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vcvcvc12
2011-11-04, 08:00 PM
Title speaks for itself. Do you make tragic anti-villains who could easily be described as Good, do you make unimaginably evil abominations that would commit unimaginably horrid atrocities for the fun of it, or is it somewhere in between?
Mine usually lean towards the former or towards pragmatism, although I do make the occasional sadistic crazy person.

Shadowknight12
2011-11-04, 08:09 PM
I've run practically every inch of the spectrum. It depends on the story we're trying to tell with the players. Usually I have several "villains," of varying degrees of "evil," to evoke a richer contrast. I tend to play with gray morality, however, with examples of altruism in the characters' enemies and utter amoral cruelty among their allies. So it all tends to come down to each individual NPC.

Anxe
2011-11-04, 08:12 PM
I usually go for Undead monstrosities that will kill anything in order to prolong their life further. However, I am never able to make villains that are more evil than my players. *sigh*

I once went for a guy who thought he was good, but the players didn't like that campaign very much.

Gensh
2011-11-04, 08:13 PM
My villains can vary, but as a trend, they frequently espouse extreme utilitarianism. Unfortunately, the traditional adventurer's mindset is more than compatible with such a philosophy, so about half the time, the party defects to the Evil side and revels in not having to put up with the arbitrary restrictions often associated with Good or polite society. Very much like the original villains themselves, the party will see the world as gray and grey and enjoy doing all the mean and nasty things, combined with debatably doing what's right for everyone.

On the other hand, my current group showed absolutely no mercy for the nihilistic ex-paladin who was the brother of one of the PC's mentor, so like I said, it balances out between groups in the long run.

Das Platyvark
2011-11-04, 10:02 PM
I have a penchant for trying to make the villains quite despicable, but not especially worse than the good guys. (Or else, have a motive that serves the common good) So long as the pcs get a little guilt in killing them.

Conners
2011-11-05, 05:42 AM
I actually have a villain who is an attempt at the most evil being in fiction. At points, he has traits of anti-villainous, to make it all the more messed up... but I consider that just part of the ludicrous chaotic mess that is trying to understand him.

Viktyr Gehrig
2011-11-05, 07:38 AM
I prefer to play games that are very dark grey in moral tone-- games in which there are Paladins on both sides, and they're sometimes forced to ally with Blackguards.

So my "villains" run the full spectrum from Exalted to Vile. I don't ever, ever do more than imply anything worse than that; I made that mistake once when a WoD Storyteller asked me to play the villain for him.

Yora
2011-11-05, 07:40 AM
Not very. My villains are usually goal orientated. They want something and use very questionable methods to get it, or they even just want something that is unaccaptable for the PCs.

Dr.Epic
2011-11-05, 10:52 AM
I turn it up to 11!:smallwink:

Frozen_Feet
2011-11-05, 11:42 AM
My players are so bad at this hero stuff, I usually find it easier to oppose them with ordinary sane people. Or rather, their out-of-whack wanton villainy naturally comes to conflict with all that's good an holy. :smalltongue:

So a lot of time, the answer is "not at all" - rather, I try to set an example of what a virtuous character would look like.

Of course, I have managed to creep my players out with a fairly simple trick that turned their own malevolence against them: the following was a reply to my players cursing the draconic laws of the local world Empire:

"You think the laws are insane? What kind of a guy do you think set them? Here's a thought experiment - you know how your group sociopath wants to rule the world. What if the only difference between him and the Emperor is that the Emperor got there first?"

This, after said group sociopath had spend half an hour describing different torture implements he wanted to his ship. I never needed to have the Emperor on-screen again, and my players were still mortally afraid of him. :smallbiggrin:

In free-form games, I experiment a bit more. I like playing villains, as they open up many venues for deconstructing acts and motives of the hero.

My main imperative is: never make a villain without a point. No matter what attrocities they commit or what reasons they give for the PCs to oppose them, I make them be at least part right. In my mind, it isn't enough for a real hero to just defeat a villain, they must prove themselves better at it - and I prefer to set the bar high. Sane and personable villains are where it's at. It's a hero litmus test of a sort - can they best the villain without stooping to their level?

Herabec
2011-11-05, 11:55 AM
I have tragic anti-villains in the campaign who do the wrong things for all the right reasons.

I have omnicidal maniacs who used to be paladin-esque heroes.

...

Really, I have 'villains' all over the spectrum.

Lord Tyger
2011-11-05, 12:10 PM
My players tend to be morally dubious, at best, so I prefer to set up multiple potential big bads, in opposition to each other, and let them decide who they want to fight.

In the current campaign, this will be a vampire sorcerer who freely and cheerfully admits he's a horrible monster, and a cosmic horror looking to establish itself as the ruler of the world.

prufock
2011-11-05, 12:35 PM
Unless I'm running a module, I tend towards shades of grey. That doesn't mean they aren't despicable, but they usually have good reasons for what they do (to varying degrees). Examples:

- in a M&M campaign I ran, there were two main villains. One was a charismatic man of the people. His goal was to promote mutant rights by any means necessary, much like Magneto, but using the people to do his dirty work and furthering the schism between human and mutant. He orchestrated a mass prison break of mutant convicts that he felt had been unjustly imprisoned - which meant all of them. It isn't really a stretch to call him "evil," because he had no regard for humans, but he never killed anyone, never fought the PCs (he'd just teleport away), and was loved by a large portion of the mutant community.

The second villain was a man at the opposite end of the spectrum. He ran an underground organization dedicated to wiping out the most dangerous mutants through assassination. He had actually discovered that the anti-mutant propaganda - that they are dangerous, unstable, etc - was all true, and had the stats to back it up.

- A different M&M campaign had a museum director as the main villain. He had been reading an ancient book, and had become obsessed with the ideas contained within - most importantly, immortality. His obsession would take over his life and lead him to do some truly nasty things to get what he wanted, however the real villain of the story was the book itself. While it would be wrong to say the museum director was not in control of his own actions, it was the book that was influencing him.

- In a 3.5 campaign (this one is a bit cliche) the main villain was a wizard who had, many many years ago, lost the woman he loved. No type of resurrection spell would work, and he became more and more infuriated at what he thought was the gods' refusal to allow her to come back, of course there was only one option - become a god.

