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Yora
2011-07-25, 12:32 PM
The most difficult part about creating adventures or any kind of fiction is to come up with plausible reasons why the villain is doing things that the protagonists want him to stop.
In most cases it seems to be either conquering the whole world, or destroying all life in the universe. But these are really bad motivations, as they don't provide any gain by themselves at all.
Stealing money or collecting ransoms is a bit better, because money is always nice, but it hardly makes for interesting villains.

So please, share all your villain motivations that provide a good reason why the main antagonists go through all those troubles that force the heroes to take action.

Crow
2011-07-25, 12:40 PM
Just pick an emotion and turn it up to 11.

NowhereMan583
2011-07-25, 12:58 PM
I find that "the greater good" is one of the more fun villain motivations. It completely throws the PCs to find out that the man/woman/thing/eldritch horror that they thought was pure kitten-swallowing evil has a goal with which they can sympathize. This also leads to the possibility of the PCs switching sides, which can make for an interesting story.

One of my recent villains was someone who was working towards the same goal the PCs were -- the overthrow of an Evil Empire -- but whose methods were highly questionable.

Shadowknight12
2011-07-25, 01:02 PM
My current villain is a pixie wizard who was exiled from his forest realm under some flimsy pretences by the Queen of the Forest (epic-level dryad with more druid levels than toes and fingers). He was taken into a fortress populated mainly by celestials, clerics, paladins and the like. His current plan is to sacrifice all the celestials in the fortress to harvest their divine essence and channel it into the CG goddess of the fey, who lies dormant in another realm after a near-mortal wound. And he's doing so under the Queen of the Forest's indications, who has sent a diplomatic contingent of fey and elves to establish relations between the forest and the fortress. The villain in question is sealed away in the deepest level of the fortress, under the excuse of examining the Calling Chamber beneath, making the celestials think he has the power to Call forth more celestials (he doesn't).

The villain is also the player's character's ex-lover (yes, the player is playing a pixie, and yes, the pixie is in the diplomatic contingent).

The Reveal should be pretty interesting. :smallamused:

KineticDiplomat
2011-07-25, 01:53 PM
Sometimes the greatest, most horrible motivation, you can give to a villian is utter indifference. He/she simply see's his acts as no different than stomping an anthill. Ok, maybe it wasn't nice, but really, he's quite a pleasnt and socially acceptable person amongst his peers. You, yours, and all your burning motivations are really quite as trivial as a squirrel ganwing on the electric line : somewhat annoying to be out of power, and maybe a little sad, a little funny that the bugger fried himself (or this mortal plane was destroyed), but really, dammit, now the A/C doesn't work. (I reccommend something equally comfort causing as the equal final answer)

hydroplatypus
2011-07-25, 03:02 PM
I am currently running a low level campaign (start at lvl1 end at 7ish hopefully). In the setting the area the PCs are in is largely ruled by city states, who aren't great at maintaining control of border regions. The PCs are in one of these border regions, and the villain is planning to conquer the town they are in. No gigantic world conquering plans, he just (at least for the moment) will be content with ruling a couple thousand people in the border regions. Basically the villain doesn't need to have world destroying ambitions. A smaller scale villain can be interesting too.

Additionally, after replaying Dragon Age 2 the quanari made really good opponents. A similar group could exist within any D&D setting. Maybe even a group of Paladins, who could easily fight a group of good PCs due to rigid adherence to their principles.

Tyndmyr
2011-07-25, 03:09 PM
Just pick an emotion and turn it up to 11.

This.

Curiosity? Fantastic. The man has a quest for knowledge no matter what the cost.

Friendly? All he really wants is for everyone to love and accept him. He devoted his life to it. But always...always there is someone who is unhappy with him no matter what he does. It's almost enough to drive a man...mad...

Saintheart
2011-07-26, 02:11 AM
Love. Doomed, obsessive love. There is no more tragic motivation than this.

dsmiles
2011-07-26, 07:20 AM
This.

Curiosity? Fantastic. The man has a quest for knowledge no matter what the cost.

Friendly? All he really wants is for everyone to love and accept him. He devoted his life to it. But always...always there is someone who is unhappy with him no matter what he does. It's almost enough to drive a man...mad...
Have to agree here. Ultra-strong emotions lead to interesting antagonists, at the very least.

I also have to admit that the "greater good" bad guys are pretty fun to DM as well.

Lapak
2011-07-26, 08:47 AM
Giving the villain a specific motivation is definitely the key to making him interesting. He or she should have some specific thing that they want or need, with money/power/conquest being the tool to that goal. To take a couple of examples from popular fantasy:

Darth Vader wants control of the events around him. He doesn't care about good or evil; he doesn't care whether he controls matters to people's benefit or their detriment. He just wants order, his order, and he'll smash whatever he has to to get it.

Thulsa Doom (1982 Conan movie version) wanted to understand the nature of power. He was a philosopher willing to conduct whatever experiment was necessary to increase his understanding - he learned about magic. He learned about war and conquest. He learned about religion and devotion. None of it was interesting to him for the power it actually gave him; all of it was interesting for what it taught him about power. He was a horrible cult leader, mass murderer, and black magician, but it wasn't out of an active desire to do evil. It was just an academic interest with no concern for people whatsoever.

Agent Smith (the Matrix) just wanted to quit his job and get out of the world he'd been stuck in. He didn't hate people except as the thing standing between him and what he wanted, but that hate festered and grew the longer he was denied freedom until it was white-hot rage.

Mixt
2011-07-26, 09:43 AM
Curiosity as a motive leads us to people like Xehanort, the Big Bad of the Kingdom Hearts series.

Hatred as a motive leads you to people like Sephiroth of Final Fantasy 7, overwhelming hatred for the human race, kill kill kill them all!
It can also result in things like Alma Wade from the F.E.A.R series.

So yes, emotions cranked up to 11 can do a lot.


How about this one.

The villain has seen visions of the future, visions of a dead world where nothing can live, where pollution has turned the atmosphere so toxic that it instantly kills anything that breathes it, where radioactive waste litters the landscape, where there are no forests or any kind of plant life at all.
And all because of the human race.

