’m changing some things up with the blog and looking at a variety of new and old ideas in gaming. I’d like to spend part of today talking about some recurring tropes and ideas that crop up in fantasy storytelling and how they can be used (and abused) in an RPG to some sort of effect. Today’s volume is a little different because we’re not going to be looking at a specific instance or idea of a plot trap, but a larger concept that is overarching throughout the fantasy RPG genre and beyond. When you’re designing an encounter, an adventure, a story arc, or even a campaign, your villains are an essential part of what you’re designing, and you can put a lot of thought into all of the aspects of team “bad guy.” What we’re going to do is take a look at some types of bad guys and how they can scale up to deal with your player characters in interesting interactions throughout the encounter, adventure or potential campaign. Let’s take a closer look.
Plot Point 12 The Antagonists (Part 2)
I have probably played too much D & D in my lifetime and after a certain point, things start to blend together. I can’t remember how many dragons i’ve fought, or the number of times i’ve been caught by sneaky traps. The dungeons start to bleed together after a certain point, and i can probably call the encounters back if i tried, but there are other encounters that stick out in my mind because they featured memorable villains. I don’t remember every tribe of goblins i’ve ever encountered or every beholder i’ve dealt with, but i do remember the time we were suckered into trying to kill Xanthalar underneath Waterdeep in his super secret underground thieves guild lair...
The Antagonists you choose to build/include in your campaign/adventure/encounter are one of the things that make it memorable for any number of reasons. I remember fondly the time we finished our campaign by slaying the Red Dragon in its Volcanic Lair. I have less happy remembrances of the time the kobold tribe decided it would be a great idea to douse us in lantern oil and then throw matches at us while we were trapped in a twenty feet deep pit. I still remember both of those encounters because the antagonists were memorable opponents in the context of the adventure.
Some critters work very well in specific locations. Orcs and Goblins are pretty omniversal as antagonists go, and you can bump into them all over the place. Other critters need specific reasons to be found in places that aren’t their home territories, like Drow outside of the underdark, or Devils outside of the 9 Hells. Sure, you can put them wherever you like, but they make better villains if you tailor the encounter/adventure/campaign to make them fit into the story you’re telling.
There is another important thing to consider when you’re putting Antagonists together. What role do you see this critter fitting into? Are they minions in nearly inexhaustible supply like the Draconians from Dragonlance or the Stormtroopers from Star Wars? Are they specialists in a key area like assassins or Necromancers that fit a specific role in the adventure/campaign? Are the Lieutenants or key servants of the main Antagonist? Are they the Key Antagonist of the entire story? Some monsters/npcs/antagonists serve in specific roles better than others. It’s possible that the goblin is the Mastermind of the entire campaign, but if he has Dragons of various types, a pet Lich, and Mind Flayers as his go to servants, then explanations are going to be required.
Minions
What makes a good minion? There are a lot of factors that go into what makes a truly good minion, but for me the basic elements are twofold. Is this creature plentiful enough in the world that they can conceivably show up in a group, and is the creature intelligent enough that it will be able to work toward the shared goal that the higher ups in the chain of command can give it? Some creatures suck as minions. Beasts of animal intelligence, creatures that are known to be solitary critters that hate other creatures to the point of hostility, and creatures that aren’t easily controlled are particularly bad minions because they aren’t going to meet one of these two criteria.
Plentitude
Minions have to be plentiful to be effective. Whether they are they hordes of Moria Orcs and goblins rampaging across Middle Earth, the Draconians from Dragonlance, or even the skeletal hordes from Army of Darkness, the minions in each of these cases are plentiful. These creatures have to common enough that seeing twenty or thirty of them doesn’t immediately make you wonder why how many of them are together, but dangerous enough that seeing twenty or thirty of them together causes panic. Individually, these aren’t necessarily dangerous to player character types, but in groups they can be quite dangerous to npcs, random areas, and small towns.
Example 1: The Orc Horde
The Orc Horde is a prototypical fantasy element. Typically you have two or three Orc Hero/Leader types and boxes and boxes of Orcs. The Moria Orc Horde from the Battle of Five Armies is a wonderful visual representation of this effect. Are individual Orcs scary? Yes, and you believe that if they get into Dale, it’s going to be a very bad situation for women and children. What’s worse, there’s an entire army of them, and they are credibly holding off the Humans, the Dwarves, and the Elves. In this example, quantity is a quality of its own.
Example 2: Stormtroopers
The white armored goons of the Star Wars Universe, Stormtroopers are everywhere. Equipped with uniform gear and armor that inspires fear in the population they are oppressing. Seeing groups of Stormtroopers isn’t an atypical thing for the Star Wars Universe, but when you see them moving quickly and pointing their blasters at something, you know business is about to pick up. Are they typically dangerous to the protagonists of that story? Not especially, but they create situations where bad decisions happen. They also serve as a way for the Mastermind of that story to spread his power around and influence events that are far away from his physical location.
