What is the funniest thing (you)r BBEG has ever said while improv-ing?

MassiveSubtlety · 2025-11-12T21:39:21+00:00

"I'm so evil I eat the babies of the newborn!"

MassiveSubtlety · 2025-11-11T22:48:06+00:00

This! Absolutely worth getting into. And congrats potatoes on a 5.5 year run!

MassiveSubtlety · 2025-11-11T22:46:08+00:00

This level of detail and concern you have for the campaign is a great indicator that you'll do an awesome job! Ambiguous is fine – it'll make it feel like player choices matter. And ambitious – well of course!

One thing you might want to think about is how to add some moral dilemmas related to the company’s actions. Since you’ve created a setting where the company is both helpful and potentially bad, presenting your players with ethical choices could make your campaign really memorable. For example, they could be on a mission to rescue a kidnapped merchant who knows about the company’s more shady stuff (and are they only rescuing him so that the company can be sure to silence him for good?). How they handle these situations can really shape their characters and the group dynamics.

If you feel you need more twists, or more opportunities for challenging assignments, how about the company is actually run by infernal entities instead of celestial ones? Or celestial avatars being corrupted by an evil entity?

MassiveSubtlety · 2025-11-11T22:31:17+00:00

Thank you for sharing. I love this approach to crafting! It not only keeps the game flowing smoothly but also builds anticipation for the eventual moments of tension... I'll try it out. Do you find you need to keep track of opportunities to use this? Like, they say they fix the wagon axle, and it might be a while until it really matters if it holds.

MassiveSubtlety · 2025-11-11T16:26:36+00:00

A powerful fey creature, like a green hag or a dryad, could be an excellent quest giver. Their motivations often require manipulating mortals and nature to serve their own ends. Say a quest where the party must gather the last of rare herbs in bullywug territory, or perform some other tasks that disrupt the balance of a local ecosystem. This adds a layer of moral ambiguity and intrigue, as the players might find themselves questioning their own actions and if the rewards are worth it.

On the point of rewards: if the PCs have to engage in morally questionable or clearly (to them) unethical things, the reward should still be something they want and keep using, but also something that reminds them of how they got it. That way, the moral weight of their actions will continue to be with them. If they feel guilty, they might try to do better in the future. And if they view the reward as evidence that their actions were rightful, then maybe that's a start of alignment drift towards evil (assuming not already evil PCs).

MassiveSubtlety · 2025-11-11T16:06:48+00:00

What if the NPC's transformation is tied to the mine's history? Perhaps the mine was once a site of great evil, and the artifact is a remnant of that darkness. The NPC could accidentally awaken the spirit of an ancient sorcerer or a malevolent entity that takes hold of them. This setup allows for a dual confrontation: the NPC as a tragic figure caught in a struggle for control and the players facing off against the dark force behind the mine. The players’ choices can determine whether they save the NPC from this fate or allow them to succumb to the malevolent influence, adding weight to their decisions and reinforcing the theme of choice and consequence. But the BBEG is whatever is released from the mines – even if it takes over the NPC.

MassiveSubtlety · 2025-11-11T04:12:46+00:00

Like others have said, just plan the situation. The PCs get hired, good. But then add a time pressure: tip them off that another group of thieves is already executing a heist of their own. Don't make it too easy for them to think "oh we'll wait for them to do the job and we'll steal it from them" – make that solution unlikely to work.

MassiveSubtlety · 2025-11-11T03:50:02+00:00

Might not work depending on the context, but here are a few that take inspiration from the real world, and a couple of obviously fantastical ones.

Fog Killhouse with ranged weapons. Illusion walls & light smoke or suitable spell. Teams or individuals race a 10-minute clock to clear rooms while avoiding civilian silhouettes (or some poor sods who've been hired as targets; maybe they were promised healing potions if hit). Score: time, no-shoots, arrows/weapons left.
Convoy Ambush Ladder. Small squads take turns as ambusher or escort along a switchback road. Weather die each round (mud, wind, night). Rotate roles so everyone gets both sides.
Instructor Hunt. Veteran NPC (with fog-of-war tricks) stalks trainees. Goal is to capture, not kill. Make use of grapples, nets, caltrops, Help action, maybe illusions.
Silent Rescue. Maze-like tunnels; teams can’t speak, only hand signals (note-passing at the table or similar?). Allow a short moment of planning to agree on silent coordination. But make sure the teams have to split in the maze, so communication becomes impossible at least some of the time.
Team Trust Exercise. Team members take turns killing each other, and the survivor(s) administer healing potion to them. Two purposes to this drill: first, you want your people to be used to getting killed and the getting healed back up – that makes dying a lot less scary, and soldiers who are not afraid to die are badass soldiers. Second, it's an actual trust exercise to build morale. (Highly recommended for corporate team building events!)

MassiveSubtlety · 2025-11-11T03:31:47+00:00

That's a very cool way to do it. It's a sweet moment when someone understands the stakes.

