Why Your Dungeons And Dragons Villains Suck
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- Опубликовано: 11 ноя 2018
- A great Dungeons and Dragons Villain can completely change your game and story from another generic campaign to something memorable for your players. Here's a Dungeon Master Tip to help you fix those boring villains.
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Игры
my pc's ARE the villains
Ikr, I had a village raid encounter and they joined the attack😂
I brought a child changeling witch with a floating head (looked just like her, same name but spelled differently) as a familiar. The gm killed her after she tried to trick the party into eating a dead party member with Cook People, and she is now a demi-lich villain we have to deal with near the end of the campaign.
My players are LITERALLY TRYING TO SUMMON TIAMET
@@luj6455 one way to ruin their expectations & create a new antagonist for the campaign is have them accidentally summon the Goddess from the Mirror-verse. I remember an old forum about The Gods Of The Mirror-verse & one of of them was Tiamat The Rainbow Dragon. The Mirror-verse version of Tiamat is a Chaotic Good dragon, who was opposed by Bahamut the Iron Tyrant, but I'd shift Bahamut from being an Iron Dragon into the Uranium Dragon.
@@luj6455 I felt that on a spiritual level
I can see sloth being a villain motivation. The villain might want an easy life so they take short cuts that can put the world in danger.
Or bringing the entire universe to a grinding halt. The whole universe, frozen forever.
My brain trembles... I AM Betelgeuse Romanée-Conti! I represent sloth
yeah, like a king hiring a bunch of bandits to be guards, or getting rid of every dissenting opinion in his court because they exhaust him, or hoarding all of the kingdom's armies in the capital while everything else goes to shit because "war is tiresome, security is relaxing", i can totally see it
Jabba the Hut is a nice example of Sloth. It's not so much that one aspires to be sloth-like, but it becomes an end result of having attained a certain level of power. Jabba no longer really needs to leave his home to get things done. He has tons of lieutenants and thugs and mercenaries he can send off to do whatever it is he needs to accomplish. Meanwhile, he rakes in the gold, surrounds himself with (slave) women, and eats like a pig.
Maybe a slumbering monster like the Tarrasque, annoyed by these chattering primate humans and elves and dwarves scurrying over the surface of its earth like an infestation of bedbugs, it wants to destroy everything so it can rest again.
8:00 “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown”
― H.P. Lovecraft
You mist play in the Midderlands Setting.
Meh... Lovecraft was a whiny bitch. Seriously. Look at his history.
Actually contradicted by the evidence accumulated by scientists of motivation and emotions such as Elliot & Church (1997), Elliot & McGregor (2001), Curry, Elliot, Da Fonceca & Moller (2006) Gollwitzer and Brandstatter (1997) and Armitage (2004).
Instead, it seems that fear is an emotion that leads to inaction and anxiety, and that drive, yearning and intent are, instead, the most powerful motivations.
Mine seems to lean more in the direction of apathy. I've nearly died several times in my life and oddly my thoughts in those times wasn't fear or panic it was once disappointment in dying in an embarrassing way when I thought I had crushed my lungs falling out of a tree and not being able to breathe until I passed out, one was hu I wonder how far I'll get before someone finds the body when I fell through the ice on a river and once complete and utter denial when I nearly bleed out from internal bleeding and refused to go to the hospital until I could barely stand up at work and I started seeing white flashes I finally had a blood test run and I was completely out of iron and my hemoglobin levels were at organ failure levels and the whole time in the moment I was still thinking I feel fine if I'm laying down though, it's not a big deal I'm fine. Ended up needing 3 bags of blood and 2 iv transfusions just to reach stable levels and was still mostly perturbed they were making me spend the night at the hospital when I was wanting to just go home. Never did figure out what the cause of the bleading was.
@Soviet who Cuts it's weird what ya think about when shit hits the fan sometimes. Hopefully your doing alright.
Usually heroes are reactionary but that's usually because the heros fights to preserve the status quo.
In most games the world is relatively good and peaceful. The villains try to change that and the heroes try to preserve the way things are.
But it's not always the case. In a story where the hero is trying to make a change and the villains is trying to preserve the status quo their rolls will be reversed.
I submit that whichever side is trying to make a change will be actionary, and whichever side wants to keep the status quo will be reactionary.
Okay, you carry a gravity-ridden point...
BUT with scenarios like this, you're imminently going to have to construct a world/setting that is NOT peaceful or relatively good... At the very least, there must exist some situation within the setting that the Players (and by rote, the PC's) will have to find intolerable for themselves.
