Has anyone here ever tried having the players face a roguish villain on their games? A thief or assassin sending letters being cryptic or straight up telling them what and when he plans to do something as a challenge, leaving calling cards behind and having the climax be a chase scene istead of a fight.
That would be cool. 5e Has an assassin statblock.
Only fags say "BBEG".
>>96798648No but my current arc villain is a rogue
How would you pull this off, feasibly?
>>96798648Wouldn't work, because you'd be constantly in a state of chasing a guy whose entire gimmick is being really good at not being caught. Everyone wants to play as Lupin, not Zenigata.
>>96798905>>96798984To answer both I say it would be better for a investigative game, a system like Pulp Cthulhu would probably be ideal but I think it could work with the typical fantasy game as long as the players know what to what kind of campagin it is during character creation.As for the villain always escaping in the end you could have that at least his plans were thwarted, the artifact recovered or the assassination mark secured. One day you'll probably want to end the story so you can have a chase scene end in a sword duel on a blimp or whatever. But if you don't want to end the campaign at a certain point you shouldn't waste time with a chase sequence at all, when the players spot him he should already be flying away on a balloon with no hope of catching, that way it won't be frustating to put effort on something that was already predetermined.
>>96798984>Everyone wants to play as Lupin, not Zenigata.Many people want to play detectives and solve stuff and stop things from happening. There's whole RPGs where the game is design for mystery solving, so I see nothing wrong with this. The big thing is it would likely be a lot like a Moriarty or use things like a Xanatos Gambit or other challenges where the bad guy can get away with doing the bad things. They arrest the wrong guy, there's an apprentice who got arrested to let the master go free, a fan was observing and was suspicious enough the players focused on them. Fantasy games could have teleportation, illusions, magical duplicates, mind controlled people.Just have there be some evidence, something that slowly points to the person.
>>96799956I think you are misunderstanding his point. You are absolutely right that a fucking lot of people want to be Sam Spade or Sherlock - COC itself is half that and half an attempt to ape Lovecraft, pretty much up there with the most played out concepts.But Sherlock catches the culprit and solves the mistery (yes, even with OG Moriarty, him being the crime Napoleon is funnily enough just what he tells us about him). The whole point of Lupin/the gentleman thief idea is that Zenigata will never, ever get him (and incidentally he hardly ever solves a mistery, at least the presentation to the readers/viewers is that there is no mistery, as we almost always see shit happening through the gangs' eyes). THAT is not what people want to play.Note that this doesn't mean Zenigata isn't cool. Heck, it's hard not to feel he's the real hero, after all.
