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How A Player Created An Omnipotent Viewer Of Worlds From A Tavern Fight
It all started many years ago back during highschool, a typical story of a group of
friends coming together to play some fun D&D.
At the time we were playing 3.5 and I was the DM.
One of my closest friends was playing an Orc Fighter that happened to love drinking and
taverns, as his background revolved around growing up in one.
So of course I started the game off in a tavern as most typical DMs like to do where everyone
would have all of their characters meet.
It was in this tavern that their fate would be sealed for the rest of time, creating the
omnipotent viewer of worlds simply known as Mr. J.
Most of the party enters the tavern separately except for the Orc Fighter who had already
been there for a while and was well on his way to getting incredibly drunk when the rest
of the party arrived.
As the players began introducing themselves, a typical tavern argument broke out in the
background and the player brushed it off as just some background activities by the NPCs.
It was not long after that I introduced a Dragonborn NPC -- one with blue scales who
was simply named John and was supposed to join the players on their adventures.
I had given them this NPC for exactly 2 reasons.
The first reason was they only had 4 players, and I knew for this game I was going to throw
some heavy hitting monsters at them and they could probably use the help.
John was a Paladin who was also going to give them a plot device, informing the group that
the king was in need of some brave or possibly foolish adventurers to take on a mission to
save his son from the clutches of a crazy cult that worshipped a Dragon, and he would
pay these adventurers very handsomely.
The second reason being that, John was secretly the campaign's big bad evil guy, or at least
he was going to be at this point in the game.
In this campaign the plot would eventually unravel more about this crazy cult: the cult
would be revealed to not just worship any type of dragon but a Dracolich, one that had
been getting more powerful over the many years of its unlife.
It would have been revealed that John actually worshipped this Dracolich and was a high level
member of the cult in secret.
He was always pulling the strings and keeping the cult one step ahead of the party.
At the end of the campaign the party would have to face off against their own friend,
one that had been traveling with them the entire campaign.
He would eventually find a way to take the power of the Dracolich he worshipped for himself,
and become a truly terrifying big bad evil guy.
Unfortunately, all of that planning and writing was completely wasted because absolutely none
of this happened.
But accidents are wonderful in DND, and by the party unknowingly preventing this made
for an even greater enemy.
Back at the tavern, as John was going to introduce himself to the party and set all of the plans
in motion.
The Orc Fighter convinced the arguing NPCs to settle it with an old fashioned fist fight.
After a successful diplomacy check, the NPCs squared off and went at each other.
Like any good tavern fight it did not stay between the two of them for long.
After getting thrown into a table and spilling drinks over a few other patrons, the entire
tavern erupted in chaos.
Chairs were thrown, tables flipped, bottles broken over heads.
Perfect.
As this was happening, I decided that players would start needing to make checks to even
walk around if they did not want to be hit or shoved in the fight.
John failed his check.
As he walked over to talk with the party, he was shoved into the bar and spilled the
Orc Fighter’s drink.
The player, staying within character and for fun, decided to attack John.
Unfortunately for John, I rolled his HP terribly while he was the same level as the rest of
the party.
The Orc Fighter rolls a natural 20 on his attack and really high on his damage, instantly
killing John as he caved in his face , much to my surprise and everyone else's.
They wrote this off as just a funny interaction I had happen, but It was so much worse.
Only after a few sessions, we stopped playing that specific campaign.
Unfortunately, many players became busy and we for some reason had a tough time keeping
a regular campaign going all the way to the end.
When they began asking me how it was going to end, I told them they actually killed my
BBEG, and they all thought it was hilarious.
With that revelation made to my players I began planning our next campaign and something
I learned is this: never waste a good BBEG idea.
So for the next campaign, I started the players off exploring and finding an underground abandoned
dwarven and gnome city.
This would become their base of operations from this point forward.
They received a mission from a Lich NPC, one who worked for the king and happened to be
fairly nice.
The Lich sent the team on a mission to fight a necromancer who had been causing trouble
with his undead minions in a mountain not far from their base.
This necromancer was named Mr. J, the reference completely unnoticed by the players.
Eventually climbing to the top of the mountain and fighting off many undead monsters, they
met with a cloaked figure sitting on a throne carved of stone; his hands were covered in
black scales, he began the typical monologue.
“I foresaw this arrival, yet everytime I see it, something different happens in the
end.
You took everything from me, my life, my dreams, my future.
Have you come to take more?”
Mr. J rasped out.
“Have we met before?” the fighter asked.
“We have not met, but the one that commands you know who I am and I will make them suffer
for the rest of time and through any distance of space.”
Mr. J hissed.
It was then that he stood and pulled back his hood, revealing a patchwork face of different
dragonborns stitched together like a horrid puzzle gone wrong.
The players finally caught on and were surprised and found it pretty funny that I brought him
back.
After defeating Mr. J they thought that was the end of it, but they forgot what he had
said before the battle so very quickly.
Eventually, Mr. J would always be there, always watching in every single campaign I ran from
those days forward even to this very day.
Every campaign I wrote and scrapped, he has traveled to and from, even appearing to my
surprise in some of my friends’ campaigns they have run.
He has never played his original part as the BBEG, but he traveled from alternate worlds
and campaigns, collecting power until he became completely omnipotent, always able to watch
the players and their characters but trapped in his own pocket world by an unknown force,
waiting, biding his time, and telling many stories until he can finally have his own
chance at being the big bad evil guy after it was stripped away from him all those years
ago.
In fact, many players have started to give me theories to what exactly he is, even that
Mr. J is me, the DM.
While I have enjoyed many of their theories, I cannot confirm or deny them, because they
just might learn the truth in due time.
Indeed, with every new world he looks for a way to break his binding to the pocket world
he is trapped within.
An ever present villain watching over your games.
That’s a pretty great idea and it would be interesting to see what other schemes he
has in store for the players.
Have you ever brought back a BBEG in an interesting way?
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