I'm not saying this is necessarily a "bad" thing. I'm simply pointing out the obvious, here. Some such situations would include systemic slavery of some variation, and/or the abuses of power by Nobles, noble families, or certain "higher" groups in regards to society at large. THEN you have to create the "excuse" for the PC's to find the status-quo intolerable.
It's probably easiest (cheap?) to suggest the Nobles are abusive of their powers of nobility, and obviously the PC's are at the other "figurative end" of social order. Otherwise, it gets difficult for them to be effected by the systemic injustice.
Sure, we like to believe we're sympathetic to others, but within a social accord (accepted tradition) the "untouchable" layers of a hierarchical social order are "untouchable" in view of the rest of society for "reasons"... all too justifiable in the minds of most people. It doesn't make it impossible for a PC to have an "excuse" to go against the proverbial grain, but it makes the list of "ready excuses" or "passable reasons" considerably shorter.
With regard to slavery as a systemic atrocity, then how do you justify the rest of "common reasonably intelligent people" accepting it as a practice?
From Rome, originally slaves were taken from conquered lands. They were the surviving barbarians brought "into the fold" of Roman Society. Their first years were supposed to be spent serving Romans who could afford them, while they learned the language and social structures along the way. Eventually, the slaves would commonly be freed, joining the society around them as citizens when they've progressed to an aptitude to handle citizenship... AND of course, fresh lands were being conquered and bringing with that fresh slaves... cyclically.
This doesn't say slavery had merits of moral virtue... Far from it, as slaves were considered property, and were clearly and often mistreated as such. It WAS however, the justification for taking slaves in the first place, and there were documentations of slaves "earning" their freedom and citizenship in just so many words and syllables.
I mean, you can't just militarily conquer a country full of barbarians and welcome them with open arms into "regular society"... It would be chaos. SO slavery wasn't "perfect" (or even good, really) BUT it served until something better could be invented... supposedly.
In any case, agreement, more or less from here... just thought I'd toss a few points to mull over along with it. ;o)
@@sztallone415, Try actually reading through the WHOLE of the comment... As I specified (near the end really) it was some arbitrary subjective musings for the rest of the participants of this thread to "mull over" a bit... none of the suggested particulars were "particularly well done" as thoughts and musings go (in my usual case anyway) but some reasonably presentable variations... oddly enough... STRIPPED RIGHT FROM THE HISTORY BOOKS... so spare me the "history is full of injustice" speech.
Leave MY morals at the door??? I've constructed a playground in-game called "S.P.O.D." specifically for a moral dillemma. Spod (Sexual Pleasures and Obscene Delights" is a variant on an older prisoner system, wherein the felons (once convicted) are utilized by the populace at "reasonable rates" as sexual objects... the duration of their sentence is both financial and time-wise determined by the degree of their crimes... AND as felons in that society had forfeited their rights as citizens, accidentally (or purposefully) killing them in the midst of excitement was NOT considered a crime. Everything in Spod has a price... even a death (if that's your thing).
Or how about a trans-galactic (post scarcity) society... Where certain colonies are created entirely for recreational purposes... and some even cater to "horrible perverts" and the proclivity for insane levels of lust, violence, violations of others, and even abuses upon children... The technology could theoretically exist to "brain edit" out the traumas, so any grievous psychological injuries are temporary at worst.
...but children? animals too... why the hell not? In synthetic bodies, they don't necessarily even have to be "real humans" though that would probably fetch a much higher price.
Don't read too much into "offerings for mulling over"... AND I can assure you, my "moral integrity" is probably at its all-time most lucid. That doesn't mean I don't have a pretty fair ideal where to "poke a sharp stick" to reach someone else's delicate sensitivities... on as personal or profoundly social a level as I wish to stab... and twist.
Slavery specifically? Well, it was a reasonable guess (as arbitrary as any other suggestion) that it would elicit SOMEONE to respond... AND you, sir, certainly responded. (see how that works?) ;o)
@@sztallone415 a great example of your original point can be seen in the curse of strahd campaign. barovia is a place fallen in darkness, where those who die can't move on because of the mists. and strahd himself is so powerful that the party may begin looking for an easier way to defeat him- even if it's morally ambiguous or just outright wrong. when that happens, you've definitely got that "how are you better than me" moment locked in. and if played right it can be a real punch in the gut.
Maybe the players can stop a villain attempting to change the status quo only for the heroes to then also attempt to change the status quo for the better.
I think that would make a good story and a fun campaign.
