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View Full Version : How Would You Show A Villain To Be Truly Evil?



Leliel
2008-04-20, 03:19 PM
As far as my BBEGs go, I have a habit of making them more anti-hero than true baddie; Not truly bad people, just mentally tormented persons who have tossed coventional morality out the door in their search for a (undeniably good) end. Besides giving the PCs moral doubts about killing them, it also serves to give them evil counterparts; A sort of warning to the world of heroes of "this could have been, and could still be, you...":redcloak: :miko:

Somtimes however, I feel the urge to make a true scumbag. A villain that does not, and can not, be anything that one could call remotely redeemable, or even human.

Of course, there is the "lazy" way of doing so-make him a member of an evil church-but I believe that both (A) cheapens the impact, and (B), does not account for the villain's actions beyond, "He's evil!"

So I perfer to do it the "hard" way: Not allege anything about the villain's alligences or powers, but to show what he does with them.

In short, Raping the Dog (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RapeTheDog), as TV Tropes would put it.

So how would you have your BBEG silence any doubt about his evilness?

hamishspence
2008-04-20, 03:25 PM
Start of Darkness did it pretty well:
where a teenage Xykon has his zombiefied granny kill his parents for letting a recruiter into his room

Its really more the attitude you want them to project, players don't have to see the acts to know this guy is, as the saying goes, bad to the bone.

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-04-20, 03:26 PM
Torture, murder, all that jazz. The villian is assumed to be evil, and if you have him capture one of the PCs favorite NPCs and Mindrape them onto his side, the PCs will stop caring about his motivations.

bosssmiley
2008-04-20, 03:27 PM
I think the one word that might be of interest to you here is: 'wanton'.

The villain doesn't do cruel or vicious things because he is compelled (as would be typical of the fallen Knight Templar type); he does them for gits and shiggles. :smallannoyed:

The secret is show, don't tell. Have the BBEG wreck things and kill people that mean something to the PCs out of sheer malicious, 'can't touch me, so to hell with you!' devilment.

Ralfarius
2008-04-20, 03:27 PM
What I need is a villain that's almost a caricature. Completely amoral, takes joy (or amusement) in the suffering of others. Does not bat an eye at overkill and outright slaughter, just not to the hindrance of overarching plans. Will kill NPC's to which the PC's have grown close, perhaps to get at the PC's (or just for amusement).

In short, sometimes you need Xykon.

hylian chozo
2008-04-20, 03:30 PM
Since you're familiar with TV tropes, I'm sure you know that a doomed hometown (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DoomedHometown) is a great way to introduce a villian.

kamikasei
2008-04-20, 03:31 PM
Bosssmiley has it right. I would phrase it as, "have him do something he can't possibly be justifying to himself as 'for the greater good'". Make it clear to the players that, while he's doing evil things, he doesn't have any need to excuse them in his own mind or others'.

I guess the real question is, how extreme do you have to make his actions to counteract the conditioning you've put your players through to assume any villain has a noble ulterior motive? That's the one real variable that needs to be plugged in; the rest of the formula is simply "have him do things he knows well to be evil, just because it suits him to do them, without apology or any inkling that he should apologize".

DrizztFan24
2008-04-20, 03:32 PM
The heroes enter a large, grand chamber hall. You see someone sitting on the far side of a long table. They are being served by what appears to be a black smoke; it is carrying a covered, silvered platter. The something sitting at the far end of the table lifts the lid on the platter and reveals a cooked baby! You hear a deep, masculine voice explain that winter babies are always a bit more tender than those born during the summer.

This way the BBEG shows an air of confidence and control by sitting down to dinner while being invaded. He also seems truly horrendous as he is eating a baby... Does that work?

hamishspence
2008-04-20, 03:37 PM
makes me think of that Blackadder 2 episode:
"and did you mention the baby-eating Bishop of Bath and Wells?"
"I did, my lord"
"And what did he say?"
"He said "I AM the baby-eating bishop of Bath and Wells!"

Inyssius Tor
2008-04-20, 03:40 PM
Walls painted with blood. Eyeballs on strings. Dead people (very, very dead people) who the players care about.

kamikasei
2008-04-20, 03:40 PM
Baby-eating is oh-so-very passe. And I'm not being flippant... well, I'm being a little flippant. But yeah, there are things, like that, which you can't really see someone doing except to consciously demonstrate how very evil they are. Better if they display their evil in pursuit of some goal that actually makes sense.

hamishspence
2008-04-20, 03:43 PM
hard part is balancing "Oh my, this guy is Eeeeevil" with grossing out the players and wrecking the game. DM needs to know the player's "comfort zone" That said, there are a few good sourcebooks for setting up a Villain: Vile Darkness, Exemplars of Evil, Champions of Ruin, Heroes of Horror.

hamishspence
2008-04-20, 03:52 PM
Quite a lot of movies use musical theme when villain arrives on scene. Might work for some games, depends what sort of game.