For you see, humanity believed that the economy was more important than preserving nature, so they chopped down the forests, drove every species in the world extinct through overhunting and habitat destruction, they dumped radioactive waste in the oceans and polluted the atmosphere so much that it became impossible to breathe it without dying.
And all to earn more money, money money, human greed destroyed the entire world, killed everyone and everything.

The villain is of the mind that the only way to prevent this from happening is to wipe out humanity, so he starts trying to destroy the human race in an all out pre-emptive assault on behalf of nature.

How's that for motivation?

And in the event that the PC's succeed in stopping the villain the DM will then describe how the world suffered a slow and painful death at the hands of humanity, congratulations, you are responsible for the end of the world.
Thus proving that the villain was right all along.

Choco
2011-07-26, 09:46 AM
I had a villain once who had become immortal, and finally snapping after a couple thousand years he decided to go the evil villain route in the hopes that someone would figure out a way to kill him and do so.

supermonkeyjoe
2011-07-26, 09:56 AM
I definitely think preservation is one of the best villainous motivations for an organisation or race, take the Quori of Eberron, they know that if they don't act they are going to cease existing within a manner of decades as part of the cycle of the planes, they mean to stop this even if it involves enslaving every sentient mind on the planet.

Fighting for survival also allows more desperate measures, someone who is after power can be dissuaded or turned off his path in exceptional circumstances whereas someone fighting for their very life has literally nothing to lose.

Lysander
2011-07-26, 11:32 AM
One major hangup people have is assuming that villains have to be evil. Maybe nobody is evil, or even "misguided good", they might just be your rival.

For example, perhaps you're from warring noble families both intent on seizing the nation's throne. Good or evil doesn't have to come into it, it's just a squabble for wealth or power or honor or revenge. Maybe you're both good, just on different sides of a fight.

The-Mage-King
2011-07-26, 11:40 AM
I tend to default to a desire for "WORLD DOMINATION! AHAHAHAHA!", or to "because I can"/"For teh lulz". And then there's the one guy who's after the first to make the world a better place. By ruthlessly crushing all resistance to his rule and turning various monsters wandering the giant wasteland that was once a country into his minions. Not a nice guy.

*Whistles innocently*

Yora
2011-07-26, 01:35 PM
For you see, humanity believed that the economy was more important than preserving nature, so they chopped down the forests, drove every species in the world extinct through overhunting and habitat destruction, they dumped radioactive waste in the oceans and polluted the atmosphere so much that it became impossible to breathe it without dying.
And all to earn more money, money money, human greed destroyed the entire world, killed everyone and everything.

The villain is of the mind that the only way to prevent this from happening is to wipe out humanity, so he starts trying to destroy the human race in an all out pre-emptive assault on behalf of nature.
I think that's the plot of the manga X.
And yes, the antagonists are quite likely to be right in their assesment.

And I really like the quori as villains, because they have a really good reason for their actions.

gkathellar
2011-07-26, 02:07 PM
conquering the whole world ... [doesn't] ... provide any gain

Calling you out on this.

Marxism
2011-07-26, 02:14 PM
The tragic motivation is sometimes the best but sometimes you need to make the players truly hate your fictional character. Make a Complete monster. someone who is evil because he loves the suffering of others.
Also misguided people are nice. People who have gone too far in their quest for good.

One I want to play around with is someone who is trying to corrupt the PCs. He makes them strong by throwing challenges at them then when they face him he forces them to do something that will corrupt them. I.E. killing him instead of capturing or Making them kill a child because otherwise the child will grow up to be worse then the villain.

Ravens_cry
2011-07-26, 03:04 PM
Revenge.
Deep in our gut, we know this motivation.
We have all felt when we have been wronged, and we have all been wronged, that burning, aching, need to seek redress through any means possible.
Like the best tragic motivations, as audience and even characters we can understand and even sympathize with the motive if not the means.
It has destroyed families and nations, brought down empires and kings. When the first hand struck down another in murder, another rose to follow soon after.
Blood calls to blood.

RandomNPC
2011-07-26, 03:05 PM
My group never cared to find out about the BBEGs past, they willingly skipped it and went on to fight him.

Had they paid more attention to the murals in the halls of the past they would've noticed everything they guessed about him was right, and then some.

He was a spoiled rich kid, who got tutoring in wizardry at a young age. His parents even hired him body guards, who he turned into undead minions at the first opportunity. He wanted a sizable kingdom with his name on it so his family name would last forever, but his family wasn't quite royalty level noble.

So he became a lich, gathering power, intimidating clans of bugbears, giants, and the like, into becoming his tax collectors. They gladly helped intimidate cities into paying tax, and after building six strongholds across a large area of land, the party showed up. They leveled his strongholds, fought to him, and were offered a job working for him, seeing as they were obviously better than his previous minions. That was the first time they destroyed his body. Three weeks later they get word of a talking skeleton trying to collect tax...

It took four years real time, and they still talk about that game.

KingofMadCows
2011-07-26, 03:34 PM
I find the villain's plan for achieving their goal to be more important than their motivation.

I played a campaign where the villain was a troll swiftblade who used to work for a blue dragon. He fled when his master's keep was invaded by an army. After he escaped, he became a bandit and pretended to be a regular stupid troll that was born with supernatural quickness. He was able to accumulate quite a bit of wealth by stealing from his bandit associates and escaping each bandit company right before things got too rough and some adventurers or army were sent to destroy them.

In the campaign, the troll had secretly became the leader of several groups of bandits and inciting hostilities between two rival cities. The rivals then hire bandits to attack each other, not knowing that the troll is secretly controlling most of the bandits in the region and getting rich off their conflict. The players even got to meet the troll several times but didn't realize he was the mastermind because he acted like a regular dumb troll. However, the troll's motivation is quite simple. He wants to get rich and live comfortably and have enough wealth to either protect himself from his former master or be able to appease his master.

Silus
2011-07-26, 03:59 PM
In my opinion, the best motivations are those that the players least expect.

First campaign I ran originally had a pretty well fleshed out BBEG that the party was going to hunt across the planes (The campaign later was turned into a horror game due to time restraints). The guy's backstory was as follows:

Originally a member of a well know adventuring party (Factotum/Mindbender/Ur Priest), the BBEG eventually settled down and had a family. At some point, his wife and child became very, very sick. He went to all the churches and temples that he could, but none had a cure. Soon after, his wife and child died.

