Sick, Twisted Villains?

[Samloyal23]

You are writing a story or game adventure, what is the nastiest thing you would let a villain do? What vile deeds have your characters committed? Where do you draw the line? What is taboo in your writing?

 

[Janx]

I'd stay away from rape. it's become rejection bait as editors/agents are tired of it. For a % of readers/players it trivializes a trauma they've experienced.

 

[Umbran]

I tend to create what songwriter Tom Smith would call, "villains with professional pride."

I think it also depends on what you, personally, find horrific. The major antagonist for my current game is more than willing to start an interstellar war to get what he wants. If allowed to act upon his goals unchallenged, millions to billions of sentient beings will die in fire and pain. But sexual depravity or body horror? Causing pain for the sake of pain? That is far beneath him.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Longspeak]

Villain in my game did his own eugenics experiments by secretly placing additives in pharmaceuticals his company made, in an attempt to make a literally super super race. This was the origin of supers in my setting, when the experiment went "wrong" and all sorts of people began to develop powers instead of "the right people." He then spent years trying to "correct" his mistake, which brought him into conflict with the PCs. He went to jail, where years later they discovered he was still running things, and when he made another major play, one PC - his "impure" granddaughter - decided enough was enough and broke his neck.

So then his preprogrammed AI nanomachines tried to continue his work, pitting heroes against friends and family who had been controlled, several of whom tried to leverage their own lives to make the PCs stand down... or in one case just to punish them.

THEN, when I let a friend run a session where I was the player, the same villian from a parallel dimension entered ours and tried to kill all those who'd stood in his way in his world, so he could start over in this world.

 

[Longspeak]

Regarding sexual assault... I've used it in the past, and don't anymore since having some things explained to me. But even when I used it, it was never the Big Bad. It's a low and cowardly thing that's beneath even my most evil villains, and so the perpetrators of such are worthless nobodies there to be dealt with, not important baddies.

 

[Janx]

I read an interview with Jim Butcher today, and a question about him doing horrible things to his characters.

He noted that he got a lot of letters that he better not hurt the cat, Mister.

He pointed out that loss of a pet is common for many, and that for the escapist fiction he writes, he wouldn't inflict such a real world tragedy on his readers.

I think that's a decent goal, aim for something fantastic, not mundane that real people experience.

---
Personally, I've been doing far more writing than gaming in the last five years. My current bad guys scaled up from targeting a single person for cyberbully with deep fake technology to targeting the hero with it and expanding into meat-space with massive drone attack terrorism with fake evidence to scapegoat another group.

I've constrained myself to transform real world threats/issues to be more monsterous. It has the problem of touching on stuff somebody HAS experienced while hopefully raising awareness ala "holy crap that can happen?" It's a work in progress. The book ain't done, and I may figure a way to shift it to even more fantastical.

 

[Eltab]

Hannibal Lecter or Jason (Friday the 13th) would about do it, if the villain is a loner.

If the PCs find the initial plans for Operation: Final Solution, the plot of the adventure is going to be "stop him before that machinery is ready / set in motion"

 

[Umbran]

I read an interview with Jim Butcher today, and a question about him doing horrible things to his characters.

He noted that he got a lot of letters that he better not hurt the cat, Mister.

He pointed out that loss of a pet is common for many, and that for the escapist fiction he writes, he wouldn't inflict such a real world tragedy on his readers.

Would that he applied that logic to having his protagonist mack on his apprentice.... :/

 

[Blue]

Would that he applied that logic to having his protagonist mack on his apprentice.... :/

You mean the apprentice he was tempted by but even when she was interested in him he didn't do anything with? He never chased her.

Are your problems that he had impure thoughts that he worked hard not to act on? And succeeded?