Nikolai_II
2008-04-20, 03:58 PM
Just do it the easy way. (The Rich Way) - Have a Lich and have him kill everything for fun. :smallwink:

Saihyol
2008-04-20, 04:05 PM
First don't try to explain why the villain did what he did.

Make the bad guy in-human (not in the sense of being an Orc)- in Silence of the Lambs the calm look in Anthony Hopkins eyes as beats the guard to death or the comment that his pulse didn't increase while eating someone were more chilling to me than the image of the crucified guard.

Villain forces someone else to be evil - have the PCs find a weeping villager outside a burned out cottage who was forced to set fire to it (with his neighbor and family inside) to save his own family. Have a small settlement forced to sacrifice ten virgins and hang their corpses from the palisade for a month or be destroyed and let the party see that.

Defending himself with innocence - PCs storm into the BBEG's main hall to find him sat on his throne with fifty young children chained to the floor around him to use as shields and prevent any aoe by the party, though this doesn't stop the BBEG dropping fireballs and turning the children into screaming candles. Alternately if you don't want them to be hampered in combat have him declare he has 50 children held prisoner just as they are about to beat him and he'll draw them a map if they let him go. Of course the map might end up reading 'I prepared explosive runes this morning' and they later find the children who have starved to death.

Wanton/casual evil - prisoners who can't help him any more are fed to the pet wolf/tiger/lizard - obviously whatever use they had wears out quickly as the pet seems to be surrounded by 50-60 skulls.

Saihyol
2008-04-20, 04:09 PM
makes me think of that Blackadder 2 episode:
"and did you mention the baby-eating Bishop of Bath and Wells?"
"I did, my lord"
"And what did he say?"
"He said "I AM the baby-eating bishop of Bath and Wells!"

Awesome I'm not the only one quoting BA

Also quite worried about how easy that list of evil things was to write...

ArmorArmadillo
2008-04-20, 04:15 PM
As much as being evil for evil's sake or out of cruelty shows evil, I think it strains disbelief much in the same way the "evil church" does.

What I think is best is an act, although ostensibly "for the greater good" shows the villain commiting an act that visually shifts his focus from that greater good to his own evil aims. Redcloak is a bad example, because he's such a tool.

An example of this would be a mage who experiments with undeath. He claims that he does this so that he can save his kingdom from the superior armies of the orcish empire. The players fight him because he begins stealing live subjects, and is clearly evil, but he still gets to claims some sense of "greater good."

However, once the players catch up to him, they find he has turned the armies of undead he claimed were to help defend the kingdom back onto the kingdom, and has allied himself with the orcs to take command of both nations. Furthermore, the order of patriotic warriors who helped him build the army have been slain at his hand.

This kind of story demonstrates evil without being touchy-feely "anti-heroic" or evil for evil's sake, and I think it makes for a better overall villain.

Jayngfet
2008-04-20, 04:25 PM
"so sauskes cooler eh, well I've got your screaming bloody wife on line 2 rooting for lee"

Nerd-o-rama
2008-04-20, 04:31 PM
Have him kick a puppy.

MeklorIlavator
2008-04-20, 04:37 PM
I think this method could work well:
Storytime with Skjaldbakka

Green Bean
2008-04-20, 04:39 PM
Baby-eating is oh-so-very passe. And I'm not being flippant... well, I'm being a little flippant. But yeah, there are things, like that, which you can't really see someone doing except to consciously demonstrate how very evil they are. Better if they display their evil in pursuit of some goal that actually makes sense.

Exactly. Instead of baby-eating, you should try baby-wearing. Find some babies, give 'em Rings of Sustenance so you don't have to feed them, and tie 'em to your armour. Guaranteed to slightly increase the bad guy's resiliency and cause serious alignment issues for any Good characters. If you have a particularly high strength bad guy, you should switch to toddlers. They're still young enough to be innocent bystanders, but they're old enough to beg for mercy.


Wow. I'm going to the special hell, aren't I.

kamikasei
2008-04-20, 04:50 PM
Exactly. Instead of baby-eating, you should try baby-wearing. Find some babies, give 'em Rings of Sustenance so you don't have to feed them, and tie 'em to your armour. Guaranteed to slightly increase the bad guy's resiliency and cause serious alignment issues for any Good characters. If you have a particularly high strength bad guy, you should switch to toddlers. They're still young enough to be innocent bystanders, but they're old enough to beg for mercy.

Heh heh heh (http://wiki.rpg.net/images/2/2b/MPost186-Motivator9c7fb21bccd76a202edbe8382c.jpg).

Randel
2008-04-20, 04:53 PM
A few ideas.

1). No sense of empathy- the villain simply doesn't care how much he hurts people. If they are in his way he forces them out of his way by either killing, maiming, or shoving them (based only by how much power he can afford to waste to move them). Torturing people isn't something he enjoys, its just "that thing I do to people to get them to do what I want." Though he's likely to do something cruel just because he likes to see how they react.