Herabec
2011-11-05, 12:40 PM
- In a 3.5 campaign (this one is a bit cliche) the main villain was a wizard who had, many many years ago, lost the woman he loved. No type of resurrection spell would work, and he became more and more infuriated at what he thought was the gods' refusal to allow her to come back, of course there was only one option - become a god.

Huh. That sounds remarkably like the backstory of one of my villains. :smalleek:

Though, replace becoming a god with KILLING THEM ALL. XD

NichG
2011-11-05, 01:20 PM
I tend to try to make it so no matter how evil they are, its for a purpose. I suppose there's also a place for the big irrational evil that doesn't care if it destroys itself in the process as long as it gets to make the world suck for people (a kind of inverse altruist), but I haven't really used that.

My least evil villain was probably this guy who, living in Planescape, wanted to know what reality was like underneath the beliefs of people - if there was something that was actually true, or if everything was belief. The problem was, he didn't realize that doing this the way he was proceeding could potentially wipe out sections of reality if he was wrong and there wasn't an underlying truth. The party simply figured out a better way to test it and teamed up with him.

My most mindlessly evil villain was a spirit being that had been imprisoned long ago, away from sources of spirit energy. To survive it had started consuming a different type of energy, one based on the degradation of what others cared about. Unfortunately, in the setting, this energy is sort of like super-addictive steroids. It makes you dependent, powerful, and dumb. So by the time the creature got out thousands of years later it was a monstrously powerful colossus that just sort of marched across the landscape corrupting things and eating their purpose to sate its addiction. Big, dumb, pointlessly destructive, but not really insidiously evil beyond the nasty effect.

As far as insidiously evil things, I had a player with a Musteval PC who drew from the Deck of Many Things and got enmity with an outsider. As such, there was a Rakshasa who was trying to make her life miserable over some imagined slight. When some of her old friends had come to town, the Rakshasa basically shapechanged into her, intercepted them before she found out they had arrived, killed them, and implicated her in the murder. Again, not quite the epitome of evil.

Falconer
2011-11-05, 01:31 PM
I always try to give my villains a fairly human motivation, which I'll try and justify through at least a vague backstory. Even if they've become a lich or something, they still want something that you or I or someone in the world could conceivably want. They might want to be very rich, they might want power or fame or all the knowledge in the world or something like that. It's the extremes they go to for that end that determines how evil they are.

If my villain is human/oid, at least, I'll still try and give them some humanizing (but not necessarily redeeming) qualities--they have a family they'll try to make sure is alright, they like art or music or books. If they're authority figures, they might have a non-evil friend who has also risen in the world, and call in or do a favor for them. Basically, what I go for in my villains is showing that they're evil, but not mindless, cackling, one-dimensional "Bwa-ha-ha!" machines. They're evil, sometimes monstrously evil, but it's still a very human (or humanoid) sort of evil.

Mastikator
2011-11-05, 01:38 PM
Only as evil as they need to be and as much as makes sense. Some may not even be evil at all, and may be opposed to the PCs because it's the PCs that are the evil ones.
I always avoid having a group of "the bad guys" and a group of "the good guys", there are on the other hand "just a bunch of people who are trying to survive in this crazy world" and unless there are demons or something like that I wouldn't deprive a peaceful resolution from the PCs, if they don't want a combat scene I'm just not gonna make them.

Dienekes
2011-11-05, 01:42 PM
The widest of ranges. I prefer games with moral ambiguity so that the players can pick which side they wish to be on, but every once in awhile I throw some of the darkest most vile creatures I can think of at them.

When I'm in a mood to throw one of those at them, if I don't get my players to feel disgusted at the very depths that individuals can sink to I feel I have not done my job right.

flumphy
2011-11-05, 01:57 PM
It depends on the tone of the game I'm running. There are times when over-the-top omnicidal maniac is acceptable or even called for.

Generally, though, I like to give my villains a logical, human motivation. The best villains are generally ones you can understand and empathize with. I wouldn't say all of them could easily be described as good, but I try to have solid reasons for the evil acts they commit.

Strormer
2011-11-05, 03:22 PM
As with most DMs, my villains run from mostly good to baby eating and everything in between. Usually by primary villains have a tendency to be dangerous villains who will do some despicable things, but they are doing it for a reason that they feel justifies all their actions. They almost always have some code that controls what they are willing to do, just like real psychopaths. Then again, I studied some of that in my forensics classes so I learned a lot about the psyche of the evil douche.

Crossblade
2011-11-05, 03:30 PM
My last villain was power hungry to no end. In his research he kidnapped a baby (the 1 pc in the solo campaign, as an infant), killed one of his fellow former adventuring party members (twice, actually), tortured a bronze wyrm (though he didn't know the wyrm was allowing it to prevent the villain from torturing other, younger dragons) and killed his own daughter... after she tried to raise an army to defeat him, so she could conquer the world using his plan.

Mixt
2011-11-05, 04:01 PM
Those blasted humans, they go around killing baby dragons with no provocation, just because they are dragons.

Mama Dragon is not pleased, now she is coming to avenge her children.

BURN HUMANS BURN! FILTHY CHILD KILLERS! MURDERERS!

And there we have our villain, and her motivation.

Oh yeah, and she's no normal dragon.

"Wait what do you mean she's got Class Levels and Divine Rank 0? :smalleek:"

Traab
2011-11-05, 04:09 PM
THIS EVIL! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GP2JPwbtq0g&feature=related)

Strormer
2011-11-06, 12:23 AM
Those blasted humans, they go around killing baby dragons with no provocation, just because they are dragons.

Mama Dragon is not pleased, now she is coming to avenge her children.

BURN HUMANS BURN! FILTHY CHILD KILLERS! MURDERERS!

And there we have our villain, and her motivation.

Oh yeah, and she's no normal dragon.

"Wait what do you mean she's got Class Levels and Divine Rank 0? :smalleek:"

Time for soul splice. I'll take familicide for 500, Alex. ^_^

Herabec
2011-11-06, 01:36 AM
Time for soul splice. I'll take familicide for 500, Alex. ^_^

"What was the name of the dragon who was killed by Vaarsuvius in Order of the Stick, then reanimated and was the subject of a Familicide spell? Thirty seconds on the clock."

Arcran
2011-11-06, 01:46 AM
Heh, I have a villian that is basically the Joker. He's about to blow up a hospital.

