Not necessarily "100 %" originals BBEG but at least we should try to come up with villains we don't get to see very much.
For example, for a cyberpunk type of campaign : I came up with the BBEG being a middle-aged worker who went on a rampage after his work drove him in a nervous breakdown.
>"BBEG"
No thanks, I don't like sounding like a fag.
>No thanks, I don't like sounding like a fag.
Then you should never have posted.
>No thanks, I don't like sounding like a fag.
Little late for that, isn't it?
>I came up with the BBEG being a middle-aged worker who went on a rampage after his work drove him in a nervous breakdown.
I see this as an encounter material, but what would bring him into a BBEG-grade? You know, to rival all those megacorps, superhacker groups, rampant AIs and occasional dragon.
>No thanks, I don't like sounding like a fag
Then why don't you just shut the fuck up ?
Depends on what kind of campaign you're running.
Ever seen falling down ? That would be pretty much the movie script but with futuristic weapon.
Middle aged worker gets fired, he gets his hands on some advanced weaponry and shit gets ugly because he can't see his daughter since he's divorced
Ok, and for what kind of campaign this would be enough? It's barely enough for a one-shot, not a campaign.
>Ever seen falling down ?
Yes I have, that's why I'm asking. D-Fence does not qualify for a BBEG, he lacks scope and actual threat level, unless you're equally small in scope.
Futuristic weapon means he's in a futuristic setting, so that thing alone does not elevate him either. So I will ask once again - how do you change him to actually bring him to the "big villain" tier?
That's still not a BBEG.
As that guy said, that's one encounter. Maybe a one-shot villain. But not the end boss of a campaign.
Wow, how clever.
Is it just one super-dedicated shitposter who does this, or is there a rotating cabal?
>D-Fens unwittingly becomes an avatar of the rage god
>A middle-age cyberpunk salaryman suffers a nervous breakdown, goes postal and unwittingly becomes an avatar for a rage god
So, Shadowrun. Thanks, I'll pass.
Great comeback.
At this point it's pretty much just a fun board meme. Sometimes I post
>BBEG
>ugh
in random bait threads just because.
Any low level or investigatory campaign. You could easily get a three session campaign just by following the acts of the film. Remember, a plot point in the film is that no one knows who he is or why he's doing it and the fact that as his journey continues he begins dealing with progressively more wealthy people. Hell, you could just use the incident with the cholo gangbangers from the beginning of the film make a campaign from the fallout.
One of my players is basically a walking villain backstory generator. Nearly every character he puts in front of me is one bad day away from putting on layers of guy-liner and attempting to take over the world.
>A goliath barbarian whose strength and stamina are very nearly deity level, keeps running afoul of nobility because it was established that he'd lived as a hermit and couldn't readily tell the difference between poor people and the wealthy
He carries around a rowboat and doesn't trust leather backpacks, favoring a wooden chest that he found in a dungeon and fitted with belts to serve as shoulder straps. If his Int was higher than eleven, he might start realizing that everyone rude to him is aristocracy and start leading a violent revolution against them with his Karl Fucking Marx beard.
>Human ranger from a faraway land that he refers to as "Deutschland," selected basically all the nonhuman playable races as his favored enemies
Sure, he's friendly and polite with everyone he meets. His alignment is Neutral Good. Animals love him like he's a Disney princess. But if he ever takes up the Leadership feat, he'll have the manpower to do more than annoy the dwarven wizard with invitations to a special camp where he can concentrate all he wants.
>Telepathy specialist psion who makes marionettes in his spare time, wants to give them sapience so he can cut the strings and let them do their own thing
This dude could be driven out of one too many villages for reading one too many minds, and start thinking, "Well, shit, why DON'T I just start treating people like the dolls I make?" Holy shit.
The first two make me think your player is a shithead. Third one is actually cool, but not enough to fix the impression.
Why do you hang out with him?
Mostly for things like the third one.
