Start of my new campaign looking for help and feed back

[NinjaLemur247]

Hello to all my fellow gamers. (players should not be reading this thread it's for GM eyes only, you sneaky little players LOL)


So I know it's been done before but I doing a campaign where the players are sent from the Forgotten Realms to to another plane that lacks heroes, but evil is basically ruling everywhere. People can get into the plane but they can't get out. Think Ravenloft .Occasionlly they will be sent support things from back home but support is few and far between. It's high level game. I'm charactes off at 12th level and they will have one main NPC with them. I will be using alot of the homebrew rules and monsters.

Here is what I have so far for the 6 masters of Dread that rule the land:

The 6 Masters of Dread

Selina the Ice Queen of Ice and frost (Alignment NE): 20th level Frozen Heart Sorcerer. She wields of the Staff of Eternal Winter. They say her mastery of cold magic is so powerful it can harm even a white dragon or frost giant. She calls all of her followers her children. Her most favored child is a female ancient white dragon. She also has number of Frost giants in her service.

Elee the Vampire Queen (Alignment LE): Bruxa Night Mother. They say despite being a vampire she able to walk in the sun. Besides many undead minions at her commands she has highly organized group of Hobgoblins that serve her loyally.

King Gloran the Undying (Alignment CE): Death Knight. He is known to ride a dragon into combat that is black as night of unknown age. Rumor say when the dragon kills someone they return as a shadow under his control.
Master Urgroth (Alignment LE): Death tyrant. A cunning manipulative Beholder, who kills minions who fail him and turns them into zombies forever under his control.

High King Treskon (Alignment CE): Balor. He is disguised as a Tiefling. Beside the massive army he controls, they say he commands demons.

Zebrek the Ancient One (Alignment NE): Arch-Wraith. All that is known is he is an old evil and powerful undead.

So what do you all think so far? I plan on doing this game up to 20 level and possibliy beyound.

[Specter]

Curiously, I will also run a high-level game with six main antagonists (The Last Stars, kinda like a secret strike team and mob rulers).

If I were you, I'd add at least another humanoid to that group; undead and fiends, as awesome as can be, will sound repeating after a while. Think if Curse of Strahd had several Strahd, players would go crazy/bored.

Also, for the presentation of these villains not to be generic, you need them interacting with the players in ways that reveal them (not only combat), or cutscenes (scenes without the players narrated by you, to expose and breed suspense). Otherwise, players may not even remember which "bad guy" they're facing.

Hope I helped.

[NinjaLemur247]

Curiously, I will also run a high-level game with six main antagonists (The Last Stars, kinda like a secret strike team and mob rulers).

If I were you, I'd add at least another humanoid to that group; undead and fiends, as awesome as can be, will sound repeating after a while. Think if Curse of Strahd had several Strahd, players would go crazy/bored.

Also, for the presentation of these villains not to be generic, you need them interacting with the players in ways that reveal them (not only combat), or cutscenes (scenes without the players narrated by you, to expose and breed suspense). Otherwise, players may not even remember which "bad guy" they're facing.

Hope I helped.

This is good feed back I appreicate it.

Do you think 6 master is too much? I don't force them into endless dungeon crawls. I want each encounter be it there final or not to be memorable.

Part of the story will be players figguring each master weakness which may give them advantages in facing them and there minons.

[Shining Wrath]

Just looking at that it appears you've put more thought into Selinia than the other 5.

Urgroth the Death Tyrant is pretty much out of his league. Hordes of zombies don't cut it when PCs can fly and rain fireballs upon them from above. The vampire queen might also be outclassed.

Since you're doing homebrew I might ditch one of Elee or Urgroth in favor of Slaads or Mind Flayers with a homebrewed Elder Brain / Greater Death Slaad BBEG. Less undeath, more hideous freaks. Or an aboleth Lord of some sort, upgraded. Kobald Press' Tome of Beasts has a niboleth (spelling?) that's a slight power upgrade.

Another alternative would be Fey Gone Bad. Tome of Beasts has some Fey Lords of the evil variety. Also, I ported over all the 3.5 MM1-5 fey and published it on DMs Guild; search for "Wild and Free", I shouldn't link to it as I'm charging $3 for it. My Wild Hunt is about CR 29 for a party of 4 if you combine the CR 23 Lord of the Hunt with 4 CR 13 Hounds of the Hunt; that's a pretty serious challenge. I'd much rather face the Tarrasque, just sayin'.

After the party takes out the other 6 lords, the Lord of the Hunt decides they are interesting, and the hunt begins; if they don't defeat him, they become the new Lords of the Land, irredeemably evil and in service to the Lord of the Hunt, the true ruler of the demiplane ....

[Specter]

This is good feed back I appreicate it.

Do you think 6 master is too much? I don't force them into endless dungeon crawls. I want each encounter be it there final or not to be memorable.

