When thinking about this idea, I wanted to create something that was a little bit different and with dreamwalking, it felt like there was some interesting ways to handle it.

Firstly, you get to run two different types of games, I’d probably tie the two worlds together somehow, like there’s something in the real world that is causing this crazy dream and nightmare fueled reality to happen when you sleep and if you die while you sleep you die in both of the game worlds. I would build it in such a way that to figure out what or who is causing it in the real world, they need to defeat things and find clues in the nightmares and dreams so that is going to lead their quests in the waking world.

Next, and it depends on your group, if you wanted, you could have the players play two different characters. Dragoth the Dwarven Fighter in the real world might be Dragoth the Dwarven Bard in the dream world with different stats and character sheet. I think it would be fun and could work well for those players who get a little bit bored playing the same character for a longer period of time, they get to play the mix of two characters. While they have some overlap in personality, they would definitely play and be different. I’d have the two versions level at the same pace, it would just make tracking things easier.

So jumping into this you’d look to introduce the players to the BBEG (big bad evil guy/gal) in the dream world. This is the BBEG’s domain so they should be basically untouchable at the start, but they also shouldn’t care about the players because this is their world. Give them someone who they know they’re building up to face at the end of the campaign/at the end of the arc. As they get better and stronger both in the dream and real world, they should show up on the BBEG’s radar and they should see that the dream world turns slowly more into a nightmare world and things become more dangerous and dark. And in the real world when the players get closer to the BBEG’s lair, that should be another time when the dream world starts to double down on the nightmares and monsters, basically a corrupting force in the real world as they near the lair which manifests as more dangerous nightmares.

So, getting to the point where you fight the BBEG, I could see doing some fetch quests, or more so destruction quests, such as having to find amulets or something that weaken the pull of the dream world on the whole of the lands Something that has been set-up or sold by a peddler not knowing what wares they were peddling. So it can be a bit of a chase to find them and destroy them, but also a bit of a red herring because the peddler is going to look very guilty to the players, and while they are guilty of selling these amulets or whatever it might be, they aren’t the BBEG. They maybe would know who the BBEG is, but not where the BBEG is or how to get in contact with them. But the peddler would know where they got the wares so they’d be able to bring the players closer to the BBEG’s lair or at least tell them about it.

In the dream world leave larger clues, totems, visions, something that has to be puzzled through. So in the real world they can only find so many clues or so many people to get close to the lair, but in the dream world, it should be a series of clues that they can put together and come up with something that not only gives them a precise location of where to go but also probably some sort of hints for getting into the lair. Because whatever your BBEG is, they are extremely powerful and would have some sort protection on their lair so that the PC’s can’t just waltz right into it.

For the final battle, I think this should be a two part thing, either start it in the real world and have the finale in the dream world or vice-a-versa. Give both sets of PC’s a chance to shine, but also being the dream world is going to create a more cinematic story. Throw large, impossibly large objects at the players and do a contest of wills to see who can manipulate the dream objects, will they stay in existence and do damage to the players, create barriers, whatever the BBEG decides, or will the PC’s be able to push them away. It’s almost a force battle that you can do for the finale in the dream world. Then in the real world, that’s going to be a bit more standard in terms of the fight, not great illusionary fighting like in the dream world, but this is where I’d have minions and traps and things to wear down the players first. If I were to do this, I’d do get through lair fighting minions and dealing with puzzles and traps, that leads up to the start of the fight in the real world, the players get the BBEG down in health so the BBEG throws them all into the dream world where they have to fight a more powerful version of the BBEG, when/if the BBEG is about ready to die in the dream world, then they drop back into the real world. Give the BBEG a chance to have used a few hit dice but to still be done some hit points and have used up magic. So the final battle then takes place in the real world. Another option would be to divide up the party, especially if you have 4 PC’s, because you could have two fighting in the dream world and two in the real world and have them each fighting the respective version of the BBEG.

So what do you think about this idea, is it a campaign that you’d want to play in or run?

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This is a topic that I believe that I’ve touched on before, but I wanted to revisit it, because it’s been a while, and I think I wrote about it a bit more generally. Like I did with Greenfang and building out a town in Dungeons and Dragons, I want to go through the process of building out an NPC when I do it on my best days.

