What's your Bad Guy race like?

[Kurashu]

The current "bad guy" is a necromantic wizard, a fallen Paladin, an island full of undead, and an insane cult bent on making their leader the next deity of undeath. However, I'm thinking after they first confront the cult obviously, they may recieve news of the LG nation in the south marching for conquest against the "heathen" nations.

Basically, whatever is handy makes a good bad guy.

 

[Desdichado]

So, you've got a campaign started, and there's a stock force of bad guys. What are they like?

Do you use orcs and have hordes of brutes rampaging across the countryside? Do you prefer a more regimented army of hobgoblins? Perhaps trapmaking kobolds are more your style.

What are your bad guys like?

Elves. Granted, they bear more than a passing resemblance to Warhammer 40k Dark Eldar, though.

Beats letting them be a PC race.

 

[Destil]

Actually, this has allways been a huge pet peeve of mine in games: that a creature's race (orc, goblin) gives you wholsale rights to slaughter them. It's a Tolkien idea that (while I love Tolkien) I could do without in RPGs.

In my future Eberron game I'm going to go as far as I can to avoid having any 'disposable' bad guy race. The setting is fairly well done in this reguard already (goblins in sharn, orcs in the marshes). But it's a subtle thing: you don't kill the goblin because he's a goblin; you kill the goblin because he's a spy for the Darguun empire and what he knows could start a war with Breeland.

Now there are races where wholesale slaughter would be the prefered method. Fiends and extraplaner monsters, that sort of thing. But such races are either outsiders (sure you can have a good balor, just like a fallen angel, but for the most part you just smite them, no questions) or ancient cunning evil like the Rakashas, and finding just one would be a challange. And their followers count just as many elves as goblins, orcs as dwarves. That orc could be a lunatic cultist of the dragon below, or he could be a gatekeeper fighting a desprate battle to destroy the reminants of the dalkier's invasion. And PC's who shoot orcs first and ask questions later may find out the hard way...

 

[Baron Opal]

Obviously? Other human nations who'se naked aggression is a threat to our way of life.

Secretly? Mind Flayers and Yuan-ti playing their chess games with human nations, letting their little lives provide a diversion to the secret master's ennui. Problem is, the pieces are becoming aware of the game. It will be soon time to clear the board.

 

[Sejs]

In my current campaign?

Real, real far behind the scenes, they come in two flavors:

Children of the Outer Gods - all subtle in their own way, all psionic. Illithids (variant; think pseudo-Dark City Strangers), Aboleth, Yuan-ti, Kuo-toa, Tsocharr, etc. Real Lovecraftian type Far Realms aberrations, for the most part.

Cultists of the Devourer - Unbeknownst to just about everyone, the god Malar isn't actually who he seems. Malar is actually an Outer God known as the Devourer. The Devourer currently lies bound sleeping in an extradimentional prison, locked away by a particular druidic order from ages past. The dreams of the Devourer are what formed the facade of the god Malar and are what grant his adherants their spells. The Devourer has one purpose - when the time is right, to rise up and consume all life on Faerun (after which he'll leave, find another world, settle in until the flock is ripe and then repeat the process; it's kinda what he does). Most... 99.999n%, say.. of Malar's worshipers don't know a single thing about the true nature of their god. Of those that do, there's a big split: on one side, there are those who want to find the Devourer's prison and release their lord ASAP; and on the other there are those who say not to, it'll happen when it happens, and if you wake him up early he'll be pissed. So essentially, Bad Guy Apocalypse Cultists of Malar and Bad Guy Cultists of Malar Opposed to the Other Bad Guys.

 

[Amitiel]

The last game was an Ultharid Paragon (noble illithid) vs. an elder brain with the PC's caught in the middle.

The Ultharid had allied with Graz'zt who supplied manpower via an Empire who's ruler was a 1/2 demon (succubus mother) Thrall of Graz'zt. The Ultharids goal was creation of a Chronus Gate (time travel) to change a pivotal event in Illithid history (the details of which were lost due to an over enthusiastic Illithid Slayer who had blasted an entire room with Maximized Energy Burst (sonic 15d6-15) powdering the tablet in question).

