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.