This is something that has come up for one of my game groups. They have the opportunity in the next session to potentially ruin the antagonist's plans. To be clear, they are an antagonist, not a BBEG...the Antagonist is attempting to bring the BBEG into being. It's a level 1-20 campaign adventure path with a multitude of different options that the player party can and indeed have made.
To be successful the antagonist requires three lodestones and the player characters have the opportunity in the next session to get their hands on a lodestone and deny the item to the antagonist. Theoretically, they could hide or lose the item meaning that the antagonist can never get hold of it. This means that there is a very real chance that the party could foil the plot and be victorious at the low, low level of 8.
For me, I've always been of the opinion that this is a good thing. The party have won the day, albeit a little earlier than anticipated. The players too don't know what I had planned, except for knowing that I had planned an adventure that should run up until either level 16 or level 20 depending on choices. To succeed in the overall goal so early then is a sign of just how competent their characters have been and how well they have made choices.
Of course, I know some players feel short changed by a campaign closing earlier than expected. This is a position I can easily understand of course. Especially when you're in a DM/GM created world. There is a kind of feeling like the GM should then be expected to invent the next adventure for these characters. This was my players' exact criticism of Vecna: Eve of Ruin, they managed to uncover the NPC's true identity early and challenge them to combat. In their success they cut the entire adventure short.
I know personally what my opinions are, but I have a choice here. I could handwave the entire thing - allow the antagonist to conduct their plot even without the item in question and allow the campaign to run longer. Or I could allow the antagonist to fail, and let the party stand triumphant focusing on the next adventure I get to offer my amazing group of players.
What would other GMs do though? What would you do? Do you allow campaigns to end early? Do you stall, or handwave, or whatever else in order to force the adventure to unfold as planned? I'm really curious to know
That kind of thing is why I don't try to plan a 1-20 campaign; it's just way too likely to go off the rails somehow long before the intended end arrives.
Without knowing the the details of the campaign or the inginuity of your players there may be another option.
You say "Theoretically, they could hide or lose the item meaning that the antagonist can never get hold of it" how easy is that?
The antagonist would do all they can to find the lodestone the party aquire, do they know the party have it, or a way to find out (maybe using divination magic)? Would they be able to scry on the party to find out there plans on where to hide it? Or have the party intercepted before they do. The antagonist is likely to persue all possible methods to get the lodestone dispite the set back caused by the party.
Depending what the antagonist would need to do you might have an extended period of downtime and continue the adventure 1 year later (or whatever) when the party would first become aware that the antagist has not given up. For example they might try to capture one of the party to force them to tell where the lodestone is, or news comes to the party that the antagonist has hired fire giants to recover it from the volcano they threw it in.
Without knowing the the details of the campaign or the inginuity of your players there may be another option.
Sorry, should have been more clear. Wasn't looking for suggestions for this campaign. I have plenty of other stuff loaded down into this world that I've created which would allow the adventure to continue or head in a different direction. In my case, should the party manage to thwart the antagonist their characters will get to take a well earnt break before one of a dozen different seeds I planted earlier pay off (there's diplomatic envoy from another city state currently visiting, there's a harmless cult they've met which could become dangerous, there's also some dissident groups they had early encounters with).
My approach is to let the player characters enjoy their success, but usually to have planted seeds of other threads that can be picked up and which allow me to pivot.
What I'm interested in then is not advice, but rather what other DMs find themselves doing. In the case of Vecna Eve of Ruin for example if an NPCs identity and successfully defeat them they can skip effectively 9 chapters of content should they choose to. The actual situation is irrelevant to the question I'm trying to ask here.
Pantagruel, I get where you're coming from and totally appreciate your point. Personally, I'm fascinated by alternate histories, speculative fictions, and counterfactuals. My brain tends to be wired along the lines of structuring worlds that way. I've even authored a choose your own adventure book around a decade ago...though I do tend to spend like 3 months of free time designing the next world or the next adventure path before I put it in front of players. I've usually by then got the contingencies to fall back on if things do go off the rails. Plus, over two decades of running a playing games has given me a fairly large library of experience to draw from if I ever do need to improvise. I know other DMs who are 100% about the improv though and live for those moments - I quite envy their skill sets!