Silus
2011-11-06, 02:42 AM
Only ran one game, but I had two "villains".

First was a "fake" one that the party assumed was evil, but was just someone from their organization sent ahead of them to take care of the task that they were sent there for.

The second was the "real" villain. It was, in fact, a reality warping Genius Loci. That infini-spawned Advanced Evolved Shadows. And Nightwalkers/Nightwings/Nightcrawlers/Nightwaves. Thing killed for the sake of killing (and for the yummy souls).

shawnhcorey
2011-11-06, 08:54 AM
I take a page from creative writing: all villains are heroes of their own story.

Villains that do random "evil" things are usually locked away before they get too much power. I find such villains unbelievable. Who would follow them?

My villains are intelligent people who are doing they best to save the world. They believe what they're doing is for the good of society. And they believe they are the best person to do the job. Example: Hitler. These are the types of people that others will willing follow. That's what makes they so hard to defeat. Most of the rest of society think you're a traitor and an anarchist for opposing them. Sure, things don't always work out correctly but just think how bad things would be if Villain wasn't in charge.

That's why I dislike D&D simplistic alignment system. Label someone evil and they get to do bad things while everyone else puts up with them... except for the PCs. And when the PCS finally do them in, everyone (who was completely indifferent before) cheer and shout and think they're heroes. Not very realistic.

Conners
2011-11-06, 09:02 AM
Villains that do random "evil" things are usually locked away before they get too much power. I find such villains unbelievable. Who would follow them? History would disagree with you. So would the genocided Jews in WW2.


That's why I dislike D&D simplistic alignment system.

Label someone evil and they get to do bad things while everyone else puts up with them... except for the PCs. And when the PCS finally do them in, everyone (who was completely indifferent before) cheer and shout and think they're heroes. Not very realistic. It's rightly dislikable.

Of course, I'm not sure DnD forces villains to be stupid evil... except with Chaotic Evil, that is.

flumphy
2011-11-06, 09:05 AM
I take a page from creative writing: all villains are heroes of their own story.

Villains that do random "evil" things are usually locked away before they get too much power. I find such villains unbelievable. Who would follow them?

My villains are intelligent people who are doing they best to save the world. They believe what they're doing is for the good of society. And they believe they are the best person to do the job. Example: Hitler. These are the types of people that others will willing follow. That's what makes they so hard to defeat. Most of the rest of society think you're a traitor and an anarchist for opposing them. Sure, things don't always work out correctly but just think how bad things would be if Villain wasn't in charge.

That's why I dislike D&D simplistic alignment system. Label someone evil and they get to do bad things while everyone else puts up with them... except for the PCs. And when the PCS finally do them in, everyone (who was completely indifferent before) cheer and shout and think they're heroes. Not very realistic.

I actually run with the "1/3 of people are evil" mentality. My main antagonists are far from the only ones who would ping on the paladin's radar; the campaign's villains just happen to be especially powerful or especially twisted.

Shadowknight12
2011-11-06, 09:07 AM
I take a page from creative writing: all villains are heroes of their own story.

Villains that do random "evil" things are usually locked away before they get too much power. I find such villains unbelievable. Who would follow them?

My villains are intelligent people who are doing they best to save the world. They believe what they're doing is for the good of society. And they believe they are the best person to do the job. Example: Hitler. These are the types of people that others will willing follow. That's what makes they so hard to defeat. Most of the rest of society think you're a traitor and an anarchist for opposing them. Sure, things don't always work out correctly but just think how bad things would be if Villain wasn't in charge.

That's why I dislike D&D simplistic alignment system. Label someone evil and they get to do bad things while everyone else puts up with them... except for the PCs. And when the PCS finally do them in, everyone (who was completely indifferent before) cheer and shout and think they're heroes. Not very realistic.

Although I completely agree with you on the alignment bit of your post, I find this approach to be too simplistic. White and White or White and Gray morality is just too saccharine for me. Some people don't delude themselves into thinking they're doing good. Some people just don't care. Some people actually derive pleasure from the suffering of others. We all have a sliding scale of Schadenfreude, and there are people who would laugh at the sort of thing most of us would cringe at. And some people are just desensitised. They just don't really care if a baby is dying of exposure in their front step.

And the scariest part is that it can happen to anyone. That's right. People aren't born sadistic or uncaring. They're made. Take any teenager who spends his whole day looking at shock sites. They will gleefully tell you how cool they are because they can watch real people or animals being brutally tortured and murdered and find it all amusingly entertaining. Are they 'evil'? Can they be rehabilitated, or is the damage done permanent? If empathy can be wiped away like grime, they won't be 'the heroes of their own story.' They'll just be themselves, going after their desires and not really caring who gets hurt in the process.

And who'd follow those people? The kind of people who follow those who have power, regardless of how sociopathic they might behave. Morality is something you learn, not something you're born with. Take any village who is under the thumb of someone with no empathy, and you bet your rear end that he won't be instilling them any ethical values that would prevent them from following him.

No, not everyone who opposes a protagonist believes herself to be the heroine of her own story.

shawnhcorey
2011-11-06, 09:57 AM
History would disagree with you. So would the genocided Jews in WW2.

Hitler was very charismatic and very popular. He was elected Chancellor of German, yes, that's right, elected. And he firmly believe that his Final Solution was what God wanted him to do. It said so in the bible, at least, according to him.


Although I completely agree with you on the alignment bit of your post, I find this approach to be too simplistic. White and White or White and Gray morality is just too saccharine for me. Some people don't delude themselves into thinking they're doing good. Some people just don't care. Some people actually derive pleasure from the suffering of others. We all have a sliding scale of Schadenfreude, and there are people who would laugh at the sort of thing most of us would cringe at. And some people are just desensitised. They just don't really care if a baby is dying of exposure in their front step.

No, they're not desensitized. They're psychopaths; they lack the ability to empathize with others.

And very the most horrendous serial killer justifies their actions as good. They're teaching others how not to be victims. They only attack those who are a burden to society. The patient was suffering too much and it was a blessing to terminate their pain.


And the scariest part is that it can happen to anyone. That's right. People aren't born sadistic or uncaring. They're made. Take any teenager who spends his whole day looking at shock sites. They will gleefully tell you how cool they are because they can watch real people or animals being brutally tortured and murdered and find it all amusingly entertaining. Are they 'evil'? Can they be rehabilitated, or is the damage done permanent? If empathy can be wiped away like grime, they won't be 'the heroes of their own story.' They'll just be themselves, going after their desires and not really caring who gets hurt in the process.

