I have finished fleshing out the long term motivations of the first major villain the NPCs have run across. In order to accomplish his objectives, he needs to
My question is this: have you, as a GM or player, been in a situation in which the villain succeeded in his plans? This could be due to either inattention by the players, or by them failing to kill or disable a target in a time-sensitive scenario. How did the players react to this perceived failure? Were they utterly crushed and disappointed, or did they rally to meet the new threat and try to rise again?
Edit: I want to make it clear that in no way is the villain guaranteed to succeed. The fight could go either way. I just wanted to gather if anyone had any experience about possible failure when something this important was at stake.
I've been in the situation where we all played different sides and I was the one succeeding through evil and treachery... Does that count?
Its not bad for evil to win now and then I don't think. Its actually unavoidable that when your constantly challenged you will have a day where the dice are against you and you TPK or the village gets burned down. You live with the conseqences and expand and follow through the story. I prefer it that way myself, provided we keep the story going(not so much tpk).
That said, people are very different. Some don't want to lose. Ever. They take it immaturely and sometimes feel cheated even when it was all in their power. Others look forward to it, and expect to fail now and then, and are completely willing to live with the consequences of their actions. Maybe you need to ask yourself what sort of group you have if this comes up?
This happened in a campaign I had played in before. It was set up that their was a "Dark Lord", who was stuck in a Gem, had succeeded in taking over the mind of one of the other players and it was supposed to end in a somewhat climatic battle with us saving our friend from the malign influence and re-imprisoning the evil.
It actually happened that one of the other players (the Wizard of all people) also fell under the malign influence of the Dark Lord and we ended up in a three on two fight against a Barbarian (the originally controlled character) and Wizard. The fight after that didn't exactly go our way either as two of the other characters fell and I had to beat feet to get out of their before I got squashed myself.
In the end, the Dark Lord ended up taking over the Kingdom and re-establishing his overall power base leaving us to go find other magical artifacts and create political alliances to establish a resistance to his rule. We ended up coming back with an army around level 10 and took him out after a noble sacrifice moment for the Paladin.
Thats an example of railroading though isn't it?
Thats an example of railroading though isn't it?
I was unclear in my original post; the villain is not guaranteed to succeed. The game style is largely sandbox, but there will be plenty of hooks available for them to figure out what's going on before the big day comes.
Thats an example of railroading though isn't it?I was unclear in my original post; the villain is not guaranteed to succeed. The game style is largely sandbox, but there will be plenty of hooks available for them to figure out what's going on before the big day comes.
I was refering to the professors post. Yours wasn't, and in sandbox play it works out better than most I think, provided you didn't just cause the apocalypse or anything, though I've read stories about players playing in that.
A classic narrative structure has three peaks: try and fail, try and fail, try and succeed. It can be very difficult to work failure into an RPG, but when done well, it really pays off in the long run.
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One thing to remember is that the world isn't a vacuum.
The bad guys can win occasionally, but the players should get to win if they put enough effort in.
That being said, the nonsense of 'one failed check,' or 'not following up on a lead,' can be dealt with by having information show up somewhere else. A low level paladin gives his life to get information to the party, the villain's equally villainous foes provide the party with info (or are killed and have records behind).
My current campaign has like three or four active villains playing speedchess against one another while the party, and about six or seven other interested neutral-to-good groups are involved. Everyone's poking everyone else, and trying to manuever around everyone else, leaving everyone vulnerable to /someone/.
Admittedly, my DM style originated from reading too much Frank Herbert, but having your supreme bad guy acccomplish his goal just in time to find out that another villain's going to backstab him and use his victory to work towards /his/ goal might give the players time to stop all of the bad guy stuff going on.
Sort of like:
Villain: I have finally conquered the Shining Kingdom with the power of the Ultimate McGuffin!
Villain 2: Indeed! You have conquered it for me, VILLAIN 2! Come Henchman 1, assist me as promised.
Henchman 1: Ah! But I am villain /3/, and you have both fallen into my trap!
Villain 4: I'm just going to burn everything. I don't care if its you guys in charge or the Shining Kingdom. Light it up! Light it up!
Villain 5: Hey wait! I needed the Shining Kingdom there for my millennia old plan for global atrocity!
Heroes: *sneak away to grab the McGuffin*
And then the 5 evil villains team up and being a search for the MacGuffin! Begin your evil campaign!