Hi all - first post! I'm finally taking the dive into my own homebrew campaign and I have a lot of (what I think are) great ideas, but I'm struggling to come up with the main/ultimate antagonist for my adventurers. I'm reading up on lots of devils, demons, etc. but I'm not quite sure how I should go about deciding. Does anyone have any tips or insight into how they went about this? Or just anecdotally your favorite supervillain and why? Thanks!
So this is how I feel with creating a campaign. First, I figure out what basic idea I want for my campaign. Second, I think out a good introduction session. Then I think about the villain that fits the setting and information I have already developed.
You don't have to go from level 1 to 20 in one go though, this is a common mistake I see from new DMs. Maybe just start with a simple 1 to 5 campaign, put a few random tidbits here and there, see what interests the player. When you reach the end, have a line for the characters to continue adventuring, or in other words the next campaign. Based on what the characters did in the first campaign and what the players showed interest in, figure out the basic overarching story and figure out how it can logically fit into the previous campaign. If you do it right, your players may never notice there were two campaigns to begin with and think it was all planned from the beginning.
Tracey has it right. Same here, kicking off my first homebrew this weekend coming. I had created the world a couple months ago. Now that we are nearing the beginning of the adventure, I have a map of the direct region and a starting place and an adventure for next weekend with a couple of alternative encounters ready at hand as my guys love to run amok of the DM at times. Beyond that, I have NOTHING. No big baddy, no arch to carry through the following sessions. I just want to get the guys moving, get them telling their story in my world. Next session I will have a couple more places fleshed out. I will also have a better grasp as to what their characters are about so that I can plan hooks down the road that would personally affect the characters. And little by little the big baddy at the end of the road will rear his ugly head and announce through the story that he is the one who will eventually need to be conquered.
But this does not need to be made ready right now, just starting off, not in the next few weeks, perhaps not for a few months. When the game needs that kind of direction, I should have a pretty good idea at that time in which direction to move.
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Thank you. ChrisW
Ones are righteous. And one day, we just might believe it.
Agreed, I would counsel planning it no further than the first story arc - especially if this is a new group.
While I have a very good grasp of the overall conflict going on in my current campaign - that is, I know the "world shaking powers" that are waking up and starting to interact via low-level local pawns only so far - I crafted this conflict out of what the Party seemed to fixate on in the first handful of sessions. OK, the Ranger has aspirations of being a Dragon slayer? One of the "great forces" is going to be Draconic in nature. The Gunslinger/Tinkerer and the Artificer have developed an interest in the construct species in this world, and the artifacts surrounding them? OK, the other major force is going to be the last remnants of the ancient race which created them, hiding out as a group mind in the "software" of that entire race.
But I didn't know any of that until about session 5, and I have no idea how the strokes of the campaign will develop. I have some story ideas about what could occur about level 12 or 13, and I definitely have directions that I think the story would develop if the Players didn't get involved, but I have no idea how it will play out, or how the actions of the Players will warp the unfolding of events.
If you watch Critical Role, look how the last 4-5 sessions totally took the whole campaign into left field and completely changed the nature of the adventure.
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Sometimes the world can just be full of small evils, each with their own narratives. As the characters progress and grow, they discover deeper and darker horrors that tendril out into the everyday lives of others. Are these evils the sole source of pain or awful in the world? Perhaps not - just evil beings living out their evil lives without any good to stop them. The trick is to blend the arcs and narratives to form a progressive story of increasing dangers.
I introduced my main bad guy in the first session (without letting on that the Guard Captain would be the main bad guy) just so they were aware of them as a character to build that tension, and then, like everyone else says, I took some time as we played to determine stuff about the character such as what the evil plan was, how they'd interact with the players individually, what his motivation was, etc.
So, while I agree with everyone saying do the majority of your end game boss planning throughout the game (you'll have plenty of time), you *can* still have a picture in your head of where you'd like the story to end up, and you can include the bad guy in the game to build tension.
That's something I know Matt Coville on YouTube is a proponent of, using the end boss throughout the game to get the players invested. Just don't ever think that something is only going to go down a certain way.
Answering your second question, said bad guy is a survivor from a catastrophic alternate future who created the player's timeline by slipping back through a tear in the fabric of reality and beginning to use his foreknowledge of events to change things as he sees fit. He's causing chaos in the current timeline generating paradox energy from each divergence from his own timeline, which he's eventually going to try and harvest and channel into himself to become a god. Currently he's just a powerful human warrior who has used his foreknowledge to uncover powerful artifacts before they've been discovered, stockpiling them to become as strong as possible, and has some minor time manipulation powers from surviving the time rift.
Answering your second question, said bad guy is a survivor from a catastrophic alternate future who created the player's timeline by slipping back through a tear in the fabric of reality and beginning to use his foreknowledge of events to change things as he sees fit. He's causing chaos in the current timeline generating paradox energy from each divergence from his own timeline, which he's eventually going to try and harvest and channel into himself to become a god. Currently he's just a powerful human warrior who has used his foreknowledge to uncover powerful artifacts before they've been discovered, stockpiling them to become as strong as possible, and has some minor time manipulation powers from surviving the time rift.