So, seeing as the Gods wouldn't or couldn't bring his family back, he decided to take things into his own hands. The objective was to cause a stupid amount of chaos in the planes (unbalancing the Blood War, throwing the Elemental Planes into chaos, undo some laws on Mechanus, ect. ect) and, while the powers that be are distracted, slip into the Temporal Energy Plane and use the power of the Citadel of Eternity to reverse time and bring his family back.

So yeah, simple but unexpected reasons =3

Ravens_cry
2011-07-26, 04:19 PM
That wouldn't really work in D&D in all but the most low magic settings because there is a variety of spells for removing diseases, curses, and similar effects. So a 'couldn't doesn't work. 'Wouldn't', unless your pulling a Burning Hate, is rather out of character for ostensibly Good deities.

Tech Boy
2011-07-26, 04:46 PM
The want to just mess with the group of "Heroes".

The want of a "game to play".

One word: Moriarty.

Zonugal
2011-07-26, 05:05 PM
In my highly magitek campaign there are a couple galactic-wide villains.

One is a the leader of a world of purely plant-based creatures whose motivation is to wipe out not plant-based creatures as it sees them only bringing a true, inescapable entropy to the galaxy in the form of their industrialization & pollution. It allow sees vegetation, agriculture and such as a form of genocide against it's people and thus sends off bombs & missiles full of Yellow Musk Creepers as to infect the rest of the galaxy.

Another is the head of the XerVs, a coalition of Mechantrixs, Maugs and Mordrons looking to bring the galaxy back to a state of unity, order and systemic perfection. They see humanity and the like as an uncontrolled outbreak which must be realigned with the needs of the galaxy. With extreme militarization and heavy industry they send off thousands of soldiers to restore the galaxy to it's former clock-like glory.

The last is the Baron of Blood, a Vampire Lord who commands the vast legion of undead throughout the galaxy. In my campaign setting undead aren't intrinsically evil but rather act on behalf of the galaxy itself who commands them towards wickedness and vile individuals/scenarios. In this way the Baron of Blood works a lot like Ra's al Ghul from Batman in that he instructs shadows, mummies and lesser vampires to go assassinate kings or topple over societies.

Shadowknight12
2011-07-26, 05:17 PM
In my highly magitek campaign there are a couple galactic-wide villains.

So... Warhammer 40K meets D&D?

Zonugal
2011-07-26, 05:36 PM
In my highly magitek campaign there are a couple galactic-wide villains. So... Warhammer 40K meets D&D?

Basically but with some Chronicles of Riddick thrown in for good measure.

Notreallyhere77
2011-07-26, 06:37 PM
Have the villain tell them outright that he wants the same things they want. Money. Power. Sex. Land. Luxury. Fame. Why, as kindred spirits, do they insist on standing in his way? This forces the players to consider their own actions and motivations.
Even on their own, these desires can make a decent villain.

Greed has been done, but it remains a classic. But in this case, it's not the money, it's about what he wants to buy with it. Better gear, of course. Can't you identify with that? Who cares who he had to kill to get the money? How many goblin children will grow up fatherless because you wanted a shinier sword? Not so different, after all, are we?

The lure of power is a strong one. The villain wants better spells, a stronger combat technique, more finely honed skills. And he's picked an efficient method of advancement by causing all of this conflict. Sure, it can be shallow if he's just leveling for the sake of levelling, but maybe he's trying to see how far he can go before he dies.

Lust is a great one, if your players are mature enough to handle it. The PCs visit brothels all the time, don't they? Perhaps the villain has different tastes, or is jaded, or just can't find a big enough brothel to give him as much as he wants.

Conquest of land is a classic motivation that combines greed and power-hunger. Of course, it can imply a philosophical cause as well...

The villain, like the rest of the people in the world, wants to retire to a huge castle surrounded by servants and full of the best food and the softest beds and the finest music. Unlike most of the rest of the world, he's going to make his fantasy a reality by actually working for it.

Fame can be a good motivator. The villain wants to make a name for himself. If the PCs already have some celebrity, he can become famous for defeating them.

Best used on a group that has similar motivations.

One motivation that the PCs aren't likely to have is fear. An evil cleric fears the wrath of his god, and will do everything that god asks of him, no matter how vile. An evil barbarian fears weakness and old age, and must make a show of strength, if only to convice himself he is still strong. An evil aristocrat might fear loss of social standing, and will kill anyone who threatens his good name. A paladin antagonist should fear falling, and will follow orders to the letter, lest his honor be stained with sympathy for his opponents. An evil sorcerer fears death, and the hell that surely awaits him, so he becomes a lich.
The possibilities are endless, but keep in mind that a simple motivation with a complex method of execution is better than a complex motivation with a simple execution.

Brauron
2011-07-26, 07:28 PM
Love/Lust (both carnal and for power) are the driving force behind the villain of the game I'm currently running. She's a Marilith who lusts after Erythnul, and wishes to be made his blood-thirsty bride. To draw the God of Slaughter's attention, she's orchestrating the bloodiest war in the history of the world, which she sees as leaving at least 60% of the planet's population dead. At which point, she expects Erythnul to appear, smack her around a bit and then carry her off.

Axinian
2011-07-26, 07:47 PM
Love/Lust (both carnal and for power) are the driving force behind the villain of the game I'm currently running. She's a Marilith who lusts after Erythnul, and wishes to be made his blood-thirsty bride. To draw the God of Slaughter's attention, she's orchestrating the bloodiest war in the history of the world, which she sees as leaving at least 60% of the planet's population dead. At which point, she expects Erythnul to appear, smack her around a bit and then carry her off.

Kinky!

...

Moving on...

I've never really understood why people say destroying the world provides no gain for the villain. Maybe it doesn't in our traditional sense of the word "gain," but being able to do so provides at least some sort of mental or spiritual gain for the villain. It makes sense to them, and that's all that really matters, since only they need to understand their plan to carry it out.

