So you've introduced your BBEG (Big Bad Evil Guy/Girl) to the party once or twice, and you've got him moving his Big Evil Plan ever closer to fruition. You're going to have an encounter set up where he steals the MacGuffin right before the party's eyes! He scoffs at them, decides on a line or two of pithy dialog...
...then the Rogue crits him in the back of the face with a daily. He falls over, dead as a doornail, mid speech. What do?
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Deal With It; The PCs Are The Heroes, Not You
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In a case such as this, you can try to play the "invulnerable" card, and say he magically gets the hell out, no explanation necessary. After all, he's the main villain, he can't die yet! Guess what? Your players will hate you for it. Don't do this. It's the hallmark of a bad DM, because it basically tells the players to sit down and shut up and play their part in the DM's grand story. The story ceases to be about the PCs and becomes about the villain's Big Evil Plan that you stayed up all night thinking up.
It is not the player's job to be the bit players in the DM's story. If you want to tell a story, write a book.
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The PCs Are The Heroes; Let Them Act Like It
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So the rest of this post is going to assume that you didn't pull the "magically got away" card like a chump, and decided to take this one on the chin. Maybe you play with a house rule where two nat20's in a row = instant kill, or maybe the way the player roleplayed the action was just so awesome that the entire table erupted in cheers, and you didn't want to put the damper on it. Fact is, there will always be situations where roleplaying trumps whatever your stat block says. I don't care that your BBEG has 350 hit points if I just rolled a nat20 to kick him off a 200' tall building and watched him hit the ground with a "squish".
If he's dead, he's dead, and that means it's time to move on. There are a number of ways to keep the game going without punishing the players for killing your star villain. In fact, you shouldn't punish them at all. They're the Heroes, and they just killed the Big Bad! They should be rewarded for their efforts! Make them renowned throughout the land for their deeds, and shower them with adulation! Then...figure out what to do next. There are a few routes you can take.
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Welcome To The Next Level
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This way of approaching your "post-BBEG" game is to make your PCs begin to matter at a higher level. If they're low level, make them regional heroes, where suddenly people at a higher level are beginning to take note. If they're mid level, make them heroes of the realm, where entire kingdoms know their name, and have some of the powers-that-be begin to take note. If they're high level...well...it's entirely possible your BBEG was a god, and it might be time to end it. :D
Assuming that you aren't ready to quit though, this is a good way to keep things going. Suddenly it's no longer about your world; the party learns that there are other plots they can solve that threaten entire planes of existence. If the BBEG was a warlord you planned to make into a main antagonist in a rival nation, maybe the king where your party is based wishes an audience, then tells them in confidence that there are problems that need solving with that nation. Once your players have had the chance to bask in the glory of their victory, up the ante.
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Communism Was Just A Red Herring
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Your BBEG wasn't the real antagonist at all, but someone else was pulling the strings! This can be a little lame and contrived, and is pretty tricky to pull off. However, if you had planned on having this BBEG be an emissary to an evil god, for instance, you could sow the seeds of him being part of a larger organization, with some clues on where the cultists meet, or some of their names. The key to making this work is in not letting the players thing your BBEG was actually "The BBEG", but a more minor villain, because that's ultimately what you're relegating him to.
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Let The Players Choose
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Ultimately the PCs are the heroes of the story, and this may be a chance for you to change the pace of the game. Let the players know that you're planning on letting them take the reins a bit narratively, and let them explore, clear out dungeons, finish side quests, vision quests, stronghold quests, whatever they want to do. You can loop plot threads back in as you go to bring in more recurring villains with their own nefarious plots to be foiled, but you can do so once the players have had an opportunity to ground themselves and get used to a different adventuring style. I usually rarely advocate this, but this might be a good time to run a pre-built module, if the opening allows for it. At this point you aren't running your story anymore, you're just going hogwild with the players, and that's OK.
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Next Time
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The next blog post I have up here will cover the flipside of this coin, and cover what to do when a PC dies...or if you get that dreaded TPK. Happy gaming!
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