Adam Gordon Star Wars has both sides of that, first the heroes are trying to hold the status quo, then in episodes 4-6 the heroes are trying to rightly change the status quo.
My greatest villain was actually my first villain ever. She was originally just a young necromancer on the run, designed for a level 1-2 group of 5. Party of Dwarf Paladin, Elf Ranger, Kobald Rogue, Human Druid, and Half-orc Wizard, a very well balanced group.
She was hunted by many people, the Faith of Pelor were the main presence the area and mainly making a large search in the local town. They were partnered with the Crusaders of Heironeous, the group that was recently routing undead and necromancers in the area recently, who originally discovered my villain and hunted her to her house, her parents, while not knowing how far she delved into dark magics, defended and hid her from the crusaders. Ultimately, there was a mishap and her family was killed by the paladins, her parents taking the blame for her actions as she watched from hiding.
She was lost, distraught, and alone, wandering the forest in the dark to flee from her pursuers, utilizing every bit of magic she could muster, dark and otherwise, to survive. Nearly captured, she was rescued by a strange young man, nearly feral, who jumped in and drove off the paladins. She collapsed from fatigue, and he took her to his home. This man, nameless until now she gave a name, Lysander, a name from a story of a brave wolf in one of her children's' stories told to her by her mother. Lysander was a child raised by wolves after bandits attacked a carriage and the wolf pack jumped the injured bandits. The Den Mother took pity on the baby who lost everything, and raised him for years until now.
Lysander couldn't understand the majority of common language, but grew up knowing of his Den Mother's kindness, and thus was a kind soul, it exuding a bestial grizzled exterior. The two had little solace, though... because then came my players.
They were travelers, adventurers hired by the Faith of Pelor at the local tavern to aid the paladin crusaders to find the lost necromancer girl, and capture her alive for trial. The hope was to determine if she was possessed by malicious spirits (thinking that her mother, specifically, was an active devil worshiper and practicing necromancer) and then free her from them, if she needed, then find her a proper foster home, or possibly send her to a convent for care and a healthy upbringing. A noble cause for my clueless players.
They were methodical, as expected, slaughtering all manner of beast to retrace my villain's steps leading to the wolf den. They slaughtered the wolves in a fierce battle, thinking that she is to be their upcoming dinner or worse, already dead, but they needed proof of her demise, if that was the case. Lysander was absent, looking for food, water, and reagents for my villain's spells, which he didn't know were reagents. The Den Mother stood to protect the girl, who backed up the Den Mother with her dark magic, not wanting her new friends to be slaughter by the church's vicious mercenaries... my players.
They slew the Den Mother, and my villain was vexed, fearful of her life once more. She ran to the back of the den, but was trapped. She knew one more spell, the darkest, most evil spell... but it require the heart of a child as a reagent and she never hoped to use it. She clutched her chest, drew her mother's kitchen knife and... was knocked out from the Kobald rogue sneaking up and whacking her with the pommel of his blade.
They tied her up and brought her to town, they gagged her and placed her in an animal cage thinking that she'd try to escape once conscious and she's been adept at evading capture for all this time. She awoke in the cage and she was lonely, hurting, and devastated for not being able to save those that have been saving her, sparing her, all this time. She wept in her cage and the party couldn't bear it, so they getting ready to turn her in, even though it was nighttime instead of waiting until the morning. They lifted and set her cage in a cart drawn by a donkey, they went back inside to prepare their equipment, wares, and potions for walking to the church, which was a short way, but they were expecting something to happen... However, Lysander had been stalking them, tracking them to the tavern, and had been waiting for an opportunity to either strike vengefully at my players for what they had done, or to save the lost little girl who so many "civilized folk" had been after with such vicious gusto. He freed her, gave her the food, water, and reagents, and she convinced him to regroup in a local cemetery, that they would both "fix" these evil paladins and mercenaries.
The party quickly realized that my little villain girl had escaped right under their noses but wasn't far. They split the party, one group tracking, the other group informing the church. They rendezvous at the local graveyard where my villain went all-in with her necromancy, raising a resent-fueled horde of zombies and skeletons. The party regrouped with the captain of the guard, some "red-shirt guard cadets" and the leader of the paladin group that was pursuing the girl, the one responsible for the "misunderstanding" and executing the girl's family. Seeing him filled her with rage, she pulled the heart of recently deceased and buried child and crushed it in her hand, incanting the forgotten "custom" spell. Graveyard shook, the bones of the dead amalgamated and the spirit of a demon was called to fill the Bone Golem being bound to the girl's will, a highly-intelligent, overcharged, miasma emitting demonic Bone Golem assailed the party and their allies at the command, "Slaughter them all, reap the pain they've sown on my soul a thousand-fold!" given by the girl who's been pushed beyond her limit. This was in tandem with Lysander, a new-born first-of-line werewolf, a mystical power granted by the soul of his Den Mother upon returning home to find his family slaughtered by the players.
