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dailyadventureprompts · 3 months

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Dm Tip: Playing the Villain/ Guidelines for "Evil" Campaigns

I've never liked the idea of running an evil game, despite how often I've had people in my inbox asking how I'd go about it. I'm all about that zero-to-hero heroic fantasy not only because I'm a goodie twoshoes IRL but because the narrative-gameplay premise that d&d is built around falls apart if the party is a bunch of killhappy murder hobos. Not only would I get bored narrating such a game and indulging the sort of players who demands the freedom to kill and torture at will (I've had those before and they don't get invited back to my table), but the whole conceit of a party falls through when the obviously villainous player characters face their first real decision point and attempt to kill eachother because cooperation is a thing that goodguys do.

Then I realized I was going about it all wrong.

The problem was I had started out playing d&d with assholes, those "murder and torture" clowns who wanted to play grand-theft-auto in the worlds I'd created and ignore the story in favour of seeing how much unchallenged chaos they could create. They set my expectations for what an evil campaign was, and I spent the rest of my time developing as a dungeonmaster thinking " I Don't want any part of that"

But what would an evil campaign look like for my playgroup of emotionally healthy friends who understand character nuance? What would I need to change about the fundamental conceit of d&d adventures to refocus the game on the badguys while still following a similar enough narrative-gameplay premise to a hero game? How do we make that sort of game relatable? What sort of power/play fantasy can we indulge in without going off the deepend?

TLDR: In an evil campaign your players aren't playing the villains, they're the MINIONS, they're mooks, henchmen, goons, lackeys. They're the disposable underlings of uncaring overseers who have nothing but ill intent towards them and the world at large.

Where as in a hero game the party is given the freedom to challenge and overthrow corrupt systems, in an evil game the party is suck as part of that corrupt system, forced to bend and compromise and sacrifice in order to survive. The fantasy is one of escaping that corrupt system, of biding your time just long enough to find an opening, find the right leverage, then tossing a molitov behind you on the way out.

Fundamentally it's the fantasy of escaping a shitty job by bringing the whole company down and punching your asshole boss in the face for good measure.

Below the cut I'm going to get into more nuance about how to build these kinds of narratives, also feel free to check out my evil party tag for campaigns and adventures that fit with the theme.

Designing a campaign made to be played from the perspective of the badguys requires you to take a different angle on quest and narrative design. It’s not so simple as swapping out the traditionally good team for the traditionally bad team and vis versa, having your party cut through a dungeon filled with against angel worshiping holyfolk in place of demon worshipping cultists etc.

Instead, the primary villain of the first arc of the campaign should be your party’s boss. Not their direct overseer mind you, more CEO compared to the middle managers your party will be dealing with for the first leg of their journey. We should know a bit about that boss villain’s goals and a few hints at their motivation, enough for the party to understand that their actions are directly contributing to that inevitable doom.

“Gee, everyone knows lord Heldred swore revenge after being banished from the king’s council for dabbling in dark magic. I don’t know WHY he has us searching for these buried ancient tablets, but I bet it’s not good”

Next, you need a manager, someone who’s a part of the evil organization that the party directly interfaces with. The manager should have something over the party, whether it be threats of force, blackmail, economic dependency… anything that keeps the antiheroes on the manager’s leash. Whether you make your manager an obvious asshole or manipulative charmer, its important to maintain this power imbalance: The party arn’t going to be rewarded when the boss-villain’s plan goes off, the manager is, but the manager’s usefulness to the boss-villain is contingent on the work they’re getting the party to do. This tension puts us on a collison course to our first big narrative beat: do the party get tired of the manager’s abuse and run away? Do they kill the manager and get the attention of the upper ranks of the villainous organization? Do they work really hard at their jobs despite the obvious warning signs and outlive their usefulness? Do they upstage their manager and end up getting promoted, becoming rivals for the boss-villain’s favor?

Building this tension up and then seeing how it breaks makes for a great first arc, as it lets your party determine among themselves when enough is enough, and set their goals for what bettering the situation looks like.

As for designing those adventures, you’ll doubtlessly realize that since the party arn’t playing heroes you’ll need to change how the setup, conflict, and payoff work. They’re still protagonists, we want them to succeed after all, but we want to hammer home that they’re doing bad things without expecting them to jump directly to warcrimes.

Up to no good: The basic building block of any evil campaign, our party need to do something skullduggerous without alerting the authorities. This of course is going to be easier said than done, especially when the task spins out of control or proves far more daunting than first expected. The best the party can hope for is to make a distraction and then escape in the chaos, but it will very likely end with them being pursued in some manner (bounties, hunters, vengeful npcs and the like). Use this setup early in a campaign so you have an external force gunning for your party during the remainder of their adventures.

