More about cowardice? Fine.
Some clarification first though. I thought it obvious from the way I wrote it, but I intended to accuse Dinkledog of trolling me.
The people I'm calling cowards are choosing targets that they know won't fight back. It's seems almost painfully obvious. Sasha was killed not because Konig wanted him dead, but because Konig couldn't stand up to Vassili. Konig wanted Vassili dead, but was too weak. So he killed someone who he could kill, someone defenseless as to incite Vassili to fight Konig on his ground. He killed a child because he was afraid of a man. I'll also note, again, that Konig commited suicide long before his actual death in the movie. There was nothing brave in anything his character did. It's like saying Hitler was brave sending children and imaginary divisions to stop the allied advance along the easter front. After all he killed himself in the end. He was a jackal faced with a lion.
Ahh and nero. A nutty emporer who's lead poisoning had touched him with madness and who's impossible wealth and privilege graced him with his now ledgendary apathy. Why I use Burning ROM proudly myself. Again a small terrified tyrant. Few emporers of Rome were as feared as Rome's army. There is a distinction. They would be minor villains. They have resources, but no resolve. Allies, of indeterminate reliability, but no strength beyond that which is furnished by others or by title. Everyone has their own preferences of course.
I like major villains that are closer to Caesar than Nero. Czar Nicholas, while somewhat of a tyrant, was completely oblivious to this fact of his rule, and pretty much just liked spending his time watching his grandchildren rollerskate. Putting him to the sword, while understandable sentiment, seems much more tragedy than justice. Stalin, now there's a villain just crying out for a violent end.
For my part my major villains are pretty diverse: dark gods, malevolent dragons, epic curses, forces of nature, something fast and invisible, a mad wizard, and at least one guy just trying to get along who thought he was an anti-hero at worst (Thank you Gundam). Small tyrants of great resources occasionally make an appearence as annoying obsticles, but as villains, I suppose early on they'd be suitable, but I usually have a more interesting idea I want to try. On the list of villain choices a scared guy with a bunch of stuff, staff and or money is just pretty far down. Somewhere behind the general of his armies who harbors his own secret ambitions.
As moderators are so fond of pointing out, it's not that there aren't any real world analogs that one could point to were it not verboten, it's not that they can't make interesting stories. It just that given it's fantasy, why should I constrain myself to such limitations? Why doesn't James Bond change jobs and become a forensic accountant and crush nefferious secret organizations with a red pencil, and calls to financial institutions? I also don't play The Slums of Beverly Hills RPG. While comming of age movies are occasionally good stories, they aren't the ones I tell well. (And I wasn't aware that anyone machine gunned a schoolyard anywhere, hence the reason I chose that example.)
I just like more action. And while I'll occasionally have an element of intrigue, it doesn't dominate play. What does isn't action, it's the development of relationships for PC's to the world they live in, the NPC's they know. That's what adds the prerequisit emotional content for a great climactic battle. The PC's have relationships that are more than just an items scrawled on paper, its something that's really at risk, that everyone can feel. I like that "at stake" knot in the stomach, like you just bet this months rent on the next throw of the dice. And if the death of the villain, or at least his ultimate defeat is something of a formality, that risk isn't there, and what there is isn't as great. Now if actual content proves ellusive, sure a little shock might suffice. Assuming no one sees it for the ploy it is. Even when done well, I don't think it substitutes for putting everything good you have at stake willingly (but with great reservation), and it still diminishes the villains. Heroes can only be as great as the villains they defeat. That's why you don't have Darth Vader the rapist. It wouldn't make him any more evil, nor more dangerous, just less impressive, less menacing, more petty, and smaller. (I should probably make some sort of premptive strike against the literalists, and fans of MPAA, but they're beyond help).
When you've got a player throwing down with a foe you couldn't imagine them beating on their best day, where his friend, and fiance that even the player feels a little something for are watching, helpless to intervine. The characters emptied his bag of tricks just to stay alive to that point, and your superhuman villain has him dead to rights for his next attack which will undoubtably finish it (in an exceptionally brutal manner). You prepare to make your roll, and say, "Damn it's been sweet. Sorry, dude, it just not the way it worked out this time." Then you roll a 1, right in front of him, buying him a chance at another 3.2 seconds of life. And somehow, beyond all preconcieved laws of probability the player manages to not only live, but to kill the villain, after you appologized! Man that's why I play at all. I can't write stories that sweet, I wouldn't have been able to suspend my disbelief.
I like my villains to be a level of badass such that my players respect them after they're dead. People like those being discussed can't command a level of respect while they're alive, let alone after. Part of that is we believe what we believe and adhere to our own values which might be quite anachronistic. It's not a history lesson, its a story and a game, and the baggage people bring to it, needs to be factored in. While a brutal tyrant might put a town, or what have you, to the torch as an object lesson for others who might resist his will, and in the process kill many innocents children etc, he wouldn't give specific instructions to kill all the children, or even one mans child. Likewise he wouldn't seek to slay the child of some hero, making sure the hero was away to avoid confrontation. If a bad guy is clever, resourceful, there's so many ways to stack the deck. If Konig is as bad as your villains get. I pity you and your players.
Look at the modern armies that rape and pillage, remember you're not allowed (I just want to pretend I'm a moderator). Who would you fear more, they, little more than under paid mercenaries, or the terrifiying might of a modern, motivated, professional, volunteer army? I don't think I need to get into any specifics, because motivated volunteer armies have been carrying the day for QUITE a while. The people serving in the armies of my villains do so through a mixture of greed, fear, and admiration. But I'm also something of a fan of supervillainous cabals with master plans bent on world domination, or something equally grand and conventionally unattainable.
If you're a motivated individual in some great army, and your leader though brutal, and not exactly Mr. Sensitive, is likely the ticket to weath, power, fame, and oh yeah the winning side, some things you could over look. But if he thought raping people was a gas, and killing children was something to pass the time while sipping a dessert wine, or other activities equally abhorrent to your nature, he's not so charismatic. That aura of command just evaporates, all that's left is fear. An unreliable motivator at best. Now this might not be true if the end you were searching for was the conclusion of some ethnic confilict (humans against the elves! Tricked ya) and a scorched earth policy was the order of the day, maybe the raping and whatnot would be a bonus. But again, mundane. My villains have bigger goals that the extermination of some tribe with different colors and funny hats. We think it's stupid and petty on CNN, that's because it is. People who let their fear rule them are weak. They make weak, although perhaps large armies, they make weak leaders, and they're often ruled by tyrants who are more affraid of them than they are of him. While my villains may certainly fear, and if my heros know what's good for them they certainly do, but they don't let it rule them. They may heed its warning, but the decision to act and what the content of some act might be isn't made from a place as base as fear. No one rapes or commits other BoVD acts because they are powerful, the do so to pretend they are. My villains. They're actually powerful. And they know it. Should you demand they prove it, they'll leave that for a conversation between you and what ever greets you in the afterlife. A little something from them to you, Sasha's could hardly make their point more convincing than that. Hey, but maybe you'll win?
) , König willingness to kill a child doesn't in the least diminish his willingness to fight an elite soldier. Frankly, I'm a little dumbfounded that you argue that König was affraid of Zaitsev. If anything, he was the more savvy and skillful warrior and Vassili admit's as much during the movie. In the end, Vassilli wins through the sacrifice of his friend, not because he's smarter and more skilled than König.
