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MockingQuantum
Jan 20, 2012



I'm DMing Rise of Tiamat right now, and I need some ideas on how I can up the stakes in the campaign. For background, the central problem of the campaign is that there's a cult that's trying to raise the dragon god Tiamat and take over the world. Unfortunately Tiamat just isn't that scary of a concept to the players. They're happy to go along and progress the campaign, but I'd love to give them more of a sense of urgency and dire consequences than I've been able to impress on them so far. Some stuff has worked (wandering past burnt-out villages, also they've run into the result of some sacrificial rituals), but I'd love to give them the impression that the cult is actually a constant danger, and some way to make Tiamat actually kind of scary, beyond the standard "dragons can kill us really easily" player knowledge kind of stuff. Any ideas?

One of the things I want to do is give them the impression that the cult is actually interfering in national-scale politics to try and prevent the regional powers from stopping the dragon cult. I'm afraid of the party finding this out and refusing to actually seek help from some of those leaders (which they really need to do to stand a chance) so any advice on how to sow that suspicion without making the players completely paranoid and locking themselves off from other NPCs would be helpful.

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PupsOfWar
Dec 6, 2013

Do you have any recurring NPCs (preferably powerful ones) or legendary figures who could be killed off as stakes-upping

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

MockingQuantum posted:

I'm DMing Rise of Tiamat right now, and I need some ideas on how I can up the stakes in the campaign. For background, the central problem of the campaign is that there's a cult that's trying to raise the dragon god Tiamat and take over the world. Unfortunately Tiamat just isn't that scary of a concept to the players. They're happy to go along and progress the campaign, but I'd love to give them more of a sense of urgency and dire consequences than I've been able to impress on them so far. Some stuff has worked (wandering past burnt-out villages, also they've run into the result of some sacrificial rituals), but I'd love to give them the impression that the cult is actually a constant danger, and some way to make Tiamat actually kind of scary, beyond the standard "dragons can kill us really easily" player knowledge kind of stuff. Any ideas?

One of the things I want to do is give them the impression that the cult is actually interfering in national-scale politics to try and prevent the regional powers from stopping the dragon cult. I'm afraid of the party finding this out and refusing to actually seek help from some of those leaders (which they really need to do to stand a chance) so any advice on how to sow that suspicion without making the players completely paranoid and locking themselves off from other NPCs would be helpful.

Have the cult launch a coup d'etat in one of the smaller and more distant nations - just so that they hear about it and hopefully the "oh poo poo that could happen here too" light goes off. Have the PCs encounter a train of refugees from said nation to regale them with stories about how scary the cult is and how sudden the coup was and how "oh poo poo you guys you don't get it they had loving dragons working with them it was horrifying" things got.

For bonus points, a few sessions before the coup have them encounter a Powerful Heroic Type - some dude who easily outlevels them, someone they have heard of as a Famous Adventurer. Then have one of the refugees mention that that guy was around for the coup and got swallowed in one bite by a dragon... or have him be one of the refugees, a broken figure who is haunted by his utter failure to even slow the cult down (and who the PCs can rehabilitate and build back up again to give them a powerful ally for later scenarios).

EthanSteele
Nov 18, 2007

I can hear you
Stuff continues to happen. Running their allies through the dungeon to get prizes is time not spent fighting another menace or whatever. It doesn't have to happen at 100 miles an hour so if they delay finding a chicken then the Elf Kingdom is destroyed or whatever, but consequences occur.

Sit on my Jace
Sep 9, 2016

MockingQuantum posted:

I'm DMing Rise of Tiamat right now, and I need some ideas on how I can up the stakes in the campaign. For background, the central problem of the campaign is that there's a cult that's trying to raise the dragon god Tiamat and take over the world. Unfortunately Tiamat just isn't that scary of a concept to the players. They're happy to go along and progress the campaign, but I'd love to give them more of a sense of urgency and dire consequences than I've been able to impress on them so far. Some stuff has worked (wandering past burnt-out villages, also they've run into the result of some sacrificial rituals), but I'd love to give them the impression that the cult is actually a constant danger, and some way to make Tiamat actually kind of scary, beyond the standard "dragons can kill us really easily" player knowledge kind of stuff. Any ideas?

