Burials of Teganshire Post 27 of 30

Saving the World requires heroes to get their hands dirty, and perhaps, what makes them heroes is keeping their valor and honor when everyone around them sacrificed those attributes on the Altar of Survival.

D&D Villains That Are Also Allies: Campaign Design

A campaign—not necessarily the game world—has a beginning, middle, and end (one way or the other), and using “morally challenged” individuals requires planning and creativity. The tricky part of the process is knowing your players. If the DM runs a sandbox campaign, then spends days designing a plot point requiring the PCs to travel in a specific direction is a risk. It’s tempting fate. Running a localized campaign can mitigate that risk by organically encouraging the players to engage the game-world on a local level. Still, it will be a sad day indeed if you turn the Baron sixty miles away into one impressive dude, and the players decide that barony in the opposite direction needs conquering.

So, there are two types of a Villainous Allies a DM can use, the Macro Villain Ally and the Micro Villan Ally and which one to use depends on the type of campaign.

The Macro Villain Ally

More challenging to pull off but epic in scope is the Macro Villain Ally (Macro VA). The Macro VA could be an entire culture, nation, or some leader of the same.

This type of VA is well-suited for a campaign that is more “open-world” vs. “sandbox,” that is, players show up to play in a campaign where the general plot is known ahead of time. They are having fun adventuring and doing their own thing within the boundaries of the game world that supports a story rather than a story based on the players’ interpretation of the game world.

In other words, the DM has a pretty good idea that if he makes a Macro VA, the players will run into the VA.

Example of the Macro VA

(campaign beginning)

A bad neighbor is a great plot device and generates drama. It can even be the primary antagonist for the earlier portions of the campaign. My favorite is the Bad Baron plot device.

Bad Baron, one Torc Mac Ceti, was just the worst. He waged a hidden campaign of agitation against the PCs, and when they finally found him out, the cold-war turned hot, and there were battles. The King intervened and had the Bad Baron thrown in jail, and because the PCs’ hands weren’t exactly clean in this conflict, he made one of them marry the Baron’s daughter so the two neighboring regions would stop feuding and start becoming allies.

(campaign middle)

Things are going not-so-well, the neighboring barony views the PCs as interlopers. There are low-level protesters (the PCs are, after all, backed by the King so, like the Bad Baron, most of the agitation is covert) and the Baron’s former allies cause issues as they liked Torc Mac Ceti. The PCs, not so much. Things escalate until the PCs have just had enough and are planning to go overt, despite the complication that one of their own is married to the beloved daughter of the barony.

(campaign end?)

All through the campaign thus far, the King has been seemingly unconcerned with the PCs’ various plights as he always grumbles about the exterior threats he faces. Well, that all comes to a head because Super Evil Bad Guys invade the kingdom, and things are now looking grim.

And one of the first things the King does is let Torc Mac Ceti out of jail because Bad Baron is a military tactician. He puts the Bad Baron under the command of the PCs and tells them in no uncertain terms they need to all work together or the Super Evil Bad Guys are going to destroy the kingdom and basically everything in it.

Bad Baron was never the primary antagonist in this campaign. In fact, everything up to this point, even with hours and hours of gameplay, could reasonably be considered prolog to the main plot point. Bad Baron, indeed is a shit. But he’s a patriot, and, the villain that he is, he would die for the kingdom.

Do the PCs redeem Torc Mac Ceti? How do they deal with him being in their grill for the rest of the campaign? Can they set aside their differences? Do they show weakness that the Bad Baron can’t help but to exploit? Does the Bad Baron teach PCs some of his ruthlessness, and the PCs teach him some of their honor?

A DM can substitute Bad Baron with “the Nation Next Door,” orcs (a classic, especially if the PCs are morally ambiguous themselves), etc.

The Micro Villain Ally

One might think the Baron is a Micro Villain Ally, but he’s not. He’s a product of his barony, and the PCs were all set to smack the hammer down on the fostering rebellion even with him in jail. He comes attached to the barony, a product of both the region and the times.

The Micro Villain Ally, however, is a singular person, usually sitting outside of society, a constant thorn in the PCs side at every worst possible moment, and a hard target. The DM uses Micro VAs when he or she just doesn’t know what direction the campaign is going to go.

Let’s talk about the above example in the context of an Open World vs. Sandbox—the DM makes an adventure of retrieving the Staff of the Thunder Monk from a commercial product, the Isle of Dread.

And the players like adventuring on or near the sea so much, that becomes the campaign focus. The barony and all its problems tossed aside—Torc Mac Cetia can have it, they have a pirate fleet to capture!

Micro VAs are an excellent way for the DM to spend time and morph the VA to the current plot. Let’s go over some examples!

Root

Root from Person of Intrest was a compelling, creepy villain, viewing people not as smart as her as expendable tools she could manipulate and nothing more. Long before becoming a member of Team Machine, she played an expert hacker. Root was a villain when she first encountered what would become her people, and later would sacrifice so much to protect and even grow to love her friends.

Root in the course of the series was the Villain, the Tool, and the Ally. She had a compelling character arc along the Hero’s Journey and became a sympathetic character.

Agent Franks

Aw yeah, Agent Franks. A VA that was so captivating Larry Correia wrote an entire novel about him, most likely to shut up all the Agent Franks fans. As the Monster Hunter International: Nemesis book copy says: “Agent Franks of the U.S. Monster Control Bureau is a man of many parts – parts from other people, that is. Franks is nearly seven feet tall and all muscle. He’s nearly indestructible. Plus he’s animated by a powerful alchemical substance and inhabited by a super-intelligent spirit more ancient than humanity itself.”

He’s not good. He’s not bad either. He’s, um, Agent Franks. Read the first four books of MHI to explore the fantastic world of Agent Franks.

Nil

If ever there was a disturbing villain that a protagonist occasionally works with, Nil from Horizon Zero Dawn fits the bill. He’s a serial killer who understands the problems of his pathology and kills bandits as an outlet. And he really isn’t redeemable, he’s basically a weapon, and you as the protagonist can choose to engage with him, or not. It doesn’t help that there are good-girl, bad-boy creeper undertones to Nil’s interaction, adding a disturbing and creepy undercurrent to a problematic, but a highly useful, ally.

At some point when I was slaughtering Yet Another Bandit Camp™ with Nil at my side, I was thinking—am I the baddy?

Nil, my psychopathic bandit killing (boy?) friend, my favorite Micro VA, I salute you!

Bottom Line: Let the Heroes be Heroes

When using a Macro and Micro VA, resist the urge to use moral lessons that have wormed their way into current entertainment media. Let the VA’s action stand on their own, and let the PCs deal with those actions as they see fit.

However, this type of gameplay is an excellent vehicle to interject higher-plot points such as nature vs. nurture, nobler motivations, moral lines in the sand, and the timeless redemption arc.

Heroes often fail. That’s the price of admission. Give players the chance to make things right. Allow players to turn their nemesis into their greatest ally. And if they all fail anyway, I can guarantee you the campaign will be anything but boring.

D&D was never about survival.