This was a very informative video on how to run villains. The description of von Hendricks in Gaz1 is a mustache twirling fool who's Evil for Evil's sake. That's boring, and the folks at TSR couldn't find a way to make him interesting so they offed him, removing a major threat to Grand Duke (later King) Stefan. By giving him understandable motives,he and his twisted family become better villains. Even Bargle the Infamous is elevated from a one note villain in this way. Kudos to you and those who worked on this story element at the Vaults of Pandius.
Indeed. Also, having loyalty of allies, not just fear or blackmail or other compulsion, but actual loyalty. The first two seasons of Netflix's Castlevania are a good example of giving villains goals and motivations normally of heroes. Evil isn't necessarily in goals, but (to me, I admit) in what methods you feel are viable. Seems like the Baron and his family have sympathetic motivations (security and prosperity for their lands and family), but they don't really have any means they won't use to achieve that, and they're not too worried about collateral damage. Perfect evil characters, really. Or at least ones that the players have to deal with outside of murderhobo ways.
Thank you for all of the lore/history videos of this setting! Please feel free to take the next weekend off for your wedding and honeymoon... your soon to be wife will hate all of us a little less if you do so. Who knows, she maybe even kind of like us because we keep encouraging you to do so. Either way I, as I'm sure many other of your faithful followers, wish the both of you a wonderful time at your ceremony, reception and honeymoon! Now you two kids go and have some FUN!
Fort Doom! Yes, a masterpiece narration by Mr. Welch! Strangely ironically fitting just before your wedding!! Congratulations my good man. I mean that in all of your endeavors with her in the future. Highs and lows
Great content from the community! Really expnds the Black Eagle. Now I'm itching to get back into a Karameikos campaign. Thanks for sharing this! Congrats on your wedding! Have a wonderful time.
@ Victor D20 How do you figure? This is a video for Fort Doom. I haven’t watched the whole thing, so if Glenn mentions that his next video will be about the Freeholds, it may be a while in coming. Plus, I just think it’s odd he hasn’t done a video yet for Heldann. Glenn has done videos for every region, some twice. He’s even done videos for other continents that weren’t fleshed out in the original setting. But nothing on the area that was big in the Stories of the Princess Ark and all of the Wrath storyline. It’s just strange to me.
This is good writing. I like that the Baron has relatable and even laudable motivations, but his methodology is what makes him a bad guy. He's definitely in a bad situation, but instead of trying to find an equitable solution--like say, allying with the Shires instead of just driving orcs and gnolls their way or taking out a loan from Darokin until Stefan finally pays up--he's doing what's expedient and makes himself look good. I also like that even though he and his family are all solidly in the Evil alignment, they do love and support one another. That's nice.
Mr. Welch, this amalgamation is incredibly well-done! I am in awe! I'm running The Eye of Traldar and really needed to better understand the Black Eagle Barony. I'll check your videos in search of more videos like this (using material from the Piazza and the Vaults, wow!!) What's your username at the Piazza? Thanks so much for the great content, V
So what are y'alls favorite character types (fighters, dexterious/stealth types, magic users, etc.)? I'm fixing to do a new modded skyrim playthrough and would love some ideas from everyone. Inspirations from many of the dnd settings, pathfinder and other games are welcome
Clerics/Paladins, Ironically Skyrim is simultaneously the best and worst out of all Elder Scrolls games to play such a character in. Easiest to Build the character, hardest to role play them as it forces Amorality and Consorting with Deadra harder than any other game in the series, even more so than Morrowind or the Shivering Isles (where it actually made sense). What makes it worse is that it's more a result of lazy quest design than trying to push a theme. Still it's not as bad as my other main stay, Druid, which I don't think their is an Elder Scrolls game to date where it's been done right, not even with mods...
Look, I'm always fond of empowered brawler types. Paladins, rangers, monks, etc. Magus from Pathfinder was one of my favorites. From the Elder Scrolls series, the classic Battlemage layout was always nice.
In the past year, our party ventured into Fort Doom under the guise of turnip (or some sort of radish) merchants to recover the lost artifact called the "Eye of Traladara". The "EoT" was stolen by Bargle's men from the Vyalia elves and in good faith to the elves, Duke Stephan asked his to retrieve the artifact discretely. -- This was one of my favorite adventures as it resulted in Fort Doom erupting into turmoil and the party being polymorphed to fly out of the fort. Too many close calls, but in the end, Fort Doom was liberated.