Part of the story will be players figguring each master weakness which may give them advantages in facing them and there minons.

Depends on how long you want to make this. Based on researching the boss and facing the boss, each of them will take at least one session to be used efficiently. If players are up to that, good, otherwise make less of them.

[Gastronomie]

Seems straightforward and nice, but I still have stuff to say. My first advice is to keep in mind that characters are not a bunch of abilities.

Non-Player Characters are humans. Or wait, um, in the cases with these 6 "Masters of Dread", they're not really human, but still, they have their mindsets and goals. You see what I mean?

"People" don't randomly sit back in thrones made of human skulls and wear black capes and have red eyes and go laugh MWAHAHAHAHA and plan world domination. That Dark Lord is actually more of a natural disaster.

If you want memorable villains, it shouldn't be just about his/her abilities - it should also be about his/her personality, or distinctive mindset.

For instance, there's this "Selina the Ice Queen of Ice and frost". So yeah, she "wields of the Staff of Eternal Winter". And "they say her mastery of cold magic is so powerful it can harm even a white dragon or frost giant". She "calls all of her followers her children". Her most favored child is a... "female ancient white dragon". And she "also has number of Frost giants in her service".

Almost all of these are explanations of her "abilities" or her "minions". The only part that doesn't belong in those categories is how she "calls all of her followers her children", but that doesn't really specify what sort of person she is either. What is her personality like? What is her goal? None of those come drifting from your passage. (Not being mean or harsh, just pointing it out.)

When trying to create interesting villains, I always keep these things in mind:
1. Set a Goal, and make him/her obsessed with it. The motivation for the goal is logically understandable, but the goal itself is often un-understandable.
2. Give him/her a weakness. This weakness can make him/her take illogical actions, ignoring any circumstances.

For the Ice Queen... what's her "goal"? And what is the "motivation" for it? (For instance, her goal may be "world domination", but the motivation could be to "make the entire world as beautiful as possible, because she thinks icy fields and glaciers and such are really nice, and wherever she dominates, the land becomes like that".)

Is she insane or is she simply cruel? What's her personality like? What's her mental weakness?
(As for "mental weakness", say, if she's obsessed with beauty, she might try to protect frozen statues from being destroyed by her spells. Which means that if you hide behind one of those statues, the queen might not attack you directly.)

The manga Jojo's Bizarre Adventures is pretty good with creating interesting characters. For instance, Kira Yoshikage, main antagonist of Part 4, is a psychopath serial killer obsessed with the hands of women... who is also a normal salary worker, whose goal in life is to "live a peaceful life". These two faces seem contradictory, but Kira was "born" with the urge to kill people (it's actually due to him being abused as a child, but it isn't explored in detail in the main manga - only mentioned by the author in an interview), and he can do nothing about this lust. Thus, he kills women now and then, but outside that he tries his best to be a normal man. He leads a healthy life, always getting back home before 8 o'clock, stretching and drinking a cup of milk before he goes to bed, waking up early, eating nice breakfast... and so on. He has absolutely no interest in world domination, or even getting promoted in his company. And this guy is the main villain.

The main characters eventually find out that there's a serial killer on the loose, and one of them, by coincidence, finds out who Kira is. For Kira, this is an emergency - if he is wanted or caught, he cannot lead the "peaceful life" he wishes to keep on living.

Thus he kills the witness in cold blood, leaving no clues*. And after that, he smiles and says to himself, "now I can sleep well tonight".
*He actually does - the killed witness, in his last moments, leaves a clue - which eventually leads to plot advancement, but that's completely another story.

Like other characters in Jojo, Kira has a special ability called a Stand, sorta like a superpower. And his Stand is pretty powerful, so he does make a menacing villain... But he has no dream of world domination or anything, he just wants to lead a normal, happy, quiet life. It's just that he also can't stop himself from killing people.

Unique villains need unique motivations. Try to start from something that's normal and undestandable - for instance, in the example I gave about the queen, all she wants to do might be to spread beauty, just that she's too obsessed with it and wouldn't permit any other landscape besides a wintery one. The motivation is understandable, but the means and goals are not.

Just random stuff off the top of my head. You should think up the specifics for yourself, because they are your characters, and it's you who're gonna role-play as them.

[NinjaLemur247]

Seems straightforward and nice, but I still have stuff to say. My first advice is to keep in mind that characters are not a bunch of abilities.

Non-Player Characters are humans. Or wait, um, in the cases with these 6 "Masters of Dread", they're not really human, but still, they have their mindsets and goals. You see what I mean?

"People" don't randomly sit back in thrones made of human skulls and wear black capes and have red eyes and go laugh MWAHAHAHAHA and plan world domination. That Dark Lord is actually more of a natural disaster.