2). No sense of honesty- He can lie just as easily as he breathes and feels no shame in it. He could give a huge speech on what his plans are and then only later do you realize that he just lied to your face and his real plan is completely different.

3). Cooks Soylent Green- Has no qualms with ruining peoples lives in his work. A necromancer that kills people only to add to his undead horde, an artist who uses sentient people as parts of their artwork, or just uses people as test subjects or whatever. (Like the villain from the Saw movies or arguably GLaDOS)

4). Gets Away With it- Put in a few failsafes to keep him alive. If he is brought to the authorities where he is presumably to be brought to justice... he just walks out of the Cardboard Prison.

5). He belongs to a super powerful race- Probably just me but I particularly despise elves, dragons, the biblical satan and devils, plus most of the cast of Dragonball Z not so much because they do evil things but because they are so unnaturally long-lived and powerful. They aren't powerful because of any skill or work they put into it, but just because they rolled a natural 20 on their 'choose a race' roll. Could expand this to encompass any villain who got to where they are entirely by circumstance of birth (see also The Caligula (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheCaligula), The Upperclass Twit (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UpperClassTwit), and to another extent Screw the Rules I have Money (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney)

Also the seven deadly sins:

Pride- he's better than you and he knows it.
Gluttony- wastes the resources, lives, environment of others in his plans
Greed- is ambitious and is driven to acquire something, no matter the cost
Lust- I dunno how this could work... maybe a literal Rape the Dog, or Foe Yay?
Sloth- He's lazy enough that he doesn't build death traps he just kills you. Also manipulates enemies to destroy each other or makes you do his dirty work (while he reaps the benefits and laughs at you)
Envy- Make the villain have awesome stuff... and the heros know they can't have it. (Elves and dragons with their unnaturally long lifespans)
Wrath- Every once in a while, let his normally calm demeanor break and let them see the madness behind the mask... or alternatively just have him act completely calm while torturing or level draining someone to inspire wrath in the heros.


Example villains:

The corrupt corporative executive from the first Robocop movie: Was working on that walking robot tank thing that didn't work and killed people just for money. And then had a goon kill a rival who build a Robocop as an alternative.

The villain from the Saw movies: A monster who deserves to have his skin sandpapered off and soaked in tobasco sauce... and probably did that to one of his victims.

The Joker and all the other costumed villains from comic books: The only reason they survive long enough to be so much trouble is because of Joker Immunity and Moral Dissonance.

Seto Kaiba: In the original manga (and all other media) he was such a jerk I wanted him dead. Not the least of which because he used so much money to build a 'theme park' to kill people in, had mob connections he used to kill and threaten the previous owners of his Blue Eyes White Dragon cards, and various other nasty things... just for a Childrens Card Game!

MeklorIlavator
2008-04-20, 04:53 PM
Heh heh heh (http://www.geneticanomaly.com/RPG-Motivational/slides/lawfulgood.jpg).

Your link doesn't work for me.

And h_v, there's a PrC in BoVD that does something similar to that. You magically chain people to yourself, and they take all of your damage(read the sory in the link I posted if you want to see it in action). I belive its called the Dark Emperour.

Raum
2008-04-20, 04:55 PM
So how would you have your BBEG silence any doubt about his evilness?Wanton destruction by itself often appears amoral rather than evil. So make your villain 'human' and use contrast. Give your BBEG one item / thing / idea he truly loves and contrast the treatment with everything else.

obvious pun
2008-04-20, 04:55 PM
The number one way to show how evil the BBEG is.

Have the BBEG make the party watch as he forces his prisoners to play Tomb of Horrors.With level 1 characters. If that doesn't work, nothing will.

kamikasei
2008-04-20, 05:00 PM
Your link doesn't work for me.

Should be fixed now (http://wiki.rpg.net/images/2/2b/MPost186-Motivator9c7fb21bccd76a202edbe8382c.jpg).


And h_v, there's a PrC in BoVD that does something similar to that. You magically chain people to yourself, and they take all of your damage(read the sory in the link I posted if you want to see it in action). I belive its called the Dark Emperour.

The Dread Emperor is an example villain in the book. I'm not sure if there's an actual class for him...

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-04-20, 05:01 PM
Dread Emperor is a suit of armor, not a class.

MeklorIlavator
2008-04-20, 05:07 PM
Dread Emperor is a suit of armor, not a class.

Opps!:smallredface:
I could have sworn it was a class, but I don't have the book right now, so I couldn't check it. Of course, this makes things easier, as all you have to do is buy him a suit of armor, instead of finding a place in a build for class levels.

EvilElitest
2008-04-20, 05:16 PM
Everyone seems to be promoting warront murder, but i think that is a little boring. Here are a few others

1) Anyone seen FMA? You know Envy or Kimblee? Yeah them.
2)A spin off of the above, make them a murdering pychopath. However, don't make them like Freddy or Jason, because they aren't scary. Make them very human, not monsters or insane people, just make them have a lust for pain and suffering


"Why are you doing this"
"because i can. I do it for the sheer enjoyment of having blood between my fingers."