Besides, the whole point of a megalomaniac's madness is often that it can't be fully understood

(unless the point is that it's relatible)

Gensh
2011-07-26, 07:56 PM
I actually have a pretty awful problem with this. I've yet to finish a game without the players switching to the villain's side before the end. :smallbiggrin:

Some examples:

The villain wants to incite/perpetuate a global civil war. Were the war to end, the economies of several nations would capsize, leading to widespread poverty. As a result, unrest would undoubtedly follow, leading to rebellions and civil war. Education would fail, and disease would run rampant as all available funds would be confiscated to fund multiple armies hardly better than a mob, who would only oppress their own people. Or so he predicts.

The villain is the prophesied son of a god exiled from the pantheon for committing an unspeakable act. This demigod will one day rise up to kill all the gods and establish a world-spanning empire. In order to do this, he'll first have to horrifyingly murder the monstrous corrupt bureaucracy of god-bloods that run the current world order, overthrow the omnipresent "big brother" church, and silence the rallying merchant lords.

The villain is a loose cannon vampire whom even the most powerful vampire lords have no control over. He's infamous the world over for killing every living thing in a certain large city in less than an hour. He also happens to teach necromancy at a prestigious academy where he teaches his students to act responsibly with their undead hordes and uses his own to viciously enforce a recent international peace treaty.

AtopTheMountain
2011-07-26, 08:02 PM
A villain I made started out as a freedom fighter who wanted peace. Two large kingdoms were constantly warring over his small but resource-rich nation, with them in the middle suffering for it. He got the idea in his head that the only way to truly stop the war was to completely eradicate both sides. Unfortunately, his method didn't work out as planned - he wanted control of artifacts that would make him the avatar of the god of storms and destruction, but when he got them, the god wanted to destroy the entire world rather than simply the two warring kingdoms. So the PCs (agents of one of the kingdoms, actually) stopped him. Not before a whole lot of devastation, though.

Pokonic
2011-07-26, 08:08 PM
To save his people.

To be exact, one of the big bads in my game came from a tribe of humans deep in a Mordor like area filled with monsters, dragons, and ogres, who have the advantige in this wasteland due to being bigger and able to somewhat tame the beasts that roam the area. Most die in there 30s, and the only other humans are raiders and canniables. They have been given no help from the kingdoms near this wasteland because there is no gain to owning this vast territory of nothing of value, and the reason they do not simply leave is because they are deeply mistrusted by almost everone else, and are decendents of the same group as the canniables/raiders.

However, one young hunter, wounded from attempting to steal a griffin egg, is found by a wandering necromancer/hermit. He than helps said necromancer to his village, offers him food and what little water they have.Shocked the necromancer than declares that, for the kindness shown to him today, he will teach a few young men and women the secrets to necromancy to the best he can.

Soon,the hermit died, but not before a few of his chosen deciples had apprentences of there own. It seemed like a gift of the gods: it alowed there greatest leaders,fighters,and hunters to live on and teach a younger generation arts that would be lost to them unless a past generation teached it. Soon, the raiders were wiped out, and the cannibals were willingly transformed into Ghouls as a form of ironic punishment. The outside world,however, knew nothing but that monsters on the borders were dropping.
Soon, however, it became apparent that soon the last of the few herds would finaly be gone after generations of feeding a growing population, and that growing food is impossable due to horrible soil. As such, in order to survive, Ajin Merrofall, Lich leader of the council, decides that it is best to invade other countrys in order to claim land that can be used to feed his people.

jidasfire
2011-07-27, 01:03 AM
A motivation that people often overlook is perhaps one of the most real-world, common reasons for people turning bad: bitterness. Plenty of originally happy, well-meaning people turn cruel, petty and selfish because their life didn't turn out the way they wanted it to. Usually they don't even realize they're doing it, but they come to despise happiness and decency and feel a great urge to squash these traits in others when they come across them, perhaps thinking they're doing the person a favor, to "wake them up" or "show them who they really are," or just for a dark, sardonic laugh. While it might seem like this would only work for small-fry villains, taken far enough, it could lead to someone who wanted to rule the world just to make everyone else miserable, or destroy the world out of spite.

claricorp
2011-07-27, 01:27 AM
My villains are githyanki who have recently freed themselves from illithid mind slavers and have gone into my game world. They seek to conquer and control everyone in order to fight an illithid menace, but after being cooped up so long as dominated slaves, they know little of diplomacy and are conquering kingdom after kingdom and turning them into either fighting vassals or protecting a nation with there powerful magic and military might, while its denizens toil as slaves, all in the name of protecting the world from an illithid threat that may no longer exist.

begooler
2011-07-27, 02:36 AM
One major hangup people have is assuming that villains have to be evil. Maybe nobody is evil, or even "misguided good", they might just be your rival.

For example, perhaps you're from warring noble families both intent on seizing the nation's throne. Good or evil doesn't have to come into it, it's just a squabble for wealth or power or honor or revenge. Maybe you're both good, just on different sides of a fight.

This. And what I like about it is that it keeps the players having to constantly analyze whether their actions are in line with their characters moral and ethical standpoints. When the group of bad guys is a bunch of devils, no one thinks twice before they get into the best attack position, roll initiative and start dealing lethal damage.

The other night, my players were in a fight with the baddie of the evening, and after they nonlethally KO her (she's a suspect, but she's a citizen who's afforded the due process of law,) they chop one of her minions, a warforged (scout, the miniature ones) in half with one lick. They didn't realize it only had 1 HD, and are shocked when it goes from healthy to a pile of bolts in one attack. Instantly they realize their mistake. What did the little guy do other than listen to its master? Do they even know if its master was evil?
They immediately go to the nearest temple to have Binny, the Consumer-Model Soulforged Baker, raised. They pay the 5,000gp for it!

Kris Strife
2011-07-27, 02:39 AM
really, dammit, now the A/C doesn't work. (I reccommend something equally comfort causing as the equal final answer)

I don't know where you live, but where I live, people have actually died because they lost air conditioning from power failures.

Yora
2011-07-27, 05:03 AM
conquering the whole world ... [doesn't] ... provide any gain

Calling you out on this.
Now you're deliberately altering my words to turn them into the opposite of what I said. The words you removed are "don't provide any gain by themselves".