Fantastic, My players love this area and are afraid of Bargiel the Infamous. Even though I keep wanting to run three modules that tie together and then ends with Kill Bargiel
I've been thinking of running DDA3 Eye of Traldar and DDA4 The Dymrak Dread with my next campaign eventually leading the party to Threshold to run Kill Bargle! Having read the adventures I do feel like they need some tweaks to work best. The first adventure doesn't include either Bargle or Von Hendriks making appearances as written but I thought of maybe kicking off with a one session flashback scene with the players using characters meant to die to establish their villainy.
Thouls are one of the less famous humanoid races that I really love and wish they got more love. I really want to see playable stats for them in some edition.
I'd think for using them as a playable race you could start with the hobgoblin race as class from Orcs of Thar if you want to run BX/BECMI. The main difference is their ghoul paralysis attack if I recall.
@@jimzecca3961 I'd argue the trollish regeneration is the more important aspect, given thouls are noted to carry weapons specifically to compensate for foes that are immune to their paralytic touch, but still, Hobgob plus Troll Regeneration from Orcs of Thar would definitely be my go-to starting point for a BECMI Thoul too!
@@MrNetWraith Forgot that they had regeneration! Definitely a reason to have them use an XP progression more like the troll or other tougher monster I think.
Love the recap of the region and all the family lore. Tired steering my last table towards Ft Doom but unfortunately the pandemic has killed that campaign. Which is fine, I'll set it up again for the next group. :D
Hey man, thanks for the new video, it's always fun to listen to you! However, do you think that you could do a video on the Game Shop's Basement, and give us a guided visit please? :D
I do feel that stephan not even once giving more troops to the baron after all of these occasions seems to really put Stephan in a bad light and the baron’s plight a little too clean cut. maybe one of these times instead of 400 men the baron says he needs, stephen says he can only spare him 100. still not enough for the baron’s needs, but not making stephan totally at fault.
Great stuff here, Mr. Welch! I’ve been looking for good Ft Doom stuff as my group has become involved in the Baron’s schemes. One character is an escapee from the Fort, another is a refugee from Luln. Do you have a notes page or links to your references, if I want to dive deeper into the fan-lore? Thanks and congrats!
The original document was lost I'm trying to see what I can salvage though the middle section was deleted. Deleted was the wrong word had a problem with a font and all I got was boxes
I'd also love to see some of this stuff written down. This is a great take on the Black Eagle Barony. I've searched Pandius and can't find this material, but we can do a lot with Mr. Welch's narration.
Speaking of Hobgoblins, I actually rather like them in most DnD stuff I've read. I can't find a specific video on their Mystarian version from you, does one exist and I'm just bad at googlefu or is that a "Maybe some time later" or are they lumped in with Humanoids?
@@Mr_Welch Yeah i started in 3.5 and really quite liked them as the Organized badguy. Though even that wasn't super heavily elaborated on outside of maybe Eberron making them a mostly fallen empire. Hobgobs and and Duergar always appealed to me, though uh only bits of the Duergar. TYheir "Religiously boring hoarding gold but not making it into anything pretty" bit felt limiting, l so I'd probably just nick their sense of style from WoW's Dark Iron, maybe throw em in an alliance with Fire Giants since those are just plus sized dwarves anyway.
For my Duergar I was even drawing up some player relevant laws made to fit the whole Lawful Evil deal. "Everything you enter with is cataloged and valued, if you leave without it it is automatically presumed sold and incredibly high sales taxes are charged, with extra penalties if you said when entering that you DIDN'T plan to sell it " And in a city full of evil bastards where every thief can turn invisible, yeah I think you see where I'm going with this. Never really GMed but it seems like a useful dick move to pull on players in any setting really.
The way they are used in the 3.5 adventure Red Hand of Doom as Tiamat worshippers that have an organized army is great. I'd think you could steal a lot of ideas from that and apply it to Mystara.
Can the barony be helped? Sounds like a lot of the problems stem from external forces. Would it be that hard to throw the hobbits a heads up when humanoids are driven their way?
Heads up everyone - a new edition of D&D is coming in 2024! Several old and new worlds are coming out with it....will Mystera be one of them? I hope so! I expect a new video telling everyone why Mystera would make a great world for D&D's 50th anniversary within the month.