Evil nihilism is nice
3) make them a fanatic, but so fanatical that you it just disgusts you. A super intolerant fanatic is almost as hate inspiring as a random killer. Unlike more fanatics, he literally can't be reasoned with at all. he believes that X god speaks to him and that he must commit his will. Or a radical believer in a case to the point of total ruthlessness
4) an utter tyrant, who is simple so selfish he will destroy anything for his power. Imagine Stalin
5) A nazi styled character. Really, just study the ideals of the nazis, or the KKK and use that sort of twisted intolerence.


from
EE

Revanmal
2008-04-20, 05:20 PM
One of my favorite campaigns to DM had the players going after an arch-bishop type person who was going to take the throne by poisoning the Royal Family. Cliche plot, yes, but it got better when the players finally catch up to the bastard. The King had died, and the only thing in the bad guy's way was the Queen.

After his plan was exposed to the public, he ran and hid himself in an old fortress, and was hiding behind a trap. Innocent people were suspended over a pit of spikes in a hallway, with the bishop on the other side. The wizard could take him out with his last Lightning Bolt, but would hit the innocents. A coward, the bishop is just about to pull the lever to try to force them into giving up, when the Queen appears behind the heroes.

Turns out, it was all her idea - the bishop, the King's murder, everything. And now she's come to kill anyone involved. Walls of flame blew the players across the pit, set the innocent people on fire, and the controlled bishop was killed too. New BBEG, and the players now hated her more than any other villain I had ever made EVAR.

Draco Ignifer
2008-04-20, 05:49 PM
I've found that there are four main tricks that really work well for making players hate a villain. The first is the closest to home - kill one of them. Make it cruel, and possibly unfair - an ambush, or a cheating tactic. The second is to kill a pet - someone who the PCs really like. You can be more cruel and unfair here, because it won't be hurting an actual player. The third is to burn a home - take a place which they're comfortable in, where the NPCs are friendly and relatively innocent, and slaughter all of them in creative fashions. The last is desecration - take something good, and make it evil. This works in conjunction with the other three - instead of killing them outright, kill them and transform them into an undead monster, or simply turn them into a monster and make the PCs fight them. But it also works on its own - when they come across completely empty villages, and find themselves later under attack by normal, small, and tiny zombies, all of them human, mocking them in the villain's voice, they'll hate the bastard.

A few more suggestions. First, if you go too over the top, it becomes ludicrous instead of evil, and people can't take it seriously. Second, the best emotions to establish someone are helplessness, betrayal, shock, and paranoia. When a villain can't be stopped, he's terrifying. When he deceives you, or makes something that you believed was safe unsafe, or something you believed was true a lie, you don't know who to trust, and feel afraid as well. Lastly, shock makes the blow harder - if you don't realize it's coming, you can't prepare for the worst. Lastly, mix things up - if the villain does the same atrocities over and over, they'll get used to it, and it'll destroy the shock. Be creative about it.

Hope that helps!

Yogi
2008-04-20, 06:13 PM
The key, I think, is to make it personal.

Option 1, the Head Alien (http://www.itswalky.com/d/20040922.html) way. Find someone or something that the heroes love, and have the villain kill them, in as stylish or sadistic way as possible, depending on the particular type you're looking for.

Option 2, the Uchiha Clan (http://www.onemanga.com/Naruto/307/16/) way. Have the villain show up after your heroes inconvenience him and utterly wipe the floor with them. Bonus points if he strips them of their equipment, de-levels them, permanently lowers their ability scores etc. etc. Have the villain make it clear that he can do so whenever he wants and there's nothing the heroes can do to stop him. Make sure he does show up periodically to wipe the floor with your heroes and rub their faces in it. Your heroes will be falling over themselves to be the first to cut him to shreds.

Option 3, the Dolores Umbridge (http://www.ew.com/ew/static/pdf/2007/03/stephenking.pdf) way. Make your villain a high ranking government official. Now, in addition to being evil, make that person a combination of every single authority figure you ever hated in your entire life. Times 10. For a bonus, make it clear that everyone else just LOVES him or her including all the people in high places. Make that person politically untouchable. Have them wage a PR war against your heroes. And win.

Option 4, the easy way. Have the villain rape and impregnate one of the female characters.

While these may not make a villain actually eviler than someone who eats babies, what they WILL do is make your heroes sincerely want to drive his (or her) skull into the elemental plain of agony, which is probably what you were going for anyway.

hamishspence
2008-04-21, 07:50 AM
yes, when the odds are stacked socially against the heroes as well, can be more interesting than a villain evrybody hates, not just the heroes.

Funkyodor
2008-04-21, 08:58 AM
Go Mr. Mxylpitlk (sp) and pull a Needful Things on the PC's probably dumb butts. I mean what PC wouldn't want something that is exactly what they want and need. Some of the best deals would involve a PC geting something else from another PC to pay for the wonderful Do-Dad.