Although, to be fair, I stopped describing clothing after hearing that his goliath was raised in typical goliath fashion on a mountain with an elevation of 10,000 feet, with sparse contact with other goliaths and the odd giant and also realizing the true extent of his incredible strength.
He's level five and can lift over half a ton over his head.
The second one is his earnest attempt at being an asshole, though. Even then, he's just the Nazi from the Dungeons And Dragons cartoon from the eighties.
Nah. We're not going to do better than Handsome Jack so there's no point in fighting the tropes.
Falling Down isn't about one man losing his mind and lashing out, or even the police detective trying to figure out what's happening and stop him. The movie is about what a horrible place L.A. is, as exhibited by most of the people who live there. So, in Op's pic, the BBEG is the City itself.
I like this interpretation. I really do.
Was about to say. "The true BBEG is the city itself" is not a completely daft concept. I could roll with this.
A BBEG of a cursed city would make for excellent plot, the main part would be how the players find out what is causing it, and what they could do to fix it. PC's would just as easily go "man, fuck this place" and move on to the next town unless the City in question is a central hub they have to keep coming back to.
Or if the City was expanding with no real explanation, and threatened to engulf a town that they actually cared about.
an author did it in DC comics, trying to explain why Gotham consistently is such a horrible place by stating that it's always been cursed, and there's a demon bound beneath it. The problem with this plot is it still hand waves all the horrible shit in the City as something that just happens 'because its cursed' and the PC's (Batman and family) don't have any facility to realize the problem and fix it.
The city doesn't need to be cursed to do this. LA in Falling Down can be interpreted as being a reflection of D-Fens; he, and by extension the city, might have its problems, but ultimately it's factors far beyond them that drove them to this points. The "not economically viable" and "They lie to the fish" scenes make it very clear. So in this case the PCs can't just say "fuck it" and move on, because they'll find the same shit wherever they go.
Actually the problem is that Batman and Co. know all about it and do have the resources available (the extensive roster of DC magic heroes), so trying to use that explanation makes everything ring hollow. It's why Hub City and Bludhaven work far better as shithole cities, their issues are entirely rooted in economics and mundane corruption.
Or the PCs face different threats and problems, big and small, and successfully solve them, only to have to deal with other very similar problems and threats, sprung in place of the old ones, later. None of the problems they face lead to a single bigger cause, some are completely singular, others lead to bigger threats and villains, but each ultimately leads up to an impersonal cause. Some of these threats are completely bad, others ambigous and sometimes even do more good than harm or are too necessary in the grand scehem of things.
So the challenges they face are ultimately just the product of their environment - they are the symptoms, but the environment is the real problem. And it resulted from a plethora of various intertwined factors, good, bad, and mixed, factors which include the opponents PCs dealt with, opponents oprigins and PCs themselves. So solving one problem ultimately solves nothing. That's the kind of BBEG you can't powergame or magic away, which makes them the most powerful.
Only noone on Veeky Forums has enough talent to pull it off in a way so that it'd be entertaining enough for a typical playr group, and not all groups will be receptive to it anyway.
My current campaign is Only War. The PCs are on a planet which is a few years out of martial law, with a small population, and resources stretched thin.
There isn't exactly a front, they're on their way to help the local PDF exterminate feral orcs.
The idea is that they will be put in gradually more and more situations which force them to choose between imperial doctrine and humanity, on this Deathworld, where practicality is always the first priority.
The local population is essentially neighbourly, and not evil, but they are def. not "live and die by the imperial creed"
Eventually I want them to fight the traitorous planetary governor, who sold out his planet to the Tau, because they had the supply-lines to keep his population from starving to death, and the tech. to save his dying wife.
It's not quite there, but hey, I'm not fucking Shakespeare.
Sorry for turning everything into 40k.
