Hear me out. Transposable character arcs. Write your character arcs separate from the characters personality so that you can transpose the roles to any character that takes the groups interests on the fly. This way literally any NPC can be the “big bad” depending on who the party gravitates towards while giving them a legitimate facade that the players won’t expect.
This can also make it more fun for you as you now have to roll play the character arc with a random character.
Backstory transposition been super helpful in my campaigns.
Though once in awhile my party notices when “Pops”, the bartender with a heart of gold, turns out to be the heir to the throne, and not the super obvious young orphan girl with the mysterious past. It’s not my fault the party decided they would do anything for “Pops”, and kind of disliked the orphan. I just rolled with what was working for them. Who knew Pops was royalty? Literally no one until the plot demanded it.
“He gave that NPC a name, that obviously means something! Let’s stalk him and study his whole routine through the day. Tell us every minute detail of his life.”
I always give extra details to npcs that work on places like the tavern, the forge, etc. My friends like to ask lot of questions to them or wanna to kill them just for the sake of chaos, so they always have a full character sheet and backstories, secrets, connections, etc.
Playing RPGs is not about having the players act out the adventure you want them to have. It’s all about the players creating the adventure they want to have.
I’d say you’re wrong there too. It’s about the players and DM collaborating, improvising, and creating the adventure we all want to have. We’re all in this to have fun and tell interesting stories. It works best when everyone is bought-in and affecting the story.
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