The players barely won, all of the NPC allies they had with them fell in battle and the Bone Golem and its demonic host, which doubled as a Wraith once the golem itself was slain. However, the injured girl and Lysander had gotten away, Lysander picking her up after she had collapsed from both fatigue and damage from the players and leaping from the the ledge of a nearby cliff to escape. The party failed in their objective, overall, but LOVED the story, which was ongoing; both Lysander and Phaedra (the girl necromancer and primary antagonist) became reoccurring villains. However, what turned out to be a romance between them fell apart when Phaedra began to seek greater dark power to a point where Lysander, the lycanthope that was taught language by Phaedra, couldn't follow. A bittersweet couple they were. Pain, loss, and the will to survive pushed them both and very often made my players quarrel between continuing to hunt and/or stop them or even consider supporting them in some instances.
Phaedra became the second primary antagonist of the entire campaign, my primary one being a very edgy devil outcast who sought dominance over the entirety of the lower planes. A far more direct approach to a villain when compared to these two villains.
Hey, that’s pretty good
Read the entire thing, loved it.
That's a great villain right there. Tragic backstory, real motivation, characterization. Love it.
Wow... I’m just starting as a DM and I’m having trouble finding a decent villain. This was a huge inspiration, thanks!
Wow. Compelling narrative and compelling characters.
My best villain yet was a politician that made the heroes do some quests for him ... they started first as helping people but slowly the players found out that they were just removing political adversaries as he was out to take over the control.
They were so proud when they defeated many evil bad guys not realizing what was happening in the power shift on the political stage.
It was only when a bunch of assassins came attacked them while he revealed his plan that the quarter dropped.
You just gave me a great idea thank you!
Why did he explain his plan to them? Just let the players find notes/contracts that he wrote to his clients instead.
In my campaign, the players are headed towards a VERY similar plot twist... It's gonna be awesome.
@@shandaniel2999 I used the classic evil guy trope, the end of the campaign was happening so the bad guy monologued
Draz Plays! But it is so obviously a thing of fiction that it takes your players out of the world. Not to mention that it is a stupid move on part of the villain which also hurts immersion and the villain’s status as a mastermind. I’m sure you can think of a better way of revealing the plot twist.
Villains do not see themselves as villains.
They see their cause as righteous, they're the hero
Some do, especially if they view themselves as beyond saving or too far gone or too late to repent, etc.
@@futuza even that is a righteous outlook: you can't save men, i'm a monster. It takes a monster to get this job done. If I have to be a monster to get this power/do this thing/save or destroy this world, then so be it.
Right, I have two groups playing in the same world working towards each other to the same world changing event. They don't know each other exists. By the time they meet around level 15-17, they could be fast friends, sworn enemies, uneasy allies, any number of things. They could see the other party as the villain's of their own story. It's all just a matter of perspective.
*Often Times.... I know of a few Villians Whom of which would call themselves villians. The Dark Side is alluring and can be motivating I want to see a great villian that simply goes after what they want and dosnt give a shit about anyone else. Acting with a true dark and evil intent knowing exactly what their doing.
Robbie rotten was one and only villian of sloth. And we loved him for it!
He was number one
Robbie has come to my mind a few times over the last couple months. No idea why, thanks for letting me know I'm not alone. Given the context I would also submit Oscar the Grouch as contender for Villain of Sloth.
Ironically, Robbie Rotten actually _doesn't_ fit Sloth very well. While Sloth is his ideal, he actually isn't overly slothful himself. He's ambitious, and he's constantly active enacting his newest scheme. In fact, he's occasionally even more hyperactive than most other inhabitants of Lazytown.
"Heros are bland/boring/etc."
They're only as boring as the the creators that conceived of them. Heroes like any other character should be interesting, otherwise why would you want to keep continuing on with whatever story you're conjuring???
Indeed, the idea of "villains act, heroes react" is more a matter of convention, not law. It's very easy to create a story that _starts_ with the villain doing something evil, and then the hero spends the whole story responding to that. Where the hero says, "I don't like what Villain is doing, so I'm going to stop it".