Yes it can happen to anyone but some people are predisposed to anti-social behaviour. According to leading psychologist Dr. Robert Hare, about 20% of psychopaths end up in prison, as oppose to less than 1% for the general population. But just because you are a psychopath doesn't mean you are destined to a life of crime. 80% of psychopaths are not.

This whole argument of is it nature or is it nurture seems simplistic. Often, it's a combination of both.


And who'd follow those people? The kind of people who follow those who have power, regardless of how sociopathic they might behave. Morality is something you learn, not something you're born with. Take any village who is under the thumb of someone with no empathy, and you bet your rear end that he won't be instilling them any ethical values that would prevent them from following him.

Psychopaths can be very charming when there's something in it for them. Just don't cross them.

If you're interested in psychopaths, I suggest Dr. Hare's book, Without Conscience (http://www.amazon.com/Without-Conscience-Disturbing-World-Psychopaths/dp/1572304510).


No, not everyone who opposes a protagonist believes herself to be the heroine of her own story.

I think of it as the other way around. The antagonist is going about his business and the protagonist interferes with it. Then the antagonist decides to do something about this interfering busybody.

Mixt
2011-11-06, 09:58 AM
Oh boy.

Take a look at these excerpts from one of the stories i read.

From the villains point of view.

She found the drake not far away from him, deep in the corridors where the stench grew worse. One of her brood who lay in a pool of blood, every scale ripped from his body to reveal muscles that glistened with black. As her breath took in the poisoned air around her she gagged again. She forced her steps onwards.

They'd never be able to clean the blood from the ground even if they scrubbed for the rest of eternity. Without their skin and scales to hold it in, the blood flooded the floors.

They had stolen his beautifully coloured hide. They hacked off claws and wing webbing, and left every invaluable part of the body to the insects. She called out for someone, anyone; her children, other dragons, anything that would answer.

Nobody did.

She found a room full of subdued hatchlings, with the short collumns squatting beside empty nests and what had once been a rainbow of children. She felt nothing but dim fascination.

We all look the same without our scales…

And here lay the hunt, all around her, buzzing with flies and the putrid stench of decay. It was a good hunt. They must have taken home so many scales for their pretty little armour, enjoyed butchering the children all around them. Nothing had been safe from the humans. Nothing.

Her children lay scattered across the cavern like a massacred flock of birds. Arrows jutted from some of their tiny bodies, others burned with magical fire, some slit from end to end by blades as other wounds bubbled with poison that ate through their scales…

In the centre lay her eldest daughter, as still and bloody as her brother had been.

In silence, she picked her way through the bodies of her children. She knelt by each one, listening for tiny breaths, but the hush went unbroken. Still she knelt, still she listened. More and more, the hope within her shrank.

She laid a hand on her eldest daughter's snout. Jagged wounds marred it, congealed with dried blood. When she pressed her forehead to it, her vision swam. Something wet trailed down her cheek.

She felt fine. Didn't she? She didn't feel anything right now. Couldn't.

… Why didn't the tears stop? She was fine! Death… death happened...it was only...

Her hands clenched and shook. Her throat made an unnatural sound. She clamped her jaws shut, screwed her eyes tight.

Where does it stop? How many more will die? Is there even anyone left?

Then she heard them.

Footsteps and distant whispers reached her ears. She pressed a kiss to her daughter's forehead and stepped back.

The humans spread out around both walls, bleary eyed and blinking, all wearing the scales of her kin. There were so many of them. How many? Four dozen? Five dozen? More? She saw bandages, deep gashes on their faces, and some had lost eyes or entire noses. Her beloved children had not gone down without a fight…

She thought she knew anger. She was used to the heat of fury, the liquid magma of rage that took her limbs with a fever and had her lash out in blindness, leaving her shaking for hours.

This coldness was foreign, a sinister stillness that settled within her, steadier than any stone, deadlier than any snake.

There's your villain.
Take that and convert it to a campaign, use that as the villain's motivation.

Now the question is, what the hell do the humans think they are doing?

Conners
2011-11-06, 10:10 AM
Hitler was very charismatic and very popular. He was elected Chancellor of German, yes, that's right, elected. And he firmly believe that his Final Solution was what God wanted him to do. It said so in the bible, at least, according to him. Hitler wasn't really that religious. He just didn't like Jews. He did consider himself to be marvellous, and anything that went wrong was someone else's fault, of course.

Also, by elected, you mean he used the brown coats to bully and terrorize the other parties, and cheat himself into an elected seat, before pulling a fast one and instating himself as dictator and Fhurer (however you spell it), right?

Hitler did a lot of crazy stuff... They stopped trying to assassinate him late in the war, when they figured out he was doing more bad for his own side than good. Heck, I heard he wouldn't go through on an important plan because the stars weren't aligned correctly...

Arminius
2011-11-06, 11:14 AM
Hitler wasn't really that religious. He just didn't like Jews. He did consider himself to be marvellous, and anything that went wrong was someone else's fault, of course.

Also, by elected, you mean he used the brown coats to bully and terrorize the other parties, and cheat himself into an elected seat, before pulling a fast one and instating himself as dictator and Fhurer (however you spell it), right?

Hitler did a lot of crazy stuff... They stopped trying to assassinate him late in the war, when they figured out he was doing more bad for his own side than good. Heck, I heard he wouldn't go through on an important plan because the stars weren't aligned correctly...
Just because he is crazy, doesn't mean what he was doing was random. Hitler, and the Nazis in general didn't think of themselves as the bad guys. Some of them probably did just like killing, but most of them, even the ones who ran the death camps were probably fairly sane. That is just what you get when you have centuries of anti-semitism, popular racist theories, rampant nationalism, traditions of unquestioning obedience, and an economy where money is more useful to burn than buy firewood with.

