Villain 101: Overview

"All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am: just one bad day."

I was recently asking myself what the most important parts of a Pen and Paper game are. Obviously, the human element is. Having fun is. But removed from all the obvious feely-feel good answers of the people being the most important part, I did have an idea or two. So, before I discuss things like general game plot structure or the anatomy of a good story, we're going to discuss the guy who drives the story, the antagonist who antagonizes the protagonist into proactive action, the Villain.

Today's post isn't called 101 because that's an awesome joke: We're going to be going back to this topic a lot so I'm literally numbering them like a class. Get used to that because when we talk about long-form subjects like building a world or walking through a Let's Create to watch everything we've learned mesh together, I want readers to be able to follow the information without me having to post it one after another. We'll all be happier if I can shake it up a bit. This is probably going to be seven or more posts as I expand on these concepts, and a few more while I do a "Let's build a bad guy" as a big finale of an example.

A villain is an antagonist. Really, this should be Antagonist 101, since your game might have its fair share of villains who aren't bad people, or who have sincerely good intentions. In fact, in an archetypal "Evil" game, the villains are probably going to be mostly good guys. Basically, an antagonist(for our purposes) is someone whose motivations or desires run counter to the motivations or desires of the protagonist. Who's the protagonist? The Player Characters. Man, that one was easy. This means that your game is going to have plenty of villains: Big ones, small ones, maybe some that only show up for one encounter. I'm going to lean toward discussing a villain who's around for at least one scheme and who are traditionally evil in nature. "Good Guy" antagonists are a big stinky can of worms that go hand in hand with discussing "evil" games, and let's not make this post longer than it needs to be by trying to shoehorn them into it.

So whether we're talking about a big bad villain or a little tiny villain, they have the same anatomy. They have a motivation, a plan, a means, and a background. Duh, but I wanted to point out two things: The first is that their background is an important part of the story you're crafting, even if the PCs never find out what it is. The second is that there's potentially not very much that separates a little villain who drives one subplot and a big one who drives the whole game. A pirate king who commands an armada of ruthless pirates and threatens the stability of an entire nation is not very different than a bandit who raids helpless merchant wagons. The pirate king simply has their metaphorical 'volume' turned up: They have a much higher motivation, a much bigger plan and much more means when the game begins.

Motivation. This is the why. Depending on their personality or intellect, maybe it isn't so big or complex. In the first draft of this, I didn't even list Motivation and Plan separately. Their motivation certainly can seem like a small, unimportant thing. Their plans are what drive the plot, after all. Their motivations are crucial to the feel of the villain, though. The thing is...they aren't always bad. Sometimes motivations are good or justified and the villain has been through so much pain or strife that they've lost sight of what's right. Maybe they CAN'T accomplish their goals without hurting people, or doesn't WANT to. While Their plan and means dictate the structure of their story, their motivations and background dictate how that's going to feel, and 'feel' is equally important, if not moreso.

Background. Basically, not a whole lot of people are born evil. In the realm of role playing games, there are totally some people who are, and that's alright. However, even a tiny psychopathic maybe-antichrist had events in their life that drove them to higher pursuits than killing small animals and the occasional dead maid. Even someone who's mentally disturbed is in a position to be an antagonist for a reason. Basically, even if the PC's never find out the background of your villain, having it will help you roleplay them(which is super important) and will help you shape their scheme by using the 'weight' of what's happened to them. You're also making another very important decision here between motivation and background: Is the villain relatable, or not? This is another decision that's going to shape how your game feels: The heroes will feel righteous when facing an repentantly evil person and sorrowful when facing someone who's essentially a victim. Both of these are fine, but you've got to take a little care with your relatable villain. Balance their motivations, their actions and their personality so the heroes feel bad for them(or even for their own actions) but not so much that they'd help them or join their side. Of course, you can always run with that, but whether you do or not that's one big derailing moment.

Plan. This is their big, grand scheme. Again, the specifics depend on their intellect. If they're another villain's subordinate, their plan certainly is a small one: it's probably 'work for this guy and I get money and power'. That's okay. This can be the most important aspect of a big villain, though, since it's going to drive the plot: you're deciding the scope of the story right here. A game's going to feel very different based on your decision here, but helpfully this is more like a Field of Vision slider than a ball-pit full of random potential. Here you're deciding whether the scope of the game is narrow (something that threatens a small group), or wide (something that threatens a very large group). Narrow scope games are no less important than wide scope games, but they tend to be shorter and you may be fighting an uphill battle to convince the PCs that this "matters", depending on the personality of your players. You can also use subordinates(little villains) to 'widen' the scope of the game to keep it going once the game's level no longer truly meshes with a narrow scope. This is as easy as finding out a villain has a 'boss' and the game so far was dealing with only one aspect of the true villain's plan, like the siege of a city taking months of real life gaming only for the PCs to find out the siege was to steal an artifact from the castle vault that the 'big' villain needs.

Be very careful here too. I put a line break here to provide emphasis to this piece of advice. This is a great way to 'iris out' and make the campaign feel like it's going from 'small' to 'big' along with the PC's growing levels, like the campaign leveled up too. However, don't take away their accomplishments: you can easily make them feel like nothing they did in the 'first' part of that game mattered. All I can tell you for now is to give them a victory to go along with this revelation, even a Pyhrric victory is better than some dude they never heard of before teleporting in and grabbing the macguffin they didn't know about, then gloating and teleporting away. Drop hints: Drop a slightly higher amount of hints than you think you need to.

Means. This just refers to the powers or resources available to our villain. Unless they're delusional, a big villain with big plans is going to have big means to accomplish it with. An army, a cult, a family, a dungeon, or even powerful magic or just powerful friends all fit here, and you're essentially deciding what you're going to throw at the heroes as challenges. For most fantasy games this means a big network of varied agents, schemes and manipulations. It's even okay to not decide right now what precisely they have at their disposal: The players aren't likely to notice, or even CARE about the specific number of minotaurs in the villain's death-maze, but they WILL care about the death-maze feeling too easy or too hard. Come up with a general theme or set of guidelines and that's good enough. Coming up with their subordinates is a good idea too.

So yeah. All of these are going to get discussed in detail, and I guess today is just a general structure-building overview. There will be plenty of examples in the future for help, but really, creating a villain isn't that hard. You're making a 'skeleton' here, and draping it with the flesh of personality, quirks and epic speeches next. The 'skeleton' greatly affects your game's plot, and the flesh...not so much. It's perfectly fine(and suggested) to work on it second.