So by now we figured out the bare bones of who our villain is. The next two villain articles are on what they're doing. You're going to find there's a lot to skip in the next two villain posts if you're designing a "little" villain. That's okay. Part of what separates a good GM and a bad GM is knowing where to put the rich detail and know where to leave it thin. More on that in a future post, just know that putting a "simple" villain in a short story is not just okay, it's downright necessary sometimes.
So basically that means we're talking about a Big Bad style villain. If not the driving force behind the game, certainly one of them. They've probably got big motivations, or at least motivations that are going to require some severe antagonism, strife and pain for a large group of people. Basically, back when you decided on their motivation, you were also deciding on the scope of the game. Contrary to popular belief, it's perfectly okay to run a game that really only affects a city, or even a few city blocks. They're just not(in general) going to be as long as a game with a wider scope. Anyway, I mention this because the villain's plan also has a hand in determining the game's scope. In very general terms, I'm saying the villain's plan can "iris out" the game's scope through overreaction, like a gang leader who plans to set off a city-destroying atom bomb simply because they lost a turf war to the PC's gang. Here, the plan "changed" and it added more life to a game that could have been over and raised the stakes. Here's the thing, though...you can't lower the stakes permanently. Don't try. You can't go from a world spanning game to one that safeguards a single city, not really. You can include that city, those blocks, that single Bar in turmoil as a side story or single adventure, but you can't ever make the game feel smaller. The PCs are always going to remember what they did before they got there.
Plans really don't have to be complex or mysterious. A mystery villain who feels like thye're moving chess pieces around a hidden board can feel great, OR they can feel like you're just making shit up. So your first piece of advice is this: Have the villain's overarching plan in mind when you begin to present it as an adventure. If you want their eventual goals and motivations to be a mystery, this is especially true. A GM often has to fly by the seat of their pants, but in this instance, you really need a mental outline to make sure every puzzle piece fits together. It takes a very experienced GM to make off-the-cuff decisions that feel like they were all planned, so keep that in mind.
So now that's out of the way, how do you make a plan? Well, in general I'm going to present two categories of villains which we'll call Saturday Morning and High Fantasy. This is going to control a lot of the game's tone by virtue of "plans" essentially being the adventures you're throwing at the party.
Just to be clear, this isn't going to be a Goofus and Gallant thing. Both categories are perfectly viable for game building and each have their pros and cons.
A High Fantasy villain is a typical D&D villain. They have a goal, and an overarching plan. Their big plan is full of little steps, little plans that serve as the adventure hooks. A game can be entirely filled with just one complex plan, and most stock fantasy games are. This is your typical five hundred step steal-the-artifact, take-over-the-world stuff. The pros of this is obviously that it has a more epic and serious feel and even if there's no mystery, it's going to feel like the PCs are putting puzzle pieces together and they're locked in a pitched battle with this person or organization. The pitfalls are, somewhat obviously, that this needs a longer outline from you. You need to plan out everything the villain is going to try to do in general terms, then react as the PCs foil(or fail to foil) their plans. You also need to keep space "open" so you can take a break from their big overarching goal to run a side-story, do things the PCs want to do, or introduce other small steps to their plan to lengthen the game. Basically, with this model, pacing and letting the PCs "breathe" is something you need to seriously consider.
A Saturday Morning villain, conversely, has a goal, but no overarching plan. Like a SatAM or comic book villain, each adventure is a separate plan to accomplish their goals directly or to gain some sort of advantage for next time. Obviously this is going to have a loose, less serious tone and works well when there's multiple villains. The pros of this is that you can be really loose with your plans and introduce hooks as they come to you. You can even use a rogue's gallery and several villains each trying to accomplish something different and the game won't feel crowded. This also works well with a game that has a bunch of hooks the PCs can follow, making them feel like they're doing what THEY decided to do and making the game feel less linear. The cons are that, unless the game transitions to a single villain with a very serious goal, it's not going to feel as "epic". The fact that the game will feel a bit like a comic book may also seriously rub some players the wrong way, and you need to be aware of that. Some people enjoy seeing villains come back(and getting a lot of time with the villain helps you characterize them) but other people will get annoyed at the seeming impermanence of their accomplishments. It helps this method a lot if you're playing a system or world conducive to this, like a Superhero or Super Spy style game, but I believe it can fit anywhere.