Thanks all! This is helpful. I guess I'm putting a bit too much pressure on myself to have this all figured out now.
Just out of curiosity, what HAVE you used in finished (or nearly finished) campaigns as your final bad guy?
First story arc for my players finished about 3 months ago and it was a doozy! It's a long story (2 years), but I'll keep it brief:
The group found an ancient shrine to a lost diety.
A strange druid threatened them for no reason as they were leaving Talmond.
They found a were-rat seeming to have connections to the druid in Narthen.
They made friends with a dog while fighting the were-rat.
They found a piece of an artifact that the druids were looking for.
In Whitebridge the dog led them to a magical circlet
They fought giant wolf headed skeletons and lost the dog in the battle (the circlet was stuck on it's neck)
They traveled to Iron Haven, the Dwarven kingdom, only to find out the artifacts were near.
They saw a boy they once saved outside the kingdom, tried to save him and an Elemental tried to carry him off
The elemental was touched by the warlock, the warlock recalled that it was the same mind as the dog
The elemental shapeshifted into the form of the druid that had threatened them (2 years of gaming by this time)
**the players were so shocked at the double betrayal that they were actually angry with me**
Party lost the fight with the druids, all but one was captured
Party ended up in Pinehurst in the Southern most part of the continent
Party learned of camp with orcs and plans to destroy technology
Party learned that the female druid was a priestess of Vecna and the druid/dog was actually undead
Killed the priestess, saved a dryad's forest, became honorary members of Orc tribe, obtained 2 artifacts, and a few magical items.
All this in about 2 years worth of gaming, and I'm leaving out sidequests, character arcs and other information. That major arc was so well worth the twists, the double betrayal and the reveal that the female "druid" was the actual baddie all along was fun to watch. The players really enjoyed it.
The best part: they're only level 8 and I'm starting on the "season 2" baddie! Assuming all goes well this will lead into the final arc where they'll see how many different things tie in to each other in ways that they'd never imagined!
I always come up with my villains at the start and then build the campaign based on what they are trying to accomplish as the story progresses. Not disagreeing with anyone who does it different, that's just how it's always worked for me.
The first villain I developed for a live campaign was an angel, a solar of Tyr that had grown resentful of the power and prestige the gods held--compared with what little action he ever witnessed them take. He saw them as figureheads undeserving of the responsibilities they had abdicated. So he plotted to take away all of their power indirectly... by annihilating their worshippers in the mortal plane.
Another was a spin on Dendar the Night Serpent. I rewrote her as an ancient illithid old god matriarch that entered mortal worlds and slowly converted them into newborn old gods. I had a second character, an illithilich, that had been preparing for her arrival for millenia, and he almost unintentionally took her place as the main antagonist--because he was more local than a massive serpent that blotted out half the sky.
(That campaign had a LOT of Intelligence saves and stuns. My players never forgave me.)
The most recent was another angel, the archangel Michael, whose battle and subsequent fall in the War of Angels created the first vampires (by way of a demonic blood curse). In order to protect mortals from the true horrors of the curse, he bound his body to a rock to contain its full power... and the gods left him there. Over time his passion gave way to anger and then hate. He broke free and bound the curse to serve his own will: exacting a toll on mortals for the years he had protected them and then using their deaths to renew the War of Angels.
Trying something different in my current campaign, but I can't disclose it yet. My players are lurkers here. The punks.
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Hi all - first post! I'm finally taking the dive into my own homebrew campaign and I have a lot of (what I think are) great ideas, but I'm struggling to come up with the main/ultimate antagonist for my adventurers. I'm reading up on lots of devils, demons, etc. but I'm not quite sure how I should go about deciding. Does anyone have any tips or insight into how they went about this? Or just anecdotally your favorite supervillain and why? Thanks!
DM - Above & Below
So this is how I feel with creating a campaign. First, I figure out what basic idea I want for my campaign. Second, I think out a good introduction session. Then I think about the villain that fits the setting and information I have already developed.
You don't have to go from level 1 to 20 in one go though, this is a common mistake I see from new DMs. Maybe just start with a simple 1 to 5 campaign, put a few random tidbits here and there, see what interests the player. When you reach the end, have a line for the characters to continue adventuring, or in other words the next campaign. Based on what the characters did in the first campaign and what the players showed interest in, figure out the basic overarching story and figure out how it can logically fit into the previous campaign. If you do it right, your players may never notice there were two campaigns to begin with and think it was all planned from the beginning.
Tracey has it right. Same here, kicking off my first homebrew this weekend coming. I had created the world a couple months ago. Now that we are nearing the beginning of the adventure, I have a map of the direct region and a starting place and an adventure for next weekend with a couple of alternative encounters ready at hand as my guys love to run amok of the DM at times. Beyond that, I have NOTHING. No big baddy, no arch to carry through the following sessions. I just want to get the guys moving, get them telling their story in my world. Next session I will have a couple more places fleshed out. I will also have a better grasp as to what their characters are about so that I can plan hooks down the road that would personally affect the characters. And little by little the big baddy at the end of the road will rear his ugly head and announce through the story that he is the one who will eventually need to be conquered.
