What makes a Villain?

[Elf Witch]

There are all kinds of villains some evil some not who are villains because they and the PCs are in opposition of each other. What makes a good villain to me is one that makes sense an NPC who has some kind of motivation other than I am evil. In my campaign a lot of what is going on by the so called villains is not totally evil. The druids and clerics of Obad-Hai who have joined forces with Tiamat have a very good reason for doing so they are tired of the destruction of the forests to pave the way for more and more human settlements.

I agree that the idea that the villain is the hero of his story is a good one. I rarely have villains consider themselves evil.

 

[delericho]

How would you define and design a villain?

I would start by determining what I want the villain for. The speed-bump henchman of the big bad is a villain in his own right, but he's a very different proposition than his boss. So, I'll start by fixing that.

From there, I work out what the villain wants, what he's willing to do to get it, and his preferred methods. (Again, a Wizard is rather different from a Fighter, even if they're both striving to end the world!)

Once I've got that, I'll start building the villain exactly as I would a PC, although I may well play a bit (or a lot) fast-and-loose with the RAW when doing so.

But one very important consideration - I try to make sure that those villains who are supposed to be significant (that is, the BBEG and his main henchmen) are powerful enough to stand up to the combined might of the PCs for 4-6 rounds. Because without that, he's a speed-bump and won't generate any good after-action stories.

(Of course, when we get to actual play, if the players pull out some tactic or power that I hadn't expected, or just get some lucky rolls, then I'll make sure to let that stand. I may have planned for an epic battle, but if it doesn't happen then so be it - I can always get another bad guy. )

What's the difference between the abrasive anto-hero and a real villain?

Boundaries. They don't even need to be stated, but there has to be a point somewhere along the line where the anti-hero won't do something, but the true villain will. For example, Batman has no problem beating up the bad guys in order to get information, but he stops short of killing them.

How can a player portray a Chaotic Neutral PC without teetering into villain territory?

As noted up-thread, by choosing not to be a jerk. It's also worth noting that you don't need to be CN to cause problems. Inspector Javert (Les Miserables) is pretty much the textbook example of a Lawful Neutral character... and one played by a jerk. Heck, in the wrong group and with the wrong player, even a goody-two-shoes LG Paladin can be a problem.

 

[Celebrim]

Inspector Javert (Les Miserables) is pretty much the textbook example of a Lawful Neutral character...and one played by a jerk

I beg your pardon, but I think you've slandered the Inspector. He's not a jerk. He has character flaws, but so does everyone (even Jean Val Jean, who is plagued with self-doubt and self-loathing right to the very end of his life, and who never trusts that he's worthy of Cosette's love to his own lose). Javert's suicide note if nothing else establishes firmly that he is a very compassionate and very just man - if even his effectively sacrificing his life for Jean Val Jean in the prior scene hadn't established that. Javert is courageous and just literally to a fault. Javert makes his next to last act fighting corruption and unnecessary cruelty in the system. It's just that Javert is unable to make a leap from the rigid inflexible place he put himself. He was never able to forgive and have mercy on anyone until Jean Val Jean, he never believed that that law made room for such an act, so he's equally unable to forgive and have mercy on himself. But when it came to it, he was unable to condemn Jean Val Jean in the act of Jean Val Jean saving someone's life. It is an amazing if damning meditation on the law, firmly grounded in the context of the Judeo-Christian themes of the book, and from a DM's perspective if this was a PC, the decision to retire the character dramaticly is really only one of two possible things he could have done (the other is accept alignment change and transformation of who this character is). The jerk act here would be to try force another PC to sacrifice his character so that you could be true to yours.

 

[delericho]

I beg your pardon, but I think you've slandered the Inspector. He's not a jerk. He has character flaws, but so does everyone...

While that's true, I would note that I didn't actually say Javert was a jerk - I said his player was a jerk. It's a subtle distinction, I know, but actually makes quite a difference here.

Seriously, though, if LM were a D&D game, and two players created Valjean and Javert as their characters, the two would be incapable of co-existing within the same party - and the blame for that would lie at the feet of the LN Javert, where the player was "only playing my character".

 

[Celebrim]

Seriously, though, if LM were a D&D game, and two players created Valjean and Javert as their characters, the two would be incapable of co-existing within the same party - and the blame for that would lie at the feet of the LN Javert, where the player was "only playing my character".

Right, because the blame always lies with the Lawful character, rather than the Chaotic character who always insists that he's continually breaking the law and stirring up trouble because he was "only playing my character". I think I dectect a bit of bias going on here.