So can you transition between the two? Sure. A High Fantasy game can absolutely sometimes "open up" into a "there's a lot to do" segment, like JRPGs typically do. Alternatively, a game with a rotating rogues gallery can have them band together, or become less important as a new, more serious villain comes to light. In this case it's a lot easier to cause something to change than it is to simply say that the existing villain "got serious" because it would make the PCs wonder why they weren't "serious" this whole time.
We'll go into what makes a great adventure, hook or "plan" later, but that's something that deserves a whole topic to itself. When we return we'll be going over Means, or what the villain has at their disposal.
Sunday, July 24, 2016
Sunday, July 17, 2016
Rant: Game-Changers and the art of Knowing Your Place
So you're not gonna learn anything today. This is the first time that our trapped little author Mouse gets mad and uses the funny words real, real loud. I understand if ya'll want to skip this one, but every once in a while the thing I want to get off my chest isn't something that's really a teachable moment that I can use to enlighten. Now, I always advocate trusting the game source as written until it's proven that something's broken, but that does happen sometimes. Sometimes something is just really powerful or really awful and you can't really figure out what the developer was thinking. Today, though, I'm talking about a slightly less obvious thing that happens in Pen and Paper game design that pisses me off.
Sometimes a feat, power or concept is a game-changer. This doesn't mean it's bad or overpowered, it just means it becomes a seriously important part of the game. In Shadowrun it's Wired Reflexes or similar initiative enhancing abilities. In Deadlands you could argue it's that smiling Red Joker on character generation, or the three point Huckster or Mad Scientist edges. In D&D 3.X you could call Power Attack one of these things. Basically, it's a power or concept you need to sit up and take notice of regardless of the character you're playing.
These aren't bad, but being unable to identify a game-changer until you've played a game a few times is part of the reason people get scared off PNP games. More on that later. Way more. An average or seasoned player picks out game-changers as a matter of course. You do it even if you don't realize it. How do you make a decent damage-dealer in D&D 3.X? Two Handed Weapon. Power Attack. Monkey Grip. How do I build a decent adept in Shadowrun? Improved Reflexes. Improved Ability. Killing Hands. It's stuff you just know. And that's okay. It doesn't (necessarily) mean the game is unbalanced or bad, it means it has things that are incredibly important and fundamentally make a big, big impact.
What pisses me off is when developers clearly have no fucking idea that they've put a game-changer into their source. Like I said, I advocate trusting your source instead of picking at it like a fussy grandma. Sometimes, though, you really feel like you want to because you find something in an obscure little book and it feels like finding rats in your pantry. Unfortunately though, banning a game-changer from play can often make big, big waves in the game, bigger than you want.
I'm guessing some of you already figured out I'm talking about Dervish Dance.
Dervish Dance has a sister ability in 3.X called Shadow Blade, and they both essentially do the same thing: They let you apply DEX to melee damage instead of STR. Remember when I talked about MAD and SAD? Attribute Dependencies mean that, at ANY stat level, being able to remove a stat dependency is very powerful. These abilities are game-changers because it gives you a stat that does more 'work', it means DEX is attack, AND damage, AND armor class, AND several important skills, AND reflex save. It means you can really pump that stat because you have no use for STR.
Just so we're clear, this is far better than Weapon Finesse on its own because of the vast importance of damage. On its own, weapon finesse is a "catch up" feat best used by a primarily ranged character to make sure they're not screwed if they're missing their bow, musket, blaster rifle, or what have you. It's also used by a utility character like rogue who can achieve 'okay' damage via weapon finesse and sneak attack and still focus mostly on their utility.
The problem comes in the role of design. Shadow Blade is a feat presented in the good old Book of Weaboo Fightan Magic, the Book of Nine Swords. In fact, it's conditional on some things listed in that book which it just so happens a non-maneuver character can reach anyway. Dervish Dance is a regional feat listed in Pathfinder Companion: The Inner Sea World Guide. What the hell's THAT book?
