Midpoint Writer's Block

[thatbenkid]

If any of my "Aul for One" players are reading this... don't?

Hey friends, long time fan, first time poster. Long story short (but not actually) I'm coming up to a big middle/turning-point in the campaign I've been running for a year. Basically the BBEG will finally reveal themselves, much of their master plan will come to light, and soem character arcs will take the players out of the city they've had as a home base for a bit. I'm just not sure how to achieve what I want for the BBEG in a narratively satisfying way for the players. Here's the gist:


Setting Context: This is a world in the midst of a magical industrial revolution. Arcanotech is competing with things like electricity for creating the modern way of life. Breakthroughs in arcanotech have allowed people to become "learned magic users" (wizards and bards) putting them at odds with "old magic users" (clerics, druids, sorcerers, etc...). The world was on the brink of war once, but has since formed a tense peace.


The BBEG needs three things to get what they want:

For the world to be at war (manipulated from behind the scenes)
For the Treaty of Contrition to be destroyed (all you need to know is that it's an artifact signed with the gods as witnesses, and is protected by POWERFUL abjuration magic)
To have a portal to the Faewild that they can escape through once the gods seek to restart the world (believing this iteration to have failed). They will then be able to mold the next world to their will, in the hopes of creating a utopia that will end the cycle of world-resetting violence and tragedy.


The tricky bit is the destruction of the treaty, how will our BBEG do this? Some ideas:


-They need the four MacGuffins to break the enchantment. This gives the party a potential fetch quest. However I (and my players) want a big climactic boss battle and that means that they'll either fail to stop the MacGuffins from being stolen, or they'll just get taken back anyway and that feels unsatisfying for the players, to constantly be failing.

Maybe there are 8 MacGuffins, and the BBEG only needs 4? That way even if they win some they can lose others?

-This is a very wealthy, very behind the scenes mastermind BBEG, maybe the device they need is being constructed atop the church tower (where I imagine the final battle might take place at this time), under the guise of some other project. This way once the party has foiled a bunch of other plans they can realize "oh no the tower thing was the doomsday device to destroy the treaty all along!"

This raises the problem of "well what are we supposed to do to impede the BBEG's efforts in the meantime?". The BBEG has 5 powerful henchmen, maybe the party could be tasked with tracking them down and taking them out one by one? Maybe in order to get more information about what the major plan is? Clues to where to go next?

-Maybe the treaty can be destroyed at any time (they could have acquired everything they need beforehand), but for the BBEG's plan to work they need to destroy is when the world is at the peak of its war/violence? This way the thrust is then less about stopping the destruction of the treaty and more trying to fix the broken world

This does run into the problem from the first bullet point where, the party will have to fail in some way for the final battle to happen (which I know they want), and also what then becomes the goal for the party?



This is sort of where I'm up to. I know this is a huge stream of consciousness, but this writer's block is starting to keep me up at night, and I would love some guidance from this brilliant group and your collective wisdom. Any advice would be highly appreciated, as this story has been my pet project for some time and I want to do it justice.

[titi]

About the mcguffins :

Maybe rather than having the heros fail to stop the bbeg in order to have a climatic battle, try to have the players keep hold of at least 1 mcguffin to force the bbeg into attacking them?
Maybe each mcguffin location is uniquely defended, but the attack destroy the place so even if they successfully defend the thing, they can't let it stay there?

[Mastikator]

Some ideas:

The treaty of contrition and the war are connected, perhaps if the treaty is voided or destroyed the war becomes inevitable? So really the BBEG can focus on the treaty.
Maybe there's a complicated clause or clauses in the treaty that would allow for war to start again if a specific set of circumstances arose. A McGuffin doesn't need to be an item, it can be an event or circumstance. If the BBEG has 5 powerful henchmen then he can send them out to get/do all McGuffins at the same time. Perhaps each McGuffin also gives the owner some powerful buff, the players can't stop/get all of them, but they can choose which benefit they get and which benefit goes to the henchmen/BBEG.

If the BBEG thinks that war is inevitable without the treaty, then the players also have the option to foster peace based on cooperation instead of a treaty. They can position themselves as leaders of community/economy that prevent war without any treaty needing to enforce it, and in doing so become entrenched and powerful members of the game world.

If the players acquire a critical mass of McGuffins then that makes the BBEGs job a lot simpler, he can just take it from the players, he gathers his powerful henchmen and his resources and targets the players directly. (this is mostly the backup path for the game, ensuring that the big confrontation the players want is inevitable) This is also a hail mary for the BBEG, pull out all the stops, spend money on golems and magical creatures and mercenaries.

[thatbenkid]

Some ideas:

The treaty of contrition and the war are connected, perhaps if the treaty is voided or destroyed the war becomes inevitable? So really the BBEG can focus on the treaty.
Maybe there's a complicated clause or clauses in the treaty that would allow for war to start again if a specific set of circumstances arose. A McGuffin doesn't need to be an item, it can be an event or circumstance. If the BBEG has 5 powerful henchmen then he can send them out to get/do all McGuffins at the same time. Perhaps each McGuffin also gives the owner some powerful buff, the players can't stop/get all of them, but they can choose which benefit they get and which benefit goes to the henchmen/BBEG.

