ForeverGMs/DMs/Referess if you have something to get off your chest, do it here.
I'll start.
I ran a Dark Heresy campaign last year during which I named most of my NPCs after Fonts in Microsoft Word and no one ever noticed.
The closest I think my players got to spotting the pattern was when they were enlisted to hunt down a Heretekal Tech Priest named Magus Calibri. I got some funny looks, but no one said anything.
Please tell me you had a wacky comic relief deep hive ganger named Wingding.
I run games because I want to see other perspectives or surprise people with scenarios. I am constantly bored or disappointed in the players I recruit because they are so damn dull and I don't know how to screen them out properly during the recruitment process.
I wish my players would take initiative more and have goals for their characters.
When I'm a player my characters always have stuff they want to do. I mean i'll follow the story that the GM is setting up, but you can be damn sure that I'm going to the market and look for a dragon tooth and ask people if they know the location of a dragon's nest because my character wants to gain the essence of a dragon. Likewise he will go to the library and inquire about dragon-related books.
Or maybe he will have something else he wants to do. Maybe he wants to arrange a festival in the city going to the mayor to ask permission and get all the shops to arrange something.
But not my players. They are fully content with just dungeon crawling and going in whatever direction i point them in. It's like all their characters are good for is stats on a paper and game mechanics.
We used to have another GM and when i was a player i could get the other players to join in by leading by example, but now that i GM it's like they just can't be bothered.
I have a DM confession to make.
Every single one of my BBEGs is a complete rip-off of Ozymandias
What I mean is, they are Well Intentioned Extremists and more importantly, they're RIGHT. Their master plan will have a positive outcome in the long run, but its near term costs are horrifying.
This is seriously getting to be a problem. I keep writing this same archetype over and over, even when I make a conscious effort not to because I just don't fin d other villain types compelling.
Eh, I don't think it's that bad. Nobody is really evil for the sake of being evil. Most people have actual goals and motivations behind what they do.
The only other real BBEG archetypes I use are an overarching fundamental force that's gone unchecked (Nature / Magic is retaliating against man, and Avatars are the only real 'human' face behind it) or a person or collection of people who simply want to get out of whatever horrible situation they're in.
Try working with other motivations.
I get the whole "no one believes they are the villain" thing, i usually do that as well but that doesn't mean they have to want to help the world.
Off the top of my head:
He has been horribly mistreated. He doesn't see himself as the villain, but he does see humans/the kingdom as the true villains. All he's really doing is removing the real bad guys.
He wants to be praised. Maybe he wants to be seen as a god, or maybe something less grandiose but he wants to be the sole ruler. He honestly believes that in the end he will be a great ruler that will be loved by the people, there's just the iffy problem that he needs to become the ruler first. Shedding some blood over that is worth it in the end. Needless to say he would be a terrible ruler.
Or hey maybe do a spin on the Ozymandias thing: He think people will join together against a common enemy, so to make the world better he will become that enemy. To that end he needs to be as horrible as possible, like ultrahitler on steroids. He will slaughter babies, force the mothers to eat their flesh and then let them free to tell the tale. Only thing is he planned to slip away once people truly had united, so when the players crashes in he will complain that they are ruining everything. Possibly his dying words will be that they don't understand anything. Or maybe he will hang unto his illusion to the end and the players will be none the wiser unless they do some digging into the characters background and learn he used to be the most caring person in the world.
Thanks, I'm going to jot these down.
My campaigns are little more than illusion-of-choice railroads where characters travel from one character I came up with, get shown him/her for a while, then move on to the next one.
That's literally it. Any deviation is met with Telltale Games tier smoothing back on target.
And my players have no fucking idea, they think they're making decisions and executing agency.
It's shit like this that makes me feel like democracy is a waste of effort.
I ran a CoC campaign where I heavily ripped off Twin Peaks. I never told my players as I didn't want them looking things up and having it spoiled and because I never told them now they think I came up with it and are some kind of writing genius.
If any of them ever watch it I don't know what they'll think.