One of the things I want to do is give them the impression that the cult is actually interfering in national-scale politics to try and prevent the regional powers from stopping the dragon cult. I'm afraid of the party finding this out and refusing to actually seek help from some of those leaders (which they really need to do to stand a chance) so any advice on how to sow that suspicion without making the players completely paranoid and locking themselves off from other NPCs would be helpful.

One thing my DM did when he ran it to make Tiamat scary (we made it through Hoard of the Dragon Queen and partway through Rise of Tiamat, with a lengthy detour along the way for Dragon Heist) was to have the cult's rituals already having weakened the magic banishing Tiamat, to the point of Tiamat being able to exert some amount of influence in the world. For example, early on when we broke and ate some dragon eggs, Tiamat attacked us in our dreams, and on waking up we each took a bit of psychic damage. Basically making Tiamat not a future problem, but a current minor problem in danger of becoming a major one.

Ceros_X
Aug 6, 2006

U.S. Marine

Sanford posted:

They could walk through the Arch of Stability and pick 3 items or the Arch of Bravery and pick d4+1.

What was the breakdown on who picked stability/bravery?

Jack B Nimble
Dec 25, 2007


Soiled Meat
I want to know, too, because you only get a worse result on a one, right?

Sanford
Jun 30, 2007

...and rarely post!


Ceros_X posted:

What was the breakdown on who picked stability/bravery?

Druid and wizard went for bravery, paladin and their npc ally went for stability. Ended up with 14 items between them.

Jolene
Jan 1, 2019
I'm running a DnD 5e game as part of a youth program I volunteer for, and since it's the summer months, there's a lot of interest - we're currently looking at 8 players, dropping in and out. We only have an hour a month, so does anyone have advice for running a game with this many players? (I do have another adult who's familiar with 5e.)

Arthil
Feb 17, 2012

A Beard of Constant Sorrow
One thing to remember about Tiamat is that she is far, far more than just a dragon with a bunch of heads.

She's a Demon Lord! Make use of that fact. Add connections to the Abyss, use fiends not necessarily present in the book but that are more draconic in appearance. You need to emphasize that this cult isn't simply worshiping a dragon, but the demonic form of chaos itself.

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Jolene posted:

I'm running a DnD 5e game as part of a youth program I volunteer for, and since it's the summer months, there's a lot of interest - we're currently looking at 8 players, dropping in and out. We only have an hour a month, so does anyone have advice for running a game with this many players? (I do have another adult who's familiar with 5e.)

start them in media res, and maybe use dungeon world techniques of bouncing between players with 'ok you do the thing, but! this happens! what do you do, other player?'

Or you could just start them in a catastrophe and have them need to work together to get out, like a sentient dungeon eats their town (13th age Stone Thief is amazing).

Trojan Kaiju
Feb 13, 2012


Arthil posted:

One thing to remember about Tiamat is that she is far, far more than just a dragon with a bunch of heads.

She's a Demon Lord! Make use of that fact. Add connections to the Abyss, use fiends not necessarily present in the book but that are more draconic in appearance. You need to emphasize that this cult isn't simply worshiping a dragon, but the demonic form of chaos itself.

Everything I'm seeing is that she's located in Avernus, and at one point even ruled Avernus? So where is that from?

Arthil
Feb 17, 2012

A Beard of Constant Sorrow

Trojan Kaiju posted:

Everything I'm seeing is that she's located in Avernus, and at one point even ruled Avernus? So where is that from?

Looking into it a bit more, guess my source for that was wrong! But it's a fun twist, seeing as many Demon Lords and Arch-Devils strive for the power of a god.

