Making an Epic Showdown – A Look Behind the Scenes
In this article I talk about Making an Epic Showdown and use examples from the game My Bloody Valentine. As such, this article contains Spoilers! So don’t read if you are planning on being a player in the game. Otherwise, read on, fellow GMs.
A showdown needs to be epic and sometimes it can feel a little meh in a game like monster of the week because it’s so rules light and needs a little creativity to help GMs really push battle epicness.
For My Bloody Valentine the final encounter takes place in an old gothic house.
I wanted the Player Characters (Heroes) to really work for the win and make the battle feel like it had high stakes without it being a repetitive task of killing a bunch of vampires.
So I gave the battle three layers.
Layer 1: The House
I wanted to create a house that felt like a maze that pushed the Heroes towards danger. And while I was doing that I also wanted to separate them.
This heightens the stakes because very often Heroes lean on one or two of the characters in a battle for example the ones with the guns or the big knives.
But a battle becomes way more interesting when the nerdy book Hero has to face off against a vampire and the big burly gun wielder is not there.
So, my goal was to combine all those things into an easy to run mechanic that the GM could do easily. So, I gave the house a move and a goal.
Layer 2 – Other Occupants of the House
A great battle has layers of confrontation. There are smaller challenges, lesser monsters, minions or other things that the Heroes need to overcome before they get to the Big Bad.
So I thought of the House as a Vampire nest and came up with lesser vampires and minions and each one has specific things that they do.
What I like about this is that each of the players can have a slightly different experience in the house and spotlighting each Hero is interesting and exciting for the table, rather than the battle being a big bash fest.
And while everything I do is technically part of the core mechanics of the game, I combine them in idea clusters to make the game a lot more exciting to run than just having players enter a creepy house and get attacked by Vampires.
If you enjoyed this behind the scenes peak then join us next time.
