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<blockquote data-quote="Paul Farquhar" data-source="post: 9010547" data-attributes="member: 6906155">A character has a distinct and recognisable personality.A novel does have characters, but the antagonist might not be one. There are a number of ways of writing a novel. You might use 3rd person omniscient narrator (especially common in TV and movies). In which case it's easy to establish the antagonist's personality, since you can include scenes in which they appear that the protagonist knows nothing about. But D&amp;D is usually more akin to a 1st person narrative, everything is seen from the protagonists' point of view. So if the protagonist and antagonist do not have scenes together, there is little opportunity to establish the antagonist's personality. The author could give the antagonist a detailed personality, backstory and history, but it would be time wasted if the reader never got to experience it.As an example, I ran an Eberron campaign which started with the PCs set up as patsies in a political assassination. I knew the villain's plot, and I knew their motive, but at that point I didn't know anything else about them. As the players (largely freeform) investigations brought them closer to the identity of their faceless enemy I filled out some details: their organisation, their rank, their name. Eventually, for the final confrontation I added a stat block. Since the PCs never got to speak to them, I never needed to give them a personality. If the PCs had managed a non-combat meeting I would have created a personality on the spot with improv acting.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Paul Farquhar, post: 9010547, member: 6906155"] A character has a distinct and recognisable personality. A novel does have characters, but the antagonist might not be one. There are a number of ways of writing a novel. You might use 3rd person omniscient narrator (especially common in TV and movies). In which case it's easy to establish the antagonist's personality, since you can include scenes in which they appear that the protagonist knows nothing about. But D&D is usually more akin to a 1st person narrative, everything is seen from the protagonists' point of view. So if the protagonist and antagonist do not have scenes together, there is little opportunity to establish the antagonist's personality. The author [I]could[/I] give the antagonist a detailed personality, backstory and history, but it would be time wasted if the reader never got to experience it. As an example, I ran an Eberron campaign which started with the PCs set up as patsies in a political assassination. I knew the villain's plot, and I knew their motive, but at that point I didn't know anything else about them. As the players (largely freeform) investigations brought them closer to the identity of their faceless enemy I filled out some details: their organisation, their rank, their name. Eventually, for the final confrontation I added a stat block. Since the PCs never got to speak to them, I never needed to give them a personality. If the PCs had managed a non-combat meeting I would have created a personality on the spot with improv acting. [/QUOTE]

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