Dog eat dog: It’s sort of cheating to excuse your party’s villainous actions by having them go up against another villain who happens to be worse than they are. The trick is that we’re not going after this secondary group of outlaws because they’re bad, we’re doing it because they’ve either got something the boss wants, or they’re edging in on the boss’s turf. This sort of plotline sees the party disrupting or taking advantage of a rival’s operation, then taking over that operation and risking becoming just as villainous as that rival happened to be. This can also be combined with an “Up to no good” plot where both groups of miscreants need to step carefully without alerting an outside threat.

The lesser evil: This kind of plot sees your party sent out to deal with an antagonistic force that’s a threat not only to the boss’s plans but to everyone in general. In doing so they might end up fighting alongside some heroes, or accidentally doing good in the long run. This not only gives your party a taste of heroism, but gives them something in their back pocket that could be used to challenge the boss-villain in the future.

The double cross: In order to get what they want, the party need to “play along” with a traditional heroic narrative long enough to get their goal and then ditch. You have them play along specifically so they can get a taste of what life would be like if they weren't bastards, as well as to make friends with the NPCs inevitably going to betray. This is to make it hurt when you have the manager yank the leash and force the party to decide between finishing the job , or risk striking out on their own and playing hero in the short term while having just made a long term enemy. This is sort of plot is best used an adventure or two into the campaign, as the party will have already committed some villainous deeds that one good act can’t blot out.

Next, lets talk about the sort of scenarios you should be looking to avoid when writing an evil campaign:

Around the time I started playing d&d there was this trend of obtusely binary morality systems in videogames which claimed to offer choice but really only existed to let the player chose between the power fantasy of being traditionally virtuous or the power fantasy of being an edgy rebel. Early examples included:

Do you want to steal food from disaster victims? in Infamous

Do you as a space cop assault a reporter who’s being kind of annoying to you? in Mass Effect

Do you blow up an entire town of innocent people for the lols? in Fallout (no seriously check out hbomberguy’s teardowm on fallout 3’s morality system and how critics at the time ate it up)

I think these games, along with the generational backwash of 90s “edge” and 00s “grit” coloured a lot of people's expectations ( including mine) about what a "villain as protagonist" sort of narrative might look like. They're childish exaggerations, devoid of substance, made even worse by how blithely their narratives treat them.

Burn down an inn full of people is not a good quest objective for an evil party, because it forces the characters to reach cartoonish levels of villainy which dissociates them from their players. Force all the villagers into the inn so we can lock them inside and do our job uninterrupted lets the party be bad, but in a way that the players can see the reason behind it and stay synced up with their characters. The latter option also provides a great setup for when the party's actually monstrous overseer sets the inn on fire to get rid of any witnesses after the job is done. Now the party (and their players) are faced with a moral quandary, will they let themselves be accessories to a massacre or risk incurring their manager's wrath? Rather than jumping face first into cackling cruelty, these sorts of quandaries have them dance along the knife's edge between grim practicality and dangerous uncertainly; It brings the player and character closer together.

Finally, lets talk about ending the villain arc:

I don't think you can play a whole evil campaign. Both because the escalation required is narratively unsustainable, but also because the most interesting aspect of playing badguys is the breaking point. Just like heroes inevitably having doubts about whether or not they're doing the right thing, there's only so long that a group of antiheroes can go along KNOWING they're doing the wrong thing before they put their feet down and say "I'm out". I think you plan a evil campaign up until a specific "there's no coming back from this" storybeat, IE letting the Inn burn... whether or not the party allows it to happen, it's the lowest point the narrative will allow them to reach before they either fight back or allow themselves to be subsumed. If they rebel, you play out the rest of the arc dismantling the machine they helped to build, taking joy in its righteous destruction. If they keep going along, show them what they get for being cogs: inevitably betrayed, sacrificed, or used as canon fodder when the real heroes step in to do their jobs for them.

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#dm tip #dm tips #writing advice #evil party #drafting the adventure #dnd #d&d #dungeons and dragons #blades in the dark #ttprg #pathfinder

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probablybadrpgideas · 2 years

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Having the party roll a d20 before a planned encounter so it feels random and they think I am good at improv but in reality I’m sneakily railroading them to do my story.

