5 Boss Fights From My Purgatoryo Campaign
Some of my favorite encounter designs in which I failed to kill my players
A few weeks ago, one of my RPG campaigns, Purgatoryo, wrapped up and as part of the credits slideshow I flashbacked the players through everything they’d been through in the campaign: missions, story beats, and bosses. The bosses, especially, were fun to look back on. Every boss was unique, offered new mechanics, and posed a threat to the players no matter how much equipment and abilities they had accrued so far. So without a fluffier segue, here are five of my favorite bosses from that campaign, an the design that went into them.
What is Purgatoryo?
Purgatoryo is the title of one of my homebrew settings that run on my Fables and Tables ruleset, as well as the name of the first campaign I ran in it. It’s set in modern day Metro Manila, only unique individuals are “awakened” and can see and harness the power of ghosts. The players of the game navigate a secret underworld of gangs, monsters, and political factions in a Ghost-Fighter-meets-John-Wick kind of universe. PDF here.
Our 30-session campaign (August 16, 2020 to April 18, 2021) saw the Ateneo High School’s Supernatural Club being formed by eight awakened high school students wanting to help their club president Lorenzo collect the Rizal Stones, powerful artifacts that will allow them to enter the dream world to save his father. But also collecting the Stones is Benevolo Awtoridad, known in the underworld as “Mabait” (“the Kind Man”), who is also collecting the Stones in order to control the people’s votes in the next election. The teenage heroes clashed with Mabait all the while being dragged deeper into the dangers of Purgatoryo.
#5 - An Actual SWAT Team
The Situation. One of the characters, Willy, wants to be one of the popular kids in school and his best way to become that is to join the barkada of the coolest kid in school, Ramon Awtoridad. Every year, Ramon opens tryouts for students to join his posse and it just so happens that the challenge this year is a Battle-Royale-esque deathmatch on Capones island off the coast of Zambales. Various clubs sign up including the Origami Club, Ramon’s own fanclub the Ramoneras, and of course the players’ Supernatural Club. What they don’t realize, however, is that Ramon has hired an actual professional SWAT team to join the tryouts and weed out any “uncool” participants.
The Mechanics. Imagine an anime-style team battle tournament with teenagers with ghost powers battling each other, and then here comes a straight-up squad of grown-ass men with assault rifles. This “boss” had no special mechanics except for the fact that each mercenary was armed with an actual gun versus kids shooting energy blasts and wielding enchanted bastons. But don’t worry— the bullets were rubber, except for their rocket launcher which was real. When the players encountered them on the battle island, the SWAT team just opened fire from the cover of trees.
How The Fight Went. The reason this fight makes it to my list (apart, of course, from the fact that it was hilarious seeing the teenage characters freak out that they were up against grown-ass men with machine guns) is because of a moment that two characters had during the fight. The party had chosen to run instead of engage these armed men, but JV, the team’s stubborn meathead refused to back down and used his powers to start charging a fireball. But because of his bad roll, he could only generate a basketball’s worth of flame rather than the wall of fire he needed to cover their escape. Under a hail of bullets, one party member, Willy, turned back and stood with JV as the rest of the party ran away. Willy, with no fire powers, held out his hands anyway and started screaming with JV, hoping to help charge the fiery attack. It helped a little, because I allowed JV a reroll, but the pair were ultimately knocked out by the gunfire. But after that display of solidarity, JV and Willy were the two among the group who would have an unspoken understanding for the rest of the campaign that they had each other’s backs.
Reprise. In the final mission, where the party assaults Benevolo Awtoridad’s Baguio mansion, the SWAT team makes a reappearance as one of the encounters. In that second time, however, they were using live rounds but also, a rubber rockets so as not to damage the congressman’s abode.
#4 - Father De Luca
The Situation. As one of their missions, the party was to help a friendly NPC escape the pursuit of Vatican priests, from whom he had stolen a powerful artifact. Using the artifact, the Supernatural Club fled into the dream world but were still somehow cornered by the Italian Father De Luca, played by Anderson from the Van Helsing anime.