That's exactly my fucking point. It's a shitty little setting guide that just so happens to make a gigantic fundamental impact on Pathfinder. Dervish Dance has a lot of cousins like this. Twist the Knife in Rokugan's Ninja book. Jotunbrud in Forgotten Realms. Bishojuo and Niche Protection in Mecha and Manga arguably rub elbows with this shitty family. These big, powerful feats and abilities being listed in esoteric books and stuffed in little regional feat sections of Setting books is thoughtless, awful design. This is what scares people off playing, when they feel like they never could have found this on their own without a huge amount of research. It makes people think there's a huge gap between them and people like Me, Dale, Maestro or Flux when there isn't. It shows a complete lack of give-a-shit in their product to slap something so important in a "conditional" book, and that will never not piss me off.
In addition to that, anything that makes a character act in an unnatural manner for a mechanical benefit is bad. In M&M 2E, Grappling is weird and broken (partially) because it's better for the attacker to let you go at the beginning of their round, then punch you to get extra damage alongside tripping a free grapple check with Improved Grab. Essentially, the attacker is punching you in the face, grabbing you, holding you for roughly six seconds, then letting go to do it again. That's dumb and wrong. Shadow Blade restricts you to a list of weapons that's essentially small and light: Daggers, rapiers, unarmed attacks, kukri, and that sort of thing. This is logical and cements its tie to the Shadow Hand maneuver category. Dervish Dance, however, only functions for scimitars. This means that a dominant strategy of dextrous characters using scimitars emerges. Not small or light weapons like daggers that rely on your speed and finesse. No. Apparently, the best weapon for an exceptionally agile person is a long curved blade intended for attacking from fucking horseback, and ONLY that weapon. Why? Because we didn't give even half a shit about what we were designing. We seriously thought we could give a regional feat to these frigging horseback nomads that are just a ripoff of the Bedouin because we have no creativity and totally trust the average player to ONLY take it if it's ROLEPLAY APPROPRIATE.
Luckily, Dervish Dance mostly had its teeth removed. There's now two classes in Pathfinder that provide the "DEX to damage" ability, and an easily found feat that's thematically tied to one of those classes. The other of the classes, Unchained Rogue, grants Weapon Finesse along with "DEX to damage" early on, giving you single weapons(off a list) to use this capability with over the course of the class and letting you 'buy' weirder ones with Rogue talents.
Of course, this creates a Dominant Strategy of taking three levels of Unchained Rogue, just like the fabled two levels of Fighter. That's an entirely different rant.
Sometimes a feat, power or concept is a game-changer. This doesn't mean it's bad or overpowered, it just means it becomes a seriously important part of the game. In Shadowrun it's Wired Reflexes or similar initiative enhancing abilities. In Deadlands you could argue it's that smiling Red Joker on character generation, or the three point Huckster or Mad Scientist edges. In D&D 3.X you could call Power Attack one of these things. Basically, it's a power or concept you need to sit up and take notice of regardless of the character you're playing.
These aren't bad, but being unable to identify a game-changer until you've played a game a few times is part of the reason people get scared off PNP games. More on that later. Way more. An average or seasoned player picks out game-changers as a matter of course. You do it even if you don't realize it. How do you make a decent damage-dealer in D&D 3.X? Two Handed Weapon. Power Attack. Monkey Grip. How do I build a decent adept in Shadowrun? Improved Reflexes. Improved Ability. Killing Hands. It's stuff you just know. And that's okay. It doesn't (necessarily) mean the game is unbalanced or bad, it means it has things that are incredibly important and fundamentally make a big, big impact.
What pisses me off is when developers clearly have no fucking idea that they've put a game-changer into their source. Like I said, I advocate trusting your source instead of picking at it like a fussy grandma. Sometimes, though, you really feel like you want to because you find something in an obscure little book and it feels like finding rats in your pantry. Unfortunately though, banning a game-changer from play can often make big, big waves in the game, bigger than you want.
