEG's plans. eventually, they'll do the old "It seems I need to handle this personally." and go meet them.
One of the cool things you could do with them being a god is to use avatars. They want to handle it personally, but they have lots of other things to do, so they create a smaller version of themselves at a CR appropriate for the PCs. The characters win, but then they meet the same villain again later. This time, its stronger, since it learned what the PCs can do. It could also let you have some fun with incorporating a hard counter to a favorite strategy, if the CPs have one. Not everything, just one or two things -- or whatever was last. If the avatar dies as a result of slashing damage, they're now immune to slashing damage. Died in a fireball, now its immune to fire.