thatbenkid
2023-09-20, 01:10 PM
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.
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.