Glukeose
Jun 6, 2014

Cults are easy to make threatening and scary. Play up the creepiness of their rituals and linger on their aftermath. The fact that Tiamat's supporters are trying to manifest a god should give them a lot of power, and a lot of cache among societal elites and other institutions who are putting short term power grabs ahead of the very real global destruction that will result from the cult's success.

Take a page from Shin Gojira and have weird draconic humanoids sprouting from places touched by the cults activities. Have a city turned into a kiln by the presence of a fragment of Tiamat's power, peoples' bodies melted into the masonry as they tried to crawl over each other to escape.

Wherever the cult goes things are irrevocably damaged, and as they grow in influence Tiamat is able to manifest power in the material realm: the sun starts burning hotter during the day, lakes and rivers dry up, calamitous storms begin to lap at the shores, etc.

A big way to make a cult like that feel more present and threatening is to show how they meet and organize. Think of all the bullshit that goes into meeting important people in John Wick. That level of weird ritual, when played for horror, can make the cult seem mysterious, far reaching, and insane.

Glukeose fucked around with this message at 16:17 on Jun 21, 2019

dex_sda
Oct 11, 2012


sebmojo posted:

Or you could just start them in a catastrophe and have them need to work together to get out, like a sentient dungeon eats their town (13th age Stone Thief is amazing).

I just read up on this and holy crap. That looks loving amazing.

Like seriously I'm thinking up ways to run this in 5e (cause good luck getting a table to learn a new system). A goddamn system seller is what that is

Pyrocat
Oct 31, 2006
not a furry
I'm a pretty new DM (but experienced player) and I'm having trouble coming up with interesting combat encounters in 5E. I want players to have interesting choices, not just "target nearest enemy with highest damage attack, repeat".

The problem is it's incredibly time consuming to come up with combat encounters like that. I only have a couple hours a week I can spend on prepping for sessions and my players seem to get bored easily in combat.

The few pre-gens I've seen haven't had much to offer in this regard, mostly "here's a table of 10 ideas for encounters" with nothing about terrain / weaknesses / strategy. Does anyone have some pre-gens they like with detailed encounter design? Any advice on how to design interesting encounters? Or even a list or website that has already designed encounters? They're all very new to tabletop so I'm not really worried about cribbing from well known adventures.

Infinite Karma
Oct 23, 2004
Good as dead





One of the easiest interesting encounters is "party of enemy adventurers." Not minions/boss, but 3-6 tough but beatable targets simultaneously.

Panderfringe
Sep 12, 2011

yospos
If they're dungeon crawling, steal some ideas from MMO raids.. You don't need to steal the exact mechanics (a lot of them won't work on tabletop anyway), but look at them for inspiration. For example: the boss is immune to any damage, but he has adds which emit radiant light and when killed the adds drop sparkling swords. These swords when used by the players can tear down the boss' immunity. Or to steal something from Destiny, you don't need to kill the boss - turns out he's actually been killed, at least physically. But his heart remains and must be destroyed, so one player has t o take up the heart (maybe it does damage over time to them so they can't just sit around) and they have to move to the place you destroy the heart while adds spawn trying to stop you.

Whybird
Aug 2, 2009

Phaiston have long avoided the tightly competetive defence sector, but the IRDA Act 2052 has given us the freedom we need to bring out something really special.

https://team-robostar.itch.io/robostar


Nap Ghost
Don't focus on the enemies, focus on secondary objectives and multiple things happening at once. If the party's goal is just to defeat all their enemies, and their enemies' goal is to defeat the party, their tactical choices are simple (and also the outcome is kind of a foregone conclusion). If some of their enemies are trying to get away to warn others, or the party have civilians to protect, or one side is mid-ritual and the others are trying to disrupt it, then the available tactics are more interesting.

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









dex_sda posted:

I just read up on this and holy crap. That looks loving amazing.

Like seriously I'm thinking up ways to run this in 5e (cause good luck getting a table to learn a new system). A goddamn system seller is what that is

Yeah it's amazing, and I'd think it would be easy enough to convert.

E: it also has a bunch of neat encounters with variations you can steal for your game. 13th age does good 4e style monsters.

