So I still consider myself a fairly new DM (I’ve been dming since 2015, but I’ve only been doing long running campaigns for about two and a half years) and I want to introduce a villain into my campaign that is heavily based on Negan from The Walking Dead. My biggest concern is making sure that I can pull it off in a way that doesn’t rub my party the wrong way.
In my campaign the players are 1st year students at an academy for monster hunters. The party have befriended many of the other 1st hunters who are npcs. How I would set this up is that I would have some members of this Negan-like villain try to take over a city for him. This city currently doesn’t have a lord because he was eaten by a false hydra so they wouldn’t be removing anybody from the throne, but this city is the home of one of the PCs and I know this will rub his character the wrong way. After they stop these guys, I’m almost positive the party will just kill them but they may also interrogate them and even send one back as a messenger. This bbeg will then send another group to deal with the party and the party will probably be able to deal with them pretty easily. After this, I’m going to set up a scenario where all the 1st year students are together in the wilderness somewhere in my world. At this point another group of this bbeg’s henchmen will attack and towards the end of the combat, I’ll have a small army surround them. Combat will no longer be a reasonable solution and this small army will arrange the PCs and their friendly npcs in a circle. At this point the negan-like bbeg will make his entrance and things will play out similar to Negans introduction in The Walking Dead. I will not be killing the PCs (that would definitely rub the players the wrong way, and I wouldn’t want to allow a PC to die in such a way) but I will be rolling a D6 to randomly decide which of the npcs he’s going to kill.
I’m wondering if I could get some feedback on this. How would you feel if you had a DM who introduced a bbeg in this way? Is there something you would do to improve this? Is this so awful that I should just completely scrap it?
Reproducing well-known scenes from a TV show or movie is always a crapshoot. If players have seen it, too, they always want to do something different. Outside of that, I like the notion of building up to a big intro scene.
I'd spend more time on motivation and plans. Why are these guys trying to take over the city? Is it because there's no lord and the place seems to be in turmoil and Negan is going to 'save' it through strength?
Negan's a good character because he lasts a long time and builds up relationships with the sympathetic characters. How are you going to keep the PCs from cutting his head off and wearing it around as a hat?
For me bringing situations from popular fiction has had mixed results. However, in the past I’ve done so in big cinematic ways where I describe the events in great detail without giving the players enough opportunity to react to those events. My group and I had a very productive discussion about this, and most of the times they didn’t enjoy these scenes borrowed from fiction was because of that.
I was planning on that being his reasoning for taking over this city. He would be looking for settlements to control, preferably ones with few neighboring settlements as having control of a lot of cities near each other would allow them to interact easily and possibly stage an uprising. He would takeover these settlements to grow his numbers and make the world stronger by making its people stronger.
As far as preventing the players from just outright killing him, I can’t guarantee that they wouldn’t but I’ve come up with some ways to discourage them from doing so. The party is already pretty powerful and 3 out of the 4 of them have some kind of legendary item. One reason why they won’t want to initially kill him is the fact before he even shows up the group will have been forced to surrender just because of the numbers they are facing. When Negan shows up he will, just as he does in the show, explain his rules and his reasoning. He’ll explain that the reason he’s going to kill someone is because they killed his men and then when he sent men to kill them for killing his men they killed more of his men just like in the show. He’s also going to casually mention how he’s already done this same thing with other powerful factions that the party has run into. He’s also going to tell the party that he would like to schedule a meeting with the hunter squad captains, their headmistress, and their grandmaster, all powerful npcs within this hunter faction. And he’ll tell them that he’s going to explain the same things to them and instruct them that they now take orders from him, or he will do the same thing with them: get them in a circle and randomly decide who to kill. The party won’t know whether he’s actually powerful enough to do so, but the initial fear would I think with my particular players be enough of a deterrent to at least buy him some time to become an interesting villain
One of the PCs names is Sedric, so if I go with this I’d be able to use one of my favorite lines 😂 “Have you heard the one about the stupid prick named ‘Ric who thought he knew shit but didn’t know shit and got everyone he gave a shit about killed. It’s about you” 😂
My husband and I have this thing about "saving time" when coming up with writing content: the more popular the context of the content that we are borrowing from, the more that we change things around so that it is unrecognizable to the players. Even if the context of the content is a fairly obscure cultural reference, we still change things around enough to make it our own. We always try to take some pride in making it semi-original intellectual property, so to speak. Of course, if we are using published modules and published gaming materials for a current gaming system, those are obviously exceptions. So, all the advice above about motivations and such for a villain are spot on. Keeping the name and exact tactics might be a weakness.... [although I have not seen the entire season 9 and 10 or read the comics] … I'm under the impression from season 8 and a little of 9, that Negan can be defeated. It gets pretty brutal in TWD, so, if you as a GM plan on pushing them in that direction, expect serious brutality as a response. They will not hold back in any way. It will get ugly really fast. One of the things that The Talking Dead were constantly discussing were the moral gray lines of how both sides were almost indistinguishable any more. At times, the "good guys" were crossing so many lines, that one even questioned if they were still the "good guys" any more, other than the fact they were characters the fans were invested in. It got to a point where fans were invested in both sides almost equally. The characters were that well developed and had rich backgrounds that fans could get behind.