So let’s start out with, what is an NPC? An NPC is a non-player character. The players at the table are playing the PCs (player characters), and the DM is controlling the rest of the characters whom they interact with, whether it’s a shop keep, a quest giver, a priestess, or the BBEG (big bad evil guy/gal) of the campaign. Anyone whom the players are going to interact with and hear what they have to say is an NPC.

What do you have NPCs in your game? I touched on this some already, but the big reason is that it helps flesh out your world. If you have interesting NPCs in your game, you are going to have a world that feels more real and it’ll make the stakes of the story seem like they have more meaningful consequences. If the BBEG kidnaps the daughter of the shop keeper who the players always shop with and have gotten to know his family, that has weight for the PC’s.

Do you need to flesh out all of your NPCs? Yes, and no. You never know who the players are going to decide to follow and make important, so it’s smart to have some idea, but it takes work to make a fully fleshed out NPC. So, no, not everyone needs to have a full backstory, only the ones who are important. And that might mean that you have to come up with some of it on the fly, but when you see who the players are interested and interacting with, you can flesh out that NPC between sessions. And if there is an NPC that is going to be important to the story, you can flesh them out ahead of time as well. It would be too much work to flesh out an NPC every time.

What do you need to plan for a fleshed out NPC in the moment? Alright, so your players decided that the shop keeper Weasel Bob was going to be important and their main spot to do business, because he seemed like he was cool. They start asking you what Weasel Bob looks like and if there’s anything interesting about him. The important things to get started in developing your fleshed out NPC in the moment are going to be something about their look and something that they do or is unique about them. And you don’t even have to do all of this.

You don’t? No, you can ask the players to help flesh out an NPC in the moment. If they make the decisions for that NPC, it’s going to create more of a connection to that NPC as well. If you even have a generic shop keep who runs a generic shop and the players ask what the NPC is named, you can ask them to give you a name and what they look like and probably end up with a pretty good Weasel Bob. That also helps you know when fleshing out the character, based off of what the players said in the session, how to create a Weasel Bob that they are going to enjoy.

This technique works well in the moment when you want to have a bar with a number of people in it or to create a few important people in the bar. Have every player at the table go around and tell you about one person or one table full in the bar. Soon you’ll have a lot of characters that you can bring back into the game later and use again to create that richer and more vibrant world. And it means that you don’t have to generate as much content on the fly, because the players are helping to populate your world with NPCs.

So, now we’ve created a bit of a character on the fly in Weasel Bob, he, like I did with Greenfang is going to be the character that I spend some time fleshing out in future articles so demonstrate how you can spend some time and build out interesting and more fulfilling NPC’s in your game. Hopefully there’s been some useful information to grab from the article thus far on why we use NPC’s in D&D and how you can start to generate more meaningful NPC’s on the fly.

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Now, Player versus Player (PvP) is something that might never come up in your game of Dungeons and Dragons. There can be moments that make it worth it for the story to have some PvP, but that’s not that norm.

So, let’s start out with some reasons that you might have some PvP in your game?

A lot of the reasons that you might have PvP aren’t good reasons. The players out of game (or in game) might not like each other, so they might fight. This happens when you have an unbalanced party, when you have a chaotic evil wizard and a lawful good paladin, you might end up having PvP in the game. You can also run into it when you have a rogue or greedy character who is stealing from the players or is hording the good loot because, even though they can’t use it, they want to keep it because it’s pretty.

You might also get PvP, and this is a good reason, when there is a tournament. Maybe there is some sort of challenge that all the players enter into and in the end they have to face off against each other. This is something that works best when you have players who really want to show off their characters mechanical abilities for a session or two.

Finally, it might be a turn, to borrow a wrestling term. When someone turns, it means that they are going from being the good guy and helpful part of the party to possibly becoming the BBEG or some level of villain. This one is neither good or bad because it could be a really cool moment for the players if it’s done correctly and planned out. If it just comes out of nowhere and there’s no reason for it other than the player got bored, then that’s considerably less ideal.