If the BBEG thinks that war is inevitable without the treaty, then the players also have the option to foster peace based on cooperation instead of a treaty. They can position themselves as leaders of community/economy that prevent war without any treaty needing to enforce it, and in doing so become entrenched and powerful members of the game world.

If the players acquire a critical mass of McGuffins then that makes the BBEGs job a lot simpler, he can just take it from the players, he gathers his powerful henchmen and his resources and targets the players directly. (this is mostly the backup path for the game, ensuring that the big confrontation the players want is inevitable) This is also a hail mary for the BBEG, pull out all the stops, spend money on golems and magical creatures and mercenaries.


This is great. The treaty and the war aren't directly connected (eg. by magic or the like), but the treaty does incentivize cooperation and peace as the treaty's magic detects and reveals the names of signers who have violated it. With it gone, a level of accountability disappears, and we all know what happens when you don't hold powerful nations accountable for their actions. Peace keeping will definitely be an aspect of the party's goals, but collecting MacGuffins and righting wrongs committed by nations will inevitably put them at odds with some groups (which will only build more tension).

The MacGuffins could be one of a few things:

This world is just one of several iterations (next to no one knows this, as they're separated by millions of years), and traces of the previous worlds can occasionally be found. These highly advanced tech bits could be instrumental to the BBEGs plan. Perhaps some sort of magic-siphoning tool?
The BBEG has also been funding sciences/tech all over the world, and could need something that's been invented. From traditional industry, to arcanotech, to magic, to genetics even.
Could be something as simple as a power source to fuel the device to destroy the treaty.
Could also be events like you said, most likely here would be to destroy a the primary church to each deity one after the other, to draw their attention to the world once more.
OR, for some tasty variety, could be some of each of these!


Open to any further thoughts/ideas, but this has already been so helpful, thank you. Mostly trying to figure what would be the most narratively satisfying while also being fun for the players. Also apologies if this is a bit scattered, just starting my first cup of coffee here.

[JonBeowulf]

About the mcguffins :

Maybe rather than having the heros fail to stop the bbeg in order to have a climatic battle, try to have the players keep hold of at least 1 mcguffin to force the bbeg into attacking them?
Maybe each mcguffin location is uniquely defended, but the attack destroy the place so even if they successfully defend the thing, they can't let it stay there?

I like the idea of the PCs somehow forcing the BBEG to directly move against them. He didn't want to, but now he has to, so he's going to -- with everything he's got. Bonus points if you make them think it was their idea.

It's a lot easier to railroad your BBEG than the PCs.

[thatbenkid]

It's a lot easier to railroad your BBEG than the PCs.

This is 100% my new mantra, and I apologize in advance for stealing this brilliant bit of succinct advice for the next time I'm asked.

[thatbenkid]

Also someone just brought to my attention on another forum:

"One other option is for the BBEG to just succeed at this stuff off-screen. The treaty breaks and the world goes to war. Now the campaign is about stopping the war before the gods reboot, and then chasing down the BBEG so he doesn't come back to mess things up again.

A lot of media rely on the BBEG's plan succeeding because it creates maximum drama. The worst has happened, and all seems lost. Bringing the world back from that is typically more satisfying than stopping the plan before it happens."

[Unoriginal]

Also someone just brought to my attention on another forum:

"One other option is for the BBEG to just succeed at this stuff off-screen. The treaty breaks and the world goes to war. Now the campaign is about stopping the war before the gods reboot, and then chasing down the BBEG so he doesn't come back to mess things up again.

A lot of media rely on the BBEG's plan succeeding because it creates maximum drama. The worst has happened, and all seems lost. Bringing the world back from that is typically more satisfying than stopping the plan before it happens."

I think it's important to note that the BBEG's plan *failing* can also create a lot of drama. Because the BBEG's plan failing does not mean the BBEG is neutralized.

Sometime beating the scheme means you've made them so mad with anger that they're going to fall on you with all they got (ex: the climax of "The Great Mouse Detective").

Sometime being foiled means the BBEG is now a "dead man walking", a broken shell of their former selves who just doesn't care about losing anything they have left in their pursuit of destroying you, because they know they're losing that anyway soon once the consequences for their failure catch up to them.

Sometime the BBEG is *mostly* neutralized, when before they were a threat to whole kingdoms, but that doesn't mean they can't target the protagonists in a personal and often extremely petty way. Ex: Saruman in The Return of the King (only in the book, though).

Sometime the BBEG had allies, cronies, minions, etc, who want to confront the heroes after the BBEG's defeat. Either because they want evenge, or to accomplish an agenda that the BBEG's defeat now makes possible if they just remove that last obstacle (aka the heroes).

Sometime the BBEG was also preventing a new/different antagonist from rising.

And sometime the BBEG was the unwitting pawn of a different BBEG, who takes advantage of the BBEG's state after their plan failed to take over directly. Either ousting the BBEG out of what they have left or by possessing them/revealing they were possessing them all along.

All in all, the PCs succeeding at stopping the BBEG's macguffin business shouldn't prevent the climactic resolution.