Monster conversion ideas (incl dragons)

And another

sebmojo fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Jun 21, 2019

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

Whybird posted:

Don't focus on the enemies, focus on secondary objectives and multiple things happening at once. If the party's goal is just to defeat all their enemies, and their enemies' goal is to defeat the party, their tactical choices are simple (and also the outcome is kind of a foregone conclusion). If some of their enemies are trying to get away to warn others, or the party have civilians to protect, or one side is mid-ritual and the others are trying to disrupt it, then the available tactics are more interesting.

While multiple objectives are good and fun in their own right and you don't need any more reason than that to use them, your reasoning here isn't true at all. It's absolutely possible to make an encounter where defeating the other side is the only goal but where good tactics will make the difference one way or the other -- otherwise why even bother playing a game with crunchy combat?

e: not to say that it's easy or that 5E is especially good at it, but therein lies the challenge

Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Jun 21, 2019

palecur
Nov 3, 2002

not too simple and not too kind
Fallen Rib
The advice on goals other than 'beat Team Monster' is good -- and Tuxedo Catfish's caveat likewise -- but I'd like to chime in with a different inspiration source in addition to MMO raids, and that's spectacle fighters like Bayonetta that rank your performance at the end of the fight, or roguelikes with challenge modes. You can implement this by having some sort of perishable treasure on a timer -- the kobolds have either accidentally or on purpose lit a slow fire that's spreading towards the cache of scrolls, and if you beat the fight in under X rounds, you can salvage them! Other alternate rewards include 'beat this fight without using the ice magic you've been leaning on super heavily and the cache of potions won't be frozen and burst out of its containers' or 'KO the 3 bugbears in the same round and there won't be anyone left upright to call for reinforcements' to get people to not focus-fire quite so relentlessly.

For table morale, I think it's important to phrase these things as optional extras the PCs can reach for and not rewards you get screwed out of for not jumping through the hoop -- yeah, it adds up to the same in the end, but one feels a lot better than the other. Constructing these challenges to let little-used parts of the character sheet get some spotlight time also makes folks feel good about their build/level-up choices.

koreban
Apr 4, 2008

I guess we all learned that trying to get along is way better than p. . .player hatin'.
Fun Shoe
Had a thought last night because while I like the 5th edition 3rd level class choice stuff, I also like starting at level one, especially for stuff like LMoP.

Also, the 1-2 level dips people do tend not to play out until way later, even if they’ve figured out a reason why their holy Paladin is making a pact with a sentient otherworldly sword.

So my thought is to let people take 3 levels in whatever they want. Take the HP, spell slots, invocations, maneuvers, everything.

Then make them level 1. The “background” levels are the HP bump everyone gives anyways, and they can double up on the first 3 levels’ abilities if they stay in their class or mix it up (battlemaster/champion), or they can start their multiclass progression without an ASI loss/delay. They double up on low level spell slots, but those feel like there aren’t enough of them anyways. Maneuvers/ki/sorcery points should be per encounter not per long/short rest, so extra uses don’t seem like an issue.

Just make sure they don’t rest after every single encounter and tune up some early encounters to make them interesting, but I’m trying to figure a downside here and I’m not coming up with one.

Adlai Stevenson
Mar 4, 2010

Making me ashamed to feel the way that I do
Giving more to your characters at any level does two things:

1) raises the ceiling on what you can challenge them with

2) raises the floor on what you can challenge them with

I tend to think more in terms of what I can get away with encounter-wise as a DM while not being needlessly punitive so I don't mind when my players have more things, because that means I can cook up stronger encounters. Front loading a lot of power like this, however, also constricts what kinds of basic challenges you can throw at your players. If you and your group are sick of ground-level scenarios, then all's well. If part of the fun of the campaign is players early on giving the side-eye to A Skeleton or other mundane things then you do lose access to some of that.

