Great villains!

[Qlippoth]

Psst, SHARK, the idea was to have villains that weren't sadistic or vicious, with no slavery, because if the DM uses those concepts, it will somehow force the DM into committing those acts. No, I don't get it, either.

Now, now...

I think what makes Sauron so terrifying in LOTR is that (at least in that portion of Tolkien's work) he's quite inscrutable--here is a being of incredible power, who (despite his "handicapped" state without the Ring) can still shake a world in a desperate (if clumsy) series of attempts to retrieve what's his. What impressed me as a reader (albeit of an early age) was "if he's this big & bad now, what happens when he gets the Ring back?"

Sometimes not knowing all the villain's intentions makes him/her/it a far nastier one.

 

[KnowTheToe]

They also have to look cool. How the players visualize the villian can be very important. If you do a good job deveopling all of the things above, this is much easier.

 

[Synicism]

One thing I try to keep in mind when I design a villain is that they very rarely consider themselves to be "evil." In a sense, I tend to create antagonists, not villains.

This is one thing that bothers me about the Book of Vile Darkness and such things. I just don't buy it. I mean, some of the most monstrous people in history performed horrible atrocities with what, in their own minds, were good intentions.

Unless my villain is something that epitomizes evil (pretty much fiends), I very rarely have them indulge in vile acts. It strips them of their believability. Just like I encourage my players to give their characters flaws and quirks, I give my villains real personalities.

 

[barsoomcore]

Sauron:

Sauron is scary in LotR for one very good reason: Because everybody else is so terrified of him. This is something that works great in a campaign -- if NPCs that the party considers tough are scared of someone, you can bet your players will pretty quick be scared of them, too. Their imagination will work them up with very little effort on your part.

Worth noting that we DO in fact know Sauron's reasons in great detail. We know he wants the Ring. We know that with the Ring he will be unstoppable. We know that he will do anything to get the Ring.

Which of course puts him on a direct collision course with Frodo, who doesn't want him to get the Ring. That's really all we need to know for big thrills.

Now the whole "big set-up ooh he's real scary" approach does contain one booby trap: the delivery. After you've set up your bad guy as The One True Badness, you need to bring him up from the on-deck circle and impress your players. If he doesn't live up to his advance billing, poof goes all your hype (not to mention your credibility). Tolkien very neatly gets around this by NEVER having Sauron appear onstage (LotR, I'm talking about). Not an approach that is easy to get away with, ESPECIALLY in a game. Most players would be deeply disappointed to never get a chance to come to grips with the scoundrel that has been thwarting them all this time. And note that even Tolkien needs to provide us with Saruman, who is arguably the REAL villain of LotR -- note that Sauron dies three chapters from the end, whereas Saruman doesn't die till the very end. In fact, the slaying of Saruman represents the end of the power of the Ring in Middle Earth, in that Saruman is the final victim of the Ring's power. Excluding Frodo and Bilbo, of course.

(Tolkien geek? WHAT Tolkien geek?)

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Keep the villain in the background. Don't let the PCs meet him, or even suspect that he exists, until the campaign has progressed quite far.

In my current GURPS Warhammer campaign, I have created a villain based on Greek mythology called "Argus". All the characters have met of him so far are a few free-floating eyeballs...