I'm guessing some of you already figured out I'm talking about Dervish Dance.
Dervish Dance has a sister ability in 3.X called Shadow Blade, and they both essentially do the same thing: They let you apply DEX to melee damage instead of STR. Remember when I talked about MAD and SAD? Attribute Dependencies mean that, at ANY stat level, being able to remove a stat dependency is very powerful. These abilities are game-changers because it gives you a stat that does more 'work', it means DEX is attack, AND damage, AND armor class, AND several important skills, AND reflex save. It means you can really pump that stat because you have no use for STR.
Just so we're clear, this is far better than Weapon Finesse on its own because of the vast importance of damage. On its own, weapon finesse is a "catch up" feat best used by a primarily ranged character to make sure they're not screwed if they're missing their bow, musket, blaster rifle, or what have you. It's also used by a utility character like rogue who can achieve 'okay' damage via weapon finesse and sneak attack and still focus mostly on their utility.
The problem comes in the role of design. Shadow Blade is a feat presented in the good old Book of Weaboo Fightan Magic, the Book of Nine Swords. In fact, it's conditional on some things listed in that book which it just so happens a non-maneuver character can reach anyway. Dervish Dance is a regional feat listed in Pathfinder Companion: The Inner Sea World Guide. What the hell's THAT book?
That's exactly my fucking point. It's a shitty little setting guide that just so happens to make a gigantic fundamental impact on Pathfinder. Dervish Dance has a lot of cousins like this. Twist the Knife in Rokugan's Ninja book. Jotunbrud in Forgotten Realms. Bishojuo and Niche Protection in Mecha and Manga arguably rub elbows with this shitty family. These big, powerful feats and abilities being listed in esoteric books and stuffed in little regional feat sections of Setting books is thoughtless, awful design. This is what scares people off playing, when they feel like they never could have found this on their own without a huge amount of research. It makes people think there's a huge gap between them and people like Me, Dale, Maestro or Flux when there isn't. It shows a complete lack of give-a-shit in their product to slap something so important in a "conditional" book, and that will never not piss me off.
In addition to that, anything that makes a character act in an unnatural manner for a mechanical benefit is bad. In M&M 2E, Grappling is weird and broken (partially) because it's better for the attacker to let you go at the beginning of their round, then punch you to get extra damage alongside tripping a free grapple check with Improved Grab. Essentially, the attacker is punching you in the face, grabbing you, holding you for roughly six seconds, then letting go to do it again. That's dumb and wrong. Shadow Blade restricts you to a list of weapons that's essentially small and light: Daggers, rapiers, unarmed attacks, kukri, and that sort of thing. This is logical and cements its tie to the Shadow Hand maneuver category. Dervish Dance, however, only functions for scimitars. This means that a dominant strategy of dextrous characters using scimitars emerges. Not small or light weapons like daggers that rely on your speed and finesse. No. Apparently, the best weapon for an exceptionally agile person is a long curved blade intended for attacking from fucking horseback, and ONLY that weapon. Why? Because we didn't give even half a shit about what we were designing. We seriously thought we could give a regional feat to these frigging horseback nomads that are just a ripoff of the Bedouin because we have no creativity and totally trust the average player to ONLY take it if it's ROLEPLAY APPROPRIATE.
Luckily, Dervish Dance mostly had its teeth removed. There's now two classes in Pathfinder that provide the "DEX to damage" ability, and an easily found feat that's thematically tied to one of those classes. The other of the classes, Unchained Rogue, grants Weapon Finesse along with "DEX to damage" early on, giving you single weapons(off a list) to use this capability with over the course of the class and letting you 'buy' weirder ones with Rogue talents.
Of course, this creates a Dominant Strategy of taking three levels of Unchained Rogue, just like the fabled two levels of Fighter. That's an entirely different rant.