How do you then deal with it these are some of the reasons.

If it is for a “bad” reason, I think you have to deal with it differently than you do with a “good” reason. With the some of the “bad” reasons, I’d start with an above table discussion. Take it out of the game and figure out how you can avoid conflict against two opposing characters for whatever reason that might. Odds are in those situations, one person is going to end up feeling like their character is being picked on in the game by the other character, and that can lead to issues outside of the game. But it is always possible that these players have been intentionally playing their characters in a way to build to that moment. If you don’t know as a DM, you should take that conversation out of the game for a moment before you sit back and watch them go at it.

If it is one of the “good” reasons, try and make it feel unique. If it’s a tournament, make it some reward that all the characters would want to win or need to win for their party so that they can continue going forward with their quest and the story. Or if it’s a turn, make that moment as rewarding as possible. Build to it slowly, pass a note to let the player know when it’s the right time, and then spring it on the other players. Hopefully it’ll be a shock and a good shock, and then let that combat happen. However, if you are doing this and you want that character to end up as the BBEG, give specific instructions when to run and get out of the combat, because up against a single character, the party is probably going to make quick work for them. Or give them something that will allow them to put up a better fight that the players don’t know about. I would also recommend, after that first encounter, you take over the BBEG, former player character, in any of the combats, and let the player roll up a new character.

For both of the good reasons for PvP, I would use them sparingly as if it draws out too much, you are likely going to lose the focus of some of your players at the table. When you are doing PvP with a group of people at the table larger than two, that means that you are going to have some players just sitting around and watching, and unless it’s compelling for the reason for it, or if it’s the whole party against the one character who has turned on them, So keep things moving, keep it interesting, and create some sort of countdown for the players so that it doesn’t end up being a long and drawn out slug fast, though, I doubt it will be. Also, try and avoid fatalities, unless it’s supposed to be a a situation where, going to the example of the character who turned, that they are not the BBEG, but have just been giving information to the BBEG. Then see how many of the party members they can take out before they are taken out.

Overall, I think that PvP in D&D is something that can work sparingly. And I think that’s something that needs to be done carefully. There are plenty of ways for it to go bad, particularly above table that you don’t want to create resentment at the table. You are going to have to get the buy-in from the players to make it really work. Like I’ve already said in the article, keep it moving as well, don’t let it drag out too long, because you might not have the whole party involved in it, and you don’t want them to be bored at the table.

Have you run into a situation where there was PvP at a table that you were a player at or that you were running the game? How did that work for you?

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“True.”

“Bring forth the character sheet and the lighter to usher Gornag to the afterlife.”

“He shall be remembered.”

“We send him back into the ether from whence he came.”

“He shall be remembered.”

Alright, that might be very goofy, and you don’t need to do any routine or anything like that, but it’s a topic that I don’t think ends up being talked about that much in Dungeons and Dragons or any RPG, how do you handle the death of a character.

It isn’t something that I’ve had a ton of experience with, I’ve “killed” three characters. The first was a convention game at the end of the one shot, so it worked out well, and technically, it was another character failing to throw a dart horribly and then hitting the unconscious character who was one death saving throw short and floating face down in water. Then, in Dungeons and Flagons, Finja died, sacrificing her life in their successful attempt to destroy a beholder. It was a sad but fitting end for that character. Finally, a barbarian who was amazing and smashing everything came up against some specters that he couldn’t kill as easily and he was rolling poorly. He got to come back, but with some pretty dire consequences for the party.

So I haven’t done a TPK (total party kill) and have to end a campaign because of that, or pick it up with new characters. I’ve knocked out characters before, but that was all with a plan of what was going to happen next and with a reason why the monsters wouldn’t just kill the players.

There are several questions that come out of death, but let’s start for a Dungeon Master even before death of a character.

Do you need to have the threat of death in your game?

It might seem like you need to, but do you really need to have that threat of death in your game? I would say that yes, death is something that has to be a threat in your game, but it should be a rare threat. You are playing with heroes, so why should these heroes be likely to go down in every fight? They shouldn’t, is my answer. There will be times when fighting against a level boss that it should be a threat, but if they are fighting a random encounter of goblins on the road, it probably shouldn’t be enough to kill them, unless I’m rolling very hot and they are rolling ice cold.