A large amount of Hitler's support came from the middle class, who saw the brown coats as protectors from the communists. Interestingly, once he took power, many of the brown coats(who took the "socialist" part of national socialism seriously) started threatening to overthrow him if he didn't act more socialist. They also hurt his support from the middle class by their poor public behaviour. These things led to SA leadership(and a good deal of other opponents) being purged, and the rise of the SS. In the early years of his rule, Hitler also did seem to be turning things around. The Germans' standards of living rose, unemployment dropped, Austria was brought into the German fold, and the German military was rebuilt regardless of what Versailles said. Once the war started, the opening stages were quickly done and with low casualties instead of the bloody stalemates of WWI. It seemed like giving Nazism a try worked. The real trouble, from a Nazi standpoint is that Hitler overextended himself with the USSR. But by the time things turned south, Hitler had won the Germans' trust. The only ones who thought they could replace Hitler were army officers, many of whom had never quite warmed to Nazism anyway. Most people still trusted him or saw no alternative.

As to his religiousity, that is a deal more vague. He was raised Catholic and seemed to think himself an agent of "divine providence", but what his true religious beliefs were probably died with him.

By and large, what Hitler did was rational, IF you accept the Nazi view of the world, much of which wasn't so unusual then. The main reason why we no longer believe the sorts of things the Nazis did is because they took those ideas to their logical conclusion, and we didn't like that destination one bit. It would be nice to think that Hitler was some kind of monster who ate babies for breakfast and spent a good deal of time gibbering incoherently. With hindsight, we can say that Nazism(or any historic belief or ideology for that matter) is crazy, but that wasn't so clear back then. If we were Germans at that time, there is a very good chance that we would have been Nazis. Indeed, maybe future generations will look at something most of us now take as granted or accept without questioning and ask "What were those fools thinking?".

To veer this post a bit closer to the topic, this is the sort of thing I like in my villains. Villains who are evil, know it, and embrace it strike me as unbelieveable. People just don't think that way. Villains with a flawed world view are more interesting and realistic imho.

Shadowknight12
2011-11-06, 11:15 AM
No, they're not desensitized. They're psychopaths; they lack the ability to empathize with others.

That is a biased assumption, which later on you use to justify your argument. Empathy can be diminished due to desensitisation to the pain and suffering of others. Regardless of whether they classify as psychopaths or not (pro tip: a mere lack of empathy does not a psychopath make. There's a an actual list of symptoms that professionals use to diagnose psychopathy, and it's actually fairly common for two professionals to disagree on a given diagnosis), that's patently not what I was talking about.


And very the most horrendous serial killer justifies their actions as good. They're teaching others how not to be victims. They only attack those who are a burden to society. The patient was suffering too much and it was a blessing to terminate their pain.

That's not by any means a general occurrence. People have wildly different coping mechanisms and explanations for their actions, and serial killers are not exempt of that.


Yes it can happen to anyone but some people are predisposed to anti-social behaviour. According to leading psychologist Dr. Robert Hare, about 20% of psychopaths end up in prison, as oppose to less than 1% for the general population. But just because you are a psychopath doesn't mean you are destined to a life of crime. 80% of psychopaths are not.

Firstly, I never actually said anything about predisposition for psychopathy or not (since I never talked about psychopaths). I said that you can achieve a decrease of empathy via desensitisation, and you can achieve this on practically any subject of your choosing. Whether they may or may not be psychopaths after such treatment is irrelevant.


This whole argument of is it nature or is it nurture seems simplistic. Often, it's a combination of both.

And yet you're dimissing disensitisation as a factor and arguing that it's a predisposition, which means that it's you the one making a reductionist argument. Not to mention how you keep assuming I'm talking about psychopaths.


Psychopaths can be very charming when there's something in it for them. Just don't cross them.

Yes, psychopaths are adept at simulating rapport, charisma and developed social skils. Third-graders know that. I wasn't talking about psychopaths. Remember above when I said that lacking empathy was not enough to diagnose a psychopath? Guess what? I wasn't talking about psychopaths. There are plenty of empathy-deprived people who behave in decidely non-charming ways and still manage to hold sway over people. That's an example of a way this can happen. There are plenty more, and "psychopath's charm" is merely one of them.


If you're interested in psychopaths, I suggest Dr. Hare's book, Without Conscience (http://www.amazon.com/Without-Conscience-Disturbing-World-Psychopaths/dp/1572304510).

Yes, thank you, I'm quite familiar with Dr. Hare's books. It's quite hard to miss his contributions to the field, after all.


I think of it as the other way around. The antagonist is going about his business and the protagonist interferes with it. Then the antagonist decides to do something about this interfering busybody.

Be that as it may, I would suggest you to re-read the post I quoted, where the implication is not that the antagonist sees herself as the protagonist of her own story. The implication was that she sees herself as the hero (or heroine) of her story. The nuance is subtle, I understand, but crucial. A protagonist is a very neutral term that it's hard to argue against. However, the associated meaning in the word "hero" carries implications that I can actually sustain an argument against. Some people don't see themselves as heroes. Some people either don't care, acknowledge that they don't fit in with the list of traits commonly associated with such a word, or just don't desire to be one.

Protagonist? Arguable. Sure, why not. Hero? Now that's something that's simply factually untrue.

shawnhcorey
2011-11-06, 11:35 AM
Just because he is crazy, doesn't mean what he was doing was random. Hitler, and the Nazis in general didn't think of themselves as the bad guys. Some of them probably did just like killing, but most of them, even the ones who ran the death camps were probably fairly sane. That is just what you get when you have centuries of anti-semitism, popular racist theories, rampant nationalism, traditions of unquestioning obedience, and an economy where money is more useful to burn than buy firewood with.

I find Hitler closer to being an authoritarian. To find out what an authoritarian is, you can read Bob Altemeyer's free PDF book, The Authoritarians (http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/).


Yes, thank you, I'm quite familiar with Dr. Hare's books. It's quite hard to miss his contributions to the field, after all.

Then you know that Dr. Hare's definition of psychopathy is someone who is lacking in empathy. I'm only going with his definition; you obviously have a different opinion.

And I'm not dismissing the effects of the environment on the individual; I'm de-emphasizing it.