Sunday, July 10, 2016
Rule Zero
So Rule Zero and The Golden Rule are often confused for one another. In fact, I did it in one of my previous blogs. Basically what we're talking about today is more discussions about GMs declaring themselves "Me King A-Rab, You Pedestrian". Basically, The Golden Rule, or Rule Number One was born from the thick, slimy mire of Sperglords and Grognards who love acting like God and seeing characters run like rats in a maze. In response, Rule Zero was born...because Zero comes before One, that means it's more important. The unnamed man who invented the idea of Rule Zero is a fucking hero.
But let's stop everyone from being confused and define what these two opposing rules are.
The Golden Rule: "The GM is Always Right."
Rule Zero: "Roleplaying Games are entertainment; your goal as a group is to make your games as entertaining as possible."
Well, that sounds like something that's obviously true followed by something that's so baseline it's ridiculous we're even talking about it, right? Not really. Plenty of games mention Rule Zero in their books, usually by saying that you should change the rules or alter them if nobody's having fun, or by reminding you that the rules are only a guideline. A grand total of one book I've found mentions The Golden Rule, and that's Paranoia. If you don't know anything about Paranoia, that...might be a good thing. It's a weird little game of politics that can lead to a lot of fun as easily as it can lead to hurt friendships because it pits the PCs against one another as the point of the game. This book directly mentions you, as the GM, are within your rights to look at a die and say with a straight face that the die is wrong. More on that later. If you'd like to read that deliberately ridiculous passage in its entirety, here it is.
So games that aren't as bugfuck as Paranoia don't seem to mention The Golden Rule, yet it's ubiquitous. Why? Because GMs are arbiters, and thus feel like they're in a position of power. They can start to feel feel as though the players are 'lesser' and thus don't deserve to argue and need to put up with whatever the GM wants, because he's the one doing the work. Yeah. I get it, honestly. You feel like you're doing all this work and anyone who argues with you hasn't done a god damn thing except show up and MAYBE bring some Cheetos. You need to try and tamp that thought of being "God" down, though.
Because here's the thing.
First off, you're not always right. The rules and the dice are the fair arbiter between everyone. Between PC and PC, and between PC and You. Bending the rules or fudging the dice is unavoidable, but too much of it removes the player's agency. The more you remove a player's agency, the less fun they'll have. Period. Changing the rules on a whim isn't exactly any better, and too often people do it for their OWN fun without caring if the PCs are having any fun or not, or because they don't feel like looking up the rules and think whatever they came up with is "good enough".
"Well, if YOU don't like it, YOU GM next week."
I can't imagine anyone's ever said this calmly. It comes out of anger, and exasperation with someone who won't drop an argument. It's okay to be angry, and you will in fact have to use the Golden Rule eventually. Stuff like the above phrase isn't exactly copacetic, though. There's no "right" answer to something like this, because either they DO that, and either they feel justified in lording The Golden Rule over YOU in THEIR game, OR the group never plays your game again. I presume that's not actually what you wanted, or else you wouldn't have gone through all that work to put a campaign together.
The thing is, The Golden Rule is dangerous because it's handing you a hammer, and it's real easy to see anyone disagreeing with you as a nail. This is complicated further by the fact that you may very well have to flex this rule at some point, so you can't just throw it away and have a democratic hippy sit-in about every disagreement.
You want to try and start with a democratic hippy sit-in, though. Discuss rules and rulings after the session and see what everyone likes. This will work out more often than you think it will. Try to keep to the book rules unless it's clearly stated beforehand, and don't simply declare something "good enough" then quote the Golden Rule when someone points out that's not how it works. Move the game along, but try to take others seriously when they want to discuss the rules. Whip out your giant hammer if someone is impacting others' fun. Basically? Rule Zero really is more important, and you should treat it like that.
And finally, a word to the players about these rules. For God's sake, be cool. We do want to keep to the rules. We all should keep to the rules, but when something's been agreed upon by everyone else don't sit there like an asshole furiously flipping pages to find the book-written rule and win the 'argument'. If you have a problem with a 'wrong' rule, bring it up after the session or before the next, and especially don't derail a combat situation and bog it down. Keep interruptions to big things like "My character shouldn't have died, because grapple doesn't work like that." and be accepting if the GM compromises and says something like "Okay, but he's still unconscious.". The GM really does do a bit more work on this than you, and sometimes fudges or forgets.