What do you do when death does happen?

This is a harder question, because you need to know how your players would react and how it happened. If it happened because a character jumped out of a fourth story window as a first level wizard, yeah, it’s going to be easier because that player was doing something dumb with their character.

If it’s because it was in an epic combat, I think that most players would still be pretty cool with it. Especially if they sacrificed themselves to do damage to get that BBEG to deaths doorsteps and the party was able to kill them. That sort of heroes death can even be a big story element and driving force for a character if you want it. But even if it wasn’t something for the character, that death feels like it has meaning.

The harder ones to deal with are the ones that come out of the blue. It could be that the monsters were rolling hot, like I said, and the player was doing poorly, and with a critical failure on a death saving throw, you can be out fast. How do you as a DM deal with that, and then, how do you as a player deal with that?

I think as a DM, it’s about giving some time. I wouldn’t gloat about it, I wouldn’t rush quickly into the next thing. It’s fairly dumb in movies when you get that moment where the protagonists best friend dies in a fight and you get that flow motion moment of the protagonist crying, but that’s what you kind of want to do in your game. Give the players at the table that reprieve from the battle, don’t ask for any rolls, any checks, just let the players process it. Then, once there has been a little bit of time, or the players have said their piece, then you jump back into what was happening. And once that is done, you can give the other players the options of things that they can do.

Also know that players will act differently. Some are going to try and find a way that the encounter was unbalanced or something along those lines and justify why they shouldn’t have died. Others are going to find that whole moment just humorous. Then there are others who are going to be ready to start rolling up their next character right then and there. The best thing, as a DM you can do in any of those situations is just give them a moment and be considerate.

As a player, how do you deal with it when another character dies, not yours? It’s pretty similar to the DM, you give it some time. You buy into the moment and are there for the player as you can be, and in character, you play out that movie moment where you fight your way to the side of your dead comrade and pick up their body in your arms and scream at the sky. You don’t treat it lightly.

If it was your character that died, it can be tough. You grow to like your character, you want to know what is going to happen with your character and you had ideas of the story that was going to continue with them for longer in the campaign until the campaign was done. You wrote a backstory for them, you drew a picture of them, it is hard to lose something that you put time and effort into. It is kind of hard to write, because it is fairly trite to say, but remember that this is a game. You are going to like the new character that you roll up as well. The best I can liken this to is Doctor Who when you get a new Doctor, I’m always a bit hesitant with the new Doctor and I don’t think I like them as well, but basically all of them have grown on me to the point where I’m sad to see them leave. That’s the case with your D&D character as well, you might not like the new one as well at the start, but you’ll grow to love them too.

But allow yourself some time to soak in the death of the character. Don’t rush yourself into creating that new character if you don’t want to. Don’t feel like you need to be more than an observer for the rest of the session. It’s fine to wait and then when the next session is come back with a new character for the game.

Finally, as a group, when you have that first character death, come up with a way that you are going to memorialize it. I have a very silly thing written at the top, but figure out what you want to do. It doesn’t need to be much, but do something in game or out of game that you want to do for future deaths. This will help with the sense of closure for the dead character and it can be something fun to do. Toasting the fallen character in and out of game would make a lot of sense. Or, if the person doesn’t want to keep the character sheet, burning it, ideally after being folded into a paper boat and floating in a bathtub to give it a proper Viking burial, would make a lot of sense as well, but that’s going to be up to your group.

How have you dealt with the death of character in your Dungeons and Dragons games? Have you had a particularly epic character death or any really funny one?

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A Neutral Evil character is going to be hard to fit into a party, unless the game is an evil game. While a lawful evil character is going to go along with the party if it helps their goal and a chaotic evil character is going to mess with everything, a neutral evil character just wants to be evil. So the second the rest of the party does anything altruistic the neutral evil character is just going to be out or going to stab them in the back and hand them over to the BBEG.

