this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2025
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lol this happened in a campaign I was running. I foolishly thought the villain should reveal details of his evil plan across rounds of combat. And also that it would be cool to have the battle on the backs of giant rocs.
You can probably see where this is going but let's just say the battle lasted about 2 rounds.
Isn't that where you just put the plan away and then the next campaign happens to be the same evil plan with minor tweaks? Throw it two campaigns from now if you wanna be fancy about it.
Clearly the campaigns weren't the same. They never found out the details of the first one, so how can it be the same?
The issue was a lot of the events had already happened. So the plot just ended up making less sense than it should have. His speech was more about his motives and why he betrayed the party since he was a former ally.
But yeah maybe I should have brought him back (since they never saw the body and he was an archfey) but I never saw the right time for it and that campaign ended.
That's how they did it in Watchmen, except the writer was in control of how long the battle lasted.
Yeah I think that can be a trap a lot of newer DMs can fall into, not understanding the difference between mediums like TV, movies, or books and the collective nature of D&D stories. Really extended sequences that require things to go a certain way are risky in D&D because you never know what the players will do!
Does the process of getting to the BBEG not involve unraveling their plans? Like, shouldn't the party to a certain extent know their goal(s) before deciding to go after them? And then particulars are divulged as they uncover the threads tying the BBEG to all his henchpeople as they defeat them. And then they understand the steps of the BBEG plan as they track down the items needed to stop them? I'm sure there are some minor things not 100% spelled out, but what did you really want your party to know that they didn't already?
This particular character was more of the penultimate evil dude and was also a former ally that betrayed them. So it was more of his motives for why he did what he did.
In the grand scheme of things it wasn't a huge deal they just thought oh well that guy went crazy or something rather than understanding his personal motives which would have made the overall plot a little more coherent.
Ooh. Nice. I never mess with ally betrayals because I honestly don't think I have the chops for it. Very hard to do, so I totally get how you wanted to give them a proper send off. I'm sure the players enjoyed their swift revenge though!