#Generic #submission #Fantasy #Tick here to allow us to use in the podcast #Meta #dm tip

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norameld · 1 year

Video

DM Idea:

a “dungeon” that is just a low level group of bards who uses a waterphone (video above) to cast their spells of prestidigitation, minor illusion, dissonant whispers, viscous mockery, and phantasmal force to "haunt" anyone who comes rooting around their secret cave base. This can easily be a one-shot for any level of adventure, and can be used to introduce experience via “experiences” rather than just hack and slash killing.

#d&d #dungeons and dragons #dm tip #dnd tips #oneshot idea

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generic-cleric · 1 year

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Notes on Jander Sunstar

Here is what I put together when trying to fill in Jander Sunstar’s life between the end of Vampire of the Mists up to the point in which he meets my party!

- I tried my best to incorporate Jander’s history across all editions into my game’s canon, though there are some areas I homebrewed. My partner and I also collaborated and made his stat block because I didn’t feel that the Vampire stat block reflected his capabilities very well. My lore also has changes to his backstory in regards to Descent into Avernus, but that isn’t super relevant here so I’ll skip that bit.

- After the events in the VotM novel Jander was taken by the Mists before he could be fully destroyed and was forced to reform in the misty borders between domains where all the horrorterrors and mistbeast lurk. For almost 200 years!

- Due to the extreme radiant damage his left arm suffered while wielding a holy weapon against Strahd, his arm never fully reformed. He now keeps his injured arm bandaged up. It’s still sensitive and causes him pain every once in a while.

- While reforming in the Mists, some evil entity stole one of his fangs, his long term goal is to get it back. (a post-campaign adventure)

- He still suffers from his Black Thumb curse where plants whither at his touch, so he wears gloves.

- He was ejected from the Mists in a dreadplane called Forlorn where he was rescued by a group of monster hunters calling themselves The Van Richten Society. They either travel alone or in very small groups, constantly meeting up and parting ways… like ships in the night.

- He is taken into their team and networks and befriends a multitude of other members of the society across the planes.

- Some members include Van Richten (who did not name the group, believe it or not), His wife Ingrid, Ez, Pavel (current incarnation of Tatyana, and many, many more)

- Jander helped Van Richten write Van Richten’s Guide to Vampires and was not credited.

- He grows romantically close with Pavel

- While in Mordent Pavel falls in battle. Jander gets tangled up in The Apparatus when trying to save them, a machine which is said to be capable of separating the soul from a living body, translocating souls from one body to another, and otherwise manipulating the substance and energy of spirits both living and undead.

- When the contraption was used, Pavel was lost and aspects of Jander were cloned into their own beings, so now there are different manifestations of him running around the dreadplanes.

- One of these manifestations is Savra, the child he’d love to have with the person of his dreams (Pavel/Tatyana) exceeeept Savra the already terrible teenaged Dhampir is like him in all the worst ways. She/They is hot-tempered, hot-headed, and angry. Jander regards Savra as his child rather than a clone.

- Savra Joins the Van Richten Society and the younger generation create the sub group New Dawn. This includes Savra, The Weathermay-Foxgrove twins, Erasmus van Richten, and Ez.and probably more I’m forgetting about.

- Pretty sure Savra has a huge crush on Ez, a huge respect for Boomer van Richten, and a burning hatred for Jander.

- Another post session adventure I want to do involves the party helping him hunt down his different aspects and eliminating them all, except Savra.

- Jander decides to make his way to Barovia after eventually hearing Strahd is still around

- Jander’s disguise is Rathandal, a sickly elven man cursed to rot alive. Ideally, he doesn't want Strahd to know he's in Barovia, but also doesn't want to be mistaken for the Morninglord Lathander. (Something that happened in the novel which kick-started the religion in Barovia. It's still going strong and even led to the formation of a secret vampire hunter's guild)

- He catches a ride with Arabelle’s caravan and rolls through Barovia, stopping in the Vallaki encampment.

- He sneaks into the town to do carpentry and woodworking to earn meager coins to pay Kasimir to stay in one of the hovels while he gathers information and plans his next moves.

- One day while the party was in Vallaki, the Paladin of the party went to investigate the woods outside of town. There he found Rathandal frantically trying to free a hurt child from some thorny vines.

And that’s where he met the party like… forever ago. They “saved him” from getting harassed by Izek The Biggest Meanest Guard. They were hurt when they found out he lied to them about being undead, and that’s how Jander found out he had friends! He’s been with the party since and they won't let him leave.