So, when you develop NPC's, make sure they are rich and have depth to them. Players want to feel like they know who their characters are interacting with.... even the "bad guys".
Thank you Stephanie and Bob for all of that advice. I’m certainly planning on changing his name and some of the details about the character to make it somewhat my own creation. I do anticipate things becoming pretty brutal and I believe that the players will act in the same way, I think, based off the way that my players think carefully about their characters actions and motivations, that I will be very rewarding for them to take the campaign in such a direction for a while. As far as them defeating him, I think it’s going to be really rewarding for them to find a way to defeat them. They’ll definitely have to find a way to separate him from his group as on his own he won’t be too powerful, most of his power will come from a finite amount of magic items and his followers.
So I had them meet four of his group who had come to town to see about taking over. They asked the party who was in charge and upon finding out that nobody was at the moment, they asked for directions the the former lords palace. The PCs ignored them initially, As they were more worried about the false Hydra. But after dealing with the false Hydra they had to return to the Palace to have a meeting and when they got there they noticed that the guards were not there and assumed that they had been killed. They asked the four individuals what their intentions were and discovered that they were trying to claim the building for their leader. Sedric, the PC who formerly lived in the city killed the first one and Told the barbarian to spare one of them. The barbarian didn’t account for the fact that these were minions and attacked all three of them and killed them instantly. They then investigated and tried to find the guards bodies And realize that they were actually behind the building drinking and had been bribed. So I’ve started to set this up and it actually went pretty well
It's fun, when the final unveiling of the PC's actions all along... are actually so morally gray.... that when they are recounted back to them in a nice check list.... that even they start to wonder.... how far did they cross the line... and did they bring this judgement day on themselves.... some might even start to beg for mercy.... what can they do to fix things.... and just not want the consequences that they can only imagine are about to come their way.
So I still consider myself a fairly new DM (I’ve been dming since 2015, but I’ve only been doing long running campaigns for about two and a half years) and I want to introduce a villain into my campaign that is heavily based on Negan from The Walking Dead. My biggest concern is making sure that I can pull it off in a way that doesn’t rub my party the wrong way.
In my campaign the players are 1st year students at an academy for monster hunters. The party have befriended many of the other 1st hunters who are npcs. How I would set this up is that I would have some members of this Negan-like villain try to take over a city for him. This city currently doesn’t have a lord because he was eaten by a false hydra so they wouldn’t be removing anybody from the throne, but this city is the home of one of the PCs and I know this will rub his character the wrong way. After they stop these guys, I’m almost positive the party will just kill them but they may also interrogate them and even send one back as a messenger. This bbeg will then send another group to deal with the party and the party will probably be able to deal with them pretty easily. After this, I’m going to set up a scenario where all the 1st year students are together in the wilderness somewhere in my world. At this point another group of this bbeg’s henchmen will attack and towards the end of the combat, I’ll have a small army surround them. Combat will no longer be a reasonable solution and this small army will arrange the PCs and their friendly npcs in a circle. At this point the negan-like bbeg will make his entrance and things will play out similar to Negans introduction in The Walking Dead. I will not be killing the PCs (that would definitely rub the players the wrong way, and I wouldn’t want to allow a PC to die in such a way) but I will be rolling a D6 to randomly decide which of the npcs he’s going to kill.
I’m wondering if I could get some feedback on this. How would you feel if you had a DM who introduced a bbeg in this way? Is there something you would do to improve this? Is this so awful that I should just completely scrap it?
Reproducing well-known scenes from a TV show or movie is always a crapshoot. If players have seen it, too, they always want to do something different. Outside of that, I like the notion of building up to a big intro scene.
I'd spend more time on motivation and plans. Why are these guys trying to take over the city? Is it because there's no lord and the place seems to be in turmoil and Negan is going to 'save' it through strength?
Negan's a good character because he lasts a long time and builds up relationships with the sympathetic characters. How are you going to keep the PCs from cutting his head off and wearing it around as a hat?
The perfect person to fight Negan would be Pedro Cerrano, the paladin of Jobu who wields a bat that can smite anything except for curveballs.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
For me bringing situations from popular fiction has had mixed results. However, in the past I’ve done so in big cinematic ways where I describe the events in great detail without giving the players enough opportunity to react to those events. My group and I had a very productive discussion about this, and most of the times they didn’t enjoy these scenes borrowed from fiction was because of that.