Now, that doesn’t mean that the Neutral Evil alignment isn’t one that you can’t play in a game. But they are going to have a desire to be the BBEG themselves and that would be their goal. And they would just focus on that versus anything else that the players are doing. So, even if the players are going to destroy the artifact that the BBEG needs for his power and our neutral evil character wants to claim it as their own, they aren’t going to be apt to step in and help on a side quest that is good. And while they might put up with it once in a while, they are going to leave the party, at least with normal motivations for a neutral evil character, and find their own evil party.

So, if you do want to play a neutral evil character, it’s going to be a lot of work for you, in a mixed party. You are going to have to come up with the reasons why your character is going to stick around, because it’s going to be hard for the DM to throw consistent hooks for you. Because the hooks are going to be basically the opposite for any good character. Whether that means your character sits back and stays out of combat as long as they can in a good cause, or don’t help negotiate the release of kidnapped children, or it means that your character just goes off to further their evil goals while those things happen, that’s going to be up to you.

For me, I think the way that I would make this work is to have my neutral evil character to be the researcher. So if I’m there, I can join the party on stuff, but otherwise, I’d send them away from the party during times of the party doing good to research what is needed to find that artifact or whatever the BBEG needs, so that we can further that line of the quest, because that’s what I would care about. It would also lead closer to the moment when I stab the party in the back so that I can enact the same plot.

As for what classes work? A fallen Paladin or a Paladin of an evil deity would make a lot of sense, someone who has been corrupted. The thief rogue who is in it just for themselves. But someone like an assassin rogue would work, and it could be that they just assassinate for fun or to get more money for their evil plan. But being an assassin in and of itself is more of a lawful role. Like all D&D alignments, all of them are going to be possible to use, even if some of them, like Cleric, don’t work as well.

Finally, just to drive home the point. A neutral evil character is all about the evil. They are going to have their evil goals, but the evil goals aren’t tied into some other thing, it is just about being evil. A lawful evil character might want to take over the lands because they think that they can get rich and revenge on someone who did them wrong, but a lawful evil character isn’t going to care about the end goal, they are going to care about being evil, so even if they don’t end up ruling the lands, if they get a sufficient amount of suffering into the world, that’s what they wanted anyways.

Would you allow a neutral evil character into your game with other characters who aren’t evil? Have you played a neutral evil character in a game with non-evil characters? What did you have to do to make that work?

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The reason I think that it makes a good BBEG, is because when you are lawful evil, you still have a set of rules around what you are going to do. A chaotic evil BBEG would have no issues killing off a 1st level adventuring party if they messed one thing up for them. A Lawful Evil BBEG would see that the adventuring party has some promise and try and twist them into joining them or to use them to unwittingly help the BBEG. Thanos is an an example of a lawful evil BBEG, in the movie, in the comics, he’s doing everything to impress Death because he has a Thanos crush. But in the movie, while his plan of destroying have the living beings won’t solve the problem forever, and there are better options, it’s the option he came up with so he’s sticking to it. But he has rules around doing what he is doing. And that is what you want when creating a BBEG for a game, someone who has rules, who has a reason to monologue at the end.

But, what about on the other side of the DM’s screen for the PC’s. I made a pretty bold statement saying that a lawful evil character is the only one that would join a non-evil adventuring party. Why do I say that? This is similar to your BBEG who has their plan, a lawful evil character is going to be willing to join up with an adventuring party to help complete their own goal or to help stop the BBEG of the game, because it would have a negative effect on their plans as a whole.

A good example of this would be someone in a thieve’s guild. A thieve’s guild isn’t about stealing stuff at random, they are concerned about running the secondary market and the market on illegal goods in a city. If they get out of control, the city guard is going to crush them. Instead they are focused on staying just out of sight and just behind the scene and actually bolstering up the town so that the city leaders are fine having them commit crimes because if they take them out, whomever replaces them would likely be worse.

Now, that might not make the best adventurer, but you can certainly tie in pieces of that to a character. In that case, you would probably have to focus at least some of the story on that character, probably based around something threatening the balance of that the city and the thieve’s guild have. But even in that case, it can be a side plot, and maybe your character has to work with the adventuring party to gain their trust prior to them helping them with this somewhat questionable thing.