Looking at the adventure path you seem to have set up, and thinking about how I would approach a similar concept if I was running it...
Your overall structure for the adventure appears to be that the first part of your adventure is that you have a bad guy who's running around collecting parts so he can unleash a bigger bad guy, and the second part of the adventure assumes the first bad guy's plot succeeded, and thus the PCs are now trying to deal with the Bigger Bad.
I would probably just plan the first half, because I expect my PCs to succeed most of the time, and have only a very short summary of what the bigger bad would attempt if he was released (possibly with notes on useful hints to scatter about for the second half). If it becomes apparent that the PCs won't foil the initial plan, develop the second half then.
However, if I already had both halves (say, I got a published adventure), I would probably just file away the second half as "I can change the names and use this later".
Have the PCs do what they do. If they take that lodestone. Ask them how they "secure" it for life. Get details who they talk to etc. Then tell them they ended the campaign early. See if they want to continue. Sometimes the party gets tired wants to do something different. Sometimes they want to continue, but after doing A/B/C...
If they want to continue, just have the antagonist' steal it from them. It could be a guards betrayal or a heist etc. Have the the knowledge it is gone be long enough to get the campaign back on track.
I would probably just plan the first half, because I expect my PCs to succeed most of the time, and have only a very short summary of what the bigger bad would attempt if he was released (possibly with notes on useful hints to scatter about for the second half).
That's probably a far more sensible approach that i take :D
To be fair, they don't actually know for sure who the antagonist is. They know a big bad is being summoned etc, they know about the lodestones, and they're now in position to get their hands on it.
I wonder if I'm just odd because if/then/else was a formative part of my early years when coding. Who knows, either way your process seems very practical.
I wonder if I'm just odd because if/then/else was a formative part of my early years when coding. Who knows, either way your process seems very practical.
You aren't odd, you just learned a way that worked well enough for you.
It's an unfortunate problem in learning to DM that published adventures are not good examples of how you should design and come up with your own custom adventures, because in a 256 page adventure book, buyers are going to feel cheated if they don't use at least, say, 128 pages, and that means you need to put in a lot of barriers to keep the PCs from wandering outside of the adventure. If you're doing your own custom campaign, you can make do with a very vague "this is what I'm currently thinking the campaign will look like in 20-50 sessions" and only prepare in detail for a couple sessions in advance.
I wonder if I'm just odd because if/then/else was a formative part of my early years when coding. Who knows, either way your process seems very practical.
You aren't odd, you just learned a way that worked well enough for you.
It's an unfortunate problem in learning to DM that published adventures are not good examples of how you should design and come up with your own custom adventures, because in a 256 page adventure book, buyers are going to feel cheated if they don't use at least, say, 128 pages, and that means you need to put in a lot of barriers to keep the PCs from wandering outside of the adventure. If you're doing your own custom campaign, you can make do with a very vague "this is what I'm currently thinking the campaign will look like in 20-50 sessions" and only prepare in detail for a couple sessions in advance.
On the other hand, when it's a published adventure and the PC's want to go a totally random direction you did not/ can not plan for, you have a really easy out:
"Guys, I love you, but that's beyond the scope of the adventure".
Being a DM is already time consuming even if you're running a written adventure between map prep, mini's, combat planning, etc etc. It's already a fair amount of emotional and mental labor. But it's a lot easier to just say "you all need to go over THERE... how do can we get this story back on the tracks?"
Different folks, different strokes but I kinda like that....
To answer your question, I too make it possible for the players to thwart the villains' plans - but just as the players can fall back and come up with alternate plans when the primary plan goes awry, so too can the villains.
Thwarting the villain doesn't end the campaign, it just means the villain moves on to plan B (or C, or D). Prematurely killing the villain might reveal they were actually just a pawn of an even tougher villain.
A campaign ends when the players and DM want it to end, not before. As long as the players and DM are having fun and want the game to continue, it continues.
