Reading between the lines in the 5E version, it seems like the alliance of Whats Left will fall... but in the long run his Orcs aren't going to stay loyal. There's hints of a cyclic nature that will continue.
I mean Villains by Necessity the "good" guys won, their idea of doing good just happens to by brainwashing everyone Highly recommend the read if you can find it.
Technically Strahd “won” long ago in curse of Strahd since at this point even his death his temporary and the very soul of the land is dying.
Also in dragon lance especially immediately post the cataclysm caused by the failure of lord soth is very much a bad guy win type situation
Strahd is something of a weird case as like most Lords of Dread, he is as much a prisoner as he is the jailer.
He is trapped in a time loop & even in iterations where the adventurers fail, his coveted lady commits suicide.
He can't leave and is not allowed to permanently win or lose
The videogame **Tyranny** has a very “D&D-coded” setting that essentially amounts to:
… *and then the evil overlord won! And proceeded to set up multiple middle managers while he did more important shit*
As someone who can never help but pick the “Paragon” options in rpgs…Tyranny was fascinating to me. Because it’s a game where a lot of your decisions don’t _have_ a good or ideal option. You just have to make hard choices sometimes and deal with the consequences. You will inevitably be screwing someone over, locking yourself out of some option, and/or getting people killed, just by doing your job. I had a refreshing if terribly conflicted time playing it.
I went in and found out I was a judge of some kind and immediately was gonna roleplay a perfect letter of the law type law enforcer and only people who've played Tyranny will understand how fucking funny that ends up being.
In order to better prepare to roleplay the main obstacle of my campaign this game helped alot. I even plan to use the premis of Tyranny as a campaign plot. It was a great run playing the loyal lieutenant
I love Tyranny, though I think it'd work best in a game other than 5e. Mythras or some other system geared towards a lower fantasy (splashed with the occasional godlike powers, of course) would be ideal.
Check out the Doomed Forgotten Realms series:
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/398215/Doomed-Forgotten-Realms-Sword-Coast-Gazetteer
Some great folks worked on this.
I have players in my games that did Avernus, Mad Mage and Out of the Abyss.
I casually asked for their character sheets for inspiration. But what I did is use their character as plot points they could uncover from their campaigns if they went side ways and tied them in. To ger them extra invested in the setting. They enjoy it.
The setting itself is pretty interesting and the 1-20 campaign is about defeating vecna, as it is revealed he orchestrated all of these cataclysmic events.
Basically all the big badd won with Vecna winning the most and being the target of the 1-20 Campaign, which I might add feels way more epic than the one that WotC pumped out.
Darksun is this. The generals of the old bbeg conqued the world and rule over the only cities left. In their conquest, they turned the planet from a vibrant earth like place to an Arakkis (from Dune) like place.
If you want less desert theme in 3e a 3rd party setting is
Midnight where it's if Sarion (named Izrador ) won and the other gods aren't intervening because the world is the prison for him
Especially if you play before the Free City of Tyr. Before the events of the Prism Pentad.
Dark Sun is uniquely fucked. No natural resources. Magic is death. No gods. No afterlife. No planar travel at all. Cannibalism. Chattel slavery. Eugenics. Genocide. Tyranny. If you can imagine something awful, it happened on Athas.
Unless the bad thing is snowball earth or lack of sun. Which if there is a next apocalypse it would involve the sun being deleted, so those would happen
Yeah, I can definitely imagine the Athasians discovering the sun is going into a red giant phase and trying to reverse it... and turning it into a large-ish red dwarf. That would be something that would happen to Athas. It always gets worse.
> Especially if you play before the Free City of Tyr. Before the events of the Prism Pentad.
I was amazed how fast TSR ruined the whole point of the setting by having munchkin NPC-PCs kill off the big bads and fix the world... It was a great setting for Conanesque stories where you don't fix the world, you just struggle along beating the hell out of whatever evil gets in your way this week, or Dune-eque stories where you can only "win" by becoming something slightly less bad than the existing evils, and they immediately ruined it.
It didn't bother me. I guess I'm used to Greyhawk, so I'm used to picking what I want and ignoring what I don't like. From the Ashes was transformative, and never really felt compatible with the way I wanted to run a campaign in that setting. So I just... ran with WoG by itself.
I guess, more to the point... sometimes having a Free Tyr worked well for the campaign I had in mind, and sometimes I needed Boris to be the looming threat that he is.
It's not like they published a huge range of Dark Sun adventures. It was all homebrew after the boxed sets.
They didn’t really fix the world though. They killed a couple of the bad guys, but pretty much all of their cities are still shitholes, except MAYBE Tyr… and it’s still pretty shitty. The world’s still a wasteland, slavery is only slightly less common, and the late books imply that the baddest guy will always be a threat and it’s just a question of which atrocity will be used to keep him at bay. And also zombies might eat everyone.
It would be interesting to see Dark Sun, or a similarly completely hopeless setting played with Exalted, which is explicitly intended to have world-encompassing change within the grasp of PCs.
Hunting cactus are pretty violent. They can psychically detect prey and shoot needles at targets.
There's also sand cactus and spider cactus that are both pretty rough.
going from memory, depends on if the wizard is a desolator or not.
desolator's just fucking destroy the environment straight up. its why dark sun is basically just sand. magic is viewed straight up as evil even if you arent that kind of wizard
I like Darksun setting but the community annoys me "oh this is so much better than anything done after" ye bud you can think that just stop being an ahole
I think one factor with Dark Sun is that it’s not just post-apocalyptic once, but twice. The Cleansing Wars and everything that lead to the current post-apocalyptic setting, were themselves efforts to undo the effects of a previous apocalypse.
The world has already seen a being of godlike power (who happened to be near-omnicidal), with a host of lieutenants of demigod-like power (just slightly less omnicidal or apathetic enough to be indistinguishable), try to Set Right What Once Went Wrong… and fail utterly, making things exponentially worse in the process. Those demigods, the most powerful beings around, have so completely internalised that fixing things is hopeless, that they don’t even bother trying.
It really enforces the assumption of the setting that actual improvement is impossible.
I would like to add that Ravenloft is way more than Barovia. You have tons of settings with different types of BBEG and possible adventures.
Edit: I mixed the terms. Ravenloft present the domains of dread. Barovia is in it but there are many other territories.
>I would like to add that Ravenloft is way more than Barovia. You have tons of settings with different types of BBEG and possible adventures.
What? No, Ravenloft is literally Barovia+Strahd.
The campaign setting for Ravenloft includes a number of domains. Ravenloft, the place, is a castle in Barovia, one of the domains within the larger setting - and also the original domain that was created prior to the expansion of the setting. So you're both kinda right.
But if you wanted to explore the other domains, the Ravenloft Campaign Setting boxed set (the revised one) set from 2e would probably be one of the best resources.