Jander is a jaded grump who softens into a romantic. The party usually has to pry for his personal information, or beg when they have outlandish requests, and he usually doesn’t humor them. He is happy to share with them anything that might help them fight monsters, particularly vampires. He loves gardening, writing poetry, woodworking, playing his flute, or drawing/painting.

- Bonus: Savra is also in Barovia now, has tried to kill Jander at least once, and has now been hired by Strahd to hunt down Jander and trap him in a Crypt in the castle. Jander will never deal lethal damage to Savra.

There’s sooo much more I’d love to talk about, but I wanted to keep this one just about this chunk of backstory!

#Curse of Strahd #Jander Sunstar #DM #DM Notes #dungeon master #session summary #Savra Sunstar #Rudolph van Richten #Strahd von Zarovich #Ez d'Avenir #dnd #5e #ravenloft #barovia #npc #npc help #dm tip #the hollering

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alderego · 1 year

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Quick tag search for different posts!

#dm tip #better dming #creation #dungeon #adventure drafting #tables #visual #reference #inspo #prompt #music #enemy #ally #setting #dnd alternative

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sschmendrick · 3 months

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Every time I look at how to create a world for a campaign or just plan a campaign on the internet you usually get : start small with the town and maybe the few places around, you don't need to know everything about the world to start the campaign.

However what if your players want to create characters that come from beyond that place. You'll need to tell them what the world is like, what others kingdoms and lands there are and what is happening in there for them to be able to put their character in there and know what is going on so they have some guidelines about the world's alliances etc ?

How do you do ? (Also if I'm looking at it wrong please tell me I am but an aspiring DM)

#dnd #dungeon master #dm tips #d&d #d&d dm #dungeons and dragons #ttrpg

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quantumblog · 9 months

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Brennan Lee Mulligan on TPKs

"The easiest feeling of dread I feel as a dungeon master is in a difficult combat when players start changing their mind turn to turn about what the overall strategy is. That has presaged every TPK I've ever seen. The only times that all the players get wiped out is when someone's like 'We gotta run' and they spend their turn runninng, and the next person is like 'I'm gonna follow them' and the third person says 'Shit, the artifact! I'm gonna swing twice and get the artifact' and then person number four goes 'Are we staying or are we running? I'm gonna cast a spell to try to pull the artifact, OK they saved, shit umm, I'm gonna move into this hedge for better cover for next round' and the first person is like 'Next round?! Well I'm gonna run back then!' and now you're blowing your action economy, and the damage is piling up, and that's when people die."

Worlds Beyond Number Fireside Chat for WWW ep11 "Promises Promises"

#d&d #dm tips #dungeon master #TPK #brennan lee mulligan #worlds beyond number

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mommysecretlife · 3 months

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You’ll never guess what me and my man did for the first time last night 🤭🤭

#18+ only #spicy content #18+ account #18+ content #onlyfrenz #content creator #onlyf@nz #+18 or +adult only #sexy content #dm me for my content #dm for noods #dms open #tips #hotmomsclub #hotwives #hot mommy #hot mama #wife

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dailyadventureprompts · 13 days

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DM Tip: Lining up the Pieces

A few years ago I saw a video that changed the way I design combat encounters, using chess pieces and 4th edition monster roles as a handy way of conceptualizing the enemy roster and making better combat.

I’ve wanted to refer back to it for ages now, but I can’t seem to find it. As such, I’m going to reproduce it’s wisdom here for everyone’s benefit and hope I can find the source one day. ( I feel like it was a Matt Coville video, but my searches have turned up nothing. Seriously, if you can find it I will be extra grateful).

TLDR: You can break down enemy combatants into six (ish) roles represented by different kinds of chess pieces, and you can mix and match them when designing encounter to create fun tactical scenarios. You can also use this as an alternative to CR picking a “budget” of these enemy roles based on how many players are in the fight. Check out the types below the cut:

Infantry (pawn): Generally weaker and mechanically simpler than any other type of combatant, the infantry uses teamwork or sheer numbers to overwhelm the party. This can be anything from rank and file soldiers to a necromancer’s skeletal minions to a pack of wolves, anything that takes up space on the battlefield and prevents the party from targeting who they want or generally getting their way in a fight. 5e combat is a numbers game, and the infantry is there to swing the numbers in the enemy’s favour (until the party cut through them to even the odds). Infantry likes battlemaps with chokepoints they can hold and crossroads they can use to outflank opponents. When budgeting they’ll have a balance of 2 infantry per 1 player they’re matched against , but the weaker they are, the thinner you can spread them.