Temperament
Minions work really well when they are intelligent enough to follow order and sociable enough to work together to execute those orders. There are tons of monsters that are big and scary and could cause a lot of property damage, but most of them don’t play well with others. This means that most reasonable antagonists use the monsters that don’t play well with others in specific roles and use other critters as minions. Minions have to work together to present a credible threat to heroic types and this bears out the need for a certain sociability and intelligence for most minions to get the job done.
Example #3: Kobold Tribe
With a small size and a violent disposition towards non-kobolds, Kobolds are at a bit of a disadvantage against larger foes. Kobolds, however, are smart creatures who know that they can’t go toe to toe with larger creatures one on one, and have decided to hell with that strategy. Kobolds are expert trap makers and use this to alter the battlefield to their benefit with enough time. They aren’t going to fight one on one, and will use their weight of numbers to carry the day against much larger foes. (I could have replaced all instances of the word Kobold with Ewok and it would have changed nothing).
Example #4: Beasts
Beasts and other creatures of limited intelligence make poor minions without the use of magic to compel behavior. The Larger predators that most antagonists would probably use are usually solo acts, and are just as likely to fight other members of their species or eat their prospective handlers. Most of the time creatures like this are better served in other places in the Antagonist arsenal, and smart antagonists will make that happen. Others will lose a lot of minions to them.
How to work through this Plot Trap?
This is a Plot Trap that’s fairly easy to handle. When you sit down to build your encounter/adventure/campaign, you need to decide who your primary antagonist is and what minions they are likely to use. This is an area of design where i am inclined to say embrace the Cliche. An Orc Warlord likely has Orc minions, just as Lich likely has skeletons by the hundreds. Don’t worry about the cliche, it’s actually fun one.
Where you can run into problems with this is if you pick a minion type that doesn’t meet the plentiful or temperament standard. An army of ogres or giants sounds really cool, but outside of higher level adventures (which strains credulity in a different way) these monsters are rarely plentiful enough to be encountered causing a ruckus and wrecking houses. Minions are inherently numerous creatures that are rarely an individual challenge to a player character. The strength of minions to me is their ability to overwhelm with numbers and force clever game play by making the characters (and their players) realize that a head on charge probably won’t work
Temperament’s a trickier problem. The creatures that aren’t typically sociable enough to work together aren’t usually going to follow orders either. These critters require a level of care and maintenance that’s not something that most villains are going to use for their “disposable” troops. An army of Rust Monsters sounds neat, but the creatures are hard to control and can cause as much damage to friendly troops as the heroes. Finding the right balance between having enough minions that are smart enough to get the job done (barring an attack by pcs) is where you are going to spend a lot of your time when you design the encounter/adventure/campaign.
Variations
There are a couple of variations on this theme that all work roughly the same way. Let’s take a closer look.
Challenge Appropriate Minions
Because Fantasy games often feature encounters and adventures that feature different levels of play, it’s important to consider the level of the characters you’re writing things for when you pick your minions. A hundred orcs isn’t actually that much of a challenge for a party of 6th level characters (without prepping the battlefield to their benefit). The availability of magic and other resources tips that fight in the favor of the player characters and unless something more dangerous is using those hundred orcs as bullet/spell catchers to bleed off resources from the PCs, it’s not that interesting of an encounter/adventure. Always check out the challenge ratings of the monsters you’re using and make sure that you are building challenge appropriate encounters (some monsters don’t fall into the range the way they are supposed to, so be careful and do your research).
Unusual Minions
There are some minions that work very well in specific situations. Undead and Outsiders are the two that come to mind immediately. Undead are terrifying to the common folk, and Outsiders are legendary adversaries come to steal souls and curse the world to the darkest pits of the underworld. However, they require some other components to make them works as believable minions.
Undead aren’t known for their intelligence (especially skeletons and zombies, the prototypical minion types) and can be very hard to get moving towards an objective. Outsiders aren’t typically team players with non-outsiders, and they require some coaxing to get them to play nice. Typically this means you’ll have either some kind of handler ( a Necromancer or a more powerful undead for the skeleton/zombie horde, or a more powerful Outsider/Conjurer to get the Outsiders working). These specialists form an important component in the Antagonist chain of command and can help you add another layer of complexity to your encounter/adventure.
Conclusions
Antagonists are an important part of any RPG or Fantasy experience and they deserve a lot of thought and planning to implement. There are a lot of ways of looking at how to build your antagonist elements, but i typically go with a pyramid structure. The Minions form the base of that pyramid and are typically the bedrock that everything else sits on top of. An antagonist at higher levels of the pyramid can always count on his or her minions to do their job or get killed by adventurers trying. We’ll cover the next level of the pyramid next week.
I hope this gives all of you some insights and ideas on incorporating this style of a Plot Element into your game without it becoming a burden to your fun. If you’d like to see more of these, or have a question about a specific plot element that you’d like to know more about, drop me a line on twitter, which you should be able to see over there on the right side of the screen. Game On,
Game Fans.
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