Things I stole for my DnD campaign pt. 1 -
I've been playing TTRPGs for quite some time and whenever I'm DMing I often use tropes, ideas and sometimes whole characters from other media I enjoy. Of course I always modify those things to fit neatly in my game world and make sure those things do not break immersion.
One of the characters I almost wholesale stole from The Venture Bros. show is Dr. Henry Killinger. Powerful supernatural creature equipped with his signature Murder Bag.
I decided that in my game world a good doctor will have demigod level powers and will be a creature born at the same time the first mortal sentient beings were created. He was not born, made or created. He and his 8 brothers just manifested as a cosmic force of the universe. Each of them represented a different aspect of the alignment chart. For Henry it was natural evil. In the game world he is known as The Consultant. He has a lot of knowledge and experience gathered over the eons of his existence but he is not all knowing. He uses that knowledge to consult promising mortals with capacity for evil. He trains them, helps them figure out more tedious parts of villainy and build long term plans and agendas. He is not interested in world domination or senseless murder. His favorite clients are small-time villains with small goals and aspirations. Warlords that are interested in conquering only one city state, necromancers whose only goal is immortality, dragons that are more interested in kidnapping princesses than anything else and so on. Additionally Killinger have his Murder Bag. Black leathery variant of bag of holding filled to the brim with hundreds of magical and cures items acquired through the years.
In my campaign he started as an advisor to one of the Baldie. Very friendly and helpful orc NPC that thanks to players' help recently acquired a large chunk of land and abandoned castle. My players met him on his vision quest and helped with killing a deadly sentient hydra that was tormenting the local population of goblins. After the whole affair goblins chose Baldie as their new leader and king (he was only present greenskin in the party at the time). After a few weeks my player decided to visit Baldie and check out his new domain and there they first met Killinger. He sensed that Baldie has some capacity for villainy if he would be pushed in the right direction. Henry decided to become Baldie court advisor and helped him with stabilizing his power over goblins and bringing little bit of order to those chaotic creatures. Not too much of course. He did not want to push them towards lawfulness.
During his first meeting with the party he was as always polite and cordial. Yet somehow his presence alone made everyone feel very uncomfortable. Over the next months of the campaign a new villain appeared. Truly BBEG. The Thin White Duke - David Bowie (my next post will probably be about him, I also stole him from Venture Bros. Kinda. It is complicated). Over the course of a few next months people of Arcan-Tau (continent of the campaign) were faced with sheer uncering chaos that Duke brought to their homeland. Undead, mutated orcs, giant hornets with human faces, dominic cults and many more. All without the goal, just in name of sheer chaos. For shits and giggles as they say. My players as the heroic sort were at the front of brave souls battling this chaotic menace every way they go.
I've been playing TTRPGs for quite some time and whenever I'm DMing I often use tropes, ideas and sometimes whole characters from other media i enjoy. Of course I always modify those things to fit neatly in my game world and make sure those things do not break immersion.
One of the characters I almost wholesale stole from The Venture Bros. show is Dr. Henry Killinger. Powerful supernatural creature equipped with his signature Murder Bag.
I decided that in my game world a good doctor will have demigod level powers and will be a creature born at the same time the first mortal sentient beings were created. He was not born, made or created. He and his 8 brothers just manifested as a cosmic force of the universe. Each of them represented a different aspect of the alignment chart. For Henry it was natural evil. In the game world he is known as The Consultant. He has a lot of knowledge and experience gathered over the eons of his existence but he is not all knowing. He uses that knowledge to consult promising mortals with capacity for evil. He trains them, helps them figure out more tedious parts of villainy and build long term plans and agendas. He is not interested in world domination or senseless murder. His favorite clients are small-time villains with small goals and aspirations. Warlords that are interested in conquering only one city state, necromancers whose only goal is immortality, dragons that are more interested in kidnapping princesses than anything else and so on. Additionally Killinger have his Murder Bag. Black leathery variant of bag of holding filled to the brim with hundreds of magical and cures items acquired through the years.
He was a powerful spellcaster and master of psionic art.
In my campaign he started as an advisor to one of the Baldie. Very friendly and helpful orc NPC that thanks to players' help recently acquired a large chunk of land and abandoned castle. My players met him on his vision quest and helped with killing a deadly sentient hydra that was tormenting the local population of goblins. After the whole affair goblins chose Baldie as their new leader and king (he was only present greenskin in the party at the time). After a few weeks my player decided to visit Baldie and check out his new domain and there they first met Killinger. He sensed that Baldie has some capacity for villainy if he would be pushed in the right direction. Henry decided to become Baldie court advisor and helped him with stabilizing his power over goblins and bringing little bit of order to those chaotic creatures. Not too much of course. He did not want to push them towards lawfulness.
During his first meeting with the party he was as always polite and cordial. Yet somehow his presence alone made everyone feel very uncomfortable. Over the next months of the campaign a new villain appeared. Truly BBEG. The Thin White Duke - David Bowie (my next post will probably be about him, I also stole him from Venture Bros. Kinda. It is complicated). Over the course of a few next months people of Arcan-Tau (continent of the campaign) were faced with sheer uncering chaos that Duke brought to their homeland. Undead, mutated orcs, giant hornets with human faces, dominic cults and many more. All without the goal, just in name of sheer chaos. For shits and giggles as they say. My players as the heroic sort were at the front of brave souls battling this chaotic menace every way they go.
Henry started to appear to them during their travels. Often bringing advice or direction. And always asking for monetary payments in return. Slowly but shortly my players figured out that he does not like Bowie at all and coordinated a lot of events behind the scenes to ensure his defeat in the near future. You see, Kilinger was not fun of too much chaos going around. A little bit yes, of course everybody loves a little bit of chaos. But apocalyptic levels of chaos were way too much for him. You may ask: “Why Killinger did not kill Bowie himself?”. He could not. You see he and all his brothers could not interfere in the mortal world too much. They could advise and guide mortals toward the desired path but direct interference was simply impossible to them. Their souls simply do not allow them to even think that way. They existed to guide sentient mortals. That's all. And that's how uneasy alliance started between Dr. Henry Killinger (almost godlike avatar of neutral evil) and a group of heroic adventurers that found themselves in the middle of global level mess.
Do any of you do that? Like still whole characters and modyfie them for your game world?
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