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I feel like you should reward the players for their actions. Rather than the bbeg be summoned in a big, flashy scene, refuges begin whispering in hushed tones of the return/whatever of the bbeg as plan b is used. You can completely change the direction of the campaign to include more investigation/roleplay/combat.
On the other hand, when it's a published adventure and the PC's want to go a totally random direction you did not/ can not plan for, you have a really easy out:
"Guys, I love you, but that's beyond the scope of the adventure".
Being a DM is already time consuming even if you're running a written adventure between map prep, mini's, combat planning, etc etc. It's already a fair amount of emotional and mental labor. But it's a lot easier to just say "you all need to go over THERE... how do can we get this story back on the tracks?"
Different folks, different strokes but I kinda like that....
A sentiment that I fear too few players understand, but I 100% see where you're coming from and do think it's a message worth boosting.
What would other GMs do though? What would you do?
Why would the players getting a hold of the lodestone mean the BBEG is permanently foiled? Does the BBEG not have access to Scrying, Locate spells, and other Divination magic?? How was the BBEG locating the lodestones to begin with that they can't use to determine that the party has it?
The BBEG should just hunt down the players and take the lodestone from them either using stealth, deception, magic or force. One could easily have a confrontation with the BBEG where they use Time Stop to block the party while they search their belongings for the Lodestone then teleport away.
What would other GMs do though? What would you do?
Why would the players getting a hold of the lodestone mean the BBEG is permanently foiled? Does the BBEG not have access to Scrying, Locate spells, and other Divination magic?? How was the BBEG locating the lodestones to begin with that they can't use to determine that the party has it?
The BBEG should just hunt down the players and take the lodestone from them either using stealth, deception, magic or force. One could easily have a confrontation with the BBEG where they use Time Stop to block the party while they search their belongings for the Lodestone then teleport away.
The bbeg doesn't even exist yet, and I doubt the so called "antagonist" can cast time stop.
What would other GMs do though? What would you do?
Why would the players getting a hold of the lodestone mean the BBEG is permanently foiled? Does the BBEG not have access to Scrying, Locate spells, and other Divination magic?? How was the BBEG locating the lodestones to begin with that they can't use to determine that the party has it?
The BBEG should just hunt down the players and take the lodestone from them either using stealth, deception, magic or force. One could easily have a confrontation with the BBEG where they use Time Stop to block the party while they search their belongings for the Lodestone then teleport away.
As I said earlier in the thread, it's not necessarily about gathering ideas for my own setting. However, consider that Strahd, Tiamat, Vecna, Acererak all have significant weaknesses and limitations. The point of such limitations is to ensure that a victory is possible in these kinds of games. Even if that victory merely takes the form of getting the villain out of the way for a short period or time, or banishing them to another plane, or whatever. In my case, the planes are not easy to pop between...they're pretty impermeable walls and as such spells allowing summoning or crossing planes are disallowed within the setting. The big bad so to speak is effectively then trapped in another plane of existence. Hence, lengthy and resource heavy ritual by an acolyte to try and bring forth the big bad by (magically and metaphorically) demolishing the walls between planes. The antagonist (acolyte) doesn't have Time Stop, instead they had True Polymorph which was quite entertaining. And in this case despite the player characters encountering this NPC way earlier than intended they weren't able to quite piece together how to retrieve the macguffin before the NPC got the drop on them. In fairness at level 7, they managed to hold their own and with a random roll one NPC got Polymorphed into a Xorn which was somewhat entertaining.
The point then, is if the player characters position themselves well enough to do this early, how do other GMs deal with this? As I have also pointed to, such 'victories' or suchlike are possible in pretty much any official, or even GM created adventure. I've known one GM who effectively had the PCs retire into the sunset and live happily ever after - that's the end of their story. The point in the original question was satisfying curiosity.
Sometimes as a GM, I find it interesting to get a read on what other GMs do differently to me.
There might be something to be said for a dynamic where as DM you can say "guys, you did it. You rendered all of this... /holds up binder/ meaningless because you played it perfectly". Players cheer. DM shrugs. "So you know... I'm gonna have to have someone steal it away to keep the story going, right?"
At some tables, that's a gut punch. They beat the villain. They got the win! How DARE you take that away with cheap hand waves.