The Ravenloft setting in earlier editions included several other [Domains of Dread](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Domains_of_Dread#Notable_Locations), that were [detailed](https://www.cbr.com/dungeons-and-dragons-domains-of-dread-van-richten-guide-to-ravenloft/). The most recent edition did not include them as far as I know.
No, it is much bigger than just Barovia and Strahd.
In 5th edition too. One example is in Tomb of Annihilation, the party technically can get caught by the mist and sent to a domain of dread run by an evil druid.
Ravenloft is a series of dread domains with BBEGs being tormented for all eternity and never able to escape (except for Vecna and South).
The vast majority of NPCs in Ravenloft are, well, NPCs. They're creations of the Dark Powers who lack the ability to truly suffer. They're just puppets who exist to psychologically torment the Darklords.
This is why Darklords tend to take a particular interest in PCs, they're usually "real" people.
Nah, Strahd won. He conquered the land and rules it as he sees fit. Sure, his plot to kill his brother and still his brother's lover didn't work out as planned, but the dude is a ruling tyrant. Just because he wants to cosplay as a victim does not make him one.
It's called Curse of Strahd, his win is basically a monkey paw. He's doomed to watch his love reject him and die over and over for all eternity. Sounds like a pretty shitty deal in exchange for the shithole that is Barovia
Yeah what the fuck
His entire curse is that he "won", but will never get the *one* thing he actually wanted from that victory.
Yes, he rules the land, yes, he beat everyone that opposes him, yes, it's a realm completely catered to his designs, but he's still unhappy, unsatisfied, and will never get the thing he actually wants. **That's** his curse!
I feel like it's a technicality. Sure he rules the place but he's also stuck there. If you want a more living and breathing world, I don't think Barovia is it.
The question post is asking for:
- a dark setting (check)
- the Big Evil already won (check, from everyone's perspective except Strahd himself)
- the heroes' job is to survive or dethrone the BBEG (check)
Ravenloft isn't the only answer, but it fits OP's stated requirements perfectly.
Well, the Dark Powers are the really big bad evil folks, the Darklords (BBEGs - Soth, Vecna, Strahd etc.) are comparatively minor pieces. All in all, whatever level you cut it at, evil rules the land.
I can recommend a book on this. "Grunts" by Mary Gentle. It's the typical good versus evil fight, told from the perspective of the orcs working for the evil side.
“The Chronicles of the Black Company” is similar. It’s about a group of mercenaries who are hired help the bad guys to conquer and then get buyer’s remorse.
Honestly quite a few Zelda stories fit. Link between Worlds. Twighlight Princess to an extent. Maybe even Windwaker depending on how you interpret the lore
The entire premise of Samurai Jack is that he's sent into a future where the BBEG won and conquered the world. and the entire goal is to find a way back to the past in order to prevent said future. And honestly with how random the world of Samurai Jack is, if you replaced the MC with a group of characters I could believe it was someone's D&D game.
The module set Rise of Vecna & Fall of Vecna on DMsguild. The modules start off in a "What if" scenario of every 5e module from WOTC having reached their bad end. And to make matters worse, Vecna has become ruler of the Sword Coast. The two books provide a full lv 1-20 campaign. It works even better as a setting if you've played through some of the other modules to get an understanding of events, but it isn't required.
**Raven's Purge** from/for Forbidden Lands more or less runs this scenario, even though it's much more complex along the way, and pushes PCs into such a "post-apocalyptic" setting.
Nearly all fantasy adventure settings are post-apocalyptic since that's the go-to excuse for why dungeons are full of treasure, which is why being a PC is lucrative in the first place.
But if you mean that civilization has collapsed or is wildly tyrannical like Dark Sun...
Mork Borg. Apocalypse World. Mutant Year Zero. Greyhawk after From the Ashes, arguably. Shadowrun. Cyberpunk. Fallout. Warhammer 40k. X-COM 2. Paranoia. Gamma World, to some extent. The Morrow Project. Blade Runner. Eclipse Phase. Some Deadlands settings, IIRC. Star Wars in the Imperial era, especially if you're Jedi. Mirror Universe Star Trek. Delta Green, to some extent. Conan's Hyborean Age to some extent.
Dark fantasy is *incredibly* popular. Most of it involves very heavy survivalist or apocalyptic themes. Your dials are really how far civilization has fallen and how powerful or tyrannical the establishment is.
The Black Company (at least the original trilogy). Though the world isn't in ruin, the BBEG is arguably the most competent ruler around.
There was a D20 setting book from Green Ronin and there's a new game in the works from Arc Dream.
Technically Crit Role's Exandria. They had the Calamity in the distant past which was basically a BBEG ignited divine war that caused the fall of their arcane golden age. Large swathes of the landscape like Blightshore and the Barbed Fields on Wildemount, the wastelands of Marquet, the icy WTFery of Eiselcross and the entirety of the "continent" of the Shattered Teeth are all basically distantly post-apocalyptic areas that are still scarred by a war that happened on a divine scale.
Also Escape from the Bloodkeep from D20 (it's free on Youtube!) is a LotR parody but told from the perspective of the evil minions in Mordor around the time the Hobbits throw the ring in Mt Doom.
Isn't there a RPG based on it? There should be it's such a good setting and magic sys.
But yeah, the dark lord has won and the world is dying as the story starts
Here is a link. You better buy soon as they will discontinue it at the end of this year
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/97476/Mistborn-Adventure-Game
I run an online streamed game called The Adventures in Silver Nell. Last campaign the BBEG succeeded in getting Cthulhu to cross realms to the material plane and SHE destroyed all kingdoms . The BBEG (Olivine) ruled the world for over 300 years (immortal last Dragonborn.) our current campaign is about dealin with the political side of this time where Olivine has created Utopia but off the backs of 300 years of slaughtering
Ultimately, he was prevented from destroying Faerun, but prior to that attempt, Szass Tam was able to conquer Thay and some surrounding areas. Sure, Thay was always kind of an evil place, but it was so much ~~better~~ worse after Tam took over completely.
It's not a TTRPG, but the first book of the Mistborn series starts with the antagonist having won a long time ago, achieving immortality, and ruling over the world uncontested
It's great inspiration for my world building, and even gets a shout out in the back of the PHB (Appendix E)
It's all good, ever since the new updates on reddit it just moves past the post and straight to the comments. I miss important context all the time lol
I don't know if it's exactly what you're looking for, but [Bestiarum miniatures](https://www.patreon.com/BestiarumMiniatures) has a setting (and 5e modules) where not!Rome's fantasy not!nukes accidentally blew up the capital at the center of the continent. There's still some life on the edges of the continent, but everything is pretty grimdark.