Yora
2011-11-06, 11:46 AM
In the early years of his rule, Hitler also did seem to be turning things around. The Germans' standards of living rose, unemployment dropped, Austria was brought into the German fold, and the German military was rebuilt regardless of what Versailles said. Once the war started, the opening stages were quickly done and with low casualties instead of the bloody stalemates of WWI. It seemed like giving Nazism a try worked. The real trouble, from a Nazi standpoint is that Hitler overextended himself with the USSR. But by the time things turned south, Hitler had won the Germans' trust. The only ones who thought they could replace Hitler were army officers, many of whom had never quite warmed to Nazism anyway. Most people still trusted him or saw no alternative.
It wasn't until the 60s that the people here in Germany actually realized what they did wrong, when the first generation that had not been indoctrinated became adults and tried to make sense of why Germany was full of foreign troops and everyone regarded us as evil.
However, some other former axis powers still havn't had any public discourse of their dark past or came to an understanding that they did some things that were not so great. It seems to slowly start in Austria in the last years, now that pretty much anyone who was actually involved is dead.

Shadowknight12
2011-11-06, 11:57 AM
Then you know that Dr. Hare's definition of psychopathy is someone who is lacking in empathy. I'm only going with his definition; you obviously have a different opinion.

He uses that definition as a layman's term in order to help his reader understand what he's saying. Scientists do that all the time. See, for example, an explanation of Quantum Physics to non-physicists or the way a doctor explains to the parents what it means for their child to have Type I Diabetes. I assure you that the actual diagnose of psychopathy is far more nuanced and complex than that.


And I'm not dismissing the effects of the environment on the individual; I'm de-emphasizing it.

And as someone with an understanding of genetics, I am de-emphasising the effects of predisposition on the individual.

Dienekes
2011-11-06, 04:25 PM
Hitler was not elected, he never held majority and merely made deals/bribes to get appointed to the position.

Also while folks may view themselves as the protagonist of their own story that doesn't mean that there cannot be a rather blatantly evil group or leaders working things along, and being followed. The mongols for instance created the largest empire in the world, and ended up allowing the spread of ideas and technologies along the Asian continent, however the conquerors themselves were a rather bloody, ruthless people who needed to be talked out of burning, pillaging, and raping the majority of China. Because they wanted to.

Or you could look at the ever colorful Borgia's who have been accused of about every crime I can think of, and their only goal seems to be grab as much power as you can and use that power to live as hedonistic as you can get away with.

Spider_Jerusalem
2011-11-06, 06:39 PM
Actually, I started DMing my running campaign by complete accident (a couple of friends called me to play a new campaign and the guy who would DM decided he didn't prepare it well enough, so they made the guy who got there late, aka me, start DMing an improvised campaign), so I decided to try something different than actually preparing a story and dropping the characters into it. Instead of having a story with roles already decided (this NPC is the villain, that NPC is the good guy), I just created the NPCs and wrote down their stories and motivation. If they are seen as allies, enemies, heroes, rivals or villains is up to the players.

This had some interesting effects.

First of all, the creation of the "BBEG" of the campaign. On one of the first game sessions, the group found a hidden path on the city sewers, which led to an abandoned hideout with an altar dedicated to Hel (the Norse goddess, yeah). After searching the place for a few minutes and fighting a few human skeletons, the party heard some chanting behind the locked door that led to the altar. The players, apparently thinking their characters were part of a videogame RPG or something, decided they would rest for eight frigging hours in order to regain their spells before fighting "the boss of the dungeon". They did so, and the necromancer inside, completely unaware of their presence, got what he wanted from the Altar and left through the other door in the altar's room. Then they woke up, and found nothing but two other skeletons and an open chest when they finally went into the altar room.

One of the players, who played a sorcerer focused on electricity spells (who, obviously, worshipped Thor), suddenly decided that that escaped necromancer was actually his character's nemesis, and that's how Mr. Unnamed Human lv2 Necromancer lived to become the BBEG of the campaign. He got a name after that, all right, and a better motivation than "He was looking for this altar to steal an old scroll with a powerful necromantic spell". By "powerful", I mean it was a simple scroll of Wrack.

So, knowing that any random NPC can become important to the player characters, why should I care about saying "this is the good guy" or "this is the villain" to the players? It has worked well so far.

As for the title question, I usually don't create NPCs intending them to be villains, though some of them are created with a disposition to oppose what the PCs are searching at the moment. Besides that, being the players who decide who is their villains, these villains can be anywhere on the alignment spectrum. Hell, one of the player characters has actually ended up becoming a villain for the others! And I really want to know how THAT will play out.

JohnnyCancer
2011-11-07, 05:44 PM
My most recently concluded campaign included a cabal of villains that used human sacrifice to maintain seals binding an evil daemon away and tried to animate a necropolis full of the heroic dead in order to sic them on the daemon's host of minions; all because the villains wanted to protect their homeland. Then there was the daemon itself, who wanted to unmake the world.

Mikeavelli
2011-11-08, 03:30 AM
With almost every villain I create, my goal is for the players to ask the question, "Should we even really be killing this guy? I mean... He's got a point."

There was a cabal of wizards that existed for the sole purpose of sealing and re-sealing eldritch abominations, any single one of which was capable of destroying the majority of the planet if it got loose. Despite their necessary and important function, they were very bad people, being willing to do whatever it takes to fulfill their objectives. They also didn't make a habit of telling anyone what they were doing that was so important, so the players started killing these guys off.

Weirdly enough, they were such complete ***** that my players kept killing them off even after it was explained in detail the vital function the cabal was playing in keeping the world a nice, safe place for humans to continue to live in.

---------

Another one was a carnival of halflings, Whisperknives (group was named after the prestige class, but it included a wide spectrum of PC classes) who were responsible for a string of "Murders" across the country. Each of those murders was justified, the victims had killed or brutalized a halfling, and their crime had gone unpunished by society at large.

PC's let'em go.

-------


REALLY evil villains still pop up from time to time, creatures that are just doing stuff for the evulz. They're demons, devils, Daemons, and sometimes Aberrations. They're being evil because it's in their nature, or because they don't even fall on the same moral axis that we do. This generally happens when I'm sick to death of moral complexity.

_Zoot_
2011-11-08, 04:49 AM
Well, my best thought out villain (who the party never met as a villain, because they decided to work for the same country that he does) is the sort that would stop at nothing to achieve his goals, but it motivated by patriotism and his sense of Duty.

I was looking forward to what the party thought of him, as his motives are understandable, his soldiers are not *evil* and he doesn't have an evil laugh, but none the less, what he was prepared to do would have been seen as 'evil'.