At some tables, that's a "rub your hands together and mutter 'bring it on'." moment. Because that group is more about team story telling than the win.
Neither is right or wrong. I won't dunk on either philosophy. Personally I'm more like the latter but I know a lot of groups that would be like the former. For the people I'm currently playing with, the idea that I had done a ton of planning and work to get a campaign set that I couldn't use, would be very stressful. I can think of two players right now taht would out and out INSIST I stole back the McGuffin somehow so we could use that materials I prepped.
To be fair, they don't actually know for sure who the antagonist is. They know a big bad is being summoned etc, they know about the lodestones, and they're now in position to get their hands on it.
As a DM my question would be... why is my Antagonist just giving up like that?
Defeating them is a nice moment for the party, sure, but I don't see how simply acquiring one of the McGuffins permanently defeats the enemy. The Antagonist didn't have the lodestone before. What's different about a group of wannabe do-gooders getting hold of it now? Why does that completely derail their plan?
You have to consider not just the value of giving the players a win, but how valuable that win is going to feel to them if it comes too easily. If this was all it took to stop the Antagonist... they weren't much of an antagonist, frankly
That said, I can see it being an effective story beat to let the players think the Antagonist has packed it in, only to bring them back down the road, more powerful than before and looking to claim that last lodestone. Or, if you want to get funky with it, have the Antagonist get punished by their master (the BBEG) and cast aside, replaced by a more powerful foe... which potentially sets up the original Antagonist as an extremely untrustworthy ally looking for revenge against their former master (or maybe redemption in their eyes)
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Neither is right or wrong. I won't dunk on either philosophy. Personally I'm more like the latter but I know a lot of groups that would be like the former. For the people I'm currently playing with, the idea that I had done a ton of planning and work to get a campaign set that I couldn't use, would be very stressful. I can think of two players right now taht would out and out INSIST I stole back the McGuffin somehow so we could use that materials I prepped.
Totally appreciate that point of view.
I once had my party give a macguffin (powerful yadayada artefact of the gods) to a NPC but not tell them what it was. They trusted the NPC absolutely and just told the NPC to go and get lost. They escorted the NPC to a dockside with macguffin in a lead lined box and let the NPC sail off to lose the artefact.
I'll be honest, though I racked my brains I could not figure out for the life of me at the time how the enemy army would be able to retrieve the special magical artefact of religious/cult significance that wasn't twee and formulaic. Of course with hindsight, formulaic doesn't always mean bad. It was also their first adventure as a group so they felt real smart having outfoxed the GM. Good for them.
I think you hit the nail on the head though. My Monday group are entirely different in character to my Saturday group, who are both very different from my FLGS group. Part of the answer is definitely table dependant.
The point then, is if the player characters position themselves well enough to do this early, how do other GMs deal with this? As I have also pointed to, such 'victories' or suchlike are possible in pretty much any official, or even GM created adventure. I've known one GM who effectively had the PCs retire into the sunset and live happily ever after - that's the end of their story. The point in the original question was satisfying curiosity.
Sometimes as a GM, I find it interesting to get a read on what other GMs do differently to me.
Some of the other answers offering suggestions on how to deal with it in your world ARE examples of how those DMs might decide to deal with a similar situation in their own world.
When I am world building, I have the general NPCs, their goals and objectives in mind. The NPCs have intentions and plans. These may or may not go as the NPCs expect due to the intervention of the party (or other NPCs - multiple NPC factions with some opposing and some congruent goals is just another plot twist). However, as the DM, as others have pointed out with examples, you are the arbiter of the world building. The party can only be 100% successful at defeating an antagonist IF the DM decides that they will be.
In my case, I try to play NPCs according to their goals, their character and their intelligence. If the party manages to come into possession of a macguffin that an NPC needs then the NPC will either find an alternative or will figure out a way to recover the item. This might not occur for a significant amount of in game time as the antogonist gathers the resources needed to have a reasonable chance of success. Whether that involves creating a fake and substituting it, stealing the original or something else would depend on what the characters decide to do with it. However, in a D&D world, with magic, there are very few ways to make anything 100% secure. There are also many ways to acquire knowledge - various forms of divination, legend lore spells, locate object, locate person, divine communion :) ... the party is known, the object is known ... as long as the antagonist and their followers are alive and the item still exists - nothing is settled unless the DM decides that it will be ... the antagonist and their followers give up OR the DM allows the item to be destroyed OR the DM decides that there is no alternative in all of the multiverse that could not be used as a substitute in this ritual.
