D&D General Who's your villain?

[Oofta]

I don't always have a main villain, I have multiple villains at various levels.

So for example in a previous campaign at lower levels the main villain was the town's constable. In a twist, he was grooming his daughter (the same age as the PCs, who started the game as children) to be a sacrificial offering/avatar. But ... the PCs ruined my nefarious plans by realized early on that the father was abusive and off and on gave her support and aid. Eventually what was supposed to be a main villain became an ally. Darn players.

But the constable was really just a bully with a badge that used intimidation and the power of his office (directly and indirectly) to get his way. So he secretly supported some of the gangs in town when he didn't want to get his hands dirty. In other cases he invented evidence or just arrested people who opposed him.

So this villain was out in the open dirty cop trope. Eventually it was revealed of course that he was just a stooge of the cult of Loki, but that's another story.

But other villains? Let's see. The same campaign had a fallen sidhe (long story) that basically looked like an elf but was actually driven insane by being in the mortal world since a young age. She became obsessed with one particular PC and would send him gifts like a human heart in a box with a not "my heart belongs to you". She grew in power as the campaign progressed and learned to tap into her inherent abilities. I always thought of her as a female version of The Joker. With superpowers magical abilities that made her quite difficult to stop.

There was a little ghost kid as well that literally haunted them. Usually at the worst possible times. She was "collecting" orphans and eventually led a swarm of ghosts. Well, technically she wasn't a ghost in D&D terms, more of a malevolent spirit.

Then there was the kindly ally who was really ... well you get the idea. Multiple villains, multiple threads. Some villains were meant to grow, others just didn't get the kind of reaction I expected so they faded into the background.

 

[Fenris-77]

Well, I'm runniging Star Wars for my lads, so the bad guy there is the Empire generally, which will eventually be represented in person by an Inquisitor or Imperial Agent of some kind. We have do some more playing to find out what happens before I decide on specifics.

For D&D the bad is usually, in some way or other, an Elder God. That's a product of my tastes in fantasy cosmology more than anything else. I like the touch of elder evil approach. Sometimes that's a a cult, or devil worshipping Vizier, sometimes it's a warchief on the rampage, it could be anything. The influence of the elder gods is the "unseen hand of Moriarty" I use to tie things together (for myself maybe even moreso that the players). It's interesting how that admittedly conspiracy theory style approach is actually quite helpful for player empowerment. Sometimes players come up with cool connections and links way before I do.

 

[Imaculata]

One of the advantages of having some kind of evil deity as your big bad, is that the players usually can't fight it directly, and you can keep him offscreen for most of the campaign. It also provides a good reason to have multiple disposable lesser villains to throw at the players, who are minions of the big bad.

 

[Richards]

The current campaign I'm running only kind of has a main villain, and that's not anyone the PCs have met up with yet (and we've only got 5 adventures left in the campaign). But for the last 20 years or so, every half a year (or thereabouts) waves of orcs and goblins have been pouring out of the forest to attack the bordering kingdoms and the "main villain" (if you want to use the term) is the person responsible for sending them out to attack. However, despite being responsible for this situation, the villain has no personal enmity against the kingdoms - it's just easier to set the slaves loose a couple of times a year and let them "earn their steel" by rampaging and acquiring metal weapons that way. (It certainly beats crafting steel weapons for slaves, and the weaker slaves get culled by the raids to the villain's overall benefit - no sense in wasting food and resources on slaves that can't hold their own in battle!)

But by the next-to-last adventure the steps the PCs have taken to find out the source of these attacks will have paid off and the last adventure will be spent finally confronting the person responsible...and the entire city of loyal subjects at the villain's disposal.

Otherwise, I run a string of short, mostly standalone adventures that can be played through in a 6-hour session. Each of those tends to have its own villain, with few villains making repeat appearances.

Johnathan

 

[Richards]

My son, on the other hand, does tend to have overarching villains in his campaigns, as his adventures are much shorter (2-3 hours, max) and the sessions tend to be separate chapters in an ongoing novel (whereas mine are more along the lines of a short story collection with the same group of characters). So in his last campaign, our main villain was an immortal lich wizard called the Mithral Mage, who had set up a cult that basically worshiped him like a god. In his current campaign (same game world and running concurrently with the events of the previous campaign), we have a more pressing villain in the Mortal Queen, the leader of the Underdark drow city (our PCs are all slaves of the drow), but the overall campaign mega-villain seems to be the Dying One, the decapitated head of an illithid god kept alive by its worshipers. (Imagine an enormous mind flayer head with 100 tentacles floating around in the Astral Plane - that's what we're up against.)

Johnathan

 

[Hoffmand]

Mephistopheles is my favorite villain always trying to overthrow Lucifer while acting as his best friend.

 

[Legatus Legionis]

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[Scottius]

In your current campaign, who's your villain? I'm actually running the same campaign for two groups. Up to the present both groups have been tangling with a cult devoted to Orcus. They're currently raiding the cults headquarters in a dungeon located in the Undercity after being tipped off to its existence by an NPC ally. The leader is one Arcturus Krim who they previously met via a projected image when they raided one of the cults other hideouts.
What are its goals, methods and alignment? They're chaotic evil being aligned with Demons & all. Their main reason for hunting the pc's is because they have a very powerful magic sword they found in an earlier adventure which is rather infamous in the outer planes because of its power to absorb the essence of extradimensional beings (angel or fiend) which it slays. The cult's demonic patrons have ordered it be recovered (it belonged to Orcus' followers a long time ago and had been sealed away until the party found it). They used a spy to keep tabs on the party when they arrived in the settings major city and have made attempts to break into their inn and steal the sword, using paralytic poison to hinder the party. They've also used demonic minions to assault them directly as well.
What is needed in order for its goals to succeed? If they were to obtain the sword they would pass it back to their masters who would put it to nefarious use which would have downstream consequences for the campaign.
Do you have multiple villains? If so, what is their relationship to each other? I am developing future villains to appear in the campaign assuming the party defeats Arcturus & his lackeys at the end of the dungeon. The cult of Orcus actually has another secret leader who is connected in the high society of the city. I plan on revealing this later, giving them a break from the Orcus cult for a bit. I'm working on an Assassin's guild run by a Vampire and brainstorming some other foes presently.

 

[jgsugden]

My most common model for a campaign is to have 6 story arcs - 1 major and 5 minor. I call it the B5 method (after Babylon 5). It runs sort of like 5 seasons of television with 5 season long stories, but each ties into the major storyline which resolves somewhere along the 4th or 5th "season".

Each of the minor storylines has some relationship to the major storyline, but they tend to be more about shades of grey stories where there are opposing forces, and it may not (or may) be clear whether anyone is truly the bad guy. Some of these storylines may be explorations (a series of dungeon delves), hexpanse (exploring an area - a hex crawl), a war (where the PCs might be on one side, might be caught in the middle, or might be fighting to stop the war), a mystery (I use Veronica Mars type storytelling where there is room to learn a lot, but it may not all be right), or something else. There is an opponent that will be at the core of the storyline, but they might not always be villains. They could be rivals, or just a time limit on how long they have to solve something.

However, the Major Storyline will always feature a clearly evil foe. Asmodeus, Orcus, Vecna, Big Pharma, ... something that the PCs know must be opposed and that they can feel a sense of victory when they beat it. I feel the big bad of the major campaign needs to give them that clear sense of victory. I also make sure to have a few more clearly evil enemies long the way, but certainly not everyone is a melodrama villain.

 

[Fenris-77]

Oooh. Big Pharma. That's a lot of legendary saves to work through.