That being said, Javert and Jean Val Jean have a lot of 'campaign time' together. Javert is the police inspector while Jean Val Jean is the mayor for years, invoking the Clark Kent rule, "Gee.. I just can't recognize this guy who has become my life's obsession, it's like he puts on glasses/a coat and is completely different in appearance." Then later Javert as the spy and Jean Val Jean are on the barricade together, with Javert's role as spy forcing him to stay out of character. If this was an RPG though, Jean Val Jean almost certainly did this deliberately, because he would have needed the Jean Val Jean's player's permission to have Jean Val Jean in his backstory. They planned the rivalry from the start which wouldn't work in the context of your average PnP but probably would work in the context of a LARP or MUSH.

 

[delericho]

Right, because the blame always lies with the Lawful character, rather than the Chaotic character who always insists that he's continually breaking the law and stirring up trouble because he was "only playing my character".

Oh, no. Not at all. But in this instance, all the other major characters are at odds with Javert. Largely because of their larcenous or even revolutionary bent, but in some cases simply due to Javert's own prejudice against the poor. (And it's also worth noting that Valjean doesn't have a problem with Javert - it is Javert who has the obsession.)

In any event, I'm sure we can agree that in some cases (not necessarily Les Mis), it can be the Chaotic character who is the problem and that in others, equally, it can be the Lawful character (or even the Good character). It all depends on the type of campaign, and the group dynamics at play?

Javert is the police inspector while Jean Val Jean is the mayor for years, invoking the Clark Kent rule, "Gee.. I just can't recognize this guy who has become my life's obsession, it's like he puts on glasses/a coat and is completely different in appearance."

I do find that particularly amusing. It's even funnier in the musical, where the need to keep the same actor in place (and limited ability to 'age' the actor using makeup) make it especially noticable.

 

[haakon1]

So those are my big 4: Motive. Transparency. Communication. Surprise.

Great post. My "most successful villains", at least in my mind, involved those . . . except perhaps the transparency.

Another thing I like to do is what I think of as "British style police stories" as opposed to "American style police stories". I got this from watching "Law & Order UK" or "Foyle's War" compared to "Law & Order" the original. The UK version sometimes recycled US plots, but it had a different POV on the villains.

In British cop shows, the villain is often sort of pathetic -- they do bad things, but it's because they are damaged in some way, and many will have motives that aren't completely evil/depraved/insane. They might even have mixed motives or a change of heart at the end.

Like in one "Foyle's War", the murder was a woman fell down the stairs drunk, during a fight with her boyfriend. But the boyfriend was actually gay, and the fight was about her finding out about it, and it wasn't entirely clear if he pushed her, it was accident, or she fell of her own accord from being drunk (1940's wartime forsenics can't tell). He also happened to be an ace fighter pilot, during the Battle of Britain. So Foyle let him fly one more mission, in which of course (as was the tacit bargain with Foyle) he went kamikaze brave and bagged a few more ME-109's before getting killed in action, so no one had to know about his sexual orientation or the woman's death wasn't necessarily just an accident.

Whereas in US cop shows, it's often like a bad D&D module -- The villain is villainous because see, their alignment says CE. Or they are crazy. So boring.

 

[Celebrim]

Whereas in US cop shows, it's often like a bad D&D module -- The villain is villainous because see, their alignment says CE. Or they are crazy. So boring.

I think there is merit in both positions. Some real 'villains' do seem to end up in their situations through a series of unfortunate events leading to a terrible tragedy were they really only made a very spontaneous and small mistake that just happened to balloon way past their ability to control. Villains can be pathetic or even sympathetic. Arguably, the villain that is merely crazy, falls in this class of pathetic or even sympathetic villain. If the villain truly from a mental illness, then however montrous they may have acted you know that it was twisted reasoning and twisted sensory experiences that led to that end. But other villains do seem to be driven by some monsterous evil spirit, whether greed or lust or wrath or pride or hatred or ambition or whatever it is, that drives and compells them to and again make monsterous and terrible decisions toward utterly evil ends and to live utterly dispicable lives where the end tragedy is anything but unexpected.

The real world doesn't offer up easy answers on this, even though - locked in their own cultural biases - two different cultures want to always look for easy answers of individual responcibility or social ills to make the world easier to reconcile with their own beliefs.

For me what is boring is see every story filtered through the same predictable lens - 'we have met the enemy and it is us' for example drives me crazy now.

 

[haakon1]

IFor me what is boring is see every story filtered through the same predictable lens

Well, yes, good writing needs some variety.