What do they want? What about some kind of physisical tribute (dark souls covenants)?
Based on the small amount of info you provided on the question you want to be answered, I'm going to assume that you are asking what the aims of common Great Old One patrons.
The Great Old Ones can be alien beings from the Far Realm (as you already know from the PHP). Let's take Great Cthulhu for example. Great Cthulhu was the creation of early 1900's author Howard Phillips Lovecraft from the short story The Call of Cthulhu. Cthulhu wishes to conquer the world by manipulating the minds of humans and causing him to worship him.
But Great Old Ones can be any alien being or elder god. Each one has its own goals. A forgotten deity could want to get more people to worship him/her.
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Devious serpent folk devoid of compassion, yuan-ti manipulate other creatures by arousing their doubts, evoking their fears, and elevating and crushing their hopes. From remote temples in jungles, swamps, and deserts, the yuan-ti plot to supplant and dominate all other races and to make themselves gods.
Or they could not care. One of the descriptions in the phb is that your character is nothing but a speck of dust to them, gone in the blink of an eye, and they never bother to notice you. You learn your magic by studying them (and most likely loosing your mind in the process) but you never actually interact with them.
The GOO can really be anything with any kind of goal, unlike say a Fiend who has a specific outlook already baised on the fact he's either a demon or a devil.
The GOO patrons are a bit weird compared to other warlock patrons, for the simple reason that most patrons aren't gods, while the GOO ones are.
* Cthulhu, when introduced into D&D lore, is noted as the Eldest of aboliths. Dagon, another lovecraft figure, is an obyriths demon lords Both serve as "gods" of the aboliths.
*Ghaunadar, called That Which Lurks;, and Tharizdun, the Chained God, are a pair of dieties from different settings (Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms, respectively). I've always been under the impression that they're just different names for the same general idea - an evil god driven insane by contact with the Far Realm, and somehow associated with oozes and the Elemental Evils. They're basically captive, telepathic gods that 1) want to be freed and 2) reshape reality to fit their deranged views. Now, they're not the same being, due to different portfolios and histories, but they have been exchanged for one another when moving adventures from Greyhawk to Forgotten Realms more than once.
* Zargon the Returner is supposedly the ex-ruler of the Nine Hells before Asmodeus, but otherwise acts a lot like Ghaunadar and Tharizdun for the Mystara setting.
* The Night Serpent is basically the Midgard Serpent / Apophis that eats dreams and nightmares. Like many serpent myths, Dendar is destined to be a harbinger of the end of the world and eat the sun/world. Creating nightmares to feed, or hastening the end of the world so can feed, or some other "let me feed" strain is the motivation here.
Most of these examples are just different variations of the "insane, captive god trying to end/reshape the world."
Some other options include:
* Back in 4e, there was a rather unique Star Pact granter (the precursor to GOO Patrons) called Ulban. Ulban was a shooting start from the future who had witnessed the end of the world (or at least its complete transformation into something unrecognizable) at the hands of Elder Evils and the Far Realm agents, and is using its power to try and preserve, rather than destroy or reshape.
* Exposure to Elder Brains, beholders, aboliths, or kracken cults. In Eberron, there are dream creatures from one of the planes that can make people into psions, this would be similar. Exposure to telepathic dream-based creatures that still slumber and accidentily leak into your mind is often used as a Patron, and the dreams guide you.
* Gith training. They have their own agenda, often involving hunting their "opposite" race, hunting mindflayers, or lost artifacts of their people (*cough*silver swords*cough*).
* Always thought this was something the Yuan-ti and their serpentine gods would get in on, matches their standard agenda.
If HP Lovecraft is too heavy for GOO inspiration, then a couple of series by William King are a lot lighter : the Terrarch tetralogy, starting with Death's Angels, and the Kormak Saga, which is a very pulp (deliberately) of Conan and Druss' lovechild. Both have the GOO quite strongly in the background (yeah, that sounds like a misnomer to me too!)
My take is basically “having influence on the material plane” and “feeding off of secret knowledge”, so my character in one way or another is helping the GOO to grow in power.