The Mechanics. Father De Luca was presented as a force to be reckoned with. As an elite headhunter for the Catholic Church, he was armed with a special rosary that locked away the ally ghosts of the party which were their main source of healing and support in combat. Additionally, Father De Luca was armed with the Genuflex brass knuckles, which forces those he hits with them to their knees. I sprinkled in a few additional priests to hide behind cover and shoot spirit bolts at the players to complicate the fight, but ultimately this boss had the very simple mechanic of being one tough motherfucker.
How The Fight Went. The Supernatural Club scrambled, torn between running away and staying to take down Father De Luca. They didn’t realize the danger of what they were fighting until De Luca easily brought down the party’s main bruiser, JV. The team’s wraith (invisible rogue), RJ, managed to hijack then crash a car into the Italian priest, but it wasn’t enough to take the enemy down. Father De Luca eventually won the fight, though it was close, and he took back the artifact that was stolen from the Vatican. This was the party’s first bitter defeat, and they never forgot the taste of it.
Reprise. Later on in the campaign, player character JV would start to date an Italian exchange student named Angelina De Luca. Making the connection too late, JV was shocked to find Anglina’s uncle Father De Luca himself living with her above a Lord’s Boxing Gym. They shared a tense lasagna dinner in front of a sweet Angelina oblivious to their death stares, but inevitably Father De Luca would become a begrudging ally to the party, for the sake of his niece.
#3 - Deo “The Slice” Madrigal
The Situation. JV Salome, raised by his Tiyo Iracio and Lolo Saturnino (played by Jonathan and Joseph Joestar), wants to be the strongest high schooler in Metro Manila. He has to take the title from one of the Six Alphas of the metro, including the likes of Lyka “Beast Queen” Ong and Lebronjames “The King” Oxales. The strongest of them, however, is Deo “The Slice” Madrigal, an 8ft tall 16-year-old who wields an enormous halberd. It’s really just my players’ luck that I was reading the manga Kingdom during this story arc.
The Mechanics: JV had challenged The Slice to a formal duel but I did not want to run a whole boss fight where the other players just watch one player play the game. So the mechanics of a formal Alpha challenge became two simultaneous fights: the “mano-y-mano” portion and the “rambol” portion. Essentially, JV’s friends would have to fight against an equal number of The Slice’s followers, and if they can’t hold them off, then those followers would get to go over to the mano-y-mano side and gang up on JV. That serves as a soft time limit for JV who therefore needs to defeat The Slice one-on-one before his friends are overwhelmed. It doesn’t help that I gave The Slice an imbalanced charge attack that I hinted would cut JV clean in half if he ever gets hit with it full-on.
How The Fight Went. The time limit was thrown out of the window immediately as the other members of the party managed to devise tactics to draw out their side of the fight for as long as possible. This gave JV enough time to get up a total of three times against The Slice. Other than that, there was nothing creative about their duel of two unreasonably large high schoolers whaling at each other. The odds were stacked against JV with The Slice having better stats, more hit points, and a ridiculous super attack but the dice gods reward those who play well, and JV, completely in-character, roused himself again and again to take down his rival. The battle culminated in the way you always want it to: a player at 1 hit point, scoring the fight-winning critical hit.
The Six Alphas of the Metro were the following:
Lyka “The Beast Queen” Ong (St. Paul College), who conquered and united all the schools in the Marikina-Antipolo-Pasig area.
“The King” Lebronjames Oxales (Arellano High School), who is on his last year as an Alpha before he graduates high school. He’s a fierce warrior who is said to be on-par with college-level fighters.
Niko “Nuclear” Morales (Philippine Science HS), an enigmatic warlord from the esteemed science high school, whose ambition is to take over all of Metro Manila.
Chard “Madam Butterfly” Yu Hico (Colegio San Agustin), known as “queen of the south” and a staunch defender of LGBTQ rights.
Deo “The Slice” Madrigal (Xavier High School) who doesn’t care about high school politics and only wants to fight and defeat the strongest.
Jakmon “Caveman” Perez (Ateneo High School) was murdered by The Slice in a formal duel where the former was cut clean in half at the waist by Deo’s glaive.
