As the title.
I'm wanting to design some villains (this doesn't mean they have to be Evil, by the way), but I am afraid that some of them aren't going to be very liked by players, or more likely, viewed as cheesy and stereotypical.
That isn't to say that I can't have such villains (especially starting out, when it's assumed that easier, more base-line villains are commonplace), but that if I really wanted to make a Big Bad of a campaign memorable, I'd need to circumvent those basic expectations.
So, when it comes to designing a villain (or encountering a villain), what would you, as a player, find interesting about a given villain?
Yes, that does help out, thank you.
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A compelling villain is one who thinks they are the hero.
A 'for the evulz' sort of villain is not compelling. A realistically rendered villain is absolutely certain of their righteousness.
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A compelling villain is one who thinks they are the hero.
A 'for the evulz' sort of villain is not compelling. A realistically rendered villain is absolutely certain of their righteousness.
Doing the wrong thing for the right reason would be a good choice. It doesn't have to be righteous in your one mindset though. It doesn't have to be a gray area, and it can go well over any line you could imagine. I suppose it could be about personal gain too, but you'd quickly revert to Cruella de Vil.
A Qlippoth would want to put an end to mortal sin and to the lives of all the mortals and demons. You could say that killing all mortals would be a noble goal in the mindset of the Qlippoth. Destroying the positive energy plane, and thus all life that comes from it, would be an epic goal for a Qlippoth.
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personal gain can be seen as righteous when the person absolutely believes that they deserve it.
Of course, a person can believe that they are in the wrong but not care as long as it benefits them. Maybe they've convinced themselves that it's just a temporary thing. And maybe they're just the type of person who doesn't care whom they hurt. And maybe they feel that they're part of a greater purpose which happens to fit a monstrous role in society.
Examples:
A small-time crook whose "one last job" has gone a little too far.
A gang who shakes down businesses for protection money
A parent who has turned to Lamashtu in order to produce stronger children (and who genuinely loves his/her children).
Villains with connections to the heroes and believable reasons for their acts of villainy are the most compelling.
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An antagonist should know more about the players than the players themselves should know, or be comfortable letting others know.
Top three examples (which may show my age):
Jafar in Disney's Aladdin - knows exactly what Aladdin's motivations are for wanting to wed the princess (at first at least until they have the duet on the carpet). Aladdin is greedy and Jafar forces him to confront this by actually courting the princess.
Sephiroth in Final Fantasy VII - manipulates Cloud into doing his bidding because he knows more about Cloud's past than he does. Forces Cloud (and gamers) to piece together and reconcile a very difficult past.
Darth Vader in Star Wars IV - forces R2D2 (c'mon we all know he is the real hero of the film) forces him to accept help from others and rely on others to complete his mission. Ok, Vader doesn't intend that initially, but he does drive every protagonist to see the world a little differently by the end of the film.
If they have a tragic backstory and/or make you understand why they are doing <insert bad thing>, even if you feel like you have to stop them that can work. Also having them do things that annoy the PC's(not the players) can work also.
Former allies can also make for particularly good villains because the PCs have already been around them enough to form some sort of attachment or at least recognition.
The general go-to is a betrayal, but it could even be a former ally who has gone separate ways and made enough poor life choices or was forced into situations they couldn't extricate themselves from that they turned bad.
Depending on the campaign, my go-to favorite is fans. If you have the mental bandwidth, keeping a list of people that the PCs have affected through their actions can be great and distracting. Once you get about a dozen or so, drop a few off here and there and then have the villain be a fan who tried to emulate their hero and fell hard. (Again, the stereotype is to blame the hero, but I find it more compelling that they tried too hard and then had to make a deal with a devil or somesuch in order to try to do good, which has turned out very poorly for them.)