Kaiser Schnitzel
Mar 29, 2006

Schnitzel mit uns


My players are in a formerly powerful and independent city state that was conquered by the king. He's been gone over the mountains for a few years and now is known by all to certainly be dead, and his successors/wardens aren't quite holding things together. The city is gonna finally kick out the King's remaining troops (who are mostly half elves), by blowing up the citadel where they are all garrisoned via an infernal machine/gunpowder plot smuggled though the sewers (which the players conveniently just cleared of wererats and a vampire). I think my players are going to be awoken at 3am by a tremendous boom and then its basically just going to an open world. It's a pretty orderly, well run city so I don't see it being like a big looting and murder in the streets kind of thing, but maybe? Any fun encounter ideas for a city in the midst of a revolution?

Things I've come up with so far:
-They meet the half elf duke who was in command of the garrison. They've met before, and recognize him while he is trying to escape the city. His uncle is a wizard the PCs like, but they don't particularly like him. Do they help him escape? Turn him over to the townsfolk? Ignore him?

-A roving press gang. This city was a big naval power and has been re-arming for some time, and the fleet is about to put to sea to attack its old rival city states now that the kingdom that united them all is falling apart and they need warm bodies to pull on ropes and man the catapults or whatever. PC's can try and escape or just go along and now we have a sea adventure yay!

The campaign is at a bit of a hinge point where I think the main plot (ancient spooky prophecy about the civilization cyclically ending etc etc) could go pretty much anywhere. They're 6th lvl now and maybe a bit too big and bad to still be fighting hobgoblins, but there is also a hobgoblin army approaching the town they've been based out of that they might go deal with. That's fine too, but I thought it might be fun to give them some opportunities to go a different direction while they're in this town, and I've told them there aren't any railroad tracks here-wherever they want to go is fine with me.

4 6th lvl PCs in 5e, if that matters.

Any other ideas?

ILL Machina
Mar 25, 2004

:italy: Glory to Italia! :italy:

Ayy!! This text is-a the color of marinara! Ohhhh!! Dat's amore!!
That sounds like an awesome moment you've given lots of context to. Only thing I can think of is to attach opportunities to the outer world so they can widen their scope if they want. And also that armies of hobgoblin are different from roving bands of the same. They might be Jedi compare to small contingents, but they'll need help from the city to deal with a swarm.

Kaiser Schnitzel
Mar 29, 2006

Schnitzel mit uns


ILL Machina posted:

That sounds like an awesome moment you've given lots of context to. Only thing I can think of is to attach opportunities to the outer world so they can widen their scope if they want. And also that armies of hobgoblin are different from roving bands of the same. They might be Jedi compare to small contingents, but they'll need help from the city to deal with a swarm.
They actually came to the city to ask for help with the hobgoblin army. City guard captain said “oh yeah hey actually that sounds good could you find out why all these dead people keep showing up by the sewers for us so we can free up some resources to help you with?” The city thinks sending a strong force to this strategically important town to ‘protect them from some hobgoblins’ seems like a great opportunity to secure an important trade route and have a literal protectorate, so they were definitely onboard.

They have had enough experience with bands of 4-5 hobgoblins + a devastator and captain to know that an army is gonna be big time trouble. Turns out PCs don’t love it when you throw fireballs back at them!

I think they’re probably gonna go back to try and fight the hobgoblins (who are maybe controlled by the dragon the PCs woke up, or maybe they’v been displaced by the dragon the PCs woke up, not sure yet), but I wanted to give them some other options. I’m thinking now maybe a hero of the realm shows up in the city about this time and..... I haven’t figured out what they have to say.

ILL Machina
Mar 25, 2004

:italy: Glory to Italia! :italy:

Ayy!! This text is-a the color of marinara! Ohhhh!! Dat's amore!!
You could do something more macro and let them control larger contingents in a siege defense you sally forth to meet. Wrap up that man vs hobgoblin, party vs squad, legion vs horde projection.

Ilor
Feb 2, 2008

That's a crit.
Man, aren't they going to be surprised when the king comes back.

Daduzi
Nov 22, 2005

You can't hide from the Grim Reaper. Especially when he's got a gun.

