Evil vs Villainy

[Umbran]

YAAT Good is just passe has got me thinking a little bit....

It's pretty easy to make a really nasty, evil villain. Making them vile and depraved and gross and monstrous is easy as pie. The morally ambiguous antagonist is also common. However, when was the last time you saw a villain who wasclearly villainous, who had to be stopped at all costs, but whom you still had to respect as a person?

Perhaps Tom Smith said it best in his song, "Rocket Ride":

How many demons out in cyberspace
Will possess every hacker's will?
How many members of a master race
Will come closing in for the kill?

How many xenomorphs will change their face,
And then hunt us down for a thrill?
Give me a villain with style and grace,
And a little bit of fencing skill.

They used to be angular, sneering and bald,
If someone got killed even they were appalled,
They tried to marry the heroine, no thought of rape,
And they sure as hell knew how to wear a cape.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

Does Marvin the Martian count? He wanted to blow up the Earth, but only because it obstructed his view of Venus.

Sorry.

I just played in a game where the "villian" had a failed arcane attempt to bring his son back to life. His child arose as a flesh golem with a sociopathic streak (it was yearning for a soul). The villian was caught between his love for his "son" and the knowledge that the creation was killing people.

Pretty good game, actually.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Well Star Wars - the Emp...or the man that will become him. controling both sides, moving the jedi, sentors, just to start a war to take power and make it look like it was an outside force. Working on the long term, big picture.

Scorp from Farscape.

 

[Bonedagger]

However, when was the last time you saw a villain who wasclearly villainous, who had to be stopped at all costs, but whom you still had to respect as a person?

Are you kidding? For me that's on of the reasons DM'ing is fun. That's usually my main source for player motivation. I want to make the players, and not just the PC's, want to get the villian.

 

[Information]

The worst antagonist my PCs have ever faced was a LN clerical inquisitor. It was a time of increasing authoritarian measures in the kingdom, and he was a centerpiece in the effort. As he was an established official and church representative, they couldn't simply kill him. But their free-wheeling, slightly chaotic bent so perturbed him that he attempted to use the powers of his office to control their actions and activities. He made the party miserable. They sought to "defeat" him at every opportunity, but his thorough knowledge of royal and clerical law far outmatched their own.

All of this, despite the fact that a party member was a marquis and on good terms with the king.

He was never "defeated". The party escaped him, inadvertently, by traveling through a portal that lead 104 years into the future.