Other ways for making them memorable is to find a way that they aren't just a "smash and forget" villain. Maybe they normally communicate via Magic Jar's victims or programmed illusions. Perhaps they have bound a pair of fae who can whispering wind back-and-forth. Whichever the mechanic - make it so that they aren't easy to just confront and deal with via a means other than their own ability to either project overwhelming force or survive it. Just make sure it's viable and not just a GM caveat (or at least make sure it seems that way to your players) - as those are, IMHO, the most forgettable ones.
Last, but not least, give them over-the-top foibles or affectations. A necromancer who dresses all in orange, an anti-paladin whose banner reads "the result of a drunken bet" in abyssal, the liche who can't rid himself of hiccups even though he doesn't even have the necessary organs anymore, etc.- anything that doesn't affect their ability to project or deal with force, but which makes them stand out and make them seem more "real" to the PCs.
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Yeah, thing is that good villain needs two things: screen time and personality. That aside they can be pretty much anything. They don't even need to be long running villain as long they use that screen time effectively.
I'll third this. I'm actually frequently shocked that my players hate, and love to hate, my villains as much as they do. They don't really see them terribly often, but I make sure that, when they do, the encounter is EXCEEDINGLY memorable. They don't even have to do anything particularly evil. Heck, I had a villain recently garner my group's fury, and the only thing he did was present appropriate paperwork giving him legal cause to do a thing the group didn't want him to do. They just really suspected he was involved with something sinister.
I mean, it turns out he was, of course, but that first encounter with his hyper-legalism and organization actually really infuriated them.
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It's difficult to give villains screen time. There are plenty of villains in Paizo Adventure Paths, but a lot of them have a tendency to die within thirty seconds of meeting the PCs for the first time.
So you need a villain who plays catch and release with the PCs, or who appears to be a law-abiding citizen, or who has a magic escape power, or who gloats via a remote image, or something like that.
Some different kinds of antagonist:
Enemy - Someone who is merely on the other side, like a soldier in an army invading your country. Capable of being honorable.
Renegade - A fun recurring antagonist who you might find yourself working alongside from time to time. Probably chaotic neutral.
Monster - Monsters instil the fear of death in you. They destroy because their nature is destructive, not because they have any particular desire to hurt people. They are often tragic figures. King Kong, Frankenstein's monster, etc.
True villain - One who laughs sadistically at the misery of others. These are the guys you hate.
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I find the horror mad guy to be the best vilain to be honest. Alden Foxgloves in Rise of the Runelors is a good example of that. When you put your players uncomfortable just with words, and when they smile as they smite the evil away, it is a nice feeling as a GM!
Mastering Warhammer & Dark Heresy helped me a lot when it comes to vilains. I remember once in a Dark Heresy campaign, their nemesis was an heretic Rogue Trader who dealt a drug causing Chaos mutations (the broken widow and glasses from a hive world lost in warp). As the player think they have his base surrounded, they realized he escaped. And then they heard a baby crying, and I can still see my players face when one of them said « Oh God not the baby! ». The vilain had left a baby, mutated with his drugs, and enough bombs to burn an entire block. They failed to disable the bombs, and got just enough time to run away.
That was a really nice scene that exposed the grim of Warhammer 40k, the «necessary sacrifice » humanity has to do every day, and a vilain with no limits.
They found him eventually. And he got to suffer the whole pain the Inquisition of the Imperum has to offer. My players take greats risks to take him alive just to have the chance to interrogate and torture him for payback. I was happy to see that I got a bunch of my friends to really hate a fictional character.
I find the best vilains to be the ones that behave without regards of any kind for society laws and customs. The sociopath, the lunatics... Of course my favorite alignement to play is Lawful Evil, and a tyrant can be a good vilain. But I found that making the players uncomfortable is what make them remember the bad guys.
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A mixed list of thoughts:
- Make the villain hot
- Make the villain out to be a friend first, this is even better when they are hot because one of the players might think they have a chance
- Make the villain the hero of their own story. Nothing hurts more than knowing that the enemy is doing what they believe is right, and if things were only a bit different the players and them could have been friends.
