I'm trying to plan a campaign for a few months from now and I had a cool idea for a villain.
The story would be set in a city controlled by a dictator that is routinely rounding up people for the smallest of indiscretions and is planning an invasion of a nearby kingdom. The villain (dictator) is actually a lawful good type who believe that he must root out all sources of chaos and evil from the world even if that means genocide. He does penance for the evils he must do in order to accomplish this and feels genuine guilt over his actions.
What do you guys think? Anyone else ever come up with any cool ideas for villains other than just power hungry madmen?
Similar to yours, a fallen angel or other good outsider.
Erm... Committing evil acts for a good cause and then feeling bad about them sounds Lawful Neutral to me.
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your villain is definitely lawful evil.
asking for forgiveness and thinking to do that for the sake of good doesn't make you good.
If you want to make a LG antagonist give him a very valid reason to believe PCs are evil, dangerous and beyond redemption, but leave the dictatorship and genocide thing out.
Genocide = evil. No amount of atonement should reverse that level of destruction.
You could say that he's rounding up all the evils and chaotics, deporting them, and that since he's done that for a great long while the forces of evil chaos have built up somewhere else...say in a kingdom that wants to invade him for sending them all this evil chaos.
If you want the genocide thing, go lawful evil. If you want to temper it with "greater good" go lawful neutral. If you just want "oppresively good" then go with the activities of a knight. And when I say "knight" I'm talking the fantasy, idealized kind, not the gritty real ones from our world who actually WOULD'VE considered regional cleansings acceptable (I'm looking at you, small portion of crusaders...)
In the end, if you're going L. Good there should be no doubt that what he's doing is, in fact, the game's definition of good, even if oppressive. To make it gray is to invite corruption; that's another alignment profile.
But I do like the concept of a good guy being the antagonist. I can't see a L. Good guy ever FORCING the PCs to do what he says. I can however see him never stop trying to get them to, and that level of annoyance can sometimes drive a person mad!
As described he is evil.
He may not think he is evil, but he is.
Closest I have ever managed is a NPC that decides the PC's are evil or in the service of evil (maybe even unknowingly).
One of the few survivors, the agent (gnome illus/rog) that asked them to go after the necro, was justifiable upset by this and headed into the hills to investigate. That was actually planned to happen if the flood occurred when I had designed the adventure. The PC’s were actually spent several days in the hills hauling out every bit of potential loot, identifying and appraising. They actually had a victory celebration (scroll of hero’s feast). They spent a lot of time joking about how the gods’ were on their side, they couldn’t lose, etc... So I figured the agent overheard this. Remember, they haven’t been back to town so don’t know about the flood yet.
After several days, they finally head back to town, with the agent following. See the flooded valley and finally realize what has happened. The local Lord’s troops are there helping roundup the survivors, livestock, salvageable gear, etc… Party decides there is really nothing they can do to help since it happened days ago. If they head down they will probably be arrested or at least all their loot taken. So they decide to leave.
I figured it was perfectly reasonable for the agent to decide by this point that they are evil or at least in the service of evil. So he follows them trying to stop whatever they are doing. Since obviously anything they are doing is what the evil gods want to happen so it should be stopped. (He’s a bit off his rocker with grief at this point.) So every few sessions he would sneak close to cast invisibility purge, dispel their buffs, faerie fire, stinking cloud, or darkness just as they start a key combat. Then he would run away to do it again.
Party didn’t actually want to hurt him since he really was a good guy and they really had destroyed his town and family. But he was becoming more than a nuisance and almost got a few of them killed. Lot of angst while they tried to find a way to convince the agent that they were on the side of good.
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A friend of mine told me a story he had heard about an interesting villain. I'll recount it in a spoiler.
Two friends, let's call them George and Fred (because I don't know their actual names), who used to play older editions of D&D together, reconnected online, and itching to get back into it, George asked Fred if he was interested in a little one-on-one thing by email. George could DM for Fred, and Fred could just kinda focus on roleplay and stuff. Fred agrees.
So Fred rolls up a wizard and jumps into it. He begins to wander George's world, finding out stuff about what was going on. What he finds is disturbing: tyrannical kings, oppressive nobility, and unlivable conditions for the commonfolk. High taxes and far too much hard labor places on the people has made their lives miserable, and it's not just one or two kingdoms: after years of competition and escalation, every region in the land has this system.
