It’s time again for the Kobold Press advice column, Pack Tactics!

Our roundtable experts this month are Basheer Ghouse, Victoria Jaczko, Brian Suskind, Jeff Quick, and Mike Welham.

You might recognize some of these names from Kobold Press products such as the updated Tome of Beasts 1 and Campaign Builder: Dungeons & Ruins. And as contributors to this very blog!

Whatever questions you have about running a game, handling tricky metagame traps, and ruling edge cases, they’ve got an answer. Sometimes several!

Anonymous GM asks . . .

We often hear people ask about what happens to heroes after the campaign is done. What we don’t always hear about is: what happens to the villains?
What if a villain fails? What if the villain just threw in the towel and walked off into the sunset alone, after wasting years of their life on their schemes, only to be spectacularly defeated?
What would happen if the PCs crossed paths with the villain again? What does it look like when the mighty have fallen?

Basheer Ghouse: I’ve actually run this a few times! It depends on the villain’s motivations. More straightforwardly evil ones are a bit harder to work in as anything besides “evil again.” But I’ve had some nasty political enemies become fairly steadfast allies that the PCs hate but need to keep around because Now They’re On The Same Side. Those villains are the sort who happily work with people they hate because, hey, gotta get me wins where I can get them, and fighting Those Assholes isn’t going to do it.

Jeff Quick: How did that go down in your campaign, Basheer?

Basheer: The PCs’ first arc was opposing a noble who was ripping apart ruins for treasure and letting loose monsters. The PCs thwarted the plot and destroyed much of the noble’s backing, but he escaped and continued being a political player in the capital.

A few levels later, the players were trying to root out an apocalyptic cult aiming to ignite a giant war. A lot of political maneuvering, covert investigations, and secret fights in back alleys. During this, they’re desperate for political allies, and they meet a middleman willing to sell them enchanted gear and magical equipment at high, but not exorbitant, prices.

They get worried about being backstabbed, investigate their middleman, and learn that their old foe is around. But he isn’t backstabbing them. He has identified that the PCs are probably going to ruin or kill a lot of his rivals and decided that this is good for business.

He’s also identified that they’re stealing money off the people they kill during this shadow war, and that he can get that from them by selling them stuff he looted from various ruins.

He at no point improved as a person. He was deeply mercenary, completely ambivalent to collateral damage and murders, and kind of an asshole in person. But also, he didn’t care that the PCs were killing influential people because it benefited him in the short term. And the players couldn’t afford to alienate a guy who could implicate them in so many murders. So they just kind of coexisted angrily for the rest of the campaign.

Victoria Jaczko: “Coexisting angrily” is a really good snapshot relationship descriptor for a diplomacy map.

Political intrigue is an opportunity for enemy-of-my-enemy kinds of turnarounds. There’s more room for moral ambiguity where it’s pragmatic to take the lowercase-a asshole’s help to deal with the uppercase-A Asshole big bad.

I’m a sucker for recurring villains/antagonists, but since not every villain is going to earn a redemption arc, I save those for NPCs who are more antagonistic than villainous. Enemies who oppose the PCs plans, at least at first, but with their own good reasons for doing so that aren’t purely selfish.

My main group are also big fans of turning antagonists into friends. Even when I don’t have that possibility in my head whatsoever. Instead of fighting a half-fiend satyr forced to serve a mid-villain under magic contract, they decided to help free him from it instead. He had no reason to revenge, so I figured he’d leave and go live out of his life starting some shady fey cults somewhere and never be heard from again.

Except one of the PCs, at next level up, decided to buy into Leadership and already had in mind tracking that guy down and making him a cohort. There was a persuasive speech prepared. It’s fun, but sometimes it’s like…. “You want… that one? Really?”

Brian Suskind: I think an interesting angle on this is also following up on what happens with redeemed villians. Some of the best NPCs are the bad guys who end up helping the PCs. Those are often the folks your players remember.

I used an NPC that appeared early in a 7-year-long campaign as a recurring villain. He’d pop up and plague the party from time to time. He wasn’t the main bad guy, more like an adjunct faction to the main evil.

At one point, he ended up helping the PCs during a heavy political roleplaying segment as their goals temporarily aligned. Some of the best roleplaying from my group was them interacting with that villain socially.

Mike Welham: Yeah, I’ve had a lesser villain who survived multiple assaults by the PCs. One held a grudge and made it their mission to disrupt the PCs’ plans indirectly (after all, they failed in a direct confrontation). However, I have had some villains reform or reach out to the PCs to help them defeat a greater evil.

What Do You Think?

How do you encourage your players to be more proactive? Be proactive and let us know in the comments or over on our Discord server!

Do you have a question for the pack? Let our pros weigh in on your tough questions. Then check back first Friday of each month for more Pack Tactics!