>regular Emperor fearing Imperial citizen is fed up with how horrible Hive Los Angelus is
>gets shit on by life
>shit on by his job
>says fuck it and walks off
>suddenly harassed by hive gangers
>it gets ugly
>rampage
>Khorne pays attention for a moment and likes what he sees
>so do other people fed up with life
>inspires others to lash out too
>it's actually mostly against people who arguably have it comming
>inquisitorial cell sent to deal with it possible Khorne cult
It's great that you don't want to sound like a fag, but
If you wanted to avoid faggotry you are on the wrong website
Khrone really doesn't pay attention to random-ass Joe bashing some skulls from some random hive-bangers.
Make it some chaos cultists trying to nab him for their sacrifices and hit him with some warpfukery before he does them in, that causes him to mildy mutate in a way that would make the story proceed along the desired track and move on.
My BBEG is an Ent (litterally, magic sentient tree, supposed to be wise and shit), the last survivor of his kind after a traumatic event. He just go batshit and tries to resurrect all his old friends with a magic spell so powerful that it involves drying the world of mana and thus ending all life besides the ones he wants to bring back. The reasonment behind this is whatever, the nature cycle works like this, mana will come back, his friends will be able to build a better world without him, and all the current lifeforms look like shit anyway.
In a cyberpunk universe it can be translated by the city having an Artificial Intelligence beneath it. Let's say that, for example, the sewage system is run by an AI that no one bothers to checkup often. Slowly, but steadily, the sewage system gains conscience. Then, the AI merge with the traffic light AI. And the surveillance camera. The entire backbone of the city is taken over by an amalgam of semi-conscient lifeforms, that may not be able to physically kill someone, but indirectly influence individuals in a negative way by not working as intended on purpose. The party finds out that several vastly unrelated "accidents" happened because the victims were about to find out something nasty, but not about an human individual.
...
Jesus Fucking Christ you again ? Don't you have something to do of your life ?
A greedy coalition of temple priests and financial professionals inflicts a religion upon the world in order to spiritually weaken men and drive them into debt.
Wow, I bet YOU feel clever spending your life shitpositng
The villain of the story is the child of one of the player characters who has gone back in time to kill the PC to prevent himself from being born.
>prevent himself from being born.
And why would he do that ?
Because he doesn't want to be a villain anymore, but he's destined to become one. Any timeline where he isn't just dead will result in him becoming a villain, and limited time travel means he only has so many windows of opportunity left.
Why waste brainpower on coming up with clever replies to your shitposts when we can just call you a faggot?
I ind some of the best BBEGs are ones who became BBEGs through unusual circumstances or by accident/sheer dumb luck.
My personal favorite is the artisan who gets robbed one time (losing his master piece to a thief) then gets completely paranoid uproots from civiliation and builds a new workshop in an old abandoned trap filled dungeon to protect his crafts. At the first sign of adventurers his paranoia worsens, he begins recruiting monsters or protection. Soon that not enough and he begins raiding nearby towns, terrified someone will steal from him again.
>BBEG
Ugh.
Someone beat you to it, now kindly bugger off.
My GM fucking bamboozled us with the bad guy one game.
>mysterious figure has been secretly overthrowing kingdom
>at one point we are certain it can only be one of maybe ten people
>slowly start going through the people finding them innocent
>the only one left is this little 6 year old kid we auto assumed couldn't be the bad guy
>even when we looked into his background it became obvious he lacked the skills to do what had been done
>it was the kid all along
>in the time it took for us to investigate everyone else the kid set up a trap for us
>half the party dies taking him out
We all got super pissed at the GM as it made no sense for a little kid to be able to do this, at which point he pointed out they we were all reincarnated heroes and it was naive of us to assume only good guys can reincarnate. Turns out it was the previous king who got overthrown by the current leadership, reincarnated in his own kingdom due to a deal with a dark god.
>le BBEG
Back to TV Tropes
You already falied
I had my party face off against a Hobgoblin Legion who were expert lawyers, they conquered others though legal loopholes and thus had an army at their disposal.
The players couldn't attack them head on, so they had to come up with subvert ways to bring them down.
Faggot
Shitposter Status : Rekt