Fred doesn't like what he sees, so he spends his time going from kingdom to kingdom, rallying the commoners to overthrow their government. After doing this for a little while, overcoming various challenges of each area, he realizes, after communication with the new freedom-loving government, that they can't prosper with their current setup. High taxes and lots of forced labor was required.
Fred decides this is unacceptable, so he decides to delve into the dark arts of necromancy. He raises up hordes of undead to do the labor, meanwhile training wizards to be positioned in each kingdom to maintain the undead workers.
His plan works, and all of the kingdoms prosper. He spends his entire life getting this to work perfectly.
What Fred didn't know was that not long after he had begun his own conquest, George had started running a second game, one in real life, at a table with a group of friends. He describes a land filled with kingdoms that employ undead as part of their workforce, with necromancers tied closely the reigning governments, governments that had relatively recently dethroned the monarchs that had the divine right to rule.
The group did what most would - they went from kingdom to kingdom and overthrew these new rulers, killing the necromancers, and eradicating the undead. They spent their entire career trying to save this land, and while doing this, they learn of the man who had set it all up, who had orchestrated this entire setup. After reinstating the old kings (or at least their descendants), they chase down this mage, preparing themselves for the final battle. They set up anti-necromancer defenses, they plan out their speeches, and they ready themselves to take down the final BBEG of the campaign.
Meanwhile Fred, getting on in his years, hears about this group of people who are going behind him and destroying his life's work. They're setting up the tyrants he had overthrown back into positions of power, killing his apprentices, and wiping out the undead labor that the kingdoms' needed if they didn't want to overwork the populations.
Rushing up a seemingly unguarded tower, the party stands outside the door they know contains the wizard. With a final breath of anticipation, they bust in and they find -
A dying old man, weak and frail from old age, with a sad look on his face, lying on a rickety bed. Bewildered, the party asks where the master necromancer is. Fred doesn't answer, but instead responds with question of his own.
"Why are you doing such terrible things?"
Fred recounts his life, explaining why he did what he did, why he looked to the undead as an answer, why the kings of old, the ones they had placed back into power, had to go. He was only seeking what was best for the people.
And with that, he dies.
I imagine the party was left completely bewildered.
Good story Vendis
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Some or most of the best villians have some way they justify their actions to themselves, and often the most memorable ones have histories and/or values that are easy to sympathize with. The point regularly comes down to: what means justify the ends? I like to start with someone else's villian and then change details to make a new BBEG.
Some examples of colorful/memorable villains:
-the end of The Watchmen
-Magneto's dream of mutant destiny/supremacy
-The Burning Crusade from World of Warcraft (the universe is flawed, it must be destroyed so a new one can be made perfect)
-Sweeny Todd
-Lord Soth from Dragonlance
-Nualia from Sandpoint /"Burnt Offerings"
so maybe instead of genocide just mass imprisonment type thing would make more sense. The goal of the villain being to rid the world of evil. He see corruption and crime in other kingdoms while the ones in his follow every law to the letter. Therefore his way is all that is left.
Although I can see killing as justification for a "good" villain if he believes that it will cleanse their souls or somesuch and allow the "wicked" to reach peace.
Also, Vendis, awesome story. Mind if I steal that idea for a seperate campaign?
@ vendis: is there an icon on these boards for 80's slow clap? That is freaking awesome dude!
@ the OP: imagine a kingdom of vast independence where wars have been fought so that people have the right to criss cross the country far and wide with freedom and lberty. Then a monarch comes along; likeable sort but with wild ideas that the young should labor for the old; the villagers' toils should not be their own but distributed how he and his advisors see fit; during his reign there is economic upheaval, famine, and a war across the sea.
This war engulfs all the foreign kingdoms but is being fought among them and the people want nothing to do with it - the king drives all business to re-fit in order to craft weapons and regardless of the people's wants he enters the war. Those of foreign descent on his shores captured and jailed without trial or say.
We called this king FDR.
I guess villainy is in the eye of the beholder. Personally I love adding twists to villains like these in my homebrew though mine are never as well crafted as "Fred" or all of Vendle's examples.
I have however had a brother of a PC who's quest for vengeance after their father was murdered drove him to...questionable ends. I've always loved that line from Blade Runner: (Roy to his maker) "I've done...QUESTIONABLE things..."
There was also a mother who killed her own daughter to save the other people in the town. There is a cursed puppeteer who is actually the alter-ego of the undying boogeyman. Currently I'm working on a hag that will turn out to be the PC's grandmother.
It's not my plot, but the fact it reached me by word of mouth says to me that the writer doesn't mind his work being spread.