Perhaps a little trivial, but I'm Hard-of-Hearing and you have no idea how much I love it that you upload each video with captions all set to go. Thank you for all the wonderful effort and keen advice you provide for your fellow GMs!
I like this approach. No need to brainstorm until you find a way to keep both your incredible villain and the PC alive until the climax. It drives me mad sometimes 🤣. Here the rivalry unfolds, grows and ends naturally. Still much work but funnier. And in the end, more creativity and originality.
Not to be a wet blanket, because Colville does have a lot of good advice as well, but the sort of railroading to keep your big villains alive until you think the players would be satisfied killing them that Alexander argues against here (rightfully, in my view) is something that Colville promotes 🙁
@@Ash__Adler yup that’s 100% true, colville is more traditional in that sense. alexander on the other hand is much more practically minded than the majority of public GMs
2 years late, but wanted to comment and say that you’re making a good point.. which is that there are many different ways to running roleplaying that can be good for everyone. There are fundamental principles that apply to all of these sets of advice, one of which is to ensure to set and meet expectations, and provide the sense of agency and choice that makes actions feel meaningful. Choosing between “railroading” and “not-railroading” is a false choice; choosing to build a world that can provide the desired experience applies the same principles described here or in Matt Colville’s advice, just in different manifestations.
One of my favorite articles converted to video form! One of the best parts of playing roleplaying games is developing villains, and discovering how they interact with the PCs.
This is the kind of advice I'm going to stick on the inside of my DM screen! So good, especially considering how it cuts through a lot of bad and murky other advice out there on this topic! Great video!
This is great advice for game masters. Not being afraid of letting special villains die is an important marker of maturity and growth for The game master and will lead to better games and stories. Thanks for the video!
Brilliant video. been there , done that. In Holmes basic: The Tower of Zenopus- the party sleep spells the lone 3rd level chaotic Swordsman ( 3rd level fighting man ) robbing and humiliating him and left for dead. but no, he evades the wandering goblins ( off screen ) only to plague the party months later with his new cohorts, evil ELVES ( and there resistance to sleep!! ) Also - the Lost City B4, the main antagonist ZARGON killed in 1st round by our house rule critical hit chart. players loved it.
Love the really clear tips and great examples. I also use another trick of the more powerful I want an npc to seem the more people the party must go through first to get access them. It's worked so well my PCs hate the provincial ruler even though they've never met her in the flesh
Interesting *makes notes*. The only issue I can see with the last example, Arveth, is that it seems a great way to end up with murderhobo players. If mercy is punished, many players will just stop being merciful.
Great story about Arveth, except that the trigger event can just lead to PCs murdering everyone they capture. It rewards the "we're just hard people making hard choices" excuse for playing a psychopathic power fantasy, so it's not a starting point I'd ever use at my table.
He probably trusts his players enough to pull it off. Even so, its just a question of expectations. "Psychopathic power fantasy" can also be entertaining to some groups.
Oh, absolutely. And the inversion is a great idea. It's just that how it's carried out can have a bunch of knock-on effects. Turning a mook into an ongoing villain will necessarily change how the players view mooks.
But that in and of itself changes how the mooks interact with the party. If the party is notorious for taking no prisoners then many mooks will run early or fight to the death. A mook backed into a corner, knowing no quarter will be given, may try and kill a downed pc in hopes of weakening the party than go after still a active pc that posses a threat to them, they're already as good as dead, better to take one with them than wounding a few more. This might go even further, some npcs might invest in better ways to kill the party faster, whilst others might start grabbing scrolls of dimension door for faster escapes should things go awry. An decision the pcs make should, over time, start an arms race with their enemies. That's what this is. Those lucky npc villains that escape, those are the guys who will learn. Dig in. Adapt. And eventually become the true villains.
The solution is to re-use freed mooks in other ways to balance it out lol. Having them re-appear and run away from the PCs, maybe see them doing work, etc. It also may apply that a cunning, fanatic cultist is probably gonna need more convincing to not fuck over a PC afterwards than some mercenary or mugger lol
You've touched on this in a couple of your videos, but could you do a video on the Railroading Manifesto? What railroading is, the problems it causes both directly and indirectly, and how to avoid resorting to it? And on another note, very good video here! I particularly liked the point about how Dracula could, in some alternate timeline, have been only the setup for the Brides going on a rampage. I think that is the single biggest thing to understand in order to effectively use RPG villains, that if the originally planned main villain goes down the best way to keep the story moving is to promote one of the lieutenants to make the new villain. But a key point there (as you touch on) is that the new villain should be a different kind of threat, to avoid the players feel like you're negating their achievement. If John McClane kills Hans Gruber, Karl Vresky doesn't just step into Gruber's shoes and continue with his scheme, he goes on a rampage to try and get revenge on McClane.
Wow, I didn't realize you had a RU-vid until this just popped up in my recommended! The algorithm worked for once 😀 I'm pretty sure you had a blog post going through this already, but good on you for making a video as well to reach a different audience 👍
Thank you for this, I'll be passing it along to other referees. I think the underlying problem is that groups have come to expect a pace that makes immersion difficult. They want to finish an adventure rather than to exist in a world. After all, who says the PCs even rate a big bad guy? You have to matter to make enemies, and the low-level PCs typical of most adventures can't even recognize-- let alone realistically threaten-- established power structures. It takes exceptional people to do things like that, and even if the PCs are (meant to be) those exceptional people, they need time to 1. acquire the power to act; 2. feel authentically compelled to act; and 3. know where to direct that action. This in turn gives the villain(s) time to develop organically in the manner you describe.