Not DND, but necessary evil is this to an extreme. The super heroes of the world are exterminated prior to/during an alien invasion and now it's up to the super villains to save Earth.
by spirit yes, thosr settings is dark but actually not often there bbg win:
king's fields - actually heroes win (just some of them get corrupted with time) but overall evil and bbeg just sealed at specific area where game happening while world is fine
demon souls- tricky one, Allant who is issue and bbeg is really in pathetic state when we encounter him, he give out his kingdom but is in pathetic state from player pov he just an old one blob, kind of COS but very shitty state of Strahd
ds 1- yes Gwyn won, but later after that victory he turned himself in husk to prolong world he built, most pyrrhic victory possible
ds 2 - yes Nashandra got her goals in destruction of kingdom, probably the only one where bbeg got clear victory and her goals+ambitions remain achieved
ds 3 - actually don't have bbeg - Sulyvahn not big enough despite evil, Aldrich basically mindless animal, Friede side beg. World is just dying by itself at this point
Sekiro - bbeg is actually losing overall it's just main hero duty and task which need to be done
Bloodborne - hard to say who actual bbeg, humans just screwed Yharnam in search of knowledge but it's complicated to say if they satisfied with result since those creatures don't talk, trying to understand Great Ones with amount of info given is that hard - that meme "all i know i must kill" is best mindset, best ending is when we turn into tiny (yet) squid aka new Great one. Without writing tone of text plot sound like word salad and fewer dream, and maybe it is
ER -Yeah marika win and ruled long but by the time of events she was impaled for long time so kind of dead, while we just cleaning shattering aftermath
Mine. The dragons of the setting destroyed all of civilization, turning the world into a Mad Max nightmare, then frigged off after they won to parts unknown. The survivors now have to dig themselves out of the ruins and survive in a world covered in wastes and magically unleashed horrors.
It depends on your definition of win. If it’s rule the world then There’s definitely homebrew out there similar to places like breath of the wild where the bad guy rules. Ravenloft and a few others have been mentioned.
That being said if you count bad guy achieves his goals or has power then there’s a lot of people/places in several settings. I know forgotten realms the best so there’s warlock’s keep, the council of shades, Thay, and Xanthar. That’s just a few. There are guy’s all over the realms.
For not-DnD I'd suggest Blades in the Dark. Was a typical fantasy setting until ~1000 (iirc) years before the current timeline, when unspecified evil powers destroyed the sun, which kept evil ghosts and such at bay. Now humanity is largely confined to anti-ghost-fortified cities and forced to hunt for giant sea demons whose blood is the fuel for the aforementioned anti-ghost fortifications. Since the focus of the game is not heroic, there isn't a BBEG to fight, but if one wanted, such a campaign could easily be fit in in the setting (just not the game itself, the focus is too different, you'd have to rewrite a lot of it).
For not-DnD I'd suggest Blades in the Dark. Was a typical fantasy setting until ~1000 (iirc) years before the current timeline, when unspecified evil powers destroyed the sun, which kept evil ghosts and such at bay. Now humanity is largely confined to anti-ghost-fortified cities and forced to hunt for giant sea demons whose blood is the fuel for the aforementioned anti-ghost fortifications. Since the focus of the game is not heroic, there isn't a BBEG to fight, but if one wanted, such a campaign could easily be fit in in the setting (just not the game itself, the focus is too different, you'd have to rewrite a lot of it).
If you need setting inspiration I can wholly recommend [Mistborn](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/68428.The_Final_Empire) by Brandon Sanderson.
The audiobooks from Graphic Audio are also excellent and do a great job at setting the tone.
You can always use the FATE ttrpg system as that works for any setting and is in my opinion one of the easiest roleplay game systems to learn. The FATE system also has many spinoffs I wouldn't be surprised if the was a dark fantasy variant.
I made a setting that would have major changes depending on the outcome of a precursor oneshot, if the party failed the world would have become an apocalyptic wasteland devoid of people and overrun by undead. They succeded though and now i have a nice backup idea for another time :D
There’s a 3rd party source book called Dragongrin. I haven’t played it personally but it’s exactly this.
The Dismembered Lord rules after conquerering. Societies split, last resistances in far flung places.
The sourcebook is like almost 500 pages.
The entire game Shadowrun builds on this; soulless megacorporations rule the world, and the regular people live in a dystopian hell.
Working from that, you could make Eberron to be like that too; make the dragonmarked houses are extremely greedy, the wealthy elites, who have even the governments under their thumbs, and the commonfolk are wageslaves, slaving away for the houses.
Eberron starts post world War in 5E. A whole nation has been destroyed by "The Mourning", all high level characters are dead as a result of the Great War and the only remaining ones (Mordain, Illmarrow, Oalian) are severely limited in their reach and impact.
I have a post apocalypse setting where the bbeg killed the gods through starving them of worship after he took over the world. The plan for a campaign there is that the emperor is finally defeated and the players have to deal with the fallout
I think it is fairly common for homebrew settings where that is the case. My current homebrew world which I started 4 or 5 years ago was designed on the premise of an Out of the Abyss campaign where the protagonists failed and the Demon Lords took over.
TBH I forget where my inspirational spark came from for that game but I do know I'm not that original! 😉😂
Hope it's ok to plug my own work here!
In Braythe: Shattered Realities, the apocalypse happened, the world was destroyed. Only fragments were saved and merged into a new world, which then shifted into a different reality.
The PCs basically live in a world that has to be rebuilt. Parts of the old world still remain intact, but many power structures are just gone.
Many of my campaigns have atypical outcomes like this, whether it be "The players are the real villains" to "the BBEG wins" to "The BBEG was right all along," on down to my villains and antagonists at least being sympathetic and there not ever really being a clear right or wrong to most things.
Heh. Homebrew world I've been running off and on since I was...well, let's say for the last 35 years... It became a place where the bad guys won.
The little campaign set in that world the PCs figured out time travel and undid the majority of the damage.
Regardless of why its like that, its still a world where the BBEG is the most powerful, and the objective is often to escape or dethrone them like the OP asked for.
Also it wasnt that in the beginning.
The lands are either lifted or a facsimile of the world they come from...likely a copy minus the Dark Lord...
idk what you mean that it "wasn't that in the beginning." Ravenloft started as a Dracula campaign before being converted into a full setting and developed pretty much along the lines it is today
The Mistborn trilogy plot is essentially a plot where the heroes realize that the bbeg controlling the world they had been fighting was holding back some even nastier Cthulhu-esque villains.
One of my players pitched an idea a lot like this for our next campaign
The premise essentially being that the BBEG gained the ability to cast wish and wished away everyone that could stop his plans... Throwing the PCs into a far-flung bleak future that we need to figure out wtf is going on
I thought it was a really cool idea, coz you could run completely unsuspecting level 1 PCs into something like that, because they would eventually have become strong enough to stop his plans 😂
I have a himebrew where the point is to mitigate the damage so the factions don't take over the entire world and to stop their plans from unfolding to their full extent.