Kioku
2011-11-08, 10:54 PM
I like to build villains as full on characters, give them a backstory, figure out their motives, the works. Only after I know their motives and what actions they will take / have taken, do I give them an alignment. Right now I've got a slew of serious campaign adversaries - they run the spectrum. One is LG, one is LN, one is CN, one is NE, one is even NN.

Beowulf DW
2011-11-08, 11:20 PM
In a recently ended Pathfinder campaign, towards the final battle, our DM threw an adventuring party at us. Our paladin told us that they were not evil. They threw themselves at us and gave us the best fight of the campaign. Our paladin fought their Barbarian, our fighter fought their fighter, our magus did battle with their sorcerer, and our druid mercilessly killed their archer for killing his animal companion.

In the midst of this battle, I realized that we were fighting ourselves, in a way. We had spent the past few months battling a theocracy that most people thought was benevolent. In weeks we had undone the work of centuries of conquest and unification. I could hear the enemy quest giver, "These evil men have spread destruction across our land, unchecked. Now they are at the gates of our capitol, our last bastion of hope. Go, and defend your city."

Realizing that we were the villains to so many people, even though our cause was just was an interesting experience. In essence, to those NPCs, we were the misguided villains doing what we thought was best.

Jay R
2011-11-09, 01:09 AM
In my superhero games, I tend to use ones straight out of the comics, and I might or might not change their names. Most recently, I ran the Crime Syndicate (evil versions of Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Flash and Wonder Woman).

In Flashing Blades, I use Richelieu as a game starter, not a villain - about halfway between history and his portrayal in the original book The Three Musketeers, rather than the absurd characterizations in the more recent movies. The PC's enemies are the enemies of France (or personal rivals).

My D&D villains can be anything from Neutral Hungry to Greedy Evil to Lawful Egomaniac to Chaotic Stupid to True Psychopath, depending on the need.

Edit: I left out Snotty Good. That makes a great villain.

ILM
2011-11-09, 05:11 AM
I'm firmly with shawnhcorey on that one. I have never met or heard of anyone who ever both:
a) was in the process of doing evil, and
b) self-described as evil.
In fact, I've never seen or heard of anyone self-describing as evil, except repentants and angsty teenagers with first-world problems (see "what alignment are you" threads).

From the lowliest thief to the mass-murderers of history, they all have excuses and reasons and it all makes perfect sense if you look at it their way, except of course something is fundamentally wrong in the way they do look at it. People are mean, or dumb, or unworthy, or there's some kind of a Higher Purpose (tm) and they're here to take care of everything.

The villain of my campaign is working with something like an elder evil that's out to ruin the world - not destroy it, really, just plunge it into horror. Said villain isn't doing it because he's mean; he's doing it because they asked for it, they all mocked him, they never gave him proper respect and he couldn't get a break, and boy will he show them. Plus he's going to get infinite power out of this, he can't pass up this opportunity. It's not like he's actually going to kill anyone anyway (other than those who try to stop him), they'll get used to living in constant fear eventually. And if the above elder evil goes on a rampage on occasion, well there's nothing he could do to stop it even if he wanted to. So he's doing it out of greed and pride and envy, and in his mind it's all their fault in the first place. No nyuk-nyuk-nyuk-I'm-team-evil-and-I-love-it going on here. He's not evil, the rest of the world is.

Of course, he believe all that all he wants; in reality he's just another sociopathic bastard, and firmly in LE territory.

Lord Vukodlak
2011-11-09, 07:47 AM
I have villains of all kinds.
Rothgrim Imperial Commander, he burned down all the houses in a village as punishment for there suspected sheltering of rebels. He only spared the fields and the people due to the damage it do to tax revenue.(and only after it was pointed out to him).

For him its about keeping order at any price he believes the ironhand is the right path to stability.

I also had a monsterious villain who sold werewolf pelts. Pelts he harvested himself. Now It should be remembered that when a lycanthrope dies they revert to human form. Yet he still had a bunch of wolf pelts. They were alive when he stopped to skin them.

In my last campaign there was a Queen Xeal who ordered the destruction of two major cities killing tens of thousands of people. The after effects rendered both cities uninhabitable making tens of thousands more homeless. She used what was in essence a magical weapon of mass destruction. She also destroyed one Colony to a powerful empire that was setting up shop on the north side of the Continent.

Just_Ice
2011-11-09, 12:58 PM
Most of my villains are people that are too lazy (or busy) to clean up their messes, and consistently make messes.

Often there will be a genuinely cruel or malicious person of power helping the party and never turning on them, just because they hate the villain that much.

Dienekes
2011-11-09, 01:19 PM
I'm firmly with shawnhcorey on that one. I have never met or heard of anyone who ever both:
a) was in the process of doing evil, and
b) self-described as evil.
In fact, I've never seen or heard of anyone self-describing as evil, except repentants and angsty teenagers with first-world problems (see "what alignment are you" threads).

From the lowliest thief to the mass-murderers of history, they all have excuses and reasons and it all makes perfect sense if you look at it their way, except of course something is fundamentally wrong in the way they do look at it. People are mean, or dumb, or unworthy, or there's some kind of a Higher Purpose (tm) and they're here to take care of everything.


I don't think anyone is saying that a villain doesn't have a motivation, just that their motivation cannot stand up to scrutiny. Such as, you're bullied therefore you want to take over. That nation exists therefore I want to conquer it. Or the sadly common power is it's own reward motivation.

Lord Vukodlak
2011-11-10, 04:48 PM
I don't think anyone is saying that a villain doesn't have a motivation, just that their motivation cannot stand up to scrutiny. Such as, you're bullied therefore you want to take over. That nation exists therefore I want to conquer it. Or the sadly common power is it's own reward motivation.

Define stands up to scrutiny as those are real life examples. Someone who is pushed around a lot may want to take over so no body can't push them around anymore. And plenty of people have sought power for its own sake.

Comics provide the real motivations that don't stand up to scrutiny. Such as someone who invents an Invisibility cloak to rob banks and armored cars instead patenting it then selling it to the U.S government for billions of dollars.

Lamp shaded here, quite amusingly.
http://senseofrightalliance.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/did-somebody-in-burbank-say-theres-no-bbbbbats.jpg

valadil
2011-11-10, 04:50 PM
I find monstrously evil to be ineffective. I want my villains to be self righteous jerks who believe they're making the world a better place, but have gone a step or two too far. This makes them both more believable and more relatable. It also gives them some subtlety. The players can interact with a villain like this for quite some time without realizing that he's gone too far.