- Plan out ahead of time for their story to continue after they have died. Have the villain say or do something that seems unimportant and then have the players learn there was more to it only after the point of no return.
- Give them a completely normal and relatable trait. A hobby, a kid that they love, and throw in an insecurity or two while you're at it.
- Create your villain with your favourite players in mind. What tropes are they suckers for? What movie made them cry like a baby? Take that pain and make it a character.
Just replace a couple of limbs with feathery wingalings and make them do rambling faux-philosophical monologues about how pointless everything is. Hey, Squeenix made billions off that formula.
*pops knuckles*
My handling of baddies has won some praise, so...
Cole Quick And Dirty Guide To Villainy:
1. They need a personality. This seems pretty basic, but it often seems to get lost in the shuffle... see: Lord Rekhan. Or Lo Pan. Laughable motives. Zero nuance. TONS of personality.
2. With that said, I enjoy some nuance... up to a point. Ultimately, your villain exists to be stopped by the PCs. But at the same time, most of them need to feel like organic outgrowths of the world they inhabit, rather than just, "I needed a Bad Guy here"
3. Personal stakes are good. This requires player cooperation up to a point, but their characters need things they actually care about for the villain to threaten.
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Everyone hates diplomatic immunity, and the smug arrogance that comes with it.
Sibling rivalry is always good, even if the PC in the party didn't know their character had a sibling, or even if they aren't related but the villain thinks they are.
The adoring fan obsessed and jealous and feeling forsaken turns to the powers of dark magic to exact his revenge and gain his well deserved notoriety.
Anyone who steals from the party can quickly become very memorable.
I still remember the vampire from my first 3.5e campaign, Lord Drazil. He was very similar to Lord Lekhan. Pure and simple chaos, hatred caused by immortality. He would take over entire towns just to fill his pits with gladiator vampire spawn out of sheer boredom. He was an absolute menace to the moral fabric of civilization. He had lord of estate and mayors doing his bidding. He had spies and heralds who would poison the opinions of townsfolk before we arrived, making even basic interactions and shopping difficult.
It was gloriously satisfying to finally end Lord Drazil.
Personally, I prefer my villains to not be the monster in the last room. A memorable monster should be one that the players have known for quite some time. The villain should have seen the players disrupting their plans and met with them, perhaps keeping their connection a secret. Maybe they'll hire the players to go off on some adventure and get themselves killed.
Maybe the villain will try to reason with the PCs, trying to get them to see things from their prospective. If the villain has a high enough Charisma score, they'll even recruit the players to work for them.
When the players find out that the person that sent them on so many challenging quests was trying to kill them all along or has been providing security against so many orc raids are really keeping the orcs from their ancestral homeland and holy ground, they'll not only be upset but also conflicted about what they have to do. They'll remember their own internal conflict.
Lord Drazil had townspeople send us on side quests to both slow us down, distract us, and waste our supplies. We were furious when we learned we had unwillingly/unknowingly done his bidding. He would show up as we tried to rest, arriving with a swarm of rats or bats to harass us as he mocked us or tried to charm one of us to do something stupid.
He had a special breeding program in his castle, half vampires of every race, the well stocked gladiator pits, probably over 50 NPC's throughout the campaign that we met were doing his bidding working against us on a social level.
He was insufferable. His chaotic antics were exhausting.
Yes, have a whole committee(*), corporation(**), or even government(***) of them!
(*)Decemvirate of the Pathfinder Society, Whispering Way, Winter Council/pre-reform Lantern Bearers.
(**)Aspis Consortium, and the Pathfinder Society itself can stray dangerously close to qualifying.
(***)Cheliax, Nidal.