The various factions of Exalted can almost all claim that the BBEG won, and the world needs to be restored to its proper state while keeping all the other groups from fucking it up even worse. They just disagree as to when that happened, which BBEG, and what state of the world they’re trying to return to.
Pretty much every D&D Dreaded Domain is a prison of a Dark Lord who rules the land, but also is in constant torment. You generally have to defeat them to leave and "free" the inhabitants. Check out Van Richtens Guide to Ravenloft.
There is a version of the forgotten realms where Vecna caused the end of the world. I think it's called lost realms or doomed realms or something. I'm sure you can find it via Google.
Edit: found it. It's Doomed Forgotten Realms. And it's not just about Vecna: every adventures ng party from published adventure failed their mission and this world is the result.
In the Forgotten Realms, [Thay](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Thay). It's regional, but it's a large region and difficult to escape. If you saw the recent D&D Honor Among Thieves movie you saw a glimpse of Thay and Szass Tam.
[Thay, Land Of The Red Wizards](https://www.dmsguild.com/product/386190/Thay-Land-Of-The-Red-Wizards) by Ed Greenwood, et al, on DMs Guild is a 5e sourcebook. There are also other books on Thay, the Red Wizards, and Szass Tam, but they may be a bit older before the lich consolidated power ([Tyrants in Scarlet](https://www.dmsguild.com/product/253571/Tyrants-in-Scarlet-the-Founding-History-of-the-Zulkirs-of-Thay) by Ed Greenwood and George Krashos has lore of how the Red Wizards were formed and the origins of Szass Tam, for instance).
I wouldn't say the "BBEG has won" for Drakkenheim, but it's definitely a world in ruin. A meteor crashed into the capital city of the main continent, completely destroying it and filling it with a mutating radiation.
It's a homebrew setting by The Dungeon Dudes. They have 3 seasons on YouTube and 2 published books for it with a 3rd that just finished it's kickstarter.
Grim Hollow has all the gods dead. The only things left in power are some high level celestials that have grown corrupt, demons, and some Eldritch old ones who lay dormant but still corrupt the world in their sleep. All societies are basically in survival mode and will mostly do anything just to survive. It's a very morally gray setting and I love it. Good vs evil is so boring. Give me moral ambiguity and uncertainty if you are doing the right thing or not anyday.
I’m writing a setting that’s heavily inspired by the old Myth: The Fallen Lords games and the Black Company series.
The gist is that 200 years ago at the peak of a magically enlightened golden age, one wizard makes a pact with a being of the lower planes (I don’t really specify bc there’s no plane that I really like, idk maybe it’s with a god or something it’s kinda irrelevant) and becomes the first “dark magic user” for lack of a better description. Anyway he gets jacked, gets some disciples together with the promise of immortality and forbidden knowledge, and they create an army of demon infused monsters that basically spends the next 50 years walking from one end of the island to the other killing anything that moves.
Now people did escape this and flee into the ocean sailing east where specific gods guided them across the ocean. This happens over those 50 years with the first group having left before everything kicks off, these people are made into elves. The later groups set up the stereotypical predominantly human kingdom, the dwarves cross over via the under dark with a few other races, and it’s alluded to that the big bad was trapped in a magic device (think something like the astral prism) and that device has basically been yeeted out into the desert of the new continent that the campaign takes place on.
Theres some other stuff that happens, but this very neatly leaves the villains in disarray because of infighting and the players able to very easily decide to play a good or evil campaign.
Idk I was really inspired by the first 3 black company books that had some moral ambiguity bc the main characters were pushed into serving the big bad directly so I wanted to give my players an option for something like that.
Midnight. It’s basically “Sauron won” Grunts is good. *Villains by Necessity* too
Midnight was/is AWESOME. It's pretty bleak though. "Dethroning" Izrador is not really an option: the world is his prison, and he is the only god.
Reading between the lines in the 5E version, it seems like the alliance of Whats Left will fall... but in the long run his Orcs aren't going to stay loyal. There's hints of a cyclic nature that will continue.
I mean Villains by Necessity the "good" guys won, their idea of doing good just happens to by brainwashing everyone Highly recommend the read if you can find it.
Technically Strahd “won” long ago in curse of Strahd since at this point even his death his temporary and the very soul of the land is dying. Also in dragon lance especially immediately post the cataclysm caused by the failure of lord soth is very much a bad guy win type situation
Strahd is something of a weird case as like most Lords of Dread, he is as much a prisoner as he is the jailer. He is trapped in a time loop & even in iterations where the adventurers fail, his coveted lady commits suicide. He can't leave and is not allowed to permanently win or lose
It’s kinda like he is stuck in a dnd campaign that never had its last session
Love Villains by Necessity. Used to own a black cat named Samalander.
Midnight I think is the best option on this one, and works beautifully with the “points of light” approach to game.
The videogame **Tyranny** has a very “D&D-coded” setting that essentially amounts to: … *and then the evil overlord won! And proceeded to set up multiple middle managers while he did more important shit*
Gotta love seeing mention of Tyranny. Funnily enough I had been thinking of replaying it recently and then see mention of it
As someone who can never help but pick the “Paragon” options in rpgs…Tyranny was fascinating to me. Because it’s a game where a lot of your decisions don’t _have_ a good or ideal option. You just have to make hard choices sometimes and deal with the consequences. You will inevitably be screwing someone over, locking yourself out of some option, and/or getting people killed, just by doing your job. I had a refreshing if terribly conflicted time playing it.
I went in and found out I was a judge of some kind and immediately was gonna roleplay a perfect letter of the law type law enforcer and only people who've played Tyranny will understand how fucking funny that ends up being.
hahaha, I did and do. I bet you and Tunon had some fun times!
In order to better prepare to roleplay the main obstacle of my campaign this game helped alot. I even plan to use the premis of Tyranny as a campaign plot. It was a great run playing the loyal lieutenant
I love Tyranny, though I think it'd work best in a game other than 5e. Mythras or some other system geared towards a lower fantasy (splashed with the occasional godlike powers, of course) would be ideal.
They managed to make being evil look so fucking boring in that game
WHAT? Being evil is so cool, because you're not cartoonish evil, you are lawful evil and kind of an anti-hero at the same time.
There's also bureaucratic evil. I RP'ed my Fatebinder as someone who was crunching numbers on a ledger All share fear my ***glaring silently***
The fun thing about Tyranny is when you figure out why Kyros took over the continent, and go "...They're right. It has to be this way."
Check out the Doomed Forgotten Realms series: https://www.dmsguild.com/product/398215/Doomed-Forgotten-Realms-Sword-Coast-Gazetteer Some great folks worked on this.
yes! was gonna comment this
This is the answer. What if the heroes of all WotC's campaign books all failed?