~~~
We'll end with a fun fact. I did once lose a character over being wrong about the rules. I was playing a droid named Nomad in a Star Wars D20 game who was ambushed by a Jedi. They deal tremendous damage and Nomad was already hurt, so the Jedi put him at essentially -9. I did the math and thought "He's just going to bleed out next round, I'll just say he's dead."
I'm leaving this line break here so you can laugh at how dumb that thought is.
By the time I realized what I'd done, it had been months and I was already enjoying the new character and how versatile she was. Of course, when compared to the party Jedi Guardian she blew goats. Such is the plight of Star Wars D20, though. The phrase "All Jedi or No Jedi" doesn't come from nowhere.
But let's stop everyone from being confused and define what these two opposing rules are.
The Golden Rule: "The GM is Always Right."
Rule Zero: "Roleplaying Games are entertainment; your goal as a group is to make your games as entertaining as possible."
Well, that sounds like something that's obviously true followed by something that's so baseline it's ridiculous we're even talking about it, right? Not really. Plenty of games mention Rule Zero in their books, usually by saying that you should change the rules or alter them if nobody's having fun, or by reminding you that the rules are only a guideline. A grand total of one book I've found mentions The Golden Rule, and that's Paranoia. If you don't know anything about Paranoia, that...might be a good thing. It's a weird little game of politics that can lead to a lot of fun as easily as it can lead to hurt friendships because it pits the PCs against one another as the point of the game. This book directly mentions you, as the GM, are within your rights to look at a die and say with a straight face that the die is wrong. More on that later. If you'd like to read that deliberately ridiculous passage in its entirety, here it is.
So games that aren't as bugfuck as Paranoia don't seem to mention The Golden Rule, yet it's ubiquitous. Why? Because GMs are arbiters, and thus feel like they're in a position of power. They can start to feel feel as though the players are 'lesser' and thus don't deserve to argue and need to put up with whatever the GM wants, because he's the one doing the work. Yeah. I get it, honestly. You feel like you're doing all this work and anyone who argues with you hasn't done a god damn thing except show up and MAYBE bring some Cheetos. You need to try and tamp that thought of being "God" down, though.
Because here's the thing.
First off, you're not always right. The rules and the dice are the fair arbiter between everyone. Between PC and PC, and between PC and You. Bending the rules or fudging the dice is unavoidable, but too much of it removes the player's agency. The more you remove a player's agency, the less fun they'll have. Period. Changing the rules on a whim isn't exactly any better, and too often people do it for their OWN fun without caring if the PCs are having any fun or not, or because they don't feel like looking up the rules and think whatever they came up with is "good enough".
"Well, if YOU don't like it, YOU GM next week."
I can't imagine anyone's ever said this calmly. It comes out of anger, and exasperation with someone who won't drop an argument. It's okay to be angry, and you will in fact have to use the Golden Rule eventually. Stuff like the above phrase isn't exactly copacetic, though. There's no "right" answer to something like this, because either they DO that, and either they feel justified in lording The Golden Rule over YOU in THEIR game, OR the group never plays your game again. I presume that's not actually what you wanted, or else you wouldn't have gone through all that work to put a campaign together.
The thing is, The Golden Rule is dangerous because it's handing you a hammer, and it's real easy to see anyone disagreeing with you as a nail. This is complicated further by the fact that you may very well have to flex this rule at some point, so you can't just throw it away and have a democratic hippy sit-in about every disagreement.
You want to try and start with a democratic hippy sit-in, though. Discuss rules and rulings after the session and see what everyone likes. This will work out more often than you think it will. Try to keep to the book rules unless it's clearly stated beforehand, and don't simply declare something "good enough" then quote the Golden Rule when someone points out that's not how it works. Move the game along, but try to take others seriously when they want to discuss the rules. Whip out your giant hammer if someone is impacting others' fun. Basically? Rule Zero really is more important, and you should treat it like that.