Thanks for the advice, will definitely follow up with that wolfsbane idea (I'm thinking guarded by a troll, should make for a pretty interesting fight).

The fight went well, I had Silas the necromancer cast fog cloud immediately which threw everyone off. One player did end up going down, partly to zombie attacks and partly to one of the random wand effects causing the zombie attacking the player to emit a poison cloud. One player finally goaded Silas into stepping out of the cloud, at which point he went down very quickly but satisfyingly.

Regarding the future levels, that's actually one of the genius parts of the homebrew I linked: players pick a class they're interested in heading toward and get minor abilities related to that class as they level up (a couple of cantrips, say, or the healer feat). Then, if they stick to it, when they get to level 5 commoner they jump straight into level 2 of that class. It's worked well so far, with players really leaning into being budding clerics/wizards/fighters/bards etc.

So here's where I am now: Silas was actually just a bullied village kid with latent and unknown magical talent. He signed up to "Doctor Dotter's Correspondence Course in Self Actualisation" which was actually a front to find lost individuals with magical ability. They are then recruited into the good Doctor's scheme: help create an army of undead to overthrow the existing regime.

Next session (last session ended at the moment poor Silas was exploded by magic missiles) the players will uncover this, and most likely end up following the clue of the return address on the correspondence material. This will take them out of the immediate area surrounding their home town for the first time in their lives.

I'm planning for the players' graduation into full adventurerhood to coincide with learning who gave them the wands in the first place. It'll turn out that they were created by a group who want to create a People's Commonwealth. The wands were made as a way of counteracting the return of magic in the world and the fact that the king now has a number of wizards at his disposal (a peasants' army might be able to defeat a regular army but they're hosed against fireball spam).

In the sessions so far I've been careful to make it clear that life as a peasant in this society is really not that great in order to hopefully get the players into a place where they're sympathetic to the rebels' cauase. Doctor Dotter's scheme, meanwhile, is aimed at encouraging them to also be skeptical. My aim is to make the decision to join the rebels or support the kingdom a tough one, because it'll shape utterly how the campaign goes from there.

This brings us (finally) to my question: as the players travel to their next destination, I'd like them to start picking up hints as to the existence of this rebel group, and signs that they are fighting for the lowest in society. It'll be a 3-4 day trip, staying at a different town each night. Does anyone have any ideas of things they should stumble across along the way?

Daduzi fucked around with this message at 00:55 on Jun 24, 2019

The Shame Boy
Jan 27, 2014

Dead weight, just like this post.



So we are closing in on the final battle with Stradh and i have drawn that his in the study. I plan on having the Mage NPC be charmed and tricking one or more of the party members into checking out the "fake" fireplace for a secret passage or something and then having Stradh/maybe a minion hiding in the room push them into the fire to start combat.


I could just handwave it and say it was just a general illusion spell cast by Stradh that made the fire seem not real until it was too late but is there an actual in game spell i could use that would let me do that? Would Minor Illusion be enough for something like that? Also would like some suggestions on how to change up Stradh's spell list because he's not got a very good loadout.

My Lovely Horse
Aug 21, 2010

I'm gonna have to have a talk with my buddy about his characters. He likes playing evil wizards and crazy cultists and generally aligns himself with whoever big player is known for trying to bring down the established forces of good. Which puts me in a tight spot because I want to run adventures for parties that, if they're not part of those established forces, at least work against the same enemies, which are generally, well, evil wizards and crazy cultists.

I know perfectly well that the answer is to put my foot down and tell him no you can't be buddies with the evil dragons and the king of lichs, if anything pick one, or preferrably stick to the agreed game plan and go more antihero. But I do want to go into the talk with some options in the back of my head that can align this guy with the more traditionally good guy party members.

e: it's 13th Age, too, which means there are actual mechanics attached to aligning yourself with the evil dragons and the king of lichs and "there's rival factions within their organizations" is an idea that's occurred to be but I'm not sure it's gonna cut it in the long run.

punishedkissinger
Sep 20, 2017

You're going to have to out your foot down and force him to make a character whose motivations at least overlap with the rest of the party.