I was planning on that being his reasoning for taking over this city. He would be looking for settlements to control, preferably ones with few neighboring settlements as having control of a lot of cities near each other would allow them to interact easily and possibly stage an uprising. He would takeover these settlements to grow his numbers and make the world stronger by making its people stronger.
As far as preventing the players from just outright killing him, I can’t guarantee that they wouldn’t but I’ve come up with some ways to discourage them from doing so. The party is already pretty powerful and 3 out of the 4 of them have some kind of legendary item. One reason why they won’t want to initially kill him is the fact before he even shows up the group will have been forced to surrender just because of the numbers they are facing. When Negan shows up he will, just as he does in the show, explain his rules and his reasoning. He’ll explain that the reason he’s going to kill someone is because they killed his men and then when he sent men to kill them for killing his men they killed more of his men just like in the show. He’s also going to casually mention how he’s already done this same thing with other powerful factions that the party has run into. He’s also going to tell the party that he would like to schedule a meeting with the hunter squad captains, their headmistress, and their grandmaster, all powerful npcs within this hunter faction. And he’ll tell them that he’s going to explain the same things to them and instruct them that they now take orders from him, or he will do the same thing with them: get them in a circle and randomly decide who to kill. The party won’t know whether he’s actually powerful enough to do so, but the initial fear would I think with my particular players be enough of a deterrent to at least buy him some time to become an interesting villain
One of the PCs names is Sedric, so if I go with this I’d be able to use one of my favorite lines 😂 “Have you heard the one about the stupid prick named ‘Ric who thought he knew shit but didn’t know shit and got everyone he gave a shit about killed. It’s about you” 😂
My husband and I have this thing about "saving time" when coming up with writing content: the more popular the context of the content that we are borrowing from, the more that we change things around so that it is unrecognizable to the players. Even if the context of the content is a fairly obscure cultural reference, we still change things around enough to make it our own. We always try to take some pride in making it semi-original intellectual property, so to speak. Of course, if we are using published modules and published gaming materials for a current gaming system, those are obviously exceptions. So, all the advice above about motivations and such for a villain are spot on. Keeping the name and exact tactics might be a weakness.... [although I have not seen the entire season 9 and 10 or read the comics] … I'm under the impression from season 8 and a little of 9, that Negan can be defeated. It gets pretty brutal in TWD, so, if you as a GM plan on pushing them in that direction, expect serious brutality as a response. They will not hold back in any way. It will get ugly really fast. One of the things that The Talking Dead were constantly discussing were the moral gray lines of how both sides were almost indistinguishable any more. At times, the "good guys" were crossing so many lines, that one even questioned if they were still the "good guys" any more, other than the fact they were characters the fans were invested in. It got to a point where fans were invested in both sides almost equally. The characters were that well developed and had rich backgrounds that fans could get behind.
So, when you develop NPC's, make sure they are rich and have depth to them. Players want to feel like they know who their characters are interacting with.... even the "bad guys".
Stephanie and Bob
Thank you Stephanie and Bob for all of that advice. I’m certainly planning on changing his name and some of the details about the character to make it somewhat my own creation. I do anticipate things becoming pretty brutal and I believe that the players will act in the same way, I think, based off the way that my players think carefully about their characters actions and motivations, that I will be very rewarding for them to take the campaign in such a direction for a while. As far as them defeating him, I think it’s going to be really rewarding for them to find a way to defeat them. They’ll definitely have to find a way to separate him from his group as on his own he won’t be too powerful, most of his power will come from a finite amount of magic items and his followers.
So I had them meet four of his group who had come to town to see about taking over. They asked the party who was in charge and upon finding out that nobody was at the moment, they asked for directions the the former lords palace. The PCs ignored them initially, As they were more worried about the false Hydra. But after dealing with the false Hydra they had to return to the Palace to have a meeting and when they got there they noticed that the guards were not there and assumed that they had been killed. They asked the four individuals what their intentions were and discovered that they were trying to claim the building for their leader. Sedric, the PC who formerly lived in the city killed the first one and Told the barbarian to spare one of them. The barbarian didn’t account for the fact that these were minions and attacked all three of them and killed them instantly. They then investigated and tried to find the guards bodies And realize that they were actually behind the building drinking and had been bribed. So I’ve started to set this up and it actually went pretty well
It's fun, when the final unveiling of the PC's actions all along... are actually so morally gray.... that when they are recounted back to them in a nice check list.... that even they start to wonder.... how far did they cross the line... and did they bring this judgement day on themselves.... some might even start to beg for mercy.... what can they do to fix things.... and just not want the consequences that they can only imagine are about to come their way.
I know I'm 5 years late, but here is your crown, my king. Perfect comment!