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Primal Fury
2009-08-31, 03:52 PM
A question occured to me not too long ago, and I would like to pose it to you all. How exactly do you DM's give your end-game/campaign/chronicle monsters/villains a "boss-ish" feel? What do you do that makes your players know that the thing their fighting is "It" and not just another mindslave of something that's a mindslave of something else that's a mindslave of something else (and so-on into infinity)?

jiriku
2009-08-31, 04:07 PM
In a great campaign, the players are participants in a complex, evolving story. Just like you can easily tell in a movie or a good book who the main villain is and when the climax of the story is occurring. Think about the movies you've enjoyed. In the best movies, special effects and set-piece battles complemented a dynamic and engaging story with well-developed villainous characters. Movies with fancy encounters but weak story-telling were less satisfying and sometimes left you confused about who was who.

Tell your story like a good movie, and the players will intuitively understand when the climax of the story is occurring, and who the master villain is.

Jair Barik
2009-08-31, 04:10 PM
They know their fighting the Big Bad because the world is falling around them, their immediate location is starting to explode and the guy in question is dramatically ominous and has just KOed a number of NPC's who the players had emotional envestment in with a single action (he has also soulbound said NPC's at the DM's discretion)

RandomNPC
2009-08-31, 04:16 PM
I duno about you guys, but my groups going to know when the artifacts they have been collecting are almost together, and the rest of the set shows up in the hands of a not nice group of people. with character levels.