And finally, a word to the players about these rules. For God's sake, be cool. We do want to keep to the rules. We all should keep to the rules, but when something's been agreed upon by everyone else don't sit there like an asshole furiously flipping pages to find the book-written rule and win the 'argument'. If you have a problem with a 'wrong' rule, bring it up after the session or before the next, and especially don't derail a combat situation and bog it down. Keep interruptions to big things like "My character shouldn't have died, because grapple doesn't work like that." and be accepting if the GM compromises and says something like "Okay, but he's still unconscious.". The GM really does do a bit more work on this than you, and sometimes fudges or forgets.
~~~
We'll end with a fun fact. I did once lose a character over being wrong about the rules. I was playing a droid named Nomad in a Star Wars D20 game who was ambushed by a Jedi. They deal tremendous damage and Nomad was already hurt, so the Jedi put him at essentially -9. I did the math and thought "He's just going to bleed out next round, I'll just say he's dead."
I'm leaving this line break here so you can laugh at how dumb that thought is.
By the time I realized what I'd done, it had been months and I was already enjoying the new character and how versatile she was. Of course, when compared to the party Jedi Guardian she blew goats. Such is the plight of Star Wars D20, though. The phrase "All Jedi or No Jedi" doesn't come from nowhere.
Sunday, July 3, 2016
Villain 103: Background
Welcome back to Villain school. Today, we're discussing the other half of our villain's "Feel", the background. Like I said before, this is an important part of your villain even if the PCs never find out any of this stuff. You don't always have to flesh everything out in game, and in fact one of the perils of GMing is trying to do that. However, if we're talking about a big bad, you should probably have a background in mind. For the PCs, finding out the truth about a villain can feel very anticlimactic if done poorly.
So the first piece of advice is to try and avoid using very simple villains for your big bad. You'll have plenty of those in smaller arcs or working for them, so try to give them a background(a personality, a motivation, an everything, really) that the PCs can sink their teeth into a little bit. Like I said when I was discussing the PCs, it's justified to give your villain a very unique background. If the PCs are meant to be the exception to normality(they are.) then the villain is even moreso. Here you're deciding the "meat" behind the villain's motivation as well as trying (potentially) to throw something a little interesting or thought provoking at the players, so don't feel you have to hit 'realism' too hard. You just have to hit it close enough that it doesn't take the players out of it when they learn it.
So even though you've got carte blanche to write whatever the hell you want to turn this guy into a villain, try not to get too ridiculous with the tone or content. What I mean is, you can take your PCs out of it very easily by crafting a background full of shitty circumstance or life running a trauma conga line on the villain. All it takes is one circumstance(Like The Joker says, one bad day) to turn someone toward being an evil antagonist, so don't feel like you have to REALLY jam their life full of awful. Players will be more accepting of something unusual happening a few times than with something normal happening repeatedly.
So WHAT should you write? Well, it doesn't have to be very long. It's kind of amusing that I'm writing all this advice on something that might not even ever be on paper. That's all okay, too. You're doing this for your mindset, for the benefit of fleshing out the villain's motivations, and to decide if you want them to be sympathetic or not. Basically, everyone's had shitty things happen to them, so your villain's reaction to circumstances is what's going to make them sympathetic or not. Consider the three following "flashpoint" events:
A: An apprentice bard loses their fiancée and turns to forbidden arts to get her back.
B: A respected teacher of necromantic arts vows revenge after being fired for their conduct.
C: A children's entertainer loses their son and turns to dark magic to punish those they feel responsible.
So, all three of these background events can make for a decent core villain to a campaign. Please notice that they differ in motivations, but can easily have an identical Plan and Means. Our friend the Mournful Bard is certainly sympathetic, and the party will likely feel at least a little bad for stopping them. The Disgraced Teacher will absolutely come off as kind of a baby who's overreacting and probably deserved to be fired. That will draw lines pretty clearly. The Vengeful Entertainer will likely spark a lot of debate as to whether he's sympathetic or not, and make way for some rich discussion as the PCs find more clues.
