The PCs just shot the Evil Overlord in the head in the second session. Now what?
People in both the Alexandrian Hangout Club for my Patreon and viewers on Twitch have recommended that I spent some time on Youtube looking at filmic tropes. I think there are some interesting videos to be made along those lines, and it’s certainly a natural fit for the medium.
This video is kind of a beta test, featuring several film clips as I figure out the workflow and pacing for including then. (The short version is that it’s a huge pain in the ass to source the clips, but I think the end result is quite nice.)
Also reminded me that I still need to spend more time with old Hammer horror films.
My problem with this advice is that it seems to set up a paradigm in which mercy is for suckers, which is not a perception I want to encourage in my games. Indeed, I worry that your example of Arveth’s story would have been read by many as severely punishing mercy — proving Elestra “right” and Tee “wrong”, even though Elestra’s approach was merciless and Tee’s was more heroic.
If you wind up with a murderhobo player in the group, they will already consider letting any foe live and letting any foe escape “bad gameplay”, *precisely because* it will result in recurring villains! As for more story-focused gamers, even they might get the message that this is a dark, gritty story in which leaving people alive is *supposed* to go badly for the PCs, and thus mercy should be used only sparingly and with the expectation that it will backfire.
I’ve specifically had an issue with a murderhobo player taking the fact that the goon that an adventure was supposed to revolve around *was* a goon to mean that the adventure was not over until his boss was dead; she knew the goon’s boss existed, therefore the goon’s boss had to die NOW and no other adventure could happen until he was. Furthermore, she made it so clear on her way to do this that she *absolutely would not accept* anything but his death as the end of the adventure that I had to abandon any idea of him escaping partway through — clearly, to her, loose ends were not good storytelling, but “bad gameplay”. Thus, if I wanted the campaign to ever be about anything aside from doggedly pursuing this one villain to the ends of the earth, I had to let him die.
(The worst part? These were supposed to be the kinds of PCs who subdue villains and turn them in to the authorities. I had to address that part later…)
This is excellent content and is sorely needed to explain why storytelling != role-playing, and how storytelling tropes need be changed or even inverted to work in an RPG setting where player agency is key.
Here’s one I’d love to see you tackle: the “fight back from overwhelming adversity” trope. In a story, the author can set this up as they wish. But in an RPG campaign, getting this started would seem to require a railroad or “poor play”; i.e. most players would try to avoid getting into such a situation in the first place. Obviously such a scenario can be one-shot. But how might you change this trope to have it work in a campaign? It is quite an iconic staple of fiction, after all.
Worthy of thought!
Looking back over my own experiences with “fight back from overwhelming adversity” I think the advice will look a lot like the Principles of RPG Villainy: Don’t force the dynamic; let it emerge organically during play. Actively play the world and your typical PC group will almost certainly dig a hole for themselves at some point that they’ll need to fight to get out of.
You can also put things in jeopardy that the PCs care about: They don’t have to pit themselves against overwhelming adversity. But that can be a choice with consequences.
>>>You can also put things in jeopardy that the PCs care about
This is very good. It didn’t occur to me, and I imagine it won’t occur to others who want a direct path into the scenario. You’re doing a good job of always bringing it back to a player choice. We can’t have too many examples like this.
The anecdotes from Ptolus sound super interesting- looking forward to more of the campaign journal!
@Pteryx A reasonable point. If the situation is black and white, and all acts of mercy will result in a recurring villain, the problems you describe are a real risk.
However, a recurring villain shouldn’t be the only possible consequence of showing mercy. Peter Pettigrew from the Harry Potter books springs to mind. If you have a campaign were showing mercy will result in positive consequences 40% of the time, neutral consequences 40% of the time, and a recurring villain in the remaining 20% (percentages intended as examples, not as hard and fast numbers), you can have the benefit of naturally creating recurring villains without encouraging murderhobo behaviour.
Also note that showing mercy is not the only scenario Justin describes to create recurring villains. Escape attempts when things go sour give another method for survival. Foreshadowing, communication at a distance and hiding behind thugs create opportunities to develop a villain without putting them at (too much) risk.
In the actual play of that campaign that’s been posted, the PCs have already had all their lives saved by a random mook goblin they decided to talk to instead of killing, so Arveth seems to have been an exceptional case even within that campaign.
I cannot help but describe this technique as the Villain Funnel.