I'm not very good at making villains but I can tell you this - you have to make the players like him. Yes, they can hate him, but they also have to like them. Not want to be friends type of like though. I mean in the sense that there's some aspect of them that the players admire in some way - even if it's just the way the villain makes them wet their pants. There could be respect for the villain - either for their power or that he's honorable in some way. They could feel sorry for him. They could think he's funny. They could be outright terrified. Etc etc.
Think of the Marvel movies - both MCU and others. The Vulture was cool because he was just a regular blue collar guy who got screwed over and used alien tech to make gear so he could take what he wanted so he could provide for his family. He's both badass and sympathetic.
Doctor Doom in that horrible horrible monstrosity they called a Fantastic Four movie was just some kid who got left behind in another dimension and then just wanted to stay there. He's boring and can't be related to in any possible way. You can't even hate him because you dislike him so much.
The Doctor Doom in the two previous F4 movies at least had better motivation for being a villain - he got kicked out of his own company through no fault of his own, the girl he liked was in love with someone else, and he was turning into metal. Simply a better villain even if he wasn't a great villain.
The most memorable villains are the ones the party likes and trusts, up until they become the villain.
They don't have to be powerful, devious works.
They don't have to be evil; they may, or may not, simply be misguided.
The villain could, for example, be a paladin holding some of the less lawful party members accountable for their actions. He's a genuinely "good" guy, just a real dick.
He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster.
And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.
You want the bad guy to be relatable. So that to fight him or her is also to fight a part of yourself. You want the party to have lost something inside themselves by beating the BBEG. You should feel bad, and sad, and mad that you had to fight him or her. You should feel confused and slightly inadequate for not being able to bring them to reason without violence. The party should feel like they broke something beautiful at the end of the fight.
Yeah, thing is that good villain needs two things: screen time and personality.
This, but I'd also like to add an understandable motivation. The best example I can think of is Handsome Jack, from Borderlands 2. He's the last boss in the game, but he keeps in contact with you through voice clips. That way, you're reminded why you hate him every 30 minutes or so. And he has some great voice lines. The inclusion of that character elevated the game from great to fantastic. As for his motivation, he truly thinks he's doing it for a good cause, and roughly three-quarters into the game, you do something that angers him. From that point on, you notice a change in him. He was just toying with you up to that point. Now it's personal. And he loses himself in that rage. The angrier he gets, the more I feel for him. And that's what so great.
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My favorite "villain" is Rachel from Tower of God.
She's got to be one of the most universally hated characters I have ever seen. The fact that she evokes such strong emotions amongst the fans speaks volumes about the author's skills.
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A compelling villain is one who thinks they are the hero.
A 'for the evulz' sort of villain is not compelling. A realistically rendered villain is absolutely certain of their righteousness.
The villain from the movie Serenity is a funky example. He knows and admits that the sort of things he does are monstrous, and would have no place in the sort of better world that he hopes to help create. This sort of villain sees themselves as a gardener, pruning away things that are a greater threat to society, or racial survival, or world peace, even if the 'pruning' they are doing involves killing entire communities of people that don't fit into the planned utopia to come.
A villain might believe that by culling the weak of their own race or culture, they are strengthening it against greater challenges to come.
Similarly, they quite possibly consider betraying or committing atrocities on other races, cultures, faiths, alignments, etc. to be absolutely necessary to promote the welfare of their own specific race/culture/faith/alignment. Races or peoples that can be subsumed to serve their own (like halflings in Cheliax, reduced to slavery), could be acceptable, while races that refuse to be slotted into a place in the new order, such as elves, are demonized and driven out. The villain has convinced themselves that they are the heroes of their own stories, the champions of their own people, whom they see at risk from these other groups. It's easy to focus entirely on this sort of bigotry, but to make the villain less obviously a villain, focus at first on the good stuff they are doing for their own race/culture/whatever, setting up schools and orphanages for displaced folk of their own particular franchise. (You can also change the texture of it by having it be race-blind, and purely cultural, or faith-based, or even alignment-based, with members of a lawful society oppressing nomadic chaotic peoples, or members of a dominant religion making sure that local laws are harsher to smaller rival faiths, while spreading all sorts of slander about these 'cults' and their practices.)