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.
Maybe offer him a background connection that has the aesthetic trappings of fantasy villainy but, in-setting, is aligned with the same side as the rest of the party.

As someone who loves that stuff myself, I'm especially partial to "undead are good for the ecology! reduce, re-use, re-animate!" for that Green Lich flavor. :v:

Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Dec 22, 2005

GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS
Maybe the cult's plans have already succeeded and he's just killing time until the comet passes overhead, 500 years from now.

Ixjuvin
Aug 8, 2009

if smug was a motorcycle, it just jumped over a fucking canyon
Nap Ghost

My Lovely Horse posted:

I'm gonna have to have a talk with my buddy about his characters. He likes playing evil wizards and crazy cultists and generally aligns himself with whoever big player is known for trying to bring down the established forces of good. Which puts me in a tight spot because I want to run adventures for parties that, if they're not part of those established forces, at least work against the same enemies, which are generally, well, evil wizards and crazy cultists.

I know perfectly well that the answer is to put my foot down and tell him no you can't be buddies with the evil dragons and the king of lichs, if anything pick one, or preferrably stick to the agreed game plan and go more antihero. But I do want to go into the talk with some options in the back of my head that can align this guy with the more traditionally good guy party members.

e: it's 13th Age, too, which means there are actual mechanics attached to aligning yourself with the evil dragons and the king of lichs and "there's rival factions within their organizations" is an idea that's occurred to be but I'm not sure it's gonna cut it in the long run.

Put it to him this way: once he helps the party take down the King of Liches, there's going to be the shell of a whole evil organization left over with a conveniently PC-shaped evil power vacuum at its head. And really, if you don't want to melodramatically double-cross your villainous employer, what's even the point.

Whybird
Aug 2, 2009

Phaiston have long avoided the tightly competetive defence sector, but the IRDA Act 2052 has given us the freedom we need to bring out something really special.

https://team-robostar.itch.io/robostar


Nap Ghost

My Lovely Horse posted:

He likes playing evil wizards and crazy cultists and generally aligns himself with whoever big player is known for trying to bring down the established forces of good.

I want to run adventures for parties that, if they're not part of those established forces, at least work against the same enemies, which are generally, well, evil wizards and crazy cultists

So as a first step it's worth understanding what your player likes about aligning himself with enemies and what you like about your players working against those enemies. It could be that the things you enjoy about it cross over and you can find a happy medium.

But at the end of the day, there's nothing wrong with recognising that the two of you like two different things out of your games, no more than if he only liked sci-fi and you only liked trad-fantasy.

Giant Tourtiere
Aug 4, 2006

TRICHER
POUR
GAGNER
It's also entirely plausible for a pragmatic minded villain to be very active in fighting against particular threats. Like, Dr. Doom would probably help stop Galactus eating the planet. Of course, he's gonna try to leverage it into ending up with cosmic power, but in the short term ...

If your player really wants to have an 'evil cult' type background, you can also start out by working with him prior to the start of the campaign to figure out what this cult is and what it wants. Then, whatever threat you intend the campaign to be against can be *another* cult or evil dragon or whatever whose goals happen to conflict with the player-cult's goals. Evil factions aren't necessarily on the same team, after all, and if what you really want is Supreme Power then some other joker working towards that same goal is as much of a problem for you as whatever established authority already exists.

Jack B Nimble
Dec 25, 2007


Soiled Meat
It's not actually a good idea, but now I'm picturing you intentionally starting the campaign with one bad guy (for him to partner with) , then quickly revealing an EVEN WORSE enemy that bad guy number one must oppose.

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admanb
Jun 18, 2014

Jack B Nimble posted:

It's not actually a good idea, but now I'm picturing you intentionally starting the campaign with one bad guy (for him to partner with) , then quickly revealing an EVEN WORSE enemy that bad guy number one must oppose.

Ah yes. The DBZ gambit.

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