So, in my games, if the players find a macguffin that someone needs ... I just let it play out. Actions by the PCs will never end a campaign as long as the NPCs have reasonable alternatives ... and if those NPCs don't ... there are always more NPCs. ie. Campaign ending decisions are up to the DM, character actions can only result in a change in "What might have happened" if the characters or NPCs had made other choices. Neither the future character decisions nor the future NPC decisions are set in stone and both will develop and evolve in response to events in the game.
On the other hand, if the antagonist is weak willed and easily discouraged or the characters somehow make it truly impossible for the antagonist to recover the needed item and there is no substitute possible (all DM decisions) then this particular problem might be resolved and the party will find other stuff to do. However, most of the lynchpin NPCs in my worlds won't necessarily give up so easily.
Some of the other answers offering suggestions on how to deal with it in your world ARE examples of how those DMs might decide to deal with a similar situation in their own world.
Genuinely mean this, thank you for pointing this out. It seems bonkers, but I hadn't actually looked at it from that viewpoint. I've been learning of late just how black and white my brain thinks...literally it was only at the very beginning of the year I was formally diagnosed as Autistic (in my very late 30's) and I'm learning that a lot of what I took for granted may not actually be how other people see the world. Hence the original question. My brain did seem to immediately jump on some folks' answers as answering a question different to what I asked, so the perspective really helps.
This is something that has come up for one of my game groups. They have the opportunity in the next session to potentially ruin the antagonist's plans. To be clear, they are an antagonist, not a BBEG...the Antagonist is attempting to bring the BBEG into being. It's a level 1-20 campaign adventure path with a multitude of different options that the player party can and indeed have made.
To be successful the antagonist requires three lodestones and the player characters have the opportunity in the next session to get their hands on a lodestone and deny the item to the antagonist. Theoretically, they could hide or lose the item meaning that the antagonist can never get hold of it. This means that there is a very real chance that the party could foil the plot and be victorious at the low, low level of 8.
For me, I've always been of the opinion that this is a good thing. The party have won the day, albeit a little earlier than anticipated. The players too don't know what I had planned, except for knowing that I had planned an adventure that should run up until either level 16 or level 20 depending on choices. To succeed in the overall goal so early then is a sign of just how competent their characters have been and how well they have made choices.
Of course, I know some players feel short changed by a campaign closing earlier than expected. This is a position I can easily understand of course. Especially when you're in a DM/GM created world. There is a kind of feeling like the GM should then be expected to invent the next adventure for these characters. This was my players' exact criticism of Vecna: Eve of Ruin, they managed to uncover the NPC's true identity early and challenge them to combat. In their success they cut the entire adventure short.
I know personally what my opinions are, but I have a choice here. I could handwave the entire thing - allow the antagonist to conduct their plot even without the item in question and allow the campaign to run longer. Or I could allow the antagonist to fail, and let the party stand triumphant focusing on the next adventure I get to offer my amazing group of players.
What would other GMs do though? What would you do? Do you allow campaigns to end early? Do you stall, or handwave, or whatever else in order to force the adventure to unfold as planned? I'm really curious to know
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That kind of thing is why I don't try to plan a 1-20 campaign; it's just way too likely to go off the rails somehow long before the intended end arrives.
Without knowing the the details of the campaign or the inginuity of your players there may be another option.
You say "Theoretically, they could hide or lose the item meaning that the antagonist can never get hold of it" how easy is that?
The antagonist would do all they can to find the lodestone the party aquire, do they know the party have it, or a way to find out (maybe using divination magic)? Would they be able to scry on the party to find out there plans on where to hide it? Or have the party intercepted before they do. The antagonist is likely to persue all possible methods to get the lodestone dispite the set back caused by the party.