#2 - Father Batacan
The Situation. In her final great wound quest, one of the main characters Alison took the party to Ateneo de Manila University’s campus after hours to find the monster that snatched her little brother years ago when they were exploring the campus. It would turn out that the culprit was the ghost of Father Batacan, a Jesuit priest and serial killer whose ghost is allowed to remain on campus by the school administration because of his contributions to theology and his tenure. When the party meets him, they find they cannot strike at him while he is imprisoned. They have to first set him free, if they want Alison to have her chance at revenge.
The Mechanics. Father Batacan (played by Sloth from the Fullmetal Alchemist series) is a warped version of his living self. His ghost is enormously large, and wields a kitchen knife as tall as a lamp post. He also has with him a piece of the Bangungot’s Shadow, a dangerous creature he is tasked to gaurd, which he used to create zones of corruption around each player which damage them and allies inside its radius. These damage zones could overlap, doubling or even tripling the damage done to the party and so the players were forced to break formation and split their characters up. To complicate things, however, Father Batacan could activate the chains of his own prison to drag the player characters closer to each other so that they would take damage from multiple overlapping auras.
How The Fight Went. Among my boss fights, this was one of the closer ones as by mid-fight there were auras on almost all the characters. Eventually, however, they figured to attack the jar holding the Bangungot’s Shadow to remove the damage auras. They won the fight by the skin of their teeth, but at a price: they had let the Bangungot Shadow loose which had implications in the campaign’s third act.
#1 - Immortal Roh Bong
The Situation. There was no more dangerous opponent in our campaign than the main villain’s right hand man: the congressman’s bodyguard Roh Bong. Played by a suit-wearing Renji from the Bleach series, Roh Bong is a Japanese-raised Korean swordsman who never leaves his boss’ side. In the midpoint of the entire campaign, Benevolo had invited the party to meet him in Shakey’s Katipunan to discuss a possible team-up to find the remaining Rizal Stones, but the Supernatural Club refused. As a consequence, Benevolo set his bodyguard on them.
The Mechanics. Roh Bong in the game was a shinigami, with awakened powers from Japan rather than the Philippines. Using his zanpakuto Fuschichozen, he has the powers of a phoenix and can be reborn an unlimited number of times every time he goes down. Meanwhile, he would turn up the heat and make the battle area deal increasing fire damage to the whole party every round. With powerful spirit barriers trapping the party in the Shakey’s with an unkillable Roh Bong, the fight became more of a puzzle of how to escape him rather than a contest of damage.
How The Fight Went. The first time the party encountered Roh Bong, they tried many things to defeat him, but every time he would simply be reborn through his phoenix powers. The party bought themselves some time by activating the restaurant’s fire sprinkler system, which stopped the heat from increasing, but they still couldn’t find a way to escape. By the time the party realized they could use one of their own spirit shield items to create a hole in the barriers keeping them in, half the party had gone down and it became a race to drag allies out of the burning restaurant while keeping Roh Bong away so they could escape. It was the party’s worst loss, and they came out of it absolutely hating Roh Bong.
How The Fight Went The Second Time. In the climax of the campaign, right before confronting Benevolo Awtoridad himself, the party fought Roh Bong one last time, but this time prepared. They researched that Roh Bong’s power comes mostly from his zampakuto, so the goal of the battle became reducing the flames of his body enough that one of them could pull out the zanpakuto from his burning form. It was a high-stakes and desperate battle at the end of other grueling consecutive final dungeon boss battles but teamwork and miraculous rolls gave the Supernatural Club the win against Roh Bong they had been itching for for 15 sessions.
The Shinigamis. In the world of Purgatoryo, the campaign manual I wrote and the abilities that players could choose from are based off of Philippine mysticism and occultism, making them Philippines-specific awakened abilities. Other countries have different ability sets in the world, which I hinted at in the campaign. For example, the party met a Chinese exchange student whose awakened power was channeled through a Ba Gua and reliant on her zodiac sign. They had an NPC ally who also knew Chinese ghost powers such as “Heavy Steel Vest” and “Golden Buddha Palm” that he could teach to the player characters. Roh Bong, as a Japanese awakened, was a shinigami exactly like the ones in the anime Bleach.