But back to the alignment. A lawful evil character is going to have their own set of rules that creates their laws. Now, some of those laws that they follow might be the actual laws, but most of them are going to be self imposed rules. An example of this for a character, they might not have an issue killing their rivals in cold blood, but they also might not let mind altering potions into the black market because they don’t want to potentially cause chaos. So both of those things might be illegal in the town or nation, but the lawful evil character will only follow one, because it’s good for them.

Another reason that I think that a lawful evil player character is interesting as well, is that a lawful evil character is more likely to have a long term plan. Going back to the Thanos example, in the MCU, he has a plan that he slowly spends time on, he doesn’t grab the infinity stones in a day. In the comics, there is a whole lot more that Thanos does impulsively. So when you roll up a lawful evil character, come up with your long term plan, of what you really want to work towards. For example, maybe you want to take over the government with as little bloodshed as possible, not because the government is at all bad, but because you want to rule. So you could join up with the adventuring party to go to various towns, pay out bribes, make a few threats, and schmooze to get a groundswell of support, and that would be your long term plan, but you team up with the group on their adventurers to be able to do that.

Even with all that said, I do think that you need to really think before you take a lawful evil character into a generally good game. Mainly because as a player there is going to be a lot more work for you in the game than if your alignment is closer to that of the rest of the characters in the game. You are going to have to do your evil things away from the group otherwise you might become their next target. This is easy enough by focusing on it as downtime activities and stuff between sessions when it’s appropriate. But you also have to keep a reason around why you’d continue adventuring. This means that your evil plan is progressing or at least, you are stopping someone else’s evil plan that would interfere with your own. And that is on you, as much as the DM, to do in the game, because the DM has the rest of the table to focus on as well.

I want to add in one final thing that you could think about as well. If you want to play a lawful evil character and drop a big surprise in the game, you can work it out with your DM that your character is going to be the BBEG when all is said and done. Maybe there is another “BBEG” who is doing what you want to do, just not as well, so you have to take them out to take over for them. That would be a great twist to put on the rest of the players at the table, and would be a moment that people remember. I would say, if you do this, once it’s revealed that your character is actually the BBEG, the DM takes over and you pull out your new character who will join the party. That way it doesn’t feel like the odds start to stack up against the players. Unless it’s the case where your character goes BBEG and you immediately have a fight and whatever side wins, that ends the game. Or, one final way to keep control of your character would be to take over yourself as the DM and the DM can pull out a character sheet, which would be a fun twist as well.

Would you play a lawful evil character in a game? Have you played one, and was it in a good campaign? How did it go, if you have?

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This is definitely going to be grim fantasy setting where you are dealing with some fairly heavy issues. Much like the show The Walking Dead and game Dead of Winter deal with humans who are causing problems to the other humans.

So, we have a small group of survivors who are our players. They are going to have to look for a safe haven. Whether they all know each other before the apocalypse is up to the players, but it’s possible that some of them could be an outsider to the group. I think that would be a way to cause tension in the game quickly by planting seeds of doubt, whether the person can be trusted fully or not.

You can also set this up by having an DM PC, something that I would say never do, in the party where you have a character, but really they are a reoccuring NPC who is going to screw over the party some night. They are using the party for their own good, but then they decide that the party isn’t useful for them, so they are going to take what they want and then leave. I’d make this a lower level bad guy for them to deal with, while still having to fight zombies often or try and sneak around zombies. You could even, if they don’t track down the NPC and kill them, have that character build up into a larger bad guy.

If they do kill the NPC, then create a new one who has a rival gang fighting for resources and doing a scorched earth policy to keep other people from following behind them and getting the zombies to follow those people and getting to them. However, this would obviously have a very negative effect on other survivors beyond the more resourceful PC’s.

Eventually, I think the big bad of the campaign, besides the zombies, should be a wizard or lich who has a controlling rod that they build after the apocalypse has started. This rod is what they are using now, to control zombies and take over territories and subjugate people. Taking out the lich/wizard won’t solve the problem of the zombies, but will at least give people a fair chance.