For the quori, conquering part of the world is merely a means to a completely different end. They don't care for the world and don't want it, but right now they need to control a huge number of humans for their actual plans and that's done most effectively by becoming overlords of an empire.

Shademan
2011-07-27, 06:18 AM
So the BBEG is actually an artist the party has met several times.
You see, the nation is under a undead menace, and since Pelor is their monotheistic head honcho they are specially upset! having your face bitten off is bad enough but having it bitten off by HERESY!?

anyways, the artist is actually working for Pelor. sort of. Like how an artist despise his old creations as flawed and poorly made, so does he see that Pelor view his creation (life) as flawed. And since Pelor had always been there for him in his hour of need he would pay pelor back by wiping out all life and let him start over again with a clean slate.

gkathellar
2011-07-27, 06:49 AM
Now you're deliberately altering my words to turn them into the opposite of what I said. The words you removed are "don't provide any gain by themselves".

You don't think that ruling the world provides gain by itself? Because "I want to run everything" seems like a pretty solid goal. Sure, it can be a means, but it reads a lot more like an end. Saying that ruling the world doesn't provide any gain by itself is silly.


For the quori, conquering part of the world is merely a means to a completely different end. They don't care for the world and don't want it, but right now they need to control a huge number of humans for their actual plans and that's done most effectively by becoming overlords of an empire.

That's one example, sure, but for a human villain who does care about the Prime, "rule the universe" can summarize their desires pretty nicely. I mean, it summarizes my most grandiose and deluded desires pretty nicely.

Shademan
2011-07-27, 06:52 AM
Kinky!

...

Moving on...

I've never really understood why people say destroying the world provides no gain for the villain. Maybe it doesn't in our traditional sense of the word "gain," but being able to do so provides at least some sort of mental or spiritual gain for the villain. It makes sense to them, and that's all that really matters, since only they need to understand their plan to carry it out.

Besides, the whole point of a megalomaniac's madness is often that it can't be fully understood

(unless the point is that it's relatible)


I had villains once that were the reincarnated souls of creatures from another multiverse. the war of the old gods basically restarted the universe, made the planes and also tore a small rift into amother multiverse letting in a few souls.
these people would be reincarnated forever so they banded together and set out to remove the barriers between the planes, causing the multiverse to collapse unto itself and hopefully finally sending them back to their own so they could die

hamishspence
2011-07-27, 06:57 AM
"Emotional satisfaction" is a pretty good motive for characters in general.

May overlap with "physical satisfaction" if the character is addicted to adrenaline, endorphins, or some other exotic hormones. :smallamused:

Cerlis
2011-07-27, 07:07 AM
I'm not sure the circumstance required to just prevent the PCs from outright allying with the guy. But i think the most epic motivation would be for the villian to try to save his child. Perhaps he made a mistake years ago in selling his soul. He accidentally sold his first borns soul. The young boy of 10 or so is alive in this world, but his soul is in hell in easy reach of the demon lord. And if the father doesnt satisfy the demon everyday with mass bloodshed.....well...the boys screams can be heard throughout the city.

Dream_Merchant
2011-07-27, 07:15 AM
I had a group of 5 Lawful Good antagonists who wanted to reinstate Amaunator as a deity by collecting certain lost artifacts related to him and performing a ritual that would have drained a divine rank from several deities and reinstated him as a Greater Deity. Once some of the other deities got scent of this, they figured (with their own reasoning) that doing so would not just weaken them but also draw the unwanted attention of Ao, so they clandestinely made a pact of deities from several alignments to put an end to this heresy.

The adventurers naturally were not told everything but where recruited to find the antagonists and either find the artifacts first or eventually failing that, stop the ritual from taking place.

The antagonists were
LG Human Binder/Paladin/Knight of the Sacred Seal (Amon)
LG Human Cleric/Sunmaster
LG Human Monk/Sun Soul Monk
LG Human Bard/Paladin/Evangelist
LG Human Warlock/Enlightened Spirit

These people where neither misguided nor madmen going after the 'greater good'. They wanted to resurrect the fallen god of law and justice that they revered. Their minions were not ogres, vampires or demons, but golems, knights, binders and celestial beings who had no intention of killing the players but preventing them from completing their quest.

At the end when the players confront the antagonists they are told of their plan and given the chance to either allow them to complete the ritual or to do the final battle.

hamishspence
2011-07-27, 07:44 AM
But i think the most epic motivation would be for the villian to try to save his child. Perhaps he made a mistake years ago in selling his soul. He accidentally sold his first borns soul. The young boy of 10 or so is alive in this world, but his soul is in hell in easy reach of the demon lord. And if the father doesnt satisfy the demon everyday with mass bloodshed.....well...the boys screams can be heard throughout the city.

Sounds a bit like a variant on the movie Silver Surfer- leads a Planet Eater to various worlds, because "My service spares my world, and the one I love".

Shadowknight12
2011-07-27, 07:50 AM
At the end when the players confront the antagonists they are told of their plan and given the chance to either allow them to complete the ritual or to do the final battle.

That is exactly what I'm planning on doing as well. Should be interesting. :smallamused:

Yora
2011-07-27, 08:20 AM
There's one anime in which the antagonist attempts to cause several severe social issues to boil over and by that forcing a public debate about how society can overcome the problems that paralyze it. But at the current, people have just resigned to their fate and the whole country suffers. (Which is quite interesting, as Japan does have severe problems with facing social issues that everyone pretends to ignore.) However, his solution is to orchestrate large scale riots and secretly founding domestic terrorism. But without bodies piling in the streets, the people will not aknowledge the fact that society can't go on as it is.

One of my favorite movies is Princess Mononoke, precisely because of the ambiguity of the villains. (This includes several major twists, so don't read it, if you havn't seen it yet.)
It first seems so simple when the forest spirits fight the humans that cut down the forest to mine and process iron on an industrial scale. But then the human workers seem to be very decent and kind people who are completely loyal to their leader, because she gives a home and a job to lepers, prostitutes, and other outcasts who only wish for a better life and some respect, and producing iron is the only way they have to work for a better future. Eboshi is ruthless and calculating and not above using some very questionable methods, but she cares well for all the people that have no other place to go.
Then it turns out that the forest spirits, including San, are not exactly kind and peace loving either. They do have a point in attempting to stall the destruction of their home, but that doesn't make them nice guys just by that.
And then there's Jigo, who is probably the friendliest and nicest character in the whole movie. However, he works for the emperor and doesn't question anything he is ordered to do. He doesn't seem to want to harm anyone, but when that's part of his assignment, he does not have second thoughts.
You can't really hate any side, but you wouldn't agree with them either.

