My apologies to everyone for my lack of posting in the last few weeks. I’ve been working on guest posts to try to bring up the blog’s ratings online, and it’s left me a little short of time.
With that said, let me introduce the first DragonEncounters post on a different site.
Meeting the villains
In Meeting the Villains, I handle the issue of how to bring a head villain into your game. Many DMs avoid this as bringing them in is asking for them to get killed, leaving your campaign without a villain in one of the very first sessions.
I’ve seen DMs whose advice to avoid this is to use a group, such as a cult. That way, they don’t have to worry about the villain getting killed. After all, there’s an unlimited supply of them, right?
The negative to this approach is that the villain no longer has personality. In trying to keep something vague and mysterious, you end up with something undefined and vague.
Why the Villain Matters
I won’t say that players should know every detail of the villains’ temperament, abilities, and schemes, I wouldn’t even recommend such as approach when writing a book or movie, where the information won’t mess up the story, but at the same time I do feel that a villain should be a “Real” person.
Villains add personality, making it more intense, more personal, more real. Think of your favorite books and movies, and chances are the villain is from in the top 5 most memorable characters, top 10 with a large cast. His or her motivations, plans, and mistakes affect the whole story, and make it into the great story that you likes so much.
This can be done without bringing the villain into the scene. There are a number of great stories where you don’t meet the villain until the climax, and even a few where you don’t meet the villain at all. (Actually, I cover advice for giving a villain personality while keeping him offscreen at the end of my article for Gnome Stew.)
With that said, keeping him offscreen doesn’t mean keeping him vague. The DM should know his goals, his means (within reason. Choose a style, but don’t define everything. Leave room to improvise.) and his flaws. If you just talk about a “strange, threatening darkness” your players will be able to tell that your making stuff up as you go along, and that they don’t need to worry about their characters’ safety all that much.
Contents of Gnome Stew Article
In the article that I wrote for Gnome Stew, I covered many types of face to face meetings, and how to ensure that everybody of consequence survives them. These ranged from battle confrontations in which one side or the other one, and also a number of neutral territory meetings, with ideas for what each side could get out of the meeting and how to ensure that neither violated the neutrality.
I also covered different approaches to giving you villain a “theme”, so that he feels like a better defined, more real adversary.
I can hardly publish the article here, but feel free to visit Gnome Stew and see it there. Then come back here and tell me what you think. I’ll be waiting to hear from you.
Oh, and here’s the link.
Love
Alexander Atoz
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