I’d make it so that the BBEG is either the only who who can control the zombies, or that the rod is something like a crystal ball so that the players won’t likely get the magical item that allows them to send zombies away or keep them away from an area. Or at least cause that as a threat for the players and the players can either decide that destroying the control rod, which would then cause the zombies to attack the BBEG as well as the players might be an object, or try and figure out how and use the control rod.

Maybe give it to the players, now that I’m thinking about it, or give them a chance to get it, because then you could narrate a cool ending where the players could use the control rod to create a little oasis of safety for people to live.

With all these kind of major points, I’d also have the players dealing with survivors, dealing with injured people, dealing with bitten people who haven’t turned yet, and things like that. I would nerf a few healing options, basically only wish should be able to stop the zombie virus as it takes over the body where it could be argued that Greater Restoration or even Lesser Restoration might be able to normally.

Now, would I want to run this game? I think it could be interesting to run. I think the big focus of this game is going to be putting the players into situations where there isn’t a good outcome. This is supposed to be a dark fantasy scenario, and you don’t want them to be too heroic. I’d throw them up against situations where it’s about surviving. With that, though, I’d also give them a saving throw against turning into a zombie, but I would expect some PC’s to die along the way.

Would you want to play in a dark fantasy game?

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In this campaign, I have an idea that can be added into any campaign, plus a fun way that you could use it in a new idea. The idea of the Losers Club in some ways comes from the movie Mystery Men. The “heroes” in the movie are worthless to start out with, but eventually become actual heroes, kind of. And that’s what we want to show off here in this campaign, the hero going from no one into a hero.

The PC’s are actually going to be that rag tag group that isn’t all that good at what they are supposed to be good at. In fact, the requirement for character creation is that you put your worst stat into your class stat. It’s obvious for some classes what this is, but if a rogue has a 6, that goes into dexterity, if a wizard has an 8, that’s going into intelligence. We’re creating a real inept band of adventurers who are going to become heroes.

This is going to give the players a really interesting chance to roleplay, because you’re going to have some odd stats and odd ways that you need to play. Maybe you spend your stat bumps to make you into a normal character that is doing what’s expected, or maybe you have a tank wizard.

As for the actual campaign itself, I think that this group of inept adventurers is going to be trying to make a name for themselves, and you lean into their story of trying to defeat some evil organization that is out there. However, when they successfully take down a small gang, the city guard and mayor shouldn’t believe them that it was them because they are too inept and the guard/mayor didn’t see it. There was no one there to tell them that the adventurers had actually done it.

After this happens a few times, and you’ll have to give the players some strong hook into the adventure so that they don’t leave the town. I’d give them some family in town or some love interest, something like that. You can also have them, after a few successful battles, have the end of a fight witnessed or something like that, so the players start to have their characters get recognized.

I’d do a fairly over the top villain for this campaign who isn’t really inept, but likes to monologue and comes up with extremely complex plots. This is going to create a lighter and funnier feel to the game, so when the players aren’t getting noticed, it can have that goofy, over the top feel as well. In fact, I’d have some fights where the city guard shows up seconds after the fight has ended, but just missed it.

Alright, one funny fight idea, in the streets, probably evening when there aren’t as many people out and about, the players fight some gang of the BBGE’s. The city guard is out in the street, but they are helping an old lady get her cat out of a tree a block away. They are so focused on that, that they miss the whole fight, and you can narrate at the start of each round how the city guard are not seeing what is going on.

Like I said, I think you could slap this idea onto any campaign idea that you have. However, keeping it lighthearted will probably make the game seem better in the eyes of the players. You don’t want to have a very serious game where most of the time they have to run away from a fight because they aren’t strong enough and have to grind their way up.

What do you think of this idea? Would you want to play in a game like this?

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First off, what is the BBEG? BBEG, if you don’t know what it stands for, means the Big Bad Evil Guy. The BBEG is also going to be the person or deity or monster that is causing the issues that your party faces in the campaign as planned thus far. It’s possible that your game could end up having several BBEG, but each one would be a separate arc, and we’re planning one arc that could be your whole campaign unless you decide to continue playing more.