The Elder Brain wanted to absorb the Ultharids brain therby making itself the most powerful of its kind. Thereby uniting all the elder brains under one banner.

The two groups fought each other by proxy with surface events. The PC's were thrust into events and what adventures they took determined what happened in the shadow war.

In the end it was the Ultharid who won and was the final challenge, (he was by that point an epic level threat)

 

[painandgreed]

So, you've got a campaign started, and there's a stock force of bad guys. What are they like?

In the days when the empires of the elves and dwarves were waining and the men were growing strong, the other humanoid races prayed to the gods of chaos for aid. One of them heeded their prayers and kiddnapped a daughter of the head elven god and forced himself upon her and sealed her in a cave, meaning to send the child to the world as their savior. This child was born early as he clawed his way out of the womb and then feasted upon his mothers flesh. From her bones he made his bow and clothed himself in her hair, then he crept to the entrance of the cave and slew his father and also feasted upon his flesh, fashioning his spear from his spine and armor from his skull.

He proceded to capture other races and create more like him as he was created. These male children he sent out into the world with the ability to breed with any other humanoid. Any child born from such a union would be a half-breed male whose birth would usually kill the mother. Only the female half-breeds could produce If a half-breed were to have children it would always be a half-breed unless the father was also a full breed or half breed and then the child would be a full breed.

This new race take their lessons straight from their father who rules them through his clerics. He commands that they rule all the other races and make them their slaves. Their flesh shall feed them and what they produce shall make them rich. Any member of the race who is weak or breaks with his rule is to hunted down and killed, not that any would ever break with tradition because where would they go? Even the other humanoids fear them as they might propigate their species at the cost of their own. However, it is easier to direct them at your enemies than kill them, so evil humans and humanoids end up using them as mercenaries or allies, and allowing their raiding so long as it is not on themselves.

Those are the orcs for my campaign.

 

[kikai]

Shadowspawn and Dark Friends (although it's a homebrew world). And Undead.

Regards,
kikai

 

[Shades of Green]

I like hobgoblins or undead better for large-scale plotlines than say orcs or kobolds. They'll be ok for a sidequest here or there, but if I were to have the bad guys be of one race, I'd have something intelligent or at least have the ability to plan ahead. Undead (or at least the liches/clerics that use them), Hobgoblins, Evil Humans and Devils are all good options for that goal and selecting one depends on my mood or inspiration. Kobolds, Ogres and Orcs are simply too small/dumb to make long-term villains.

MM/SRD Kobolds have INT 10, which makes them as smart as Humans; they also have a knack for trapbuilding (and IMC, machine-building). Played right, they could be a long-term villian; I intend to use a Kobold nation as a major antagonist IMC, having steampunk technology and employing the Goblin and Orc masses as grunt laborers in their factories and as cannon-fodder. Their economical power and steampunk contraptions have allowed them to subjegate several major Hobgoblin groups which they use as shock-troops, and they also have several enslaved monsters in their employ.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

The closest to a "Bad Guy race" in my Exalted campaign are the Fair Folk. Well, they aren't neccessarily all bad but in the end it amounts to the same thing.

If you haven't any familiarity with Exalted, then forget the image of Fair Folk as tiny Victorian pixies whose only use is to be kept in glasses so you have a source of illumination. No, the Fair Folk of Exalted are alien entities of primordial chaos who have taken on form to be able to interact with the Lands of Shape.

And they live on emotions the way humans live on food and water. They want and need attention from both others of their kind and humans. They want others to be passionate about them.

And what's worse, it doesn't matter to them whether others feel love or hate about them. Humans might see a difference, but all they care for is the intensity of the feelings. Thus, they will go to any length to get a reaction out of you.

And that can be very scary indeed.

At this stage of my campaign, two of the characters would rather see any given Fair Folk dead instead of entering any kind of deal with them... while another one is trying to learn the powers of the Fair Folk, despite the fact that he is in danger of becoming like them in the process...