Mining Tropes for RPG Nuggets: I, Overlord!

This post is part of a series exploring Tropes (recurrent plot devices and expectations in fiction) as applied to RPGs, see the growing collection of posts on the subject here.

Now that Yax has fallen in my fiendish trap by accepting my Ennies challenge, I thought I’d start the ball rolling by finally tackling one of my favorite tropes, the one that got me a Nemesis and inspired such craziness as the All-out Crunch Assault…

(Don’t worry dear Yax, I’ll tackle your trope soon enough… he he he)

Evil Overlord

The archetypal Heroic Fantasy villain. Usually lurks in an intimidating fortress in a near-inhospitable landscape, plotting to Take Over The World (if he doesn’t already rule it), with a band of Faceless Goons (who are usually none too bright) and a sinister second-in-command at his beck and call. Additional options include a Quirky Miniboss Squad, a black wardrobe with lots of leather, and command over dark magic or some powerful but vulnerable Mac Guffin. They probably have a Zero Percent Approval Rating.

Often found at the end of the plot, sitting on his throne of (Good-aligned) Dragon Bones, surrounded by his most trusted fiendish guards, the Overlord awaits the timely arrival of the heroes for one last speech and a climatic, drawn-out confrontation …

That is, unless the heroes slay him during the speech with a timely critical hit…

(Sigh) I can sooooo relate…

I’d like to tackle this juiciest of tropes by looking at the RPG applications of a classic version of the trope and then a pair of subversions.

The Classic Evil Overlord

Countless fantasy campaigns have been played based on the model of the Sorting Algotithm of Evil where, as the heroes get better at fighting evil, so do the threats they face.

Whenever the Evil Boss of the week falls, a hint is found that reveals that he/she was only a pawn in the schemes of that other, bigger, badder Evil Boss.

At the end of this chain, depending on how far the DM planned, sits the Evil Overlord, the Big Bad that’s the source of most of the heroes’ woes.

(And rapidly rising power level and wealth might I point out).

Often enough, the Evil Overlord never actually shows up in the campaign, and when he/she/it does, the encounter can come off as a meeting with a bloated pile of hard-to-kill stats.

Alternatively, when the PCs actually meet the Overlord, the players aren’t usually in the mood for a heartfelt, dramatic Hannibal Lecture.

As already established in action-oriented Role-Playing campaigns, NPCs, no matter how cool or interesting are made to be killed, Overlords are no exceptions.

However there are ways to make a classic evil Overlord’s presence felt in a campaign:

Create an evil looking symbol (a chaos symbol, a RNA pattern, an old Indian cross,etc ) and put it everywhere in your campaign:

• Tattooed on low level humanoids
• On the walls of lost tombs
• On the messages from yet undiscovered superiors
• On the Flag of the Warring nations threatening your campaign’s homebase

Have the Evil Overlord show up real early in the campaign, doing something really awful, but far enough from the PCs not to harm them (Capture is okay if you want to make it a prison break campaign arc).

Have the Overlord show up (and get killed) really early in the campaign. Then go full-blown Dr Doom on the PCs and bring him back again and again, always a little stronger. The reasons for coming back can be numerous:

• It’s a constructs and gets rebuilt.
• Worse: it rebuilds itself, because it’s a special Lich-like Golem
• It returns as an undead
• It wasn’t actually him, but a shaped changed, dominated copy

Don’t work on the Overlord’s direct personality so much, but sprinkle his insane fluff and power-crazed plot devices all over the campaign’s countryside. The overlord’s imprint on your game world is more important than the NPC itself.

Now let’s see how the trope can be subverted to spice up a campaign…

The Benevolent Overlord

Imagine warlike, violent and unruly tribal people sitting on the worlds most fertile land and/or nearby the world’s richess mineral deposits. These barbarians are surrounded by rapidly developing, more ‘civilized’ neighbors who are eyeing this land to gain the final advantage needed to conquer the continent.

The invasion plans are drawn, the various neighboring civilized populations are convinced of the barbarian threat and ready to go to war and several skirmishes among the other civilized states have already started.

Then, from the far kingdom of the south comes a powerful priestess of the god of Law and Protection. She sweeps through the fertile plains/rich mountains with her retinue of militant celestial allies, rallying (by force of personality or arms) all the chieftain to a common banner.

In order to stabilize the area and prevent invasion, she crowns herself Imperatix, imposes harshly but fairly applied laws on the barbarians and implements an accelerated program of ‘Civilization’.

We got ourselves a Benevolent Overlord (Concept taken from Gurps Wizards, an excellent book of archetypes).

Adventure seeds for a campaign around such a concept:

• PCs are minor divine agents of the Imperatix and must defeat the plots brewing against her benevolent but reviled rule
• PCs are mercenaries hired by the neighboring kingdoms who paint the Imperatix as Evil incarnate (and maybe believing it so) and request they infiltrate and sabotage her work.
• Double Subversion: The Impratix is actually an evil agent acting under the guise of a distant and recently slain/corrupted God of Good

Other Examples of Benevolent Overlords:

• A Kingdom run by a Good Dragon
• An empire with an Angelic Bureaucracy
• A forest protected by a semi-divine Forest Spirit
• A cloud city run by a trade-friendly, free-enterprise Genie

The Non-evil, Ruthlessly Efficient Overlord

By far my favorite version of this trope. A somewhat neutral Overlord that keeps power, not necessarily because he craves it, or needs it, but because he’s the only one that can do a decent job keeping things under control damn it!

The Patrician of Terry Pratchet’s Discworld is the a perfect example of this trope. Girl Genius’ Baron Wulfenback is also a preety awesome specimen.

That’s the type of Overlord that think that crime is bad… unless it’s organized and self-regulated. They have eyes and ears everywhere and rarely lose their nerves… unless the plot asks for it.

A great patron for those ‘grey-area’ campaigns where PCs explore the different shades between the poles of Good and Evil.

Some more Adventure Seeds:

• The Arch Druid of the Middle Kindgoms sends a party to broker peace between the Orcs and Dwarves,
  • Only to reveal that the Dwarves are slaughtering the orcs badly
  • The Druid then asks the PCs to intervene for the orcs!
• Recently impeached and imprisoned in his own dungeon, the Lord-Mayor of the city makes a deal with his PC cellmates, the very ones he imprisoned just before his downfall:
  • He sends them through a secret door out of the prison (him staying, he has his reasons) to clear his name
  • During that time the city rapidly falls into Chaos as nothing seem to work right anymore (Pure Pratchett)

It’s not easy being an overlord but the payoff can be satisfying when you finally manage to take over the world!