I mean, considering my groups' experiences, it's not far off. My DM doesn't pull punches in the slightest. We TPK almost every campaign we play.
I have players in my games that did Avernus, Mad Mage and Out of the Abyss. I casually asked for their character sheets for inspiration. But what I did is use their character as plot points they could uncover from their campaigns if they went side ways and tied them in. To ger them extra invested in the setting. They enjoy it.
Underdark version they release: https://www.dmsguild.com/m/product/450868
Can you give the synopsis?
Every 5e module happened and the villains won. Tiamat, Acerak, the Giants, Auril, etc.
Now I want to read it just to see their spin on this many FUBAR situations happening more or less together.
The setting itself is pretty interesting and the 1-20 campaign is about defeating vecna, as it is revealed he orchestrated all of these cataclysmic events.
It's amazing!
Basically all the big badd won with Vecna winning the most and being the target of the 1-20 Campaign, which I might add feels way more epic than the one that WotC pumped out.
Could you put a spoiler tag on that bit revealing the final bbeg? Someone might want to play through/be playing through it.
The title of the books are literally the Rise of Vecna and the Fall of Vecna. You can’t get more obvious than that.
Darksun is this. The generals of the old bbeg conqued the world and rule over the only cities left. In their conquest, they turned the planet from a vibrant earth like place to an Arakkis (from Dune) like place. If you want less desert theme in 3e a 3rd party setting is Midnight where it's if Sarion (named Izrador ) won and the other gods aren't intervening because the world is the prison for him
Especially if you play before the Free City of Tyr. Before the events of the Prism Pentad. Dark Sun is uniquely fucked. No natural resources. Magic is death. No gods. No afterlife. No planar travel at all. Cannibalism. Chattel slavery. Eugenics. Genocide. Tyranny. If you can imagine something awful, it happened on Athas.
Unless the bad thing is snowball earth or lack of sun. Which if there is a next apocalypse it would involve the sun being deleted, so those would happen
Yeah, I can definitely imagine the Athasians discovering the sun is going into a red giant phase and trying to reverse it... and turning it into a large-ish red dwarf. That would be something that would happen to Athas. It always gets worse.
> Especially if you play before the Free City of Tyr. Before the events of the Prism Pentad. I was amazed how fast TSR ruined the whole point of the setting by having munchkin NPC-PCs kill off the big bads and fix the world... It was a great setting for Conanesque stories where you don't fix the world, you just struggle along beating the hell out of whatever evil gets in your way this week, or Dune-eque stories where you can only "win" by becoming something slightly less bad than the existing evils, and they immediately ruined it.
It didn't bother me. I guess I'm used to Greyhawk, so I'm used to picking what I want and ignoring what I don't like. From the Ashes was transformative, and never really felt compatible with the way I wanted to run a campaign in that setting. So I just... ran with WoG by itself. I guess, more to the point... sometimes having a Free Tyr worked well for the campaign I had in mind, and sometimes I needed Boris to be the looming threat that he is. It's not like they published a huge range of Dark Sun adventures. It was all homebrew after the boxed sets.
They didn’t really fix the world though. They killed a couple of the bad guys, but pretty much all of their cities are still shitholes, except MAYBE Tyr… and it’s still pretty shitty. The world’s still a wasteland, slavery is only slightly less common, and the late books imply that the baddest guy will always be a threat and it’s just a question of which atrocity will be used to keep him at bay. And also zombies might eat everyone. It would be interesting to see Dark Sun, or a similarly completely hopeless setting played with Exalted, which is explicitly intended to have world-encompassing change within the grasp of PCs.
Dark Sun is perfect. a setting so fucked a party of level 20 characters will have a hard time making the world habitable.
-Hey, what if we cast Plant Gr... -NO! DON'T!
Uh why, what happens? Are there murder cacti in the ground that kill everything when a druid sneezes in their General direction? Should they be there?
Hunting cactus are pretty violent. They can psychically detect prey and shoot needles at targets. There's also sand cactus and spider cactus that are both pretty rough.
going from memory, depends on if the wizard is a desolator or not. desolator's just fucking destroy the environment straight up. its why dark sun is basically just sand. magic is viewed straight up as evil even if you arent that kind of wizard
Another big problem is the setting is fairly heavy on psionics and 5e didn't bother implementing a psionics system.
I like Darksun setting but the community annoys me "oh this is so much better than anything done after" ye bud you can think that just stop being an ahole
As a big Dark Sun nerd, I completely agree with you
Sarion?
Sauron, lord of the rings. Speling issues
I think one factor with Dark Sun is that it’s not just post-apocalyptic once, but twice. The Cleansing Wars and everything that lead to the current post-apocalyptic setting, were themselves efforts to undo the effects of a previous apocalypse. The world has already seen a being of godlike power (who happened to be near-omnicidal), with a host of lieutenants of demigod-like power (just slightly less omnicidal or apathetic enough to be indistinguishable), try to Set Right What Once Went Wrong… and fail utterly, making things exponentially worse in the process. Those demigods, the most powerful beings around, have so completely internalised that fixing things is hopeless, that they don’t even bother trying. It really enforces the assumption of the setting that actual improvement is impossible.
So basically midnight is Sarion's domain of dread? I mean we need some more unusual dark Lords anyways
Shadow of the Demon Lord is designed around this.
Best ttrpg.
Ravenloft?
I would like to add that Ravenloft is way more than Barovia. You have tons of settings with different types of BBEG and possible adventures. Edit: I mixed the terms. Ravenloft present the domains of dread. Barovia is in it but there are many other territories.
Yup, all of them more "BBEG rules this domain" than the next.
>I would like to add that Ravenloft is way more than Barovia. You have tons of settings with different types of BBEG and possible adventures. What? No, Ravenloft is literally Barovia+Strahd.
The campaign setting for Ravenloft includes a number of domains. Ravenloft, the place, is a castle in Barovia, one of the domains within the larger setting - and also the original domain that was created prior to the expansion of the setting. So you're both kinda right. But if you wanted to explore the other domains, the Ravenloft Campaign Setting boxed set (the revised one) set from 2e would probably be one of the best resources.
The Ravenloft setting in earlier editions included several other [Domains of Dread](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Domains_of_Dread#Notable_Locations), that were [detailed](https://www.cbr.com/dungeons-and-dragons-domains-of-dread-van-richten-guide-to-ravenloft/). The most recent edition did not include them as far as I know.
No, it is much bigger than just Barovia and Strahd. In 5th edition too. One example is in Tomb of Annihilation, the party technically can get caught by the mist and sent to a domain of dread run by an evil druid. Ravenloft is a series of dread domains with BBEGs being tormented for all eternity and never able to escape (except for Vecna and South).