So, what makes a good BBEG? Some evil tyrant trying to rule everyone? Sure, that works. A mistaken wizard who believes that the person who killed their family is the king? Yup, that works too. Is it the Queen who believes that the only way to save her people is by kidnapping the youngest child and making them part of a weird cult to appease the gods? Yup, that also works.

This is one area where you can really decide how you want to take your game. The easiest thing to do to create your BBEG is to think about what type of game that you want to run again. We’ve limited our game to this smaller area, so that probably precludes some of the ideas that I’ve come up with. But a crazed wizard in the woods is always interesting.

I’m going to create what I call a mind horror that is going to be my BBEG. The Mind Horror is going to be an intelligent monster that has come into the area and is looking to gain control of the lands so that it can create a breeding ground for more Mind Horrors. So if the players actually bother to talk with it and interact with it more than just try and kill it, they can possibly come to an agreement where it will stop killing people.

Now with the BBEG, you want to hint at them early on, but your players shouldn’t come across them until later in the game, probably still before they can actually handle it, but not that much before so the BBEG doesn’t just murder your whole party in one shot. So you have to set-up stuff before your players are at that level that they can deal with.

These are the smaller story arcs that the players get to play through that teach them about the BBEG and getting an idea of what sort of monster they might be facing again. So you most likely will want to have several of these arcs prior to them facing off against the BBEG. I’m thinking that my Mind Horror is going to be set as someone they face off against at level 10. Depending on how I do it, I think that I’d want about 3-4 arcs for the PC’s to have to go through before getting to the BBEG arc.

So in some order the arcs would go like the following:

Something strange going on in the mine. Most likely the workers are coming back crazy and some of them are murdering each other. The PC’s can go and investigate. First it’s thought that it’s a goblin tribe, but the players will find out the same thing is happening to the goblins. The players can then explore underground and determine eventually that it’s going to be a tainted under ground stream.

There’s also going to be a cult that is following the Mind Horror around that comes into the town. They are going to be causing problems because of killing of livestock, generally causing a malaise to come over the town and plants and animals are dying off. They are doing something to prepare the way for the Mind Horror to take over the land.

We’re also going to have a Grima Wormtongue situation where the Wizard is going to be influenced by a new adviser into doing more and more destructive and crazy things. So the players are going to have to figure out who is causing the problem, but then will have to figure out if they decide to deal with it as a Wormtongue problem, how to get the Wizard back to normal, or deal with the Wizard as well and create a power vacuum.

Then we’ll have a situation where there are mindlings that come out of the mines and caves in the mountains. Basically they are weaker versions of the mind horror and are setting up nests in the mountains.

This would probably be somewhere in the middle. Wormtongue part would probably be the last one before they have to face off against the Mind Horror. There would also be some overlap between these things as well. Probably the earliest thing that would actually have happened is the Wormtongue situation where the Wizard is being influenced, and that’s why the wizard wants the gems. The Goblins/Mine issue might be the first thing, but the cult would start moving into town and influencing things while that is going as well.

You can see how it can become a bit to manage, but the multi-leveled story and multi-arc story gives it a better feel. And I don’t need to plan out all the way to level 20, or even all the way through the arcs until I get closer to them. Maybe the players decide they want to continue the campaign, while that can happen with introducing a new and bigger bad guy.

You can also see how I’ve tied basically everything into the small area. It doesn’t matter where the Mind Horror has come from, because it’s there already. They don’t need to go anywhere else to deal with it besides a few days out of the town at times. Maybe the next arc is more epic. Now that the PC’s have a name for themselves the Queen of the land will send them on a mission to deal with a rogue dragon up in the mountains? Or maybe it’s to infiltrate another kingdom and deal with a problem that they thought was just a normal king, turns out to be a dragon who now wants to wipe out the kingdom they are from. But that’s how you can build stories on top of each other. You could even tie it together barely by saying that the reason the Mind Horror moved to this location is because the dragon forced them out of the other kingdom.

So what do you think of the story thus far. I’m not sure there is a ton more that I would do to create this game, but I will talk some more about creating the specifics of the town and surrounding area in a later article.

What are your thoughts on the BBEG I’ve created? How do you create a BBEG?

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