One of the great things about the GOOs, is that the player may never have a concrete or firm ideanof what their patron wants. They could occasionally be asked to do something seemingly random that might be part of a long term plot of theirs.
Sometimes keeping something mysterious and in the dark helps to build the suspense and alieness that should be around the GOO.
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What do they want? What about some kind of physisical tribute (dark souls covenants)?
Devious serpent folk devoid of compassion, yuan-ti manipulate other creatures by arousing their doubts, evoking their fears, and elevating and crushing their hopes. From remote temples in jungles, swamps, and deserts, the yuan-ti plot to supplant and dominate all other races and to make themselves gods.
Or they could not care. One of the descriptions in the phb is that your character is nothing but a speck of dust to them, gone in the blink of an eye, and they never bother to notice you. You learn your magic by studying them (and most likely loosing your mind in the process) but you never actually interact with them.
The GOO can really be anything with any kind of goal, unlike say a Fiend who has a specific outlook already baised on the fact he's either a demon or a devil.
They want you to send me money. Via Paypal.
Plundered.Tombs@hereshoping.com
Roleplaying since Runequest.
The GOO patrons are a bit weird compared to other warlock patrons, for the simple reason that most patrons aren't gods, while the GOO ones are.
* Cthulhu, when introduced into D&D lore, is noted as the Eldest of aboliths. Dagon, another lovecraft figure, is an obyriths demon lords Both serve as "gods" of the aboliths.
*Ghaunadar, called That Which Lurks;, and Tharizdun, the Chained God, are a pair of dieties from different settings (Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms, respectively). I've always been under the impression that they're just different names for the same general idea - an evil god driven insane by contact with the Far Realm, and somehow associated with oozes and the Elemental Evils. They're basically captive, telepathic gods that 1) want to be freed and 2) reshape reality to fit their deranged views. Now, they're not the same being, due to different portfolios and histories, but they have been exchanged for one another when moving adventures from Greyhawk to Forgotten Realms more than once.
* Zargon the Returner is supposedly the ex-ruler of the Nine Hells before Asmodeus, but otherwise acts a lot like Ghaunadar and Tharizdun for the Mystara setting.
* The Night Serpent is basically the Midgard Serpent / Apophis that eats dreams and nightmares. Like many serpent myths, Dendar is destined to be a harbinger of the end of the world and eat the sun/world. Creating nightmares to feed, or hastening the end of the world so can feed, or some other "let me feed" strain is the motivation here.
Most of these examples are just different variations of the "insane, captive god trying to end/reshape the world."
Some other options include:
* Back in 4e, there was a rather unique Star Pact granter (the precursor to GOO Patrons) called Ulban. Ulban was a shooting start from the future who had witnessed the end of the world (or at least its complete transformation into something unrecognizable) at the hands of Elder Evils and the Far Realm agents, and is using its power to try and preserve, rather than destroy or reshape.
* Exposure to Elder Brains, beholders, aboliths, or kracken cults. In Eberron, there are dream creatures from one of the planes that can make people into psions, this would be similar. Exposure to telepathic dream-based creatures that still slumber and accidentily leak into your mind is often used as a Patron, and the dreams guide you.
* Gith training. They have their own agenda, often involving hunting their "opposite" race, hunting mindflayers, or lost artifacts of their people (*cough*silver swords*cough*).
* Always thought this was something the Yuan-ti and their serpentine gods would get in on, matches their standard agenda.
If HP Lovecraft is too heavy for GOO inspiration, then a couple of series by William King are a lot lighter : the Terrarch tetralogy, starting with Death's Angels, and the Kormak Saga, which is a very pulp (deliberately) of Conan and Druss' lovechild. Both have the GOO quite strongly in the background (yeah, that sounds like a misnomer to me too!)
Roleplaying since Runequest.
My take is basically “having influence on the material plane” and “feeding off of secret knowledge”, so my character in one way or another is helping the GOO to grow in power.
One of the great things about the GOOs, is that the player may never have a concrete or firm ideanof what their patron wants. They could occasionally be asked to do something seemingly random that might be part of a long term plot of theirs.
Sometimes keeping something mysterious and in the dark helps to build the suspense and alieness that should be around the GOO.