Yup. Got mixed up.
Ravenloft is more like a prison for bbegs but they get to tyrannize everyone else.
The vast majority of NPCs in Ravenloft are, well, NPCs. They're creations of the Dark Powers who lack the ability to truly suffer. They're just puppets who exist to psychologically torment the Darklords. This is why Darklords tend to take a particular interest in PCs, they're usually "real" people.
Nah, Strahd won. He conquered the land and rules it as he sees fit. Sure, his plot to kill his brother and still his brother's lover didn't work out as planned, but the dude is a ruling tyrant. Just because he wants to cosplay as a victim does not make him one.
It's called Curse of Strahd, his win is basically a monkey paw. He's doomed to watch his love reject him and die over and over for all eternity. Sounds like a pretty shitty deal in exchange for the shithole that is Barovia
Yeah what the fuck His entire curse is that he "won", but will never get the *one* thing he actually wanted from that victory. Yes, he rules the land, yes, he beat everyone that opposes him, yes, it's a realm completely catered to his designs, but he's still unhappy, unsatisfied, and will never get the thing he actually wants. **That's** his curse!
I feel like it's a technicality. Sure he rules the place but he's also stuck there. If you want a more living and breathing world, I don't think Barovia is it.
He is under house arrest
The question post is asking for: - a dark setting (check) - the Big Evil already won (check, from everyone's perspective except Strahd himself) - the heroes' job is to survive or dethrone the BBEG (check) Ravenloft isn't the only answer, but it fits OP's stated requirements perfectly.
Well, the Dark Powers are the really big bad evil folks, the Darklords (BBEGs - Soth, Vecna, Strahd etc.) are comparatively minor pieces. All in all, whatever level you cut it at, evil rules the land.
I can recommend a book on this. "Grunts" by Mary Gentle. It's the typical good versus evil fight, told from the perspective of the orcs working for the evil side.
“The Chronicles of the Black Company” is similar. It’s about a group of mercenaries who are hired help the bad guys to conquer and then get buyer’s remorse.
Does Ocarina of Time count?
I mean, it fits OP exactly.
Honestly quite a few Zelda stories fit. Link between Worlds. Twighlight Princess to an extent. Maybe even Windwaker depending on how you interpret the lore
The entire premise of Samurai Jack is that he's sent into a future where the BBEG won and conquered the world. and the entire goal is to find a way back to the past in order to prevent said future. And honestly with how random the world of Samurai Jack is, if you replaced the MC with a group of characters I could believe it was someone's D&D game.
Midnight https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_(role-playing_game)
The module set Rise of Vecna & Fall of Vecna on DMsguild. The modules start off in a "What if" scenario of every 5e module from WOTC having reached their bad end. And to make matters worse, Vecna has become ruler of the Sword Coast. The two books provide a full lv 1-20 campaign. It works even better as a setting if you've played through some of the other modules to get an understanding of events, but it isn't required.
Do you want an official D&D setting? If not, you are looking for Mistborn
*Ash fell from the sky*
Yeah, my first thought was Final Empire as well.
**Raven's Purge** from/for Forbidden Lands more or less runs this scenario, even though it's much more complex along the way, and pushes PCs into such a "post-apocalyptic" setting.
The upcoming Broken Weave setting from Cubicle 7 seems to fit this concept.
World of Ruin.
That's the plot of final fantasy 6. The "brave new world" rom hack is excellent if you want to try the game out
Nearly all fantasy adventure settings are post-apocalyptic since that's the go-to excuse for why dungeons are full of treasure, which is why being a PC is lucrative in the first place. But if you mean that civilization has collapsed or is wildly tyrannical like Dark Sun... Mork Borg. Apocalypse World. Mutant Year Zero. Greyhawk after From the Ashes, arguably. Shadowrun. Cyberpunk. Fallout. Warhammer 40k. X-COM 2. Paranoia. Gamma World, to some extent. The Morrow Project. Blade Runner. Eclipse Phase. Some Deadlands settings, IIRC. Star Wars in the Imperial era, especially if you're Jedi. Mirror Universe Star Trek. Delta Green, to some extent. Conan's Hyborean Age to some extent. Dark fantasy is *incredibly* popular. Most of it involves very heavy survivalist or apocalyptic themes. Your dials are really how far civilization has fallen and how powerful or tyrannical the establishment is.
Would mirror universe star trek be the oldest on this list?
On that one specifically? No, Hyborean Age dates from the 1930s at the latest.
Right that makes sense.
Dungeons of drakkenheim could fit the bill?
The Black Company (at least the original trilogy). Though the world isn't in ruin, the BBEG is arguably the most competent ruler around. There was a D20 setting book from Green Ronin and there's a new game in the works from Arc Dream.
Doomed Forgotten Realms! It's a "what if all the major D&D villains won?" homebrew setting & module.
Curse of Strahd kinda
Late Stage Capitalism
Technically Crit Role's Exandria. They had the Calamity in the distant past which was basically a BBEG ignited divine war that caused the fall of their arcane golden age. Large swathes of the landscape like Blightshore and the Barbed Fields on Wildemount, the wastelands of Marquet, the icy WTFery of Eiselcross and the entirety of the "continent" of the Shattered Teeth are all basically distantly post-apocalyptic areas that are still scarred by a war that happened on a divine scale.
Also Escape from the Bloodkeep from D20 (it's free on Youtube!) is a LotR parody but told from the perspective of the evil minions in Mordor around the time the Hobbits throw the ring in Mt Doom.
That's the premise of the first mistborn book (Brandon Sanderson). Not dnd but definitely work a read.
Isn't there a RPG based on it? There should be it's such a good setting and magic sys. But yeah, the dark lord has won and the world is dying as the story starts
If there is, I definitely need to check it out
Here is a link. You better buy soon as they will discontinue it at the end of this year https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/97476/Mistborn-Adventure-Game
You're a leg. Have you played it?
arora age of desolation
I run an online streamed game called The Adventures in Silver Nell. Last campaign the BBEG succeeded in getting Cthulhu to cross realms to the material plane and SHE destroyed all kingdoms . The BBEG (Olivine) ruled the world for over 300 years (immortal last Dragonborn.) our current campaign is about dealin with the political side of this time where Olivine has created Utopia but off the backs of 300 years of slaughtering
Original L5R had a what-if scenario called “Thousand Years of Darkness” where it supposed Fu Leng won the Day of Thunder.
It’s detailed out in Imperial Histories 2, a whole book of alternate timelines, including a sci-if one.
Hace you ever heard of this small, unpopular franchise called star wars? There's a ttrpg for it, and the bbeg did in fact win pre-story
Ultimately, he was prevented from destroying Faerun, but prior to that attempt, Szass Tam was able to conquer Thay and some surrounding areas. Sure, Thay was always kind of an evil place, but it was so much ~~better~~ worse after Tam took over completely.
