Help with minor villains

[Razanir]

So I have an idea for a plot. And once it gets going, quests should be easy to make. But the lead-in's a bit more difficult. The idea is that magic shouldn't exist any more, but it's reentering the world. And the first few quests will be fighting Scooby-Doo monsters to lower the players' guards and create a bit of a shock factor. So here's the question: what could you imagine someone pretending to be, and why would they be doing so?

tl;dr: Scooby-Doo villains. Come up with someone disguising themself as a mythical creature in a post-magic world and why they would be doing so.

[Hyena]

Slavers try to portait the mansion they operate in as haunted by undead to scare off the city watch.

[Bulhakov]

You did not specify the time period. Standard medieval-like fantasy?

Generally try to use paranormal activities (ghosts, witches, werewolves, other creatures) to cover up some typical illegal ones (smuggling, robberies, break-ins, production of drugs, poaching, cons) or for someone's economic benefit (r.g. silver trader spreads rumors / fabricates evidence of vampires/werewolves).

[Razanir]

You did not specify the time period. Standard medieval-like fantasy?

Generally try to use paranormal activities (ghosts, witches, werewolves, other creatures) to cover up some typical illegal ones (smuggling, robberies, break-ins, production of drugs, poaching, cons) or for someone's economic benefit (r.g. silver trader spreads rumors / fabricates evidence of vampires/werewolves).

The world they're in at the start is similar to Westeros in tech- and magic-level

EDIT: This is the post that gave me the idea.


I don't know if it's early enough in this campaign to do this, but you could have the "no magical creatures" thing play out in-game instead of just telling your players.

What I mean is, you do your worldbuilding such that people may believe in dragons, goblins, or whatever, but all "reasonable" people know that these are just stories - folklore, but not something that educated people believe in. Then you build on that by having a couple adventures where your players investigate something that looks like a vampire attack, and that all the villagers are insisting is a vampire attack, only to find out that the "vampire" was really Old Man Withers in a mask. Throw a couple of those at your players, then have an actual werewolf start killing people.

[illyrus]

A man has trained his vicious attack dog to seek out people with a certain scent and tear them apart. That scent actually comes from a plant that the man has been selling to the rich of the city as the city's one and only herbalist. He has an irrational hatred of the nobility/rich for what happened to his now deceased sister. So far he's only released the dog on the nights of a full moon more out of coincidence of when the plants are purchased than planning. He keeps something on his person that cancels out the scent on him as well as at his shop. People are assuming it is the work of a werewolf with a specific grudge.

A cat burglar has been stealing valuables from the homes of the rich. While there she drugs the sleeping patron and then makes a vampire bite mark on them. She only steals a few items that should not be immediately missed and figures the worry of vampires will keep people from looking too closely at their valuables.

A group of kids have been going around playing pranks while the town sleeps. The people are convinced it is the work of fey.

Have the town convinced that a woman is a witch who is a herbalist and doctor. An enemy of hers planted some dangerous herbs in her bag that caused people over time to experience detrimental side effects. The townspeople assume it is a curse that she's spreading and want to lynch her.

[Jay R]

Thieves who use the city sewers to reach their intended victims want everybody to think the sewers have monsters in them.

You said it was Westeros-like. Enemies of the Lannisters might want to simulate the effects of escaped lions attacking the herds, to make people dislike the Lannisters.

Kids might pretend to be zombies near the cemetery just to play pranks on people.

Brigands hiding in the forest might want people to think that there's a dire wolf pack there.

Somebody might want people to believe that he has a troll defending his treasure.

[Zahhak]

Possibly important questions: are the Scooby Doo villains working together, directly and in the open, directly but hidden from party knowledge, unknowingly by the BBEG, or anything of that nature?

[Razanir]

Possibly important questions: are the Scooby Doo villains working together, directly and in the open, directly but hidden from party knowledge, unknowingly by the BBEG, or anything of that nature?

Minor, unrelated villains used to set up the concept of "There's no magic in the world"

[Estrecca]

Minor, unrelated villains used to set up the concept of "There's no magic in the world"

Depending on the specifics of what you want to do and the setting, you could use something akin to the Leopard Society (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopard_Society) adapted to a fantasy world.

Say, crazy cult from the bad old days in which magic existed. Members used to be able to transform into powerful werebeings. Now, they have to play dress up and kill folks with weapons, but they hope that if they keep doing evil stuff, eventually they will regain their ability or something.

[ZeroGear]

Actually ran across one of these in one of my supplements:
There was this bandit who build a wooden dragon, placed it atop a set of stone stairs, hid inside, and had kobolds threaten a nearby settlement into giving them stuff. He used bluff and intimidate skills to pretend to be the dragon, and had a mechanism that fired out alchemist's fire as the dragon's "breath".
Swap out the kobolds with something more setting appropriate, and you have yourself a Scooby-Doo encounter.