Really glad to see you do a video on this topic! Great point about the early death of a villain being a reward for the players' effort, as opposed to a disappointing anti-climax.
In my current campaign, the PCs foiled an antagonist's plot and killed him while he fled. The dm was up-front that he was supposed to be that chapter's "big bad" but didn't want to take our win away from us. Instead, there ended up being a "bigger bad" and our victory was a clue, linking her to her "incompetent assistant"
Any advice on how to handle villains getting resurrected? In a game world where such things exist (such as your typical D&D setting) it makes sense, but a few weeks ago I was quite frustrated when we killed a former party member who had turned against us and was serving a demon lord, only for us to hear the voice of the demon lord saying he’d be brought back.
When I first read this in your Ptolus campaign writeup it changed the way I planned, built and played all NPCs forever. Fantastic, useful advice, as always.
I entered your intro ready to argue with you, but then some of your points were things I do to build up villains so I felt better lol. Great thoughts about setting up multiple baddies, and ultimately using the ones that the players relate to/love to hate. It’s a really interesting idea, I’m gonna try it in my next Edge of the Empire campaign!
For me as a GM the railroad looks much nicer when the players don't buy in to the world. This video does have great advice, but the best villains occur at the players choice. Some players could add more fun to theirs and their GMs lives if they tried to see the great villain behind the mask of the GM who is really trying. Maybe don't pursue every enemy like a hungry dog, be fearful of what dangers a chase could hold. Prompt enemies to talk, tell you why they've commited their atrocities, because dialogue can be fun. Trust the GM to not cheat you out of a fair fight because you forgot to say "I shoot him in the head"
I’m not sure if the ending to the video works: under what circumstances would we meet Justin Alexander at the table? Even if the pandemic ended? Is this a tease? Does Justin Alexander have a plan for us to play with him at a physical or virtual table?
I dunno, what mad designs lurk in the depths of the well of wisdom? What knowledge is he privvy to that us mortals do not see? Perhaps in his possession are forbidden majicks or illusions that we could only barely comprehend as mere mortals?
Your content keeps getting better and better. I'm happy that you can be succinct as to give us a lot of helpful advices in a short video, but please do longer ones with complete scenarios and examples as in the Icewind Dale. Its awesome! P.S: I'm so excited that Ptolus is getting an updated version.
Always so helpful, putting into concrete terms what I've only barely brainstormed about. Thank you so much, as always, for your insight. Looking forward to your next video!
Nice vlog. I would like to hear your take on letting the PCs die when they are super stupid or the dice are against them. I think it is too railroad-y to save them.
Excellent video and all yours are very good. Subscribed, like everyone should. Im curious in that you mention you play 3e. Can you tell us more about why?
Yeah, I have been building up one of the antagonist of the sessions for months now, and I KNOW that if the players get their chance they would most defenitvely kill him. So I mostly build this interaction trough inderect mediums. But there are villains that can comeback again and again. Liches raise untill you destroy their philactery, Rakshasas reincarnate, Demons and Devils go back to their home plane. A malicius AI can be virtually inmortal making copies of itself. The antagonist is probably the most important NPC you need to flesh out on ANY given scenario, you need to give them goals to achive, obstacles to bypass and most important a reason for them to NOT back away. Another thing I really try to do, is not think of them as VILLAINS, that's why I call them antagonist. When the players set themselves to stop the antagonist, when their goals are diametrically opposed by the antagonist... that's when it becomes the villain.
Compelling stuff. This advice immediately reminded me of how you remixed Waterdeep Dragon Heist on your blog to bring ALL the villains into play. It also frees the DM of having to connive foolproof villain escape plans all the time :-)
This is an advice how to make good story worst, replace Dracula with improvised ad hoc lackey, and - most of all - how to force DM to feel every time unsafe, turn a game session for him to final math exams and make him burnout. All these sandboxes, non-linear scenarios etc. are just marketing bluff to make players happy at the cost of DMs and sell more modules of big game companies. The railroading is the best way of RPG for DM. . . as long as it stays hidden from players' eyes.
i really don’t understand how you think this is marketing for modules. most modern modules are railroads, and he is telling you how to create and run your own sandbox campaign. if you’re going to railroad, just watch a movie or read a book
@@C3R341K1LL3R Let's look at Dragon Haist module. You can find the 4 villains to choose and a lot of material your players never discover. It's a product of big corporation, made by several full time employers. You cannot expect your DM will prepare for the next session a sandbox like this. He can do it once, maybe twice, and after loosing his job and wife he will burnout. For this reason I think all the terms: non-linear, railroading and - most of all - sandbox are just marketing tricks of big game companies to make you buy their modules.
@@ThomasPercy i just think you’re very unfamiliar with Justin’s work. he has said many times that most published modules are bad. in this video he’s not telling you to prep a huge amount of content for each villain that you’ll never use. he’s saying to prep as you go and as it gets narrowed down. his entire philosophy goes against the mentality of just following modules. i recommend you read some of his articles on his site and you’ll see that he is definitely not trying to sell anything
@@C3R341K1LL3R Yes, I'm new on this channel. I didn't tell Alexandrian works for WotC or Games Workshop marketing. He said you can kill Dracula, Vader or Sauron at the very beginning of your game session, next you can replace them on the fly with random vampire spawn, stormtrooper or goblin and your story still be good, or even better. This is simply not true. The only true result will be that you (as a DM) have to prepare new villain, which cost you a lot of work.