If you want memorable villains, it shouldn't be just about his/her abilities - it should also be about his/her personality, or distinctive mindset.

For instance, there's this "Selina the Ice Queen of Ice and frost". So yeah, she "wields of the Staff of Eternal Winter". And "they say her mastery of cold magic is so powerful it can harm even a white dragon or frost giant". She "calls all of her followers her children". Her most favored child is a... "female ancient white dragon". And she "also has number of Frost giants in her service".

Almost all of these are explanations of her "abilities" or her "minions". The only part that doesn't belong in those categories is how she "calls all of her followers her children", but that doesn't really specify what sort of person she is either. What is her personality like? What is her goal? None of those come drifting from your passage. (Not being mean or harsh, just pointing it out.)

When trying to create interesting villains, I always keep these things in mind:
1. Set a Goal, and make him/her obsessed with it. The motivation for the goal is logically understandable, but the goal itself is often un-understandable.
2. Give him/her a weakness. This weakness can make him/her take illogical actions, ignoring any circumstances.

For the Ice Queen... what's her "goal"? And what is the "motivation" for it? (For instance, her goal may be "world domination", but the motivation could be to "make the entire world as beautiful as possible, because she thinks icy fields and glaciers and such are really nice, and wherever she dominates, the land becomes like that".)

Is she insane or is she simply cruel? What's her personality like? What's her mental weakness?
(As for "mental weakness", say, if she's obsessed with beauty, she might try to protect frozen statues from being destroyed by her spells. Which means that if you hide behind one of those statues, the queen might not attack you directly.)

The manga Jojo's Bizarre Adventures is pretty good with creating interesting characters. For instance, Kira Yoshikage, main antagonist of Part 4, is a psychopath serial killer obsessed with the hands of women... who is also a normal salary worker, whose goal in life is to "live a peaceful life". These two faces seem contradictory, but Kira was "born" with the urge to kill people (it's actually due to him being abused as a child, but it isn't explored in detail in the main manga - only mentioned by the author in an interview), and he can do nothing about this lust. Thus, he kills women now and then, but outside that he tries his best to be a normal man. He leads a healthy life, always getting back home before 8 o'clock, stretching and drinking a cup of milk before he goes to bed, waking up early, eating nice breakfast... and so on. He has absolutely no interest in world domination, or even getting promoted in his company. And this guy is the main villain.

The main characters eventually find out that there's a serial killer on the loose, and one of them, by coincidence, finds out who Kira is. For Kira, this is an emergency - if he is wanted or caught, he cannot lead the "peaceful life" he wishes to keep on living.

Thus he kills the witness in cold blood, leaving no clues*. And after that, he smiles and says to himself, "now I can sleep well tonight".
*He actually does - the killed witness, in his last moments, leaves a clue - which eventually leads to plot advancement, but that's completely another story.

Like other characters in Jojo, Kira has a special ability called a Stand, sorta like a superpower. And his Stand is pretty powerful, so he does make a menacing villain... But he has no dream of world domination or anything, he just wants to lead a normal, happy, quiet life. It's just that he also can't stop himself from killing people.

Unique villains need unique motivations. Try to start from something that's normal and undestandable - for instance, in the example I gave about the queen, all she wants to do might be to spread beauty, just that she's too obsessed with it and wouldn't permit any other landscape besides a wintery one. The motivation is understandable, but the means and goals are not.

Just random stuff off the top of my head. You should think up the specifics for yourself, because they are your characters, and it's you who're gonna role-play as them.


Awesome feed back! good stuff to keep in mind

[Arelai]

You should make sure at least one of them isn't a true villain. Like, a lawful neutral character who's doing evil things for a greater good. So instead of fighting and killing him, they can ally with him, or at least set up some kind of agreement, like "give us 3 ten days, and if we can't stop them by then, continue your actions."

[Gastronomie]

You should make sure at least one of them isn't a true villain. Like, a lawful neutral character who's doing evil things for a greater good. So instead of fighting and killing him, they can ally with him, or at least set up some kind of agreement, like "give us 3 ten days, and if we can't stop them by then, continue your actions."I'm not sure if this is a "requirement", but it would be interesting if the 6 masters had some rival relationships and it's possible to pitch their forces against each other. If "straight-forward fighting" is the one and only way to defeat them it's no different from a computer game.

[Antilles123]

This is good feed back I appreicate it.

Do you think 6 master is too much? I don't force them into endless dungeon crawls. I want each encounter be it there final or not to be memorable.

Part of the story will be players figguring each master weakness which may give them advantages in facing them and there minons.

Personally, I feel like 6 is too much.
It's like a quest when you have to find the 10 pieces of the broken magic weapon. Whenever I play games like that, I feel like it's the same thing over and over. Find 1 piece and repeat. 3-4 villains would be better, IMO.