Depending what the antagonist would need to do you might have an extended period of downtime and continue the adventure 1 year later (or whatever) when the party would first become aware that the antagist has not given up. For example they might try to capture one of the party to force them to tell where the lodestone is, or news comes to the party that the antagonist has hired fire giants to recover it from the volcano they threw it in.
Sorry, should have been more clear. Wasn't looking for suggestions for this campaign. I have plenty of other stuff loaded down into this world that I've created which would allow the adventure to continue or head in a different direction. In my case, should the party manage to thwart the antagonist their characters will get to take a well earnt break before one of a dozen different seeds I planted earlier pay off (there's diplomatic envoy from another city state currently visiting, there's a harmless cult they've met which could become dangerous, there's also some dissident groups they had early encounters with).
My approach is to let the player characters enjoy their success, but usually to have planted seeds of other threads that can be picked up and which allow me to pivot.
What I'm interested in then is not advice, but rather what other DMs find themselves doing. In the case of Vecna Eve of Ruin for example if an NPCs identity and successfully defeat them they can skip effectively 9 chapters of content should they choose to. The actual situation is irrelevant to the question I'm trying to ask here.
Pantagruel, I get where you're coming from and totally appreciate your point. Personally, I'm fascinated by alternate histories, speculative fictions, and counterfactuals. My brain tends to be wired along the lines of structuring worlds that way. I've even authored a choose your own adventure book around a decade ago...though I do tend to spend like 3 months of free time designing the next world or the next adventure path before I put it in front of players. I've usually by then got the contingencies to fall back on if things do go off the rails. Plus, over two decades of running a playing games has given me a fairly large library of experience to draw from if I ever do need to improvise. I know other DMs who are 100% about the improv though and live for those moments - I quite envy their skill sets!
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Looking at the adventure path you seem to have set up, and thinking about how I would approach a similar concept if I was running it...
Your overall structure for the adventure appears to be that the first part of your adventure is that you have a bad guy who's running around collecting parts so he can unleash a bigger bad guy, and the second part of the adventure assumes the first bad guy's plot succeeded, and thus the PCs are now trying to deal with the Bigger Bad.
I would probably just plan the first half, because I expect my PCs to succeed most of the time, and have only a very short summary of what the bigger bad would attempt if he was released (possibly with notes on useful hints to scatter about for the second half). If it becomes apparent that the PCs won't foil the initial plan, develop the second half then.
However, if I already had both halves (say, I got a published adventure), I would probably just file away the second half as "I can change the names and use this later".
Have the PCs do what they do. If they take that lodestone. Ask them how they "secure" it for life. Get details who they talk to etc. Then tell them they ended the campaign early. See if they want to continue. Sometimes the party gets tired wants to do something different. Sometimes they want to continue, but after doing A/B/C...
If they want to continue, just have the antagonist' steal it from them. It could be a guards betrayal or a heist etc. Have the the knowledge it is gone be long enough to get the campaign back on track.
That's probably a far more sensible approach that i take :D
To be fair, they don't actually know for sure who the antagonist is. They know a big bad is being summoned etc, they know about the lodestones, and they're now in position to get their hands on it.
I wonder if I'm just odd because if/then/else was a formative part of my early years when coding. Who knows, either way your process seems very practical.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
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You aren't odd, you just learned a way that worked well enough for you.
It's an unfortunate problem in learning to DM that published adventures are not good examples of how you should design and come up with your own custom adventures, because in a 256 page adventure book, buyers are going to feel cheated if they don't use at least, say, 128 pages, and that means you need to put in a lot of barriers to keep the PCs from wandering outside of the adventure. If you're doing your own custom campaign, you can make do with a very vague "this is what I'm currently thinking the campaign will look like in 20-50 sessions" and only prepare in detail for a couple sessions in advance.
On the other hand, when it's a published adventure and the PC's want to go a totally random direction you did not/ can not plan for, you have a really easy out:
"Guys, I love you, but that's beyond the scope of the adventure".