So you can see how much the villain matters to the tone of the game. You can hand the party a mystery or a moral conundrum to discuss, or simply draw the line yourself and get straight to the high fantasy action. The villain's conduct(or mental state) can easily keep the players from feeling like they want to side with the villain as well: The Vengeful Entertainer can easily be losing their mind and continuing to kill people long after those responsible for their child's death are gone...or it could turn out their scheme is larger and darker than simple revenge and their own child never truly mattered. The Mournful Bard could accidentally release an ancient being of death out of desperation and become a force to help the PCs against a new foe after coming to their senses...or they could joyfully decide that if they can't have their true love, then the whole world deserves to die. The Disgraced Teacher is possibly the bluntest of our three example villains, but even they can twist expectations based on the circumstances surrounding being fired.
The point is, all of these rich twists and turns the game can take all have roots in the villain's background, and even just keeping one in mind can fill a "rainy day" session you've not prepared for with clues and mysteries.
So the first piece of advice is to try and avoid using very simple villains for your big bad. You'll have plenty of those in smaller arcs or working for them, so try to give them a background(a personality, a motivation, an everything, really) that the PCs can sink their teeth into a little bit. Like I said when I was discussing the PCs, it's justified to give your villain a very unique background. If the PCs are meant to be the exception to normality(they are.) then the villain is even moreso. Here you're deciding the "meat" behind the villain's motivation as well as trying (potentially) to throw something a little interesting or thought provoking at the players, so don't feel you have to hit 'realism' too hard. You just have to hit it close enough that it doesn't take the players out of it when they learn it.
So even though you've got carte blanche to write whatever the hell you want to turn this guy into a villain, try not to get too ridiculous with the tone or content. What I mean is, you can take your PCs out of it very easily by crafting a background full of shitty circumstance or life running a trauma conga line on the villain. All it takes is one circumstance(Like The Joker says, one bad day) to turn someone toward being an evil antagonist, so don't feel like you have to REALLY jam their life full of awful. Players will be more accepting of something unusual happening a few times than with something normal happening repeatedly.
So WHAT should you write? Well, it doesn't have to be very long. It's kind of amusing that I'm writing all this advice on something that might not even ever be on paper. That's all okay, too. You're doing this for your mindset, for the benefit of fleshing out the villain's motivations, and to decide if you want them to be sympathetic or not. Basically, everyone's had shitty things happen to them, so your villain's reaction to circumstances is what's going to make them sympathetic or not. Consider the three following "flashpoint" events:
A: An apprentice bard loses their fiancée and turns to forbidden arts to get her back.
B: A respected teacher of necromantic arts vows revenge after being fired for their conduct.
C: A children's entertainer loses their son and turns to dark magic to punish those they feel responsible.
So, all three of these background events can make for a decent core villain to a campaign. Please notice that they differ in motivations, but can easily have an identical Plan and Means. Our friend the Mournful Bard is certainly sympathetic, and the party will likely feel at least a little bad for stopping them. The Disgraced Teacher will absolutely come off as kind of a baby who's overreacting and probably deserved to be fired. That will draw lines pretty clearly. The Vengeful Entertainer will likely spark a lot of debate as to whether he's sympathetic or not, and make way for some rich discussion as the PCs find more clues.
So you can see how much the villain matters to the tone of the game. You can hand the party a mystery or a moral conundrum to discuss, or simply draw the line yourself and get straight to the high fantasy action. The villain's conduct(or mental state) can easily keep the players from feeling like they want to side with the villain as well: The Vengeful Entertainer can easily be losing their mind and continuing to kill people long after those responsible for their child's death are gone...or it could turn out their scheme is larger and darker than simple revenge and their own child never truly mattered. The Mournful Bard could accidentally release an ancient being of death out of desperation and become a force to help the PCs against a new foe after coming to their senses...or they could joyfully decide that if they can't have their true love, then the whole world deserves to die. The Disgraced Teacher is possibly the bluntest of our three example villains, but even they can twist expectations based on the circumstances surrounding being fired.
The point is, all of these rich twists and turns the game can take all have roots in the villain's background, and even just keeping one in mind can fill a "rainy day" session you've not prepared for with clues and mysteries.
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