Choco
2011-07-27, 08:38 AM
Another take on the "Fighting for Survival" angle could be the villain's race simply need to eat other sentient races to survive. I introduced a race like this into my game (OK, so not really, I just refluffed Beholders into being like this), a race who's only food source is other sentient races and thus far no magic has been able to provide a replacement. Think like the Wraith from Stargate Atlantis, but without the cryochambers or the ability to eat themselves and/or go for decades without feeding.

The PC's eventually found the Beholder leader and asked him to explain why he was committing such tragedies, and he flat-out told them that it's nothing personal, it's just that his kind needs to eat them to survive. He then compared their situation to what would happen if, say, chickens were the only thing humans could eat, and then after centuries the chickens suddenly got smart and formed societies, and obviously started rebelling against their lot in life. What would the humans do? Would they stop eating chickens and die off cause it is the "right thing to do"? Of course not, they would do what needs to be done for the continuation of their race.

The PC's/players had no response to this, and after that little meeting both sides basically agreed that it is a matter of survival for each of them and unless an alternative was found, the fighting would continue until either the Beholders are wiped out, or the other sentient races are reduced to cattle.

Mono Vertigo
2011-07-27, 08:50 AM
There's one anime in which the antagonist attempts to cause several severe social issues to boil over and by that forcing a public debate about how society can overcome the problems that paralyze it. But at the current, people have just resigned to their fate and the whole country suffers. (Which is quite interesting, as Japan does have severe problems with facing social issues that everyone pretends to ignore.) However, his solution is to orchestrate large scale riots and secretly founding domestic terrorism. But without bodies piling in the streets, the people will not aknowledge the fact that society can't go on as it is.


That reminds me a bit of Akumetsu.
Long story short, there's that masked guy who starts killing politicians very violently. Corrupt/inept/evil politicians. The catch is, the guy seems to kill himself/die after each murder, but more masked guys just like him pop up over the place later; therefore, it's extremely hard fighting against those Akumetsu guys (beside, is it a whole group, or is it a single person coming back to life every time?), as they're not afraid to die, are very organized, and even more determined.
Akumetsu admits that he's/they're essentially a terrorist organization, but still fights for what he/they think is the economical greater good of his country. He's/they're also more lenient with politicians he doesn't consider evil... just slightly more lenient.
So, not as much of a morally grey manga as some other fictions mentioned here, but here, the terrorist happens to be the protagonist, and he's uncomfortably halfway between good and evil. With the right POV, and maybe the doubt over whether he's judged all his victims correctly, he can make a great villain.

Analytica
2011-07-28, 06:24 PM
There's one anime in which the antagonist attempts to cause several severe social issues to boil over and by that forcing a public debate about how society can overcome the problems that paralyze it. But at the current, people have just resigned to their fate and the whole country suffers. (Which is quite interesting, as Japan does have severe problems with facing social issues that everyone pretends to ignore.) However, his solution is to orchestrate large scale riots and secretly founding domestic terrorism. But without bodies piling in the streets, the people will not aknowledge the fact that society can't go on as it is.


Which one do you mean? Sounds interesting.

Ravens_cry
2011-07-28, 06:27 PM
It sounds like, from what I know of it, Code Geass.

Lowkey Lyesmith
2011-07-28, 07:20 PM
I have a villain who was the victim of an attempted rape by a nobleman. She managed to defend herself but in the struggle she killed the man. Since he was a nobleman and she a nobody she was sentenced to death. On the night before the sentence she was visited in her cell by a woman (a Devil/Succubus) that promised to set her free and give her all her heart desired as long as she signed a contract saying that she was effectivly the devils slave for 5 years.

Now she is bringing about the apocalypse and can't do anything about it.

The idea with this is that the group are going to find out and then have to decide what to do.

gkathellar
2011-07-28, 09:00 PM
I have a villain who was the victim of an attempted rape by a nobleman. She managed to defend herself but in the struggle she killed the man. Since he was a nobleman and she a nobody she was sentenced to death. On the night before the sentence she was visited in her cell by a woman (a Devil/Succubus) that promised to set her free and give her all her heart desired as long as she signed a contract saying that she was effectivly the devils slave for 5 years.

Now she is bringing about the apocalypse and can't do anything about it.

The idea with this is that the group are going to find out and then have to decide what to do.

I've got to say, while what happened to this woman you're describing is horrible and unfair, I don't think that it justifies knowingly signing a bargain with a creature of infinite evil. Especially considering she doesn't exactly come out much worse the wear for the deal (the devil is going to "give her all her heart desired," as you say). Whole thing comes across as kind of vain, selfish and Freudian excuse-ish.

Which is why I love it. Some of the very finest villains are hypocrites.

playswithfire
2011-07-28, 09:05 PM
Couple villains I've come up with or actually used:
Crusader//Pale Master (with some dips) who wages brutal war seeking vengeance for the destruction of the men who followed him in life (and whose corpses serve him in death) and the kingdom his was destined to rule before its destruction.

In a Rokugan type setting, a group of six Oni generals (each exemplifying one of the ability scores), who seek to return to the mortal world and conquer it. Starting slow, each plans to possess one of the scions of the great families, sowing discord and war among the human population, allowing the demons freer reign and forcing desperate mortals to summon more oni/demons to the mortal realm. Came with a bunch of lesser BEGs who were more the Xanatos type, jockeying for position via both palace intrigue and outright conflict.

magic9mushroom
2011-07-28, 10:24 PM
There are 3 evil characters I've introduced my PCs to.

The first is just out for herself in a general sort of way - nothing really villainish there. Basically her motivations are:

More land
More political leverage
More possessions
More magic power

(All of which feed into each other, of course).