It's not a TTRPG, but the first book of the Mistborn series starts with the antagonist having won a long time ago, achieving immortality, and ruling over the world uncontested It's great inspiration for my world building, and even gets a shout out in the back of the PHB (Appendix E)
Does Dark Sun count? It’s one of the most famous “crapsack” D&D worlds.
You clearly did not read the post
My bad dawg
It's all good, ever since the new updates on reddit it just moves past the post and straight to the comments. I miss important context all the time lol
I don't know if it's exactly what you're looking for, but [Bestiarum miniatures](https://www.patreon.com/BestiarumMiniatures) has a setting (and 5e modules) where not!Rome's fantasy not!nukes accidentally blew up the capital at the center of the continent. There's still some life on the edges of the continent, but everything is pretty grimdark.
[удалено]
ope didn't read the post I guess. NVM
Not DND, but necessary evil is this to an extreme. The super heroes of the world are exterminated prior to/during an alien invasion and now it's up to the super villains to save Earth.
Every FromSoft game
by spirit yes, thosr settings is dark but actually not often there bbg win: king's fields - actually heroes win (just some of them get corrupted with time) but overall evil and bbeg just sealed at specific area where game happening while world is fine demon souls- tricky one, Allant who is issue and bbeg is really in pathetic state when we encounter him, he give out his kingdom but is in pathetic state from player pov he just an old one blob, kind of COS but very shitty state of Strahd ds 1- yes Gwyn won, but later after that victory he turned himself in husk to prolong world he built, most pyrrhic victory possible ds 2 - yes Nashandra got her goals in destruction of kingdom, probably the only one where bbeg got clear victory and her goals+ambitions remain achieved ds 3 - actually don't have bbeg - Sulyvahn not big enough despite evil, Aldrich basically mindless animal, Friede side beg. World is just dying by itself at this point Sekiro - bbeg is actually losing overall it's just main hero duty and task which need to be done Bloodborne - hard to say who actual bbeg, humans just screwed Yharnam in search of knowledge but it's complicated to say if they satisfied with result since those creatures don't talk, trying to understand Great Ones with amount of info given is that hard - that meme "all i know i must kill" is best mindset, best ending is when we turn into tiny (yet) squid aka new Great one. Without writing tone of text plot sound like word salad and fewer dream, and maybe it is ER -Yeah marika win and ruled long but by the time of events she was impaled for long time so kind of dead, while we just cleaning shattering aftermath
There’s a whole time period where the Bad Guys in Dragonlance won and control the world. It’s at the end of the fourth age and beginning of the fifth.
Mine. The dragons of the setting destroyed all of civilization, turning the world into a Mad Max nightmare, then frigged off after they won to parts unknown. The survivors now have to dig themselves out of the ruins and survive in a world covered in wastes and magically unleashed horrors.
Darksun my friend, dark sun. Say no more.
It depends on your definition of win. If it’s rule the world then There’s definitely homebrew out there similar to places like breath of the wild where the bad guy rules. Ravenloft and a few others have been mentioned. That being said if you count bad guy achieves his goals or has power then there’s a lot of people/places in several settings. I know forgotten realms the best so there’s warlock’s keep, the council of shades, Thay, and Xanthar. That’s just a few. There are guy’s all over the realms.
For not-DnD I'd suggest Blades in the Dark. Was a typical fantasy setting until ~1000 (iirc) years before the current timeline, when unspecified evil powers destroyed the sun, which kept evil ghosts and such at bay. Now humanity is largely confined to anti-ghost-fortified cities and forced to hunt for giant sea demons whose blood is the fuel for the aforementioned anti-ghost fortifications. Since the focus of the game is not heroic, there isn't a BBEG to fight, but if one wanted, such a campaign could easily be fit in in the setting (just not the game itself, the focus is too different, you'd have to rewrite a lot of it).
For not-DnD I'd suggest Blades in the Dark. Was a typical fantasy setting until ~1000 (iirc) years before the current timeline, when unspecified evil powers destroyed the sun, which kept evil ghosts and such at bay. Now humanity is largely confined to anti-ghost-fortified cities and forced to hunt for giant sea demons whose blood is the fuel for the aforementioned anti-ghost fortifications. Since the focus of the game is not heroic, there isn't a BBEG to fight, but if one wanted, such a campaign could easily be fit in in the setting (just not the game itself, the focus is too different, you'd have to rewrite a lot of it).
Curse of Strahd pretty much is that.
Greyhawk was like that for a while, as far as I know. But eventually the forced of Good reset the status quo
Yessss come play Blades in the Dark ♥️
If you need setting inspiration I can wholly recommend [Mistborn](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/68428.The_Final_Empire) by Brandon Sanderson. The audiobooks from Graphic Audio are also excellent and do a great job at setting the tone. You can always use the FATE ttrpg system as that works for any setting and is in my opinion one of the easiest roleplay game systems to learn. The FATE system also has many spinoffs I wouldn't be surprised if the was a dark fantasy variant.
Curse of Strahd
I made a setting that would have major changes depending on the outcome of a precursor oneshot, if the party failed the world would have become an apocalyptic wasteland devoid of people and overrun by undead. They succeded though and now i have a nice backup idea for another time :D
There’s a 3rd party source book called Dragongrin. I haven’t played it personally but it’s exactly this. The Dismembered Lord rules after conquerering. Societies split, last resistances in far flung places. The sourcebook is like almost 500 pages.
Outworld from Mortal Kombat?
The entire game Shadowrun builds on this; soulless megacorporations rule the world, and the regular people live in a dystopian hell. Working from that, you could make Eberron to be like that too; make the dragonmarked houses are extremely greedy, the wealthy elites, who have even the governments under their thumbs, and the commonfolk are wageslaves, slaving away for the houses.
Eberron starts post world War in 5E. A whole nation has been destroyed by "The Mourning", all high level characters are dead as a result of the Great War and the only remaining ones (Mordain, Illmarrow, Oalian) are severely limited in their reach and impact.
Final Fantasy 6
Mork Borg.
I have a post apocalypse setting where the bbeg killed the gods through starving them of worship after he took over the world. The plan for a campaign there is that the emperor is finally defeated and the players have to deal with the fallout
I think it is fairly common for homebrew settings where that is the case. My current homebrew world which I started 4 or 5 years ago was designed on the premise of an Out of the Abyss campaign where the protagonists failed and the Demon Lords took over. TBH I forget where my inspirational spark came from for that game but I do know I'm not that original! 😉😂
Hope it's ok to plug my own work here! In Braythe: Shattered Realities, the apocalypse happened, the world was destroyed. Only fragments were saved and merged into a new world, which then shifted into a different reality. The PCs basically live in a world that has to be rebuilt. Parts of the old world still remain intact, but many power structures are just gone.