Behind the scenes of all the 'good works' the group is seen doing for people of their preferred type, signs that members of other groups are being oppressed could be subtle, at first, so that the PCs might not immediately jump to the notion that these people are fantasy Nazis. If they take a few missions for them, to deal with uncontroversial things (stop some goblin raids, kill some giant spiders breeding in the woods, find a necromancer who fled justice, etc.), the party could end up working for such a villain, unaware that they are using the party to handle this work, so that their own forces can concentrate on nastier work they like to keep behind the scenes. (Note that the players are likely to get upset if they get bamboozled into nastier missions on the 'kindly' quest-givers behalf, so it might be best to avoid that, as your goal is to make them hate the villain, not the game-master!) :)
Yes, have a whole committee(*), corporation(**), or even government(***) of them!
(*)Decemvirate of the Pathfinder Society, Whispering Way, Winter Council/pre-reform Lantern Bearers.
(**)Aspis Consortium, and the Pathfinder Society itself can stray dangerously close to qualifying.
(***)Cheliax, Nidal.
Nidal is not villainous. They are just misunderstood! :P
I'm not very good at making villains but I can tell you this - you have to make the players like him. {. . .}
Doctor Doom in that horrible horrible monstrosity they called a Fantastic Four movie was just some kid who got left behind in another dimension and then just wanted to stay there. He's boring and can't be related to in any possible way. You can't even hate him because you dislike him so much.
{. . .}
I found myself drawn to root for Dr. Doom in that movie. Although he was obviously a bit batty, and not much like the Dr. Doom of the comics, of all the characters in that movie, he articulated better philosophical points than anyone else in there . . . .
The too much righteous guy can be a good opponent too. It depends on how you use and judge alignment but I had a blast with a fanatical Inquisitor of Abadar who was applying the law without any reflexion at all. To the letter.
He made my players angry more than once, by being sometimes really stubborn and undiplomatic.
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I had an expy of Labyrinth's Jareth (David Bowie) as an elf sorcerer merrily and flamboyantly leading a band of goblins on a quest to reawaken the superweapons of a fallen civilisation and take over the world.
The party frequently forgot that he was the bad guy. They rather liked him.
Whatever you do, make sure the villain gets ample time "on camera." Make sure the PC's and players have some kind of relationship with them.
Don't just have an NPC tell the PC's "My town was butchered by the necromancer's zombie horde!" Instead show the town as a place with (mostly) friendly people, families, and plot threads, then when they visit again later its been torn apart by the undead.
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Sometimes the most memorable villains are the ones that the heroes can't defeat through fighting--not because the NPC is a major badass, but because doing so would make life far, far harder for the PCs.
Here's an example from one of my past campaigns (not PF, but the system doesn't matter):
A noblewoman takes an instant dislike to the low-born PCs. She seizes every opportunity to politely insult them, undermine their efforts at court, and even sabotage their love affairs. As a close blood relative to the local ruler, taking any direct action against her would get the PCs run out of town at best, or executed at worse. Eventually, her obsession with thwarting the PCs may lead to her stepping over a line that they CAN use against her. Perhaps she's exiled for it--but then reappears in a later adventure as the new leader of a group that causes trouble for the PCs--especially after she learns of their presence on "her" turf. Now she has her own little court to lord it over, as well as a tougher, rougher sort of bodyguard. And even though she's in exile, taking her out would still sour the PCs' relationship with her family, who are their chief patrons.
In my game, this noblewoman was eventually pardoned, but by then she vastly preferred ruling in exile rather being than a mere courtier back home. Some years later, a PC had a vision about a threat to the exile's life, and their personal code of honor compelled them to go to her aid. This led to an uneasy truce, and the beginnings of some mutual respect at long last. But they are definitely NOT friends.