OotS Style Campaign

[KoDT69]

I DM a strong homebrewed version of DragonLance on Tuesdays. It's always been a lot of different kinds of fun, depending on the night. After I got hooked on OotS and these forums, the games just keep getting better. Only one of my players knows anything about OotS and he doesn't even lurk on the forums. I've ben foreshadowing a Xykon style BBEG for the last few months. The great thing is that I can borrow many of the plot hooks from the strip and the players are unsuspecting! My only problem in a full in-game character development of the "bad-guy" team, is finding ways for the group to not be able to attack during the comedical speeches. I mean seriously, how many of you DM groups that talk to BBEG's more than 1 round? If OotS was a based from a campaign being played, how mad would Roy's player be after that last strip? I'm open to any suggestions to stall the players in the presence of the bad-guys so I can properly lay out the personalities. I'm also open to any suggestions on events that could lead a group to get involved with this kind of encounter.

[Vyker]

Take a page from the Exalted book and cultivate a sense of courtesy between the players and the villians.

They don't have to like each other, but in my Exalted game, there's often a great deal of dramatic pauses for banter, insults, monologues, or whatnots. It makes for a very fun game, because you can get the villians to be more than obstacles to be bludgeoned into submission.

One option is to write up little short-short stories about what the BBEG and his crew are up to when not on-camera. Play it right, and the players will become very interested in your villians.

[DaMullet]

I always give my BBEGs a bonus feat: "Dramatic Monologue."

Essentially, it lets them talk whenever it would be thematically useful or otherwise plot-important. It staves off the "I kick him while he's gloating" by a lot.

[KoDT69]

I've prefaced the villans through the party cleric. He likes to randomly scry on stuff, so I introduced the sorcerer NPC that always seems to catch random bad-guys saying something funny, yet plot-related, or just fighting amongst themselves with an area visible in the background the players can recognize later. The players just have this bad tendancy to ignore most of the scry stuff or treat it like changing a TV channel. I can't wait to have my Redcloak rip-off NPC drop a Harm spell on someone, followed by some Titanium Elementals!

[BardicDuelist]

You could always have hold person or similar spell cast when they enter the room and give it an artifically high DC. It wouldn't interfere with gameplay if its only to allow for dialogue, but it is rather overkill.