Unleash the thrilling villainy of your party's perfect opponents.
Want a faster route to planning out the major players in an adventure? Something that focuses you efforts like a laser, and results in a living, breathing world? In this episode we use the four-corner opposition method to create rich, dynamic antagonists for our adventure.
Trying to cook up awesome villains can be tough. Many failed approaches were attempted before we found this one. We've spent ages crafting what felt like the perfect villain, only to have them not really resonate. We've jammed all our "baddie" ideas into one mega villain, only to have it feel disjointed and out of place. We've read tomes of lore from different settings, just to have none of it feel quite right. With this approach, we now outline a handful of awesome, custom opposing forces in the time it takes to listen to this episode.
In The Sanctum of Scholars, We review the player characters that our patrons Dangerous Marmalade, Leprecan, and Lyla G. helped come up with. We then figure out what parts of them we can expand upon, and what real world knowledge we can use to inspire our stories antagonists. The discussion covers snake-oil, cult leaders and controlling parents.
In The Conspirator's Conclave, we massage all that into three exciting antagonists. Starting with the ideas of control and manipulation from our characters, we give each corner a differing opinion on these, and use our inspirations to guide the details. We come away with a temple leader that is absolutely awful, a couple of followers that illustrate his evils while providing plenty of chaos of their own, and a terrible monster that the temple has been manipulating in secret for generations.
Previous episodes that use Four Corner Opposition:
Create Conflict with Four Corner Opposition
As always, huge thanks to our patrons for making this episode a reality.
Inigo the Brave, David P., Adam F., Alex R., Steve A., Sigma, Kuraidoscope, Skyler E., Deadman, Ninja Duckie, PseuArt, Blackthorne, First Law, Peacockdreams, DM Thunderbum, Marley R., Timewarp, Dangerous Marmalade, Zach G., NoMaam, Michelle T., Adlerious, Chris F., The Senate, Lucas D., Lyla G., The GM Tim, Nevermour, Thomas W., DM Natske, Heavyarms, Leprecan, and Will H-P.