The second wants stagnation (the motivation isn't strictly mine, though, since I co-opted it from something in an Eberron book).

The third is clearly insane, like most demon worshippers.

big teej
2011-07-28, 10:57 PM
I've got 2 to contribute as examples

1: love/reverence.

I've a barbarian who's goal in life is to become a daemon-prince... he wishes to do this because he sees it as the ultimate expression of worship and love for his diety.

2: for the greater good.
a necromancer who has effectively set up Dooms latveria through the use of undead.
the people are never hungry.
there is no crime
they do not have to work dangerous jobs/serve in the army.

but once they die they are added to the legions of undeath.

Lowkey Lyesmith
2011-07-28, 11:57 PM
I've got to say, while what happened to this woman you're describing is horrible and unfair, I don't think that it justifies knowingly signing a bargain with a creature of infinite evil. Especially considering she doesn't exactly come out much worse the wear for the deal (the devil is going to "give her all her heart desired," as you say). Whole thing comes across as kind of vain, selfish and Freudian excuse-ish.

Which is why I love it. Some of the very finest villains are hypocrites.

While thank you, that is actually part of what I was gunning for. The thing is I want the players to feel for her, maby hesitate when fighting her. But she is rotten to the core and she is doing what she does out of selfish reasons.

She is part of a group of baddies were all of them have gotten a deal from the same devil and all of them have "Freudian" excuses, but not a single one of them hesitates to do the evil they are asked to do. Wich in this case is wipeing out all Paladins and good Clerics in the land.

Yora
2011-07-29, 03:38 AM
It sounds like, from what I know of it, Code Geass.
That's suprising, because I meant
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
Seems it's really an issue that get japanese writers bothered.

Caewil
2011-07-29, 04:02 AM
Revolutionaries make great villians. Instead of gradually reforming an oppressive/hierarchal/feudal society they want to smash regardless of the short term human cost. They also usually want to control people "for their own good" to create an ideal Republic/workers paradise.

Yora
2011-07-29, 04:27 AM
Makes me think of Robespierre and Cromwell. The line between hero and villain can become very thin and subjective.

Cerlis
2011-07-29, 09:03 AM
That's suprising, because I meant
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
Seems it's really an issue that get japanese writers bothered.

interesting, cus i thought the guy from one was a jackass who went to far, and the other was a clever bastard.

I guess thats why alignment DOES matter.

Vknight
2011-07-29, 09:43 PM
Why nothing more then for your pitiful pantheon of gods to crumble so a new empire may rise. From this a phoenix shall emerge a bright new light to guide the people from the doom caused by the old gods.
The God Slayer planned to eliminate every god take there power and then use it to create a disaster leading to a war against the Feywild well he assumed the mantle as the one god. From there every person would come to worship him after the destruction and loss of the gifts of the gods which abandoned them. He would give them technology, power over the mind and a way to defeat these Feywild invaders.
The best part is he did. The old gods had died the 'Maker' had risen and the people grew of hundreds of years after the destruction caused. The setting evolving into an Eberron + Dragon Age setting.

Caewil
2011-08-01, 05:46 AM
Makes me think of Robespierre and Cromwell. The line between hero and villain can become very thin and subjective.
Exactly. And once you let the masses of people who have been oppressed for hundreds of years have their revenge on the ruling class, the result is mass bloodshed.

EDIT: Lenin comes to mind as well. Although here the line between hero and villain is a bit more obvious.

Yora
2011-08-01, 06:59 AM
Lenin has the advantage of having Stalin. Stalin was so terrible that he makes Lenin look quite good in comparison.

Analytica
2011-08-01, 09:19 AM
That's suprising, because I meant
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
Seems it's really an issue that get japanese writers bothered.

That was my first suspicion, somehow along with Paranoia Agent. I'll have to watch that again sometime soon. :smallsmile:

Maho-Tsukai
2011-08-01, 10:14 AM
What some people forget is that you can actually make a pure evil villain who dose not have a high-minded, sympathetic goal who is actually still effective as a villain if you know what your doing. A good example is Porky Minch, from the Mother series, from whom one of my most infamous BBEGs was based. That villain was thousands of years old, but he had gained his immortality at a young age everything had stopped aging after that, including his mind and maturity level. So yeah, he did not have a good motive, he did not want to create peace or destroy the corrupt, greedy upper-class or save the world or make a utopia. He was basically an extremely bored, immature, spoiled brat given phenomenal cosmic power and he used it to entertain himself by treating the multiverse as one big sims game, building empires, destroying lives and shaping history at his whims simply because to him it was enjoyable....kinda like a kid burning ants with a magnifying glass except on a massive scale.

Also, I had another BBEG who wanted to turn time back to the ancient past and keep it forever locked in that period not to gain power, but because he was nostalgic about those times and thought the current age was horrible and crappy. He was like the old man that hates modern culture and always waxes on about how great the 1940s-1950s where, but instead he was an ancient evil spellcaster who waxed on about how great and ancient times of his world was....needless to say he was different from my usual crop of world domination baddies. Nostalgia is a seriously under-used motive in my mind ,and one that deserves more attention, especially since it is VERY sympathetic to a lot of us.(I KNOW you watch the Nostalgia Critic.)

Yora
2011-08-01, 10:44 AM
The problem with villains who do evil for the sake of evil is that you can't negotiate with them, sabotage their opperations, bribe their minions, infiltrate their organization, and so on. All you can really do is find them and kill them.
This works for a simple dungeon crawl, but doesn't do much for me for more multi-layered campaigns.
In the real world, there are some really crazy criminals, but almost all of them have at least some kind of goal, even if their logic is completely twisted and messed up. But such villains can be tricked or lured, and there are ways to understand their motives and methods, which allows you to create plans to take them down.