Being a DM is already time consuming even if you're running a written adventure between map prep, mini's, combat planning, etc etc. It's already a fair amount of emotional and mental labor. But it's a lot easier to just say "you all need to go over THERE... how do can we get this story back on the tracks?"
Different folks, different strokes but I kinda like that....
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To answer your question, I too make it possible for the players to thwart the villains' plans - but just as the players can fall back and come up with alternate plans when the primary plan goes awry, so too can the villains.
Thwarting the villain doesn't end the campaign, it just means the villain moves on to plan B (or C, or D). Prematurely killing the villain might reveal they were actually just a pawn of an even tougher villain.
A campaign ends when the players and DM want it to end, not before. As long as the players and DM are having fun and want the game to continue, it continues.
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I feel like you should reward the players for their actions. Rather than the bbeg be summoned in a big, flashy scene, refuges begin whispering in hushed tones of the return/whatever of the bbeg as plan b is used. You can completely change the direction of the campaign to include more investigation/roleplay/combat.
A sentiment that I fear too few players understand, but I 100% see where you're coming from and do think it's a message worth boosting.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
Why would the players getting a hold of the lodestone mean the BBEG is permanently foiled? Does the BBEG not have access to Scrying, Locate spells, and other Divination magic?? How was the BBEG locating the lodestones to begin with that they can't use to determine that the party has it?
The BBEG should just hunt down the players and take the lodestone from them either using stealth, deception, magic or force. One could easily have a confrontation with the BBEG where they use Time Stop to block the party while they search their belongings for the Lodestone then teleport away.
The bbeg doesn't even exist yet, and I doubt the so called "antagonist" can cast time stop.
As I said earlier in the thread, it's not necessarily about gathering ideas for my own setting. However, consider that Strahd, Tiamat, Vecna, Acererak all have significant weaknesses and limitations. The point of such limitations is to ensure that a victory is possible in these kinds of games. Even if that victory merely takes the form of getting the villain out of the way for a short period or time, or banishing them to another plane, or whatever. In my case, the planes are not easy to pop between...they're pretty impermeable walls and as such spells allowing summoning or crossing planes are disallowed within the setting. The big bad so to speak is effectively then trapped in another plane of existence. Hence, lengthy and resource heavy ritual by an acolyte to try and bring forth the big bad by (magically and metaphorically) demolishing the walls between planes. The antagonist (acolyte) doesn't have Time Stop, instead they had True Polymorph which was quite entertaining. And in this case despite the player characters encountering this NPC way earlier than intended they weren't able to quite piece together how to retrieve the macguffin before the NPC got the drop on them. In fairness at level 7, they managed to hold their own and with a random roll one NPC got Polymorphed into a Xorn which was somewhat entertaining.
The point then, is if the player characters position themselves well enough to do this early, how do other GMs deal with this? As I have also pointed to, such 'victories' or suchlike are possible in pretty much any official, or even GM created adventure. I've known one GM who effectively had the PCs retire into the sunset and live happily ever after - that's the end of their story. The point in the original question was satisfying curiosity.
Sometimes as a GM, I find it interesting to get a read on what other GMs do differently to me.
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There might be something to be said for a dynamic where as DM you can say "guys, you did it. You rendered all of this... /holds up binder/ meaningless because you played it perfectly". Players cheer. DM shrugs. "So you know... I'm gonna have to have someone steal it away to keep the story going, right?"
At some tables, that's a gut punch. They beat the villain. They got the win! How DARE you take that away with cheap hand waves.
At some tables, that's a "rub your hands together and mutter 'bring it on'." moment. Because that group is more about team story telling than the win.
Neither is right or wrong. I won't dunk on either philosophy. Personally I'm more like the latter but I know a lot of groups that would be like the former. For the people I'm currently playing with, the idea that I had done a ton of planning and work to get a campaign set that I couldn't use, would be very stressful. I can think of two players right now taht would out and out INSIST I stole back the McGuffin somehow so we could use that materials I prepped.
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As a DM my question would be... why is my Antagonist just giving up like that?
Defeating them is a nice moment for the party, sure, but I don't see how simply acquiring one of the McGuffins permanently defeats the enemy. The Antagonist didn't have the lodestone before. What's different about a group of wannabe do-gooders getting hold of it now? Why does that completely derail their plan?