When it was pulled on us, the BBEG had enough to block the Clerics deity access, foul the Wizards DC's towards everyone, dominate one of the Fighters, and almost complete his goal. The populace is happy and likes him, the PC's are happy and likes him, and this leads to a deep sense of betrayal once the friendly Miscelaneous Magic Item salesman goes and attempts to take everyones souls. Lives are cheap in D&D with the prevalence of raise deads and heals. But to trap the souls of others in items and give them to around in hopes of getting even more souls... That would be a way in D&D to have captive worshipers to fuel his launch towards deity hood.

Mewtarthio
2008-04-21, 09:38 AM
Use their own conditioning against them. You say they automatically assume that all your villains have sympathetic motives? Let them think that. Introduce a character that seems to be totally understandable. Give him a good and noble motivation, and let the PCs work with him. Then, at the height of their victory, have him betray that motivation in exchange for personal power.

For instance, you could have the villain delving into Dark Tomes of Evil (tm) in hopes of finding a cure for his cute innocent terminally-ill little sister. After he's learned what he wanted to know, have him incapacitate the PCs and force them to watch as he sacrifices abovementioned CITILS in an unholy ritual to gain infernal powers. Note, of course, that this is only effective if they knew about the CITILS beforehand (and is extra effective if they've met her personally).

Other possibilities include: An evil ruler of a small city-state who performs all sorts of atrocities in the name of providing his people with security, who then uses a horrible ritual to consume the souls of everyone in the city; a woman who goes to horrible lengths to preserve the innocence of his daughter, because she's secretly a vampire lord and is storing her up like a bottle of fine wine; a man fighting an order of cultists that took his son, who meets up with his child in the darkest depths of whatnot, then casually slaughters him and grasps the artifact for himself; etc.

One thing you should never do is have him eat babies. That's so ludicrously over-the-top that you're more likely to elicit laughter than horror. Unless, of course, they know the babies (or at least their parents), in which case you should still limit it to people who've got reasons for it.

TheCountAlucard
2008-04-21, 11:23 AM
For instance, you could have the villain delving into Dark Tomes of Evil (tm) in hopes of finding a cure for his cute innocent terminally-ill little sister. After he's learned what he wanted to know, have him incapacitate the PCs and force them to watch as he sacrifices abovementioned CITILS in an unholy ritual to gain infernal powers. Note, of course, that this is only effective if they knew about the CITILS beforehand (and is extra effective if they've met her personally).

Here's the problem with that'un...

DM: He sits beside her sleeping form. "My sister has only weeks to live," he whispered. "I have heard that the Dark Tomes hold the secret to save her, so into these I shall delve."

P1: I pat his shoulder and say, "No need for that," and then use Remove Disease.

DM: ...Uhh, it doesn't work.

P2: Okay, I'll cast Miracle. Surely the god of healing would not refuse to save her life?

DM: ...

The Rose Dragon
2008-04-21, 11:34 AM
Here's the problem with that'un...

DM: He sits beside her sleeping form. "My sister has only weeks to live," he whispered. "I have heard that the Dark Tomes hold the secret to save her, so into these I shall delve."

P1: I pat his shoulder and say, "No need for that," and then use Remove Disease.

DM: ...Uhh, it doesn't work.

P2: Okay, I'll cast Miracle. Surely the god of healing would not refuse to save her life?

DM: ...

Hey, if the Jedi couldn't save Padme (who was medically perfectly healthy, to boot), non-omnipotent gods can still fail to save mortal lives.

Mewtarthio
2008-04-21, 11:35 AM
DM: He sits beside her sleeping form. "My sister has only weeks to live," he whispered. "I have heard that the Dark Tomes hold the secret to save her, so into these I shall delve."

P1: I pat his shoulder and say, "No need for that," and then use Remove Disease.

DM: ...Uhh, it doesn't work.

P2: Okay, I'll cast Miracle. Surely the god of healing would not refuse to save her life?

DM: ...

Er, by "terminally-ill" I mean "infested with an unstatted demonic taint that is slowly killing her and requires a caster level check that you can't make right now." Come on, remove disease ruins so many potential plots that it's not even considered cheating to use the whole "not a disease but coincidentally similar in every way" curse. Miracle would still work, though, which is why you need to kill the CITILS some time before your characters reach that level. I mean, what's the point in unveiling a truly evil BBEG if your PCs are already nigh epic and can kill him anyway?

sikyon
2008-04-21, 11:37 AM
The key to making players hate something is to make them love something else first, and then snatching it away from them.

So your question really becomes, how can you make them love something?

Introduce lovable and awesome NPC's who they grow to care about deeply. Examples might include lovable pets, little girl that follows them around and has nowhere else to go, etc. Invoke deep loving feelings.

Then have the BBEG snatch that away, and destroy it forever in the most vile manner possible.