Cerlis
2011-08-01, 01:11 PM
The problem with villains who do evil for the sake of evil is that you can't negotiate with them, sabotage their opperations, bribe their minions, infiltrate their organization, and so on. All you can really do is find them and kill them.
This works for a simple dungeon crawl, but doesn't do much for me for more multi-layered campaigns.
In the real world, there are some really crazy criminals, but almost all of them have at least some kind of goal, even if their logic is completely twisted and messed up. But such villains can be tricked or lured, and there are ways to understand their motives and methods, which allows you to create plans to take them down.

infiltrating orginizations is easy if you lie. you can sabatoge opperations in many form or fasion. Minions dont have the same goals as the leader. Order of the stick has a villian who does evil for evils sake, but Red Cloak, MitD, Tsusiko, and The new Goblin leader have very different motivations than Xykon. even if you couldnt convert them it would be easy to create some scenario where they let the PCs go, or trick them, or get them to doupt themselves and even betray xykon without allying with the PCs.

and i think the only scale of negotiation that would be impossible would be "stop what you are doing" it would be easy for a clever hero to think of a reason the villian should wait till later, to use some other device or means or sacrifice. giving the world and them time to stop him.

as long as your villian isnt one dimensional even those psychotic villians can be manipulated.

Tzi
2011-08-01, 02:24 PM
Most of the villains in the setting I am doing are merely just people defending their resources or territory.

The campaign is largely a wilderness exploration in which the party is the Louis and Clark expedition of the continent. Finding food and water often leads them to hostile animals or indigenous races of various types who are not eager to share, much less with colonizing peoples.

Das Platyvark
2011-08-01, 10:16 PM
My current BBEG is using his artificer-esque powers to build gods, because he decided the people need them. He is bringing the light of religion and civilization to the world, in the name of progress.

Yora
2011-08-02, 08:49 AM
infiltrating orginizations is easy if you lie. you can sabatoge opperations in many form or fasion. Minions dont have the same goals as the leader. Order of the stick has a villian who does evil for evils sake, but Red Cloak, MitD, Tsusiko, and The new Goblin leader have very different motivations than Xykon. even if you couldnt convert them it would be easy to create some scenario where they let the PCs go, or trick them, or get them to doupt themselves and even betray xykon without allying with the PCs.
Even though it's bad form to quote TV Tropes (because it will ruin your life), that's more of a Dragon in Chief (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DragonInChief). The villain does not have to be the head of the antagonist party, merely the driving force behind their actions.

Edge
2011-08-02, 09:11 AM
Wanting to undo their mistakes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_M02sPapWds). (Warning, spoilers for Wakfu).

Doesn't sound that villainous, but when the character's goal requires life-force as fuel, harvested on the near genocidal scale...

Yeah, Nox is an excellent villain.

Guancyto
2011-08-02, 10:29 AM
destroying all life in the universe

I don't really comprehend this sort of motivation, but it's pretty useful for a more straightforward campaign, or one of widely varying alignments. SilverClawShift's log of her Crystal Cantrips campaign, for instance, had a villain who wanted to replace all other sentient life with his own unified hive-mind. SCS played a thoroughly evil warlock in a party with a guy who was pretty much a paladin. There were conflicts, but the warlock's loyalty was never in doubt because once the extent of the villain's plan became clear, nobody would want him to succeed. (Except his very small cadre of very broken minions, and most of them were dead by the time the kid gloves came off.)

Now if a villain is destroying all life on the planet, and they have some sort of escape plan for them and theirs, that's just a bloodier type of world conquest.

Shademan
2011-08-03, 10:29 AM
I don't really comprehend this sort of motivation, but it's pretty useful for a more straightforward campaign, or one of widely varying alignments. SilverClawShift's log of her Crystal Cantrips campaign, for instance, had a villain who wanted to replace all other sentient life with his own unified hive-mind. SCS played a thoroughly evil warlock in a party with a guy who was pretty much a paladin. There were conflicts, but the warlock's loyalty was never in doubt because once the extent of the villain's plan became clear, nobody would want him to succeed. (Except his very small cadre of very broken minions, and most of them were dead by the time the kid gloves came off.)

Now if a villain is destroying all life on the planet, and they have some sort of escape plan for them and theirs, that's just a bloodier type of world conquest.

some people are just not sane.
I had a villain that wanted to destroy all life on the planet because in his mind it was the greatest possible act of poetry and perfection.

Ovaltine Patrol
2011-08-03, 02:04 PM
In the Pathfinder campaign I've been running, the PCs are the retainers of a noble family, out to glorify their patrons with their exploits. The villains the players faced at lower levels had fairly base motives: slaving for profit, take over the city, etc. Their adventures have served to "make their star ascendant," in a city obsessed with glory. Having basically hogged all the glory, the villains are now a cabal of rival families who're trying to get their own homeland invaded so they can win glory in its defense (they think they'll be better prepared than the others since they have foreknowledge).

CarpeGuitarrem
2011-08-03, 02:10 PM
Well, let's see.

In the campaign I'm currently running, there was an antagonist whose motivation was to capitalize on the chaos of a rebellion in the world, so she'd play along with one side, then the other, with no real regard for anyone, even her little brother, who didn't meet her standards of strength. Anyone lesser was just a tool to be used. She wanted power. When the first half of the campaign (we're picking it up with half 2 in about a month) ended, she'd become a victim of the Big Bads, the empire that was being rebelled against.

This empire is motivated by various things, because it's led by a metaphorical pantheon of humans with advanced technology/power. Their primary motivation is to breed a more perfect human, so the entire world (it's not a very large world, mind you) is a sealed-off experiment designed to control the population and produce a "world without sin". Although some motivations of power have woven their way in there as well.

You could really heavily mine A Song of Ice and Fire for good villain motivations. Some of the villains are cruel and sadistic, some are power-hungry, some are misguided, some believe they have a duty to perform. And some of them aren't quite bad enough to be straight villains.

Jay R
2011-08-03, 06:55 PM
"What if I unite all the legions of the world under my banner? What if I ruthlessly crush all opposition to my rule? What if I force all the kingdoms in the world to bow down before me, and send tribute every week?

"Boy - then I bet I could meet a girl!"

Caewil
2011-08-03, 09:19 PM
"What if I unite all the legions of the world under my banner? What if I ruthlessly crush all opposition to my rule? What if I force all the kingdoms in the world to bow down before me, and send tribute every week?

"Boy - then I bet I could meet a girl!"

Sounds like this story (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_of_Norway).

Jay R
2011-08-04, 10:45 AM
Sounds like this story (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_of_Norway).

Oh, well done. Well done indeed.