So you’ve figured out my evil plan…
I like mystery plots in RPGs. I love concocting detailed investigations and enjoy watching my players piece the clues together… But eventually, the pieces do come together and the players can see the whole story. Now they have to figure out what to do next.
And so do I.
We’ve written before about not sweating your big plot reveal. Even if your players figure out the campaign plot, they still have to do something about it. That can involve as many steps and difficulties as you want to make sure that you have the time to tell your story, and to ensure that your players have plenty of fun.
How many hurdles should be between the players and the villain? Is the mystery over now, or is there more yet to be discovered? If the PCs figure out what my villain is up to before I was ready to reveal it, did my game just get cut short? And if I leave a lot of time between that revelation and the actual confrontation, am I blunting my own drama or boring my players?
In the simplest of terms, there are two places that you can put your RPG villain — up close or far away.
Up-close villains are personal. They get in the PCs’ faces to taunt or argue with them. One of my favorite kinds of villain is a traitor, someone that the PCs thought was a friend. That revelation — whether I got to pull the curtain as planned in a third-act reveal, or the players were smart enough to peek under the curtain early — can be super dramatic and fun. But if the villain is right there, well within face-punching range, what’s to stop the party from jumping the villain and bringing the game to the end right then?
Of course, the other position where you can place your villain is very distant. Villains can be remote figures whose identity is not even known to the party. The PCs only interact with them through minion-pummeling, or by finding their calling card. In that case, if the reveal comes early, when I’m not necessarily ready for them to move on to the endgame, then I’m left with a long stretch of game planned that’s filled with clues about the reveal that the players may not need anymore. That can be frustrating, but not nearly the game-ender of catching and bringing the villain to justice in the middle of act two.
If it sounds like I’m a little too familiar with this mistake, it’s because I am. I love mystery plots, and I enjoy unexpected enemies with strong personal ties to my PCs, so I tend to place my villains close to the players. As a result, I’ve run face-first into this particular window more than once. Players can be shockingly dense about simple puzzles, but then dazzlingly brilliant about the overarching plot.
So now I’m very careful about how close I place my hidden enemies in a mystery plot, and make sure that I’ve got some safeties in place. Sometimes I lean in the other direction, toward remote villains, though it can be at the risk of being too impersonal, making the PCs less invested in the fight. The balance I’m seeking is to have a personal villain, someone the PCs can get to know in one way or another, but to build in some safeties so that if the players are smarter than me, I can keep the campaign going.
I can try to instill doubts, have arguments for why their beloved friend or mentor isn’t the enemy that they have been seeking. I can also give my NPC some social or political armor — make them someone of a rank or position that gives my players pause before having their characters punch them. A diplomat, or a higher-ranked wizard in their magical order, for example. If the players make a move without evidence of what they’ve figured out, then the villain is protected by the PCs own allies, or the player characters might appear to be the villain themselves!
As a last-ditch save, my villain can run away. It risks making my Big Bad look weak instead of being strong and scary. And if the PCs can’t stop the villain’s escape, it might feel like a Storyteller hammer — a forced game event where the players have no agency. This is my move of last resort, and I try to avoid it.
But social barriers or even Storyteller hammers will only buy me a little more time. Eventually, my players will find a way to get around whatever obstacles I’ve thrown into their path. And they’re supposed to — I just want to move the timing toward the most fun and dramatic arc that I can get.
In the case of mystery plots, I’ve determined that it works better — for me, at least — to position my villains outside punching range. I like the personal villains, but I’m not strong on the improv and tend to Storytell myself into a corner if my reveal gets sprung too early, so more distant villains have been turning out better for me. They can talk to and taunt the player characters over the phone, letter or video, all while disguising who exactly they are — if their identity is part of the mystery. But not from close enough that if they’re discovered, the PCs can immediately kill them. I need the villain to survive long enough to finish the story, after all, and if I have to strong-arm their survival too much, my players will see through my bullet-proof plot armor and get frustrated.
An ounce of prevention, in this case, is worth a ton of cure. Once players figure out who is doing the bad stuff and how, they will pursue the Big Bad relentlessly. So you’ve figured out my evil plan? Well, I’ve got a head start because my villain’s got enough distance and barriers in place to make an entire game campaign of finding them!