This will show them how evil he really is and take away any objectivity.

hamlet
2008-04-21, 11:39 AM
I always felt that what Aerys II (from Game of Thrones novels) did to Rikard and Brandon Stark to be an excellent "rape the dog" moment and real inspiration for truly horrible villains.

I don't know how to do spoiler tags, so read on at your own discretion:





In short, Aerys captured Brandon as part of a group of rebel lords and set about executing them pretty quickly. It just so happened that Rickard, Brandon's father, was nearby and pleaded with the king to have his son tried by ordeal/combat. The king agreed and said that the ordeal would happen tomorrow.

Believing that this would be a combat to the death or something similar, Rikard arrived in full battle dress and heavy plate armor and was horribly surprised when, in the middle of the throne room, Aerys strung the man up by his wrists over a giant bonfire and roasted him alive.

In the meantime, he told Brandon that he could save his father if he could reach him. The king then tied a noose around the son's throat and let him have at it.

Rikard died horribly and slowly, being cooked alive. One character comments at one point that, to his great shame, he found the smell of the cooking man "delicious." Meanwhile, Brandon, the son, died of strangulation as he struggled at the end of the rope, just out of reach of his father.



Rape the dog moments aren't about the what always. It's about the simple act of not just going too far, but way beyond the pale. Doing something that would make even the most evil and vile person sit back, throw up his hands and say "hey, dude, that's just too much"!

The perpetrator doesn't have to be a characture of evil, either. They can have understandable, or even good motives.

Burning a church full of civilians in order to force a captured enemy soldier to reveal crucial information is always a good one.

Killing off all male children of a certain population in order to prevent the fulfillment of a prophecy that would be deadly to the legitimate rulers of the land.

Using children as cover in order to save one's own life.

Brainwashing children into a thuggish cult that murders for prophit or for some especially vile goal.

Use your imagination on what would be a truly horrible act and reverse engineer from there. The fact that he had a good motive doesn't lessen the unspeakableness of the act.

Saihyol
2008-04-21, 12:29 PM
Alternately make the players (not the characters) hate this guy.

Have him steal thier stuff. There is almost nothing players hate more than discovering that thier +5 dodah of might and magic missiles/spellbook of mystra/holy symbol of divine protection with added holiness have been pilfered.

Believe me they will invent reasons for their characters why this guy is the most evil being to ever walk the earth and why it is justifiable to torture him for the location of thier gear.

Of course if they had something that was unbalancing the game, maye he used a few charges or broke something experimenting...

Drascin
2008-04-21, 12:44 PM
Everyone seems to be promoting warront murder, but i think that is a little boring. Here are a few others

1) Anyone seen FMA? You know Envy or Kimblee? Yeah them.


And Kimblee isn't "wanton murder" how?!?

Anyway, I have found a nice way of asserting the evilness is giving them a sense of calm fun. Most of my villains are not really evil, but most of those who are have this detached attitude, where they can casually comment with the heroes on how half the city has been overrun with soul-eating zombies while keeping a smile on their faces, and most likely feeling pretty interested as to the exact results the soul-eating might have in people. This tends to elicit reactions around the table of "this guy's totally mad!" :smallbiggrin:

Awetugiw
2008-04-21, 01:12 PM
The trick with an evil villain is that it should be a believable villain. As such, self-interest is a much better motivation than simply a desire to kill/torture/whatever.

A good "rape the dog" villain is cruel, but always with a purpose. If he tortures someone to death it is to frighten others, not simply because he likes to torture (though he may like to torture people, and will probably at least pretend to).

The best way to show a total ruthlessness is probably the age-old idea of making people suffer for the actions of others.

Take for example a BBEG controlling a village/town/city/country (depending on level). If he is evil he'll probably kill his subjects if they displease him. If he is a real "rape the dog" villain, however, it will not be that simple. He doesn't kill the ones opposing him. He tortures their loved ones to death, and then reanimates the corpses. If he can, he'll use healing magic to delay death. In some cases, he won't just kill his opponent children, he'll torture them until there is nothing left of their free will, and then makes them kill their parents.

Basically, he behaves like ye average real-life guerrilla leader. He is cruel, but he is always cruel because it makes people afraid of him, so they won't oppose him.

Roderick_BR
2008-04-21, 01:20 PM
One cool way of making a villain is one that torture, mains, an kills, as people already said, for giggles.
Homicidal rages is interesting if he is just bored and needs to do something "fun".
If something displeases him, kill it so it doesn't bother him anymore.
The trick is to make him detached from people. If there is something people value, the villain doesn't give it a crap.
Think MySpace drama, only that the villain actually have power to kill people :smalltongue:
Don't forget there should always have a purpose, even if it's something the players would find "banal". Actually, sometimes a villain that does something *he* thinks is correct, but is an atrocity, he can turn into something the heroes true like to hate.

And don't ever try to make the villain try too hard to be evil. He may end up looking goofy like Pokemon's Team Rocket, where they try too much to be "evil", but are nothing more than clowns.
Try to make it come naturally.