You have to consider not just the value of giving the players a win, but how valuable that win is going to feel to them if it comes too easily. If this was all it took to stop the Antagonist... they weren't much of an antagonist, frankly
That said, I can see it being an effective story beat to let the players think the Antagonist has packed it in, only to bring them back down the road, more powerful than before and looking to claim that last lodestone. Or, if you want to get funky with it, have the Antagonist get punished by their master (the BBEG) and cast aside, replaced by a more powerful foe... which potentially sets up the original Antagonist as an extremely untrustworthy ally looking for revenge against their former master (or maybe redemption in their eyes)
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Totally appreciate that point of view.
I once had my party give a macguffin (powerful yadayada artefact of the gods) to a NPC but not tell them what it was. They trusted the NPC absolutely and just told the NPC to go and get lost. They escorted the NPC to a dockside with macguffin in a lead lined box and let the NPC sail off to lose the artefact.
I'll be honest, though I racked my brains I could not figure out for the life of me at the time how the enemy army would be able to retrieve the special magical artefact of religious/cult significance that wasn't twee and formulaic. Of course with hindsight, formulaic doesn't always mean bad. It was also their first adventure as a group so they felt real smart having outfoxed the GM. Good for them.
I think you hit the nail on the head though. My Monday group are entirely different in character to my Saturday group, who are both very different from my FLGS group. Part of the answer is definitely table dependant.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
Some of the other answers offering suggestions on how to deal with it in your world ARE examples of how those DMs might decide to deal with a similar situation in their own world.
When I am world building, I have the general NPCs, their goals and objectives in mind. The NPCs have intentions and plans. These may or may not go as the NPCs expect due to the intervention of the party (or other NPCs - multiple NPC factions with some opposing and some congruent goals is just another plot twist). However, as the DM, as others have pointed out with examples, you are the arbiter of the world building. The party can only be 100% successful at defeating an antagonist IF the DM decides that they will be.
In my case, I try to play NPCs according to their goals, their character and their intelligence. If the party manages to come into possession of a macguffin that an NPC needs then the NPC will either find an alternative or will figure out a way to recover the item. This might not occur for a significant amount of in game time as the antogonist gathers the resources needed to have a reasonable chance of success. Whether that involves creating a fake and substituting it, stealing the original or something else would depend on what the characters decide to do with it. However, in a D&D world, with magic, there are very few ways to make anything 100% secure. There are also many ways to acquire knowledge - various forms of divination, legend lore spells, locate object, locate person, divine communion :) ... the party is known, the object is known ... as long as the antagonist and their followers are alive and the item still exists - nothing is settled unless the DM decides that it will be ... the antagonist and their followers give up OR the DM allows the item to be destroyed OR the DM decides that there is no alternative in all of the multiverse that could not be used as a substitute in this ritual.
So, in my games, if the players find a macguffin that someone needs ... I just let it play out. Actions by the PCs will never end a campaign as long as the NPCs have reasonable alternatives ... and if those NPCs don't ... there are always more NPCs. ie. Campaign ending decisions are up to the DM, character actions can only result in a change in "What might have happened" if the characters or NPCs had made other choices. Neither the future character decisions nor the future NPC decisions are set in stone and both will develop and evolve in response to events in the game.
On the other hand, if the antagonist is weak willed and easily discouraged or the characters somehow make it truly impossible for the antagonist to recover the needed item and there is no substitute possible (all DM decisions) then this particular problem might be resolved and the party will find other stuff to do. However, most of the lynchpin NPCs in my worlds won't necessarily give up so easily.
Genuinely mean this, thank you for pointing this out. It seems bonkers, but I hadn't actually looked at it from that viewpoint. I've been learning of late just how black and white my brain thinks...literally it was only at the very beginning of the year I was formally diagnosed as Autistic (in my very late 30's) and I'm learning that a lot of what I took for granted may not actually be how other people see the world. Hence the original question. My brain did seem to immediately jump on some folks' answers as answering a question different to what I asked, so the perspective really helps.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.