Lord Vukodlak
2011-11-10, 04:53 PM
I find monstrously evil to be ineffective. I want my villains to be self righteous jerks who believe they're making the world a better place, but have gone a step or two too far. This makes them both more believable and more relatable. It also gives them some subtlety. The players can interact with a villain like this for quite some time without realizing that he's gone too far.

Those villains are good but its nice to see the how nine yards of villains. The group of monsterously evil creatures could be used to justify the Self-rightious jerks.

Jayabalard
2011-11-10, 06:21 PM
Title speaks for itself. Do you make tragic anti-villains who could easily be described as Good, do you make unimaginably evil abominations that would commit unimaginably horrid atrocities for the fun of it, or is it somewhere in between?
Mine usually lean towards the former or towards pragmatism, although I do make the occasional sadistic crazy person.mostly I do realistically evil; if I want to do unimaginably evil I usually go with some sort of eldritch horror that the PC's can't even relate to.

jguy
2011-11-11, 12:48 AM
I've only really done one big campaign that had a BBEG. It was an Eberron Campaign and the villain was named Ruubagall. He was a Titan spirit from Xendrix when Giants ruled. I had ruled that current giants were degenerate titans in that setting.

What he did was tricked the players into getting his spirit back into xendrix and even back into his old castle. Inside housed the God Machine, what was used to originally make the Elf race. He possessed the spirit of the Drow High Priest that was guarding the castle, which the players had killed. From there he vowed to rebuild the God Machine, as he was the architect and the current one was broke, and use it to remake his body and reestablish the giant empire while destroying the Dragons of Argonia.

Considering I had stated his out his final form to be a Titan with access to 9th level cleric and psion spells, he could succeed.

Oh, and the God Machine was the logical conclusion I came too from what the Warforge Forges were originally based off of. Being able to manipulate matter and create souls. A literal God Machine.

Dienekes
2011-11-11, 12:18 PM
Define stands up to scrutiny as those are real life examples. Someone who is pushed around a lot may want to take over so no body can't push them around anymore. And plenty of people have sought power for its own sake.

Comics provide the real motivations that don't stand up to scrutiny. Such as someone who invents an Invisibility cloak to rob banks and armored cars instead patenting it then selling it to the U.S government for billions of dollars

The discussion was that everyone is the hero of their story, and the discussion that villains are doing the best they can but are wrong and somehow flawed making the players need to take them down, regretfully.

While such a story can be fun, my argument is only the more aggressively and blatantly evil exists. Conquering for the sake of conquering, and the power mad hedonism are such examples. They did exist, they found followers, and they were effective and can be effective villains. There motivations do not stand up against the preconceived notions that they think they're good. If they are done well they can make as fun a campaign as any other.

Also, hilarious comic.

GeekGirl
2011-11-11, 03:14 PM
On a scale of evil, I trya and put mine right around this guy (http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Dukat). I feel If im on par with him, I'm going in the right direction.


http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20070318030760/memoryalpha/en/images/9/9d/Dukat-closeup.jpg

Brauron
2011-11-11, 05:04 PM
The villainess of my current campaign is a Marilith who is manipulating centuries-old enmities between the races of the world into a global war, essentially as a way of saying, "Will you be my Valentine?" to Erythnul. She's forged an alliance between the "Savage Races" (Goblins, Orcs, Hobgoblins, Bugbears, Ogres, Trolls, and the various evil True Giants), who in my world were all created by Erythnul, and a particularly nasty off-shoot of the Dwarves who believe they are predestined to enslave all of humanity, the Elven race, and the uncorrupted Dwarves. The evil dwarves and the "nation" of orcs and goblinoids have joined armies and are marching westward (they inhabit the two eastern-most lands), destroying everything in their path, while tribes of "Savages" living in the western lands are rising up and causing havoc, destroying crops, etc., to weaken the "Civilized Races."

The Marilith has two primary underlings: First off is an Ogre Mage with a couple levels of Fighter and a powerful magic sword that is the symbol of divine right of rule among the Savage Races, allowing him to summon them all to his banner, and by extension, the Marilith's banner. Not really aware of the Marilith's goals, the Ogre Mage is basically fighting for the rights of his people -- arguing that the Savage Races are truly no more Savage than the Civilized Races, but they've been driven from every wholesome country to make way for human and elven expansion, treated like monsters for the color of their skin, forced to raid and pillage just to survive. Is it any surprise, then, that the oppressed should rise up and try to reclaim some of what they've been robbed of?

Second underling is the King of the evil Dwarves, who has been fooled into believing that the Marilith is an emissary of his god, Hextor, and that she has set him upon a divine crusade to purify the world of infidels and expand Hextor's dominion across the globe. He's not exactly pleased with being forced to ally with the Savage Races, but sees it as Hextor's will that he do so, and contemplates, once the Glorious Crusade has been completed, the complete enslavement of the Savage Races, and in battle arranges the battle lines so that the Ogre Mage's forces take the brunt of every attack against them, ensuring that they'll be weak when the evil Dwarves are ready to claim them as slaves.

Coidzor
2011-11-11, 06:09 PM
Well, my cap is as evil as you can get without bringing sexual wrong-doing into the picture. Well, most sorts of it, anyway, bastard sons/daughters growing up to become heroic figures and gank their mother's babydaddy is just good clean fun, after all.

Though, it's sort of up to one's individual taste if one views destroying entire planes/planets impersonally as more or less evil than viscerally killing and torturing entire peoples personally or with minions.

And I've not really done a whole lot of villain crafting at the personal level just yet, I've got a couple of pages marked "Put Thayan analogues here" or "Come up with a substitute for the Githyanki as pirates here." ...And I think a "Come up with the freakiest Necromancer here that's not a necrophiliac," every now and then, but that's more because I'm a fan of things like the Sedlec Ossuary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedlec_Ossuary) and skeletal butlers with hinged ribcages that open up and contain a minibar and have those little snooty mustaches (http://drmcninja.com/archives/comic/4p35/).

LibraryOgre
2011-11-14, 11:16 PM
The Mod Wonder: This thread is closed. If you wish to restart it, please do so without becoming a discussion of modern political issues.