Brute (rook): High defence, high offence, the brute is an outright threat that the party should not want to take in a head to head fight. Giants, beasts, constructs, and heavy armoured warriors are your traditional brutes, but you could also go with a buffed to hell battlemage getting all up in the party’s face. Conversely, every brute has some kind of weakness that the party can exploit. They might be slow, or be unable to maneuver as easily, or like a werewolf, fiend, or troll, have particular weapons or damage types that overcome their natural resilience. Their job is to force confrontation, blunder into the middle of combat and force the party to act defensively rather than proactively. They soak up the party’s frontline’s attention while forcing the mid/backlines to scatter under the threat of too much raw damage. The brute Likes open spaces where they can have a direct path to the party and dead ends they can corner their targets against. Budget: Around 1 per 3 players

Skirmisher (knight): A very broad type of opponent, the skirmisher’s job is to bully the party’s weapsots whenever they’re exposed. They can do this by being ranged fighters ( traditional archers, magic users) or by being highly mobile (stealthy, mounted, flying, teleporting). They’re the bane of the party’s backline, generally targeting whoever has the lowest armour/or least health, then using their evasiveness to deny any kind of retaliation when the group rallies to protect their squishy friends. Skirmishers have great offence but are generally pretty weak, made helpless when you can deny them their movement/terrain advantages. Skirmishers like unfair fights, terrain that gives them a movement advantage, cover, or allows them the highground over their foes. Budgeting: 1 per 1-2 players.

Controller (bishop): The controller’s job is to fuck with the party, Either by locking down some of their stronger options (counterspelling, mind control, status effects, grapples), by manipulating the battlefield in some way that disrupts planning (aoe spells to prevent grouping together, summoning to reinforce numbers, barriers and banishment to single targets out), Or by advancing the baddies’ goal while the party is otherwise occupied (the cult priest finishing the disastrous ritual, the master thief making off with the mcguffin) forcing them to split their attention. The controller likes to distinctly be away from combat, and will usually be on the otherside of some kind of hazardous/hard to bypass barrier, sometimes of their own making. Budgeting: 1 per 2-3 players:

Support (king): Usually a healer, bodyguard, or some kind of buff-bot, the support wants to piggyback on other sorts of units or make them better at doing their jobs. Generally this means they’ll ignore whatever the party is doing to focus on staying with effective range of those who most benefit from their abilities. Supports will stay back in safety while throwing out buffs, bodyguards will put themselves between the party and their designated defendee. They tend to prefer whatever type of terrain most benefits their partners. 1- 2-3 players

Elite (queen): Something to be reckoned with, an Elite mixies the strength and abilities of two other kinds of combatants and uses both to devastating effect. Combine a brute and a support for an unstoppable frontline commander, or infantry and a skirmisher for an elite striketeam that attacks in perfect coordination before fading back into the shadows. Mix and match for whatever combination you think would be most interesting for a situation, then supplement it with a different unit or two for contrast. Elites make up your traditional “big bad and minions” bossfight, without escalating to the full party challenge of “solo” monsters. Budgeting: 1 per 3-4 players.

Picking the right Pieces:

Generally what you're going to want to do when planning a combat is to first think of what the baddies are trying to acomplish with the fight then pick 2-3 different types of baddie that you think would work well in concert to achieve that goal. "Kill the party" is an all too common goal, but you could easily imagine others that provide for dynamic stakes:

A group of forest bandits intend to rob a caravan, so they unleash a captive warbeast as a distraction while their archers rain chaos from above (Infantry, brute, skirmisher)

A villain abducts an important npc into a carriage while their dutiful muscle run interference (controller, brutes)

A necromancer hurls curses from behind a barricade of gravestones while their undead minions pour from surrounding tombs ( Controller/infantry)

While the party is ambushed by an archer in a tower, a cloaked figure waits in the underbrush, waiting for them to thin out and begin picking them off one by one (paired skirmishers of different types)

After the fighter is tricked into single combat against the mounted arena champion, the rest of the party will have to search the crowd for the caster secretly channeling healing magic to their opponent. ( combined brute/skirmisher elite, support)

Once you've got your pieces picked out, you can start designing the battle arena taking the desires of each combatant into account while also throwing in any environmental flourishes you'd like to enjoy.

As an added benefit for DMs like me who don't have the inclination or budget to collect huge batches of minis, it's SUPER easy to pick up a second hand chess set or two and use them as stand ins. Your players will have an instinctive understanding of what each piece does which will help them understand the roles outlined above.

Artsource

#dm tip #dm advice #combat #dap combat hack #dnd #dungeons and dragons #d&d #ttprg #pathfinder

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