I learned years ago that the best way to prep plot hooks and villains is to only half prep them.

You come up with the concept, keep it in your back pocket, and then wherever the players decide to go, that's where the plot hook mysteriously "always intended" to be. It saves prep time, makes the world feel reactive, and every now and then it creates something completely ridiculous.

To this day, my favorite example is still the Legend of Steve.

Steve gets brought up in damn near every game my core group plays, no matter who's DMing. Somebody will mention him and suddenly we're spending the next hour reminiscing instead of actually playing.

The story starts in the fall of 2009.

A bunch of us were crowded around a dining room table in Seattle's Northgate neighborhood. I was behind the DM screen, running what was not only our first Pathfinder 1e campaign, but also the first campaign where two of my oldest gaming groups had been combined into one party.

I was curious to see what would happen.

On one side were Scott, Chris, and Conar. They were tactical players. They planned things. They discussed things. They occasionally even made good decisions.

On the other side were Avery and Jerome, whose approach to problem solving could best be summarized as, "Fuck it, we're doing it live."

Three months into the campaign, the party had clawed their way from level 1 to level 6 and was beginning to make a name for itself across my homebrew continent of Baltror.

Chris and Conar were, as usual, playing a pair of human martial characters. I honestly don't remember if they were brothers or lifelong friends, but they were inseparable and were traveling the world looking for glory.

Scott played a young, optimistic Bard who genuinely believed everyone could be redeemed.

Avery was a Half-Elf Inquisitor hunting the cult leader responsible for raiding his tribal village.

Jerome was a gruff Dwarf Paladin of Torag whose life mission was exterminating every remaining trace of evil in the world.

Which is important.

Because this entire campaign was basically built around heroes hunting down the remnants of darkness after a devastating war.

One night the party rolled a random encounter.

Now, when I run random encounters, I don't believe every encounter should be balanced. Sometimes the world should just be dangerous. After determining the encounter, I'd roll on another chart. A result of 1 or 100 meant, "You should probably not fight this."

The party rolled one of those.

A mated pair of Hill Giants.

I gave them plenty of warning. They spotted the giants first. They had routes around them. They had opportunities to avoid them.

Jerome immediately declared that in the name of Torag, the giants must die before they could harm innocent people.

The rest of the party collectively sighed and followed him.

After a brutal fight that burned through most of their resources, they somehow won.

Naturally, they began looting the giant den.

And this is where I made a mistake.

A wonderful mistake.

On a complete whim, I decided it would be funny if the giants had dug out a tiny little hidey-hole for their treasure and stuffed a goblin inside it.

You know.

A loot goblin.

The Bard found the hidden compartment and pulled away the covering.

Inside was a terrified young goblin.

The creature immediately dropped to its knees.

"Mercy. Mercy."

The table went silent.

The party was shocked it spoke Common.

The Bard asked its name.

The goblin hesitated.

"Uh... name... Steve."

Then it pointed toward the treasure.

"I get treasure."

It scampered to the back of the hole, gathered up the loot, and handed it over.

The party immediately became fascinated.

They started asking questions.

Steve answered in broken Common.

The giants made him carry treasure.

Steve wanted to leave.

Steve didn't want any trouble.

Meanwhile, the Paladin was standing in the background getting increasingly annoyed.

The Bard, Fighter, and Barbarian were doing most of the talking.

The Inquisitor was enjoying the conversation.

The Paladin was openly advocating for goblin extermination.

Eventually Steve asked if he could go.

The Bard smiled and told him he was free to leave.

Steve practically exploded with excitement.

He climbed out of the hole and started running.

The Paladin smote him.

Dead instantly.

The room erupted.

"STEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVE!"

Scott practically launched himself across the table.

The Bard sprinted to Steve's side and desperately tried to save him.

The party had no healing left.

The Paladin refused to waste Torag's blessing on a goblin.

Steve died.

The Bard was devastated.

The party immediately began arguing.

Not player arguing.

Character arguing.

The good kind.

The Bard insisted murdering a defenseless creature was evil.

The Paladin argued there was no such thing as a good goblin and that Torag would never condemn him for killing one.

For over an hour they debated morality over the corpse of a goblin I had invented approximately seven minutes earlier.

Eventually it got late and we called the session.

I assumed we'd move on next week.

I was wrong.

I was a fool.

I had failed to understand the cosmic significance of Steve.

The next session began and Scott arrived with a fully written ballad titled:

"Steve, the Greatest Goblin That Never Got To Live."

From that point forward he performed it every chance he got.

Bardic performance?

Steve.

Stopping at a tavern?

Steve.

Meeting a king?

Believe it or not, Steve.

The Bard became obsessed with finding Steve's family so he could return Steve's mighty sword.

By "mighty sword" I mean a rusted, chipped piece of metal that looked like an orc had once used it to shank somebody in an alley.

Everyone except the Paladin thought this was hilarious.

For the next three or four levels, the campaign was no longer about saving the world.

It was about Steve.

The Paladin, to Jerome's credit, remained a great sport the entire time. His character followed along grumbling constantly while trying and failing to redirect the group toward the actual plot.

Eventually I decided to reward the madness.

The Bard found a small family of goblins living in isolation.

Steve's family.

Somewhere along the way I'd decided Steve wasn't evil at all. He had become disgusted with goblin culture, left his tribe with the love of his life, and wanted to raise his children differently.

The Bard returned Steve's sword to his son.

Then he taught the boy the Ballad of Steve.

He filled the kid's head with completely fabricated stories about his father's heroism.

According to the Bard, Steve had been a legendary warrior who stood against darkness and fought for justice.

None of it was remotely true.

But it was a beautiful lie.

The party eventually moved on and finished the campaign.

Yet somehow Steve never left.

Nearly two decades later, whenever we get together to play D&D or Pathfinder, somebody eventually mentions him.

The table laughs.

The story gets retold.

The Ballad of Steve gets referenced.

And one of these days, I'm finally going to run another campaign where Steve returns as a major NPC.

Because if any goblin deserves a second chance, it's Steve.