But this does not need to be made ready right now, just starting off, not in the next few weeks, perhaps not for a few months. When the game needs that kind of direction, I should have a pretty good idea at that time in which direction to move.
Thank you.
ChrisW
Ones are righteous. And one day, we just might believe it.
Agreed, I would counsel planning it no further than the first story arc - especially if this is a new group.
While I have a very good grasp of the overall conflict going on in my current campaign - that is, I know the "world shaking powers" that are waking up and starting to interact via low-level local pawns only so far - I crafted this conflict out of what the Party seemed to fixate on in the first handful of sessions. OK, the Ranger has aspirations of being a Dragon slayer? One of the "great forces" is going to be Draconic in nature. The Gunslinger/Tinkerer and the Artificer have developed an interest in the construct species in this world, and the artifacts surrounding them? OK, the other major force is going to be the last remnants of the ancient race which created them, hiding out as a group mind in the "software" of that entire race.
But I didn't know any of that until about session 5, and I have no idea how the strokes of the campaign will develop. I have some story ideas about what could occur about level 12 or 13, and I definitely have directions that I think the story would develop if the Players didn't get involved, but I have no idea how it will play out, or how the actions of the Players will warp the unfolding of events.
If you watch Critical Role, look how the last 4-5 sessions totally took the whole campaign into left field and completely changed the nature of the adventure.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
Sometimes the world can just be full of small evils, each with their own narratives. As the characters progress and grow, they discover deeper and darker horrors that tendril out into the everyday lives of others. Are these evils the sole source of pain or awful in the world? Perhaps not - just evil beings living out their evil lives without any good to stop them. The trick is to blend the arcs and narratives to form a progressive story of increasing dangers.
Thanks all! This is helpful. I guess I'm putting a bit too much pressure on myself to have this all figured out now.
Just out of curiosity, what HAVE you used in finished (or nearly finished) campaigns as your final bad guy?
DM - Above & Below
I introduced my main bad guy in the first session (without letting on that the Guard Captain would be the main bad guy) just so they were aware of them as a character to build that tension, and then, like everyone else says, I took some time as we played to determine stuff about the character such as what the evil plan was, how they'd interact with the players individually, what his motivation was, etc.
So, while I agree with everyone saying do the majority of your end game boss planning throughout the game (you'll have plenty of time), you *can* still have a picture in your head of where you'd like the story to end up, and you can include the bad guy in the game to build tension.
That's something I know Matt Coville on YouTube is a proponent of, using the end boss throughout the game to get the players invested. Just don't ever think that something is only going to go down a certain way.
Answering your second question, said bad guy is a survivor from a catastrophic alternate future who created the player's timeline by slipping back through a tear in the fabric of reality and beginning to use his foreknowledge of events to change things as he sees fit. He's causing chaos in the current timeline generating paradox energy from each divergence from his own timeline, which he's eventually going to try and harvest and channel into himself to become a god. Currently he's just a powerful human warrior who has used his foreknowledge to uncover powerful artifacts before they've been discovered, stockpiling them to become as strong as possible, and has some minor time manipulation powers from surviving the time rift.
Haha, I love it! That's awesome.
DM - Above & Below
First story arc for my players finished about 3 months ago and it was a doozy! It's a long story (2 years), but I'll keep it brief:
All this in about 2 years worth of gaming, and I'm leaving out sidequests, character arcs and other information. That major arc was so well worth the twists, the double betrayal and the reveal that the female "druid" was the actual baddie all along was fun to watch. The players really enjoyed it.
The best part: they're only level 8 and I'm starting on the "season 2" baddie! Assuming all goes well this will lead into the final arc where they'll see how many different things tie in to each other in ways that they'd never imagined!
I always come up with my villains at the start and then build the campaign based on what they are trying to accomplish as the story progresses. Not disagreeing with anyone who does it different, that's just how it's always worked for me.
The first villain I developed for a live campaign was an angel, a solar of Tyr that had grown resentful of the power and prestige the gods held--compared with what little action he ever witnessed them take. He saw them as figureheads undeserving of the responsibilities they had abdicated. So he plotted to take away all of their power indirectly... by annihilating their worshippers in the mortal plane.
Another was a spin on Dendar the Night Serpent. I rewrote her as an ancient illithid old god matriarch that entered mortal worlds and slowly converted them into newborn old gods. I had a second character, an illithilich, that had been preparing for her arrival for millenia, and he almost unintentionally took her place as the main antagonist--because he was more local than a massive serpent that blotted out half the sky.
(That campaign had a LOT of Intelligence saves and stuns. My players never forgave me.)
The most recent was another angel, the archangel Michael, whose battle and subsequent fall in the War of Angels created the first vampires (by way of a demonic blood curse). In order to protect mortals from the true horrors of the curse, he bound his body to a rock to contain its full power... and the gods left him there. Over time his passion gave way to anger and then hate. He broke free and bound the curse to serve his own will: exacting a toll on mortals for the years he had protected them and then using their deaths to renew the War of Angels.
Trying something different in my current campaign, but I can't disclose it yet. My players are lurkers here. The punks.