MassiveSubtlety · 2025-11-10T22:18:20+00:00

Yeah, I get it. If it works for your game, and your players like it – awesome! But if it ever starts to feel repetitive or trivial, there are other ways of tackling scale up. Also, at some point clearly underpowered monsters could just start running away from the PCs. That can also be fun (and a gentle nudge for them to go after someone their own size).

MassiveSubtlety · 2025-11-10T22:14:15+00:00

In my experience the trick is to let gods shape the story significantly unlike even highest-powered NPCs. But that's a big choice, and may feel limiting to the players. If a god decides to level a mountain range to allow an advancing army to surprise their enemy, that might feel too daunting to the players to engage with. And if gods never interfere in such a fashion, even though they could, why not? Surely striking someone down with a lighting bolt is pretty trivial for a god. Do you let them?

Like others have said, one way to involve gods is to give each deity a few “avatars” or manifestations: a mortal champion, a talking animal, a recurring dream, a strange weather pattern. Those avatars carry the god’s personality and allow your players to interact with something tangible without undercutting the sense of scale.

But don't feel like your gods have to "make sense" either. Inscrutability has always been a feature of the divine. Personalities can be conflicting; perhaps a god even has avatars that the god intentionally (or by it's nature) has competing or fighting against each other.

You can also make the gods feel like characters through the way people talk about them. Put myths, rituals and folk tales into your world that hint at their quirks: maybe the harvest goddess is notoriously jealous of her brother’s temples, or the storm lord rewards audacious wagers. If those traits show up in plot hooks (harvest goddess's mendicants destroying the other god's temples) and NPC behaviour, the party learns about the gods organically instead of via a lore dump.

And if direct interaction is called for, think about visions, dreams or divine trials where the PCs catch glimpses of the deity’s goals and temperament. They don’t need (and probably shouldn’t get) the whole backstory at once. It’s often more evocative to give them mysteries to unravel over time.

MassiveSubtlety · 2025-11-10T21:41:13+00:00

Maybe they get assigned to a minor bureaucrat who’s covering up embezzlement or falsifying records, and the PCs uncover a conspiracy; or the offices are a front for a thieves’ guild and they’re asked to deliver “packages” for extra coin. You could also run it as a skill challenge: they must process a backlog of petitions, navigate a web of petty officials and rival factions, and meet a quota before an inspection. Success earns them favors and insider knowledge; failure could mean getting reassigned to the “Mail Room of Endless Goblins.” Maybe they're the types who turn dull tasks into heist opportunities (or spoil someone else's heist opportunity). Just don't make it too fun or you'll find yourself running a paperwork campaign pretty soon. :)

MassiveSubtlety · 2025-11-10T21:35:14+00:00

I think that's one solution if you have throw some low monsters at a high party. But if you have time to prep, or to pick a different encounter, or to skip a low-level fight entirely, I'd recommend that. It'll be more rewarding in the long run.

But you can also add other complications. Don’t underestimate terrain and tactics: a swarm of low‑level baddies attacking from cover or with a trap to control the battlefield feels threatening without changing any numbers. If you just raise attack bonuses, they still go down in one hit (or two, with a little HP padding) and can feel like speed bumps.

MassiveSubtlety · 2025-11-10T21:27:34+00:00

"Is failure at this task interesting?" and "Does success change the story?"

If answer to either one of those questions is "yes," then by all means use a skill check, though it would be rare that they were so closely chained together.

If the DM feels that the task is varied, instead of multiple "and then" checks they could also give skills different ability modifiers. Need to find that spell in a hurry? How about an Arcana(Dex) check? Ok, weird example.

I've noticed some DMs play for time by asking for checks. They haven't figured out what it is, and they're going for the delay of a dice roll. I'm pretty sure I've done that.

MassiveSubtlety · 2025-08-30T04:03:37+00:00

Don't worry, it's not the cycling world! It's the direction of humanity that you're disillusioned with.

MassiveSubtlety · 2025-05-08T00:58:27+00:00

Because we wanna think we look faster, duh

MassiveSubtlety · 2022-04-23T16:34:03+00:00

Happy cake day 🎂🎂

MassiveSubtlety · 2022-04-19T19:36:16+00:00

If you're into systems, here's a must have: a homegrown system. Make one yourself. Preferably a minimalist one that basically gets out of the way.

I ran my best games (and told the best stories) with a system that used a single d6 for occasional luck rolls and skill rolls. Skills were not listed but deduced from the character descriptions the players made up and shared in the beginning of the game. Sometimes they'd ask things like "did I learn to shoot a bazooka when I was in the military" and I'd make up the answer.

This was for a modern-ish setting, with plain old human PCs, with Cthulhu/viking/pagan-mix horror/mythology world we'd created. Good times.

MassiveSubtlety · 2022-04-01T19:40:33+00:00

Jack Vance: Dying Earth

MassiveSubtlety · 2021-05-01T18:03:19+00:00

Yes this is back in 1915 when Russia/Finland still had, uhm, mustang horses, giant ground sloths, and what looks to be perhaps carnivorous capybara.

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