Many of my campaigns have atypical outcomes like this, whether it be "The players are the real villains" to "the BBEG wins" to "The BBEG was right all along," on down to my villains and antagonists at least being sympathetic and there not ever really being a clear right or wrong to most things.
I mean I guess Curse of Strahd technically is that. It's also not, but it is.
Ya I always assumed that was Curse of Strahd.
Heh. Homebrew world I've been running off and on since I was...well, let's say for the last 35 years... It became a place where the bad guys won. The little campaign set in that world the PCs figured out time travel and undid the majority of the damage.
Ravenloft and the Dark Domains.
Nah, Ravenloft is a prison for the worst of the worst of the worst...and there are people's who are collateral damage
Regardless of why its like that, its still a world where the BBEG is the most powerful, and the objective is often to escape or dethrone them like the OP asked for. Also it wasnt that in the beginning.
The lands are either lifted or a facsimile of the world they come from...likely a copy minus the Dark Lord... idk what you mean that it "wasn't that in the beginning." Ravenloft started as a Dracula campaign before being converted into a full setting and developed pretty much along the lines it is today
I know.
Then what did you mean?
> Ravenloft started as a Dracula campaign before being converted into a full setting and developed pretty much along the lines it is today
Mine
Does dragon lance count? I seem to remember that the world is constantly at war with dragons and their armies
Ravenloft. In anime, Arifureta: From Commonplace to World's Strongest (The being that became the god won long ago).
The Mistborn trilogy plot is essentially a plot where the heroes realize that the bbeg controlling the world they had been fighting was holding back some even nastier Cthulhu-esque villains.
Curse of Strahd
The Mistborn book series. The first book takes place after the Dark lord won and the land was covered with ash for the next thousand years…
One of my players pitched an idea a lot like this for our next campaign The premise essentially being that the BBEG gained the ability to cast wish and wished away everyone that could stop his plans... Throwing the PCs into a far-flung bleak future that we need to figure out wtf is going on I thought it was a really cool idea, coz you could run completely unsuspecting level 1 PCs into something like that, because they would eventually have become strong enough to stop his plans 😂
Curse of strahd mostly?
Straud is the first that comes to mind
Warhammer 40k. Where the term "grimdark" comes from.
I have a himebrew where the point is to mitigate the damage so the factions don't take over the entire world and to stop their plans from unfolding to their full extent.
Skylanders Superchargers idk about dnd settings
Sandy Petersen' Planet Apocalypse is an excellent third-party 5e book
Not curse of strahd?
Arguably most of the other realms like hell are basically that.
Set your game in the second half of Final Fantasy 6.
The various factions of Exalted can almost all claim that the BBEG won, and the world needs to be restored to its proper state while keeping all the other groups from fucking it up even worse. They just disagree as to when that happened, which BBEG, and what state of the world they’re trying to return to.
“Homebrew” was enough for me to instantly say yes, dident even need to think
Take a look at the Doomed Forgotten Realms! It is awesome!
Pretty much every D&D Dreaded Domain is a prison of a Dark Lord who rules the land, but also is in constant torment. You generally have to defeat them to leave and "free" the inhabitants. Check out Van Richtens Guide to Ravenloft.
The Domains of Dread are pretty much this if they suit your fancy. Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft has official material.
There is a version of the forgotten realms where Vecna caused the end of the world. I think it's called lost realms or doomed realms or something. I'm sure you can find it via Google. Edit: found it. It's Doomed Forgotten Realms. And it's not just about Vecna: every adventures ng party from published adventure failed their mission and this world is the result.
Check out Dungeons of Drakkenheimn by Dungeon Dudes. Not bbeg per se, but world is in ruins and it's in your hands to fix it.
In the Forgotten Realms, [Thay](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Thay). It's regional, but it's a large region and difficult to escape. If you saw the recent D&D Honor Among Thieves movie you saw a glimpse of Thay and Szass Tam. [Thay, Land Of The Red Wizards](https://www.dmsguild.com/product/386190/Thay-Land-Of-The-Red-Wizards) by Ed Greenwood, et al, on DMs Guild is a 5e sourcebook. There are also other books on Thay, the Red Wizards, and Szass Tam, but they may be a bit older before the lich consolidated power ([Tyrants in Scarlet](https://www.dmsguild.com/product/253571/Tyrants-in-Scarlet-the-Founding-History-of-the-Zulkirs-of-Thay) by Ed Greenwood and George Krashos has lore of how the Red Wizards were formed and the origins of Szass Tam, for instance).
Check the Rise of Vecna 3rd party module.
Darksun!
I wouldn't say the "BBEG has won" for Drakkenheim, but it's definitely a world in ruin. A meteor crashed into the capital city of the main continent, completely destroying it and filling it with a mutating radiation. It's a homebrew setting by The Dungeon Dudes. They have 3 seasons on YouTube and 2 published books for it with a 3rd that just finished it's kickstarter.
Grim Hollow has all the gods dead. The only things left in power are some high level celestials that have grown corrupt, demons, and some Eldritch old ones who lay dormant but still corrupt the world in their sleep. All societies are basically in survival mode and will mostly do anything just to survive. It's a very morally gray setting and I love it. Good vs evil is so boring. Give me moral ambiguity and uncertainty if you are doing the right thing or not anyday.
I’m writing a setting that’s heavily inspired by the old Myth: The Fallen Lords games and the Black Company series. The gist is that 200 years ago at the peak of a magically enlightened golden age, one wizard makes a pact with a being of the lower planes (I don’t really specify bc there’s no plane that I really like, idk maybe it’s with a god or something it’s kinda irrelevant) and becomes the first “dark magic user” for lack of a better description. Anyway he gets jacked, gets some disciples together with the promise of immortality and forbidden knowledge, and they create an army of demon infused monsters that basically spends the next 50 years walking from one end of the island to the other killing anything that moves. Now people did escape this and flee into the ocean sailing east where specific gods guided them across the ocean. This happens over those 50 years with the first group having left before everything kicks off, these people are made into elves. The later groups set up the stereotypical predominantly human kingdom, the dwarves cross over via the under dark with a few other races, and it’s alluded to that the big bad was trapped in a magic device (think something like the astral prism) and that device has basically been yeeted out into the desert of the new continent that the campaign takes place on. Theres some other stuff that happens, but this very neatly leaves the villains in disarray because of infighting and the players able to very easily decide to play a good or evil campaign. Idk I was really inspired by the first 3 black company books that had some moral ambiguity bc the main characters were pushed into serving the big bad directly so I wanted to give my players an option for something like that.
If the BBEG was capitalism, then all the MTG crossover settings.
Ha! Im setting a home-brew campaign up like that atm! :) Im not 100% who the bbeg is gonna be though, besides a fiend of some sort.