Tren
2008-04-21, 01:51 PM
I find this sort of situation interesting, where everyone has radically different opinions on what makes a good villain. For me a good irredeemably unequivocally villain does a couple things

1.) Shows emotion. Villains you can really hate are usually the ones that are most human, who show complex behaviors and attitudes. Villains that are detached from their behavior can still work, but for me anyway it always seems more indicative of the sort of anti-hero you're trying to avoid (regrets his work or considers it a necessary evil). Have your villain enjoy what he does.

2.) Have a balanced personality. They enjoy committing evil acts, but not to the exclusion of personality. A villain who enjoys the act of killing others doesn't have to wantonly hack and slash, but maybe thoroughly relishes watching the look on his victim's face when he actually needs to kill someone. Someone mentioned Kimblee from FMA, I think he's a terrible villain because his motives and interest don't extend beyond "BOOM! I like killing things for no apparent reason!"

3.) Be intelligent/surprising. Stupid villains just suck. The caricature type evil guy with the crazy mustache isn't frightening and doesn't inspire hatred because you know he's doomed to fail, he's a cliché. Even when he does perform unspeakable acts the impact is lessened, because honestly, did anyone doubt that's what he was going to do? His character type really doesn't leave any other options. An evil villain who is capable of despicable acts, yet doesn't perform the every chance he gets is more frightening and interesting.

hamishspence
2008-04-21, 01:54 PM
how about the combination of Just for kicks, really really obnoxious personality (like Cordelia in early Buffy episodes turned up to 11) and smug with it, cos despite the apparently ditzy speech style they are very good at when they do, and keep putting the heroes down when they catch them out "Daring last minute escapes are so last season"

That added to truly evil behaviour can lead to a really hateable villain or villainess.

hamishspence
2008-04-21, 01:58 PM
It depends what sort of villain is wanted. Combination of evil acts and tendency to get the jump on the PCs can make for a good enemy.

alchemyprime
2008-04-21, 02:02 PM
Hve him eat a baby. A humanoid baby. Right as the PCs come to stop him.

And make it obvious that it is a baby.

Really. That is the most overtly evil thing I can think of.

AKA_Bait
2008-04-21, 02:10 PM
As some others have said, a total and complete lack of honor. Kidnap the PCs friends and use them to lead the PCs into traps. Have it be obvious that the friends were tortured for information and/or killed before the PCs were even contacted.

Have them lie to the PC's often. Have them not give a darn if the PCs live or die so long as they are not in the way. Give them motives that are not readily transparant to the PCs.

Give them enemies of their own, Good NPCs that can tell other horror stories to the PCs about why they are hunting the bastard down. Evil NPCs with a grudge. Evil NPCs, who although evil view themselves a doing the right thing and were horrified by undisclosed acts that the BBEG committed.

Burley
2008-04-21, 02:12 PM
I would suggest the villian just leaving the ICU of the local hospital with Death Knell activated. Outside, he sees an group of young children with a box of kittens they are giving away. He hikes up his robes and dances a jig in the box, as though he were stomping grapes, while he merrily hums the Darth Vader background music. Then, he steps out of the box, uses the lollipop stick he swipes from a baby to pick the varioius kitty bits from his shoes, then uses the stick to stab a nun. He then notices that his robes are dirty, and tries to get new ones from a local tailor, but the tailor does not carry robes made of "Drider silk and the tears of innocents", so, the villian burns the entire town for "having poor fashion sense."

Evil?

Tren
2008-04-21, 02:16 PM
I would suggest the villian just leaving the ICU of the local hospital with Death Knell activated. Outside, he sees an group of young children with a box of kittens they are giving away. He hikes up his robes and dances a jig in the box, as though he were stomping grapes, while he merrily hums the Darth Vader background music. Then, he steps out of the box, uses the lollipop stick he swipes from a baby to pick the varioius kitty bits from his shoes, then uses the stick to stab a nun. He then notices that his robes are dirty, and tries to get new ones from a local tailor, but the tailor does not carry robes made of "Drider silk and the tears of innocents", so, the villian burns the entire town for "having poor fashion sense."

Evil?

:smalleek:

That's just Evil.

edit: forgot to capitalize the E

NephandiMan
2008-04-21, 02:26 PM
One thing you might do is a Not So Different (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NotSoDifferent) speech. These are usually used to make the villain more sympathetic, but here you subvert it by putting the villain clearly in the wrong. To do this, orchestrate things so that the PC's encounter a moral choice somewhere along the way that is very similar to one the villain has encountered. However, whereas the PC's made the heroic choice, the villain did not. For instance, you might consider Burning The Village In Order To Save It (which apparently doesn't have a trope entry, but it should, dammit!) In this case, the PC's take the more direct route of saving the village in order to save it. Thus, when the villain tries to justify his actions, his reasons are apt to sound more like rationalizations - and cowardly ones at that.

