What have you done to REALLY make your players hate an NPC?

[Satori]

During an RP intensive campaign, I was trying to find out a way to create an enduring villain AND a reason for the ranger character to truly DESPISE orcs.

So, I started the PC as 1st or 2nd level, then roleplayed her coming across her Lynx animal companion as a kitten. Meanwhile, rumors of the impending orcish horde are arriving, and everyone is freaked. She's preparing for the invasion, meanwhile building a connection to her animal companion.

Well...orcish horde arrives early, and a raid leader (the future enduring villain) not only kills off several NPCs she'd grown attached to, but brutally throws her poor little lynx into a tree.

This was a one on one, RP heavy campaign...and the PC was my fiance. We're both BIG animal lovers...and she was SO upset and shocked she damn near cried.

I felt so incredibly horrible that I let her nurse the poor kitty back to health...which actually proved rather fulfilling and created a pretty potent, enduring animal companion that even ended up epic at later levels.

It was a bit of poetic justice when the now Dire Lynx landed the killing blow on the former raid leader turned Orcish general.

Still...I was forever ruined on EVER harming animal companions. To this day I don't think I've ever even had one get hurt in a campaign I run, so traumatized was I.

It worked, though...she truly despised that orc.

 

[WayneLigon]

Had him talk like the boss in 'Office Space'. That droning pausing monotone about absolutely inconsequentuial matters. Hatred flared, flared, I tell you, in their eyes after five minutes.

 

[Shemeska]

Had one particular NPC, my namesake, make a routine ass of herself to the PCs, and she happened to be in a position of influence and power that honestly made retribution not an option for them. She didn't do anything criminal (that they could prove). They loathed her in about every way possible over the course of three years of a campaign because she'd toy with them at every opportunity simply because she could.

But as for actual hatred. I had another NPC, a Baernaloth by the name of Methikus Sar Telmuril aka 'The Flesh Sculptor', 'Lord of Corporeal Terrors', 'He Who Dances Among the Dead', kill a long time NPC who'd been with the party since day 1 of the campaign. Almost killed all of the PCs too when they fought him, and in the process of killing that beloved NPC, he did so in a way that took an entire plot arc of the game for the PCs to find her petitioner in order to bring her back to life. It was not pretty.

 

[shilsen]

One past and two present:

Marius - He was a high priest of Pholtus in a Greyhawk campaign who helped out and hired the party to help him recover some 'minor' lost magic items. The party eventually worked out that he was not only planning to utilize a hugely powerful artifact that the minor items would lead him through, but had personally manipulated all of them into coming to him for aid and accepting him as a patron. They confronted him in his temple, were severly beaten and locked up. They managed to escape with the help of a member of his temple they'd befriended, only to be almost caught in the process (and they got to see their helper get obliterated by Marius). After they escaped, one of their primary goals was to find Marius someday and rip his throat out. It didn't help when they got involved in helping a forestful of elves fight an undead army and discovered that Marius had got in good with the leaders of the elves and was now a valued ally. They ended up in a huge knock-down dragout fight with the vampire leader of the undead. With the help of Marius, they managed to slay the vampire, after suffering some casualties. At that point, Marius attacked the remaining (all wounded) PCs and TPKed them.

The Lord of Blades - One of my current Eberron games. The PCs entered the Mournland on a mission to recover some items belonging to Prince Oargev ir'Wynarn and ended up near the LoB's camp. They found the items but had to kill some warforged in getting away. They were tracked down and captured by a pair of the LoB's minions and a warforged titan, with only the two rogues escaping. The others revived back in his camp, stripped naked and tied to wooden stakes, and suffered a long and irritating harangue from the LoB, during which he almost tempted the warforged PC to join him. The two rogues pulled off a daring rescue and they escaped the Mournland, leaving the major amount of their equipment behind. They've been working on a plan to take down the LoB ever since. And recently some of his followers beat them up and cold-bloodedly killed the mentally retarded warforged they'd all fallen in love with (platonically, that is), right in front of them. Now they really hate him.

Killian - In my other Eberron game, the PCs have met a gnome called Killian, who they are absolutely sure is evil and tied in with crime in Sharn. Unfortunately, he does nothing to harm them and keeps giving them information about one of the criminal organizations and suggesting (e.g. location of a drug den) the PCs take them down. Killian is quite open about being aware that the PCs dislike him and persists in baiting them, esp. the paladin. And last session, the paladin was mugged and lost his family heirloom, a very powerful sword, and is now in the position of needing information from Killian in order to get it back

 

[Joshua Randall]

The NPC that my players hated most never did anything incredibly dastardly aside from simply attack them. But they could not seem to catch her.

This worked for my campaign, too. I created a fairly standard villain -- a ranger/assassin who tracked down the PCs in order to (try to) kill them. Through some quirks of the dice, plus some smart playing on my part, the NPC just kept getting away. He survived a half-dozen encounters with the PCs before they finally nailed him. And let me tell you, they hated that guy with a passion.

 

[Thunderfoot]

In my current campaign I have a reoccuring BG (but not the BBEG) named Donovan - a Wererat Thief - appropriately nicknamed Maus. He has been one step ahead of the party and always seems to be in the right place at the wrong time. He is a member of group know as the Cult of the Rat (I wonder wy) but, for the most part he's just hard as heck to kill. Each time they have encountered him, he's gotten away and that is the one thing that has frustrated them to no end.
What they don;t know is that they still have a couple more meetings with him, and one of them he will help them - talk about frustrating, how do you hate a guy that saves your bacon just because it suits his purposes.

 

[Black Omega]

Betrayal is good, though it can be drawn out. In my game, the big hated guy was Nezu (AKA The Rat).

The group met him on their very first adventure when they were ambushed by bandits. He was bandit #3 on my sheet. He escaped the ambush, then for the next session I gave him a name and used him to warn the PC's that his village was being attacked. This story was totally true, the only part he lied about was being injured defending his village. The wounds were inflicted by the PCs. The PCs saved the village and one PC put Nezu in charge of defending it.

Later Nezu was grabbed by a witch hunter the PC's knew and used as a guide. The hunter was killed, the Nezu got his journel and he was rescued by the PCs before he was caught by the bad guys. The PC's mostly still treated him badly, but one PC was nice to him. So later he warned the PCs about a plot against their town. His reward was being dragged back to the bandit 'fortress' to act as a guide. There the party found Nezu had been a high level bandit but had tried to backstab the bandit chief and had been tortured, then drained down to essentially 1st level.

The group put him to work as a housesitter, but after fighting for the group in the bandit stronghold he started getting a little more pride back and he returned to bandit life, fighting the group a couple of times and taunting them pretty viciously, even more so given he knew how they fought. The group finally caught up to him in the last adventure of the game. That was the end of Nezu.

 

[kenobi65]

Go see "Serenity" for a disturbing example.

(highlight to read, it might be considered a spoiler)

Have the BBEG (in "Serenity", it's "The Operative") wipe out everyone they know, everyone who's ever helped them, everyone they've ever cared about.

 

[sniffles]

Go see "Serenity" for a disturbing example.

Have the BBEG (in "Serenity", it's "The Operative") wipe out everyone they know, everyone who's ever helped them, everyone they've ever cared about.

Ouch!! Don't give the RBDMs any ideas!!

One GM I regularly play with is obsessed with fairies. He loves to introduce them into his games. In his world, fairies are always bimbos who get into trouble, and they're usually thieves as well. We hate every fairy he introduces just on principle.

 

[Rel]

Shilsen, you're a bastard. I'd love to play in one of your games.