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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gez" data-source="post: 266505" data-attributes="member: 1328">Re: Vance's villainsYes, I often have. Casmir is a great villain, Faude Carfilhiot is a great villain, Iucounnu is a great "villain" (hmm... antagonist, rather), etc. I've often said that roleplayers in particular should read Vance. The imagination of this writer, his skill at creating and depicting cultures, places, creatures, and "NPCs" (frequently far better than his heroes), are shining examples of what a DM should try to emulate.On a different topic, I personally have strayed from citing real-world people as "greatest villains", but since it has been a general practice here, I'll chime in. It seems normal that people such as Hitler or Stalin have been mentionned, and if it was expected that the names of Bill Gates and Georges Walker "Texas Ranger" Bush would spring (they did), I'm surprised noone mentionned Osama bin Laden. This guy is, from a litterary standpoint, an excellent villain: rich and charismatic, he comes from a great family friendly to his personal enemies (western countries, especially USA), he's fanatically devout and is persuaded his fight is just -- which only makes him more frightening and dangerous -- yet the vision of the world he promote is one of the worst reactionary dictature one can thought of (and only partially backed by the scripture he invoke, by the way). Furthermore his network is built to be resilient to military, judiciary, and financiary attacks. In fact, he combines several of the traits that makes him a villain you would expect to see in a James Bond movie rather than in real life (and this has led some people to believe he got James-Bond-Villainesque resources at his disposal, like those famous "ultramodern military underground complex under Torabora", reality was far from it).However, rather than him, I would personally cite Pol Pot as most evil villain from the real world. Others "worthy" of that title have already been cited, and he did slaughter more than half the population of his own country for his revolution. Criteria for execution were as blunt as having glasses (if you weared glasses, that meant that you knew how to read, so you were an intellectual, so a potential influential opponent, so you were shot in the head by the red khmers). Maybe the bloodiest dictature of the XXth centurie, more savage even than Hitler's, Franco's,  Stalin's, Pinochet's...I would also cite Kim Jong-Il and Kim Il-Sung, who made North Korea into a country-sized goulag, or a country-sized sect. A nightmare even the worst political-fiction (like 1984) don't approach.</blockquote>

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