Also, Karma Houdinis (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KarmaHoudini) are a good way to earn PCs' ire, though if you pull too many of them you might get some players' ire as well - or end up with a Dr. Claw who invariably promises to meet the heroes again (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WeWillMeetAgain).

Gensuru
2008-04-21, 04:11 PM
Well i´ll give my two cents though "Evil" is basicaly a thing of perspective so in order to know the perfect answer to your question you´d have to know your players definition of "ture and absolutely hateable evil".


Torture the PCs. I always thought that a well made illusion can be quite a hell for someone. Not only kill the loved ones of the PCs...show them their death again and again by Illusions. Eventualy change the Illusions so the PCs change perspective and are now forced to see through the scene while being in the position ofthe killer. Those who make it through this are likely to hate the one that put them through this hell. Someone mentioned little zombies that use the villains voice to taunt them. How about he use that system of the dungeon walls...but this time with the screams for mercy and the sobbing and crying of the PCs loved ones? If you want to hurt someone...go for that person´s heart and soul. I could give more ideas for mental torture but this shall be enough for now.

The above can also be combine with separating the PCs and attacking each of them at their weak spots. And while you are at it: have Illusional copies of them attack each other for some reason. After the fighter just got rid of his Rouge friend that tried to murder him he runs into his TRUE Rouge-Friend who just got rid of a fighter-copy that tried to kill him as well. This might casue quite some nteresting scenes...and the feelings installed in the PCs and the players...should be rather close to your target.


Another idea. Have the villain not only be detached from others but from himself as well. Someone who does not care about other beings is evil yes? Well why stop there? What if the PCs do not only find out that their opponent is willing to make others suffer for his own plans but that he also does not respect his own "humanity" as well. Some empty villain you just can not understan? Who murders and tortures for absolutely no reason at all except maybe the fact that he has nothing like a "heart"? Either annying/ridiculous or pretty evil. Perhabs he even wants to die and has decided to take the entire world with him.


Depending on the person arrogance might work well for getting people to hate the villain. if that guy keeps playing with the heros and makes no efford to hide the simple fact that he is playing with them someone might sooner or later get the urge to "wipe that arrogant smirk from his face...with my battlehammer."

Kami2awa
2008-04-21, 04:14 PM
D&D has lots of enemies who are literally inhuman... Lords of Madness is full of inspiration for abberation enemies.

Illiterate Scribe
2008-04-21, 04:17 PM
Killing off all male children of a certain population in order to prevent the fulfillment of a prophecy that would be deadly to the legitimate rulers of the land.


I c wat u did thar.

neochaos
2008-04-21, 05:41 PM
I think the manga Berserk way will do ok - if you remove the reason behind the action.

Well, in the manga, Griffith, the leader of one mercenary group, gave his comrades as a sacrifice to gain power to be a king, which was his one true goal from the beginning. During the sacrifice-rampage, Guts, the protagonist of the manga, sees demons eating his friends, corrupting them, torturing them, and see Griffith, his friend, raping his girlfirend right in front of her eyes. She gets ganbanged by demons too...and Guts, angered, cuts his pinned arm to save her, but failed and just forced to watch all that all along. So, I think this will be pretty interest thing to show a evil villian if you remove all the reasons behind the villian, and show just "THAT" in front of PCs who are just forced to watch it, without having any power to stop that happening.

Ravyn
2008-04-21, 06:20 PM
I prefer making even the irredeemable villains a bit more subtle than that.

There was one, for instance, that I'd been rather proud of--or at least I would've been, if it'd worked the way I wanted it to. (The problem was mainly the timeframe--see explanation.) That arc in my game had been something of a rescue-plot; an NPC the group had liked pretty well, who had saved the lives of a couple of them and served as a mentor figure for another, before getting kidnapped somewhere around the tenth session (not in the original plan, but that's another story.) So after a certain amount of epic questing, they find her--end up having to pry her out of her own mindspace, which was a preliminary indication--and.... well, what was supposed to get them was how much she'd changed in the interim. I'd portrayed her before as this calm sort, capable of working her own way out of most bad situations, but afterward they were lucky if they could even get a full sentence out of her half the time, except in a rather specific set of situations. Then again, the reason why mine didn't work is that the interim was way too long; this works a lot better with either a very well-established character or a very short IRL timegap. The villain himself was a minimalist when it came to generically evil actions; I think the only time he went beyond the pale was right as the group was breaking one of his doors down anyway. Instead, I was focused more on the calm arrogance, and the particularly dismissive approach to the PCs; I've found it gets them more angry.

Unconsciously doing things that are directly in conflict with the PCs' morals tends to work better than deliberately, I think. Atrocious for the sake of atrocious and you're trying too hard; atrocious for a couple other purposes and the PCs just happen to be in a position where they can't do anything about it, and the evil is clearly inherent and not Trying To Make A Point.

hamlet
2008-04-22, 10:04 AM
I c wat u did thar.

Yes, and if you look closely, you'll notice that most of what I wrote in that posts references somewhat notable things.