That can easily be turned on its head. Where the _Hero_ decides to pursue a goal, that is then reacted to by a villain for whatever reason. The villain says, "I don't like what Hero is doing, so I'm going to stop it". The villain doens't need to have been doing evil beforehand - and if they are, the hero might not have known about it when he began pursuing his goal. The hero might have a personal goal, and that goal is objectionable to the villain for some reason. Frequent conflicts arise over obtaining a Thing that both characters want, and the villain is willing to sink to villainous lows in order to get it. Or the two characters have interests that are mutually exclusive; the hero cannot obtain what he wants without preventing the villain from getting what HE wants.
The villain's motivations for placing himself in villainous opposition to the hero's plans can be complex, or could be very petty. People are known to bad things for simple reasons. Primal ones.
For me the best thing in 5e is the background section. It's where the payers can define their characters' motivations, and the DM can use it to build a campaign off of. You could make character driven games. I only wish it was used more.
Bluecho4
THIS.
Holy mackerel this post! Thanks for such a stellar reply. You really hit the proverbial nail on the head better than I did originally!
Douglas Phillips
I'm very much a noob when it comes to tabletop RPGs. Like I've read about most of the popular ones, and watch streams of it, etc without ever actually playing. And considering how in depth the background part of D&D character creation is... I'm so, so disappointed with how most folks don't try to utilize it more often.
But if you're a writer as a hobby like me; those backgrounds and whatnot are great for helping to develop your own stuff as inspiration. 🤷🏻♀️ XD
@@spritelady4669 Just my 2 cents here as a comic book writer. Main character and hero are two different thing.
The antagonist could be a hero, and the protagonist a villain. By definition a hero is one who displays courage and self-sacrifice.
As you said, the opposition between protagonist and antagonist is just a conflict of motivation, it doesn't take the behavior of each character into account. A protagonist can be trying to save the world, but may be a villain if he doesn't care about killing people while doing so.
Good and Evil are subjective, being a villain and being evil are not related. A goblin villain could be killing human, stealing food and fighting like a coward, doing "evil" things, but he may at the same time be the last hope of his starving clan, helping them survive by bringing stolen food from the hostile human city. Not only will he be doing "good" but he could even be considered a hero by his people.
Even antagonist and protagonist isn't something fixed. A lot of antagonist can become ally, when they see their motivations are not opposed anymore, or if they renounce on their motivations.
Character design is a long process, and the only reason a character may be boring is because the author didn't take enough time to write it.
(PS : sorry for my english, french speaker here)
5:37
I mean, Sloth is the ultimate motivation, not wanting to do anything makes you find the fastest way to do something, so a Sloth driven Necromancer makes sense in this respect.
And of course, "fast" does not mean "efficient", "moral", or "risk-free". Hence why the villain is a villain. They are willing to sink to terrible lows - even ones that will take them into conflict with others - just to minimize effort on their part.
@@Bluecho4
Exactly.
Steps to creating a successful villain:
1. Give them an Eye Patch. Preferably more than one.
2. Give them a Prosthetic Arm. At least 2.
3. Give the at least 2 Peg Legs.
4. at least one hook on each of their hands.
So, Shamus from Family Guy?
I was about to say big boss but then i read the at least 2 part
Darth Vader would actually fit that list
"To be truly diabolical is to do Evil under the guise of Good" Use that phrase for creating great villains, everyone doesnt have to be cut and dry, make your villain's ambitions allign with those of your heroes, but skewed in a twisted or extreme way, and that will make for a villian your heroes can sympathize with, and somewhat understand why they would do that.
Magneto.
If you do this too well, or neglect to give the villain a reason to be at odds the party before they have a say in the matter, they may well end up joining him.
One of the essential ingredients for a villain (and not just a bad guy or anti-hero) is to have goals that can ONLY conflict with the goals of the heroes.
I think that to create a good villain you do need a motivation. But I think that giving them morals really help them become a lot more interesting. Instead of thinking about what how evil they are but simply about what they WONT do. What is it that they will NOT tolerate. Hero's are those who stand up to what they think is abominable. I find that my most interesting villains are not particularly fanatical and may not even have motivations really outside of what they think is simply intolerable to live with.
Agreed, there's nothing more intriguing to a villain than having the heroes walk into them reprimanding a sub-villain for going overboard or doing something against their moral code, or something to that effect. Showing that they have a limit to how far they'll go to accomplish their goals means the party won't just think they're an opposing force to whatever 'good'' they'll do.
In fact, if you as a DM ever see an opportunity to make a villain go: "You know what, this isn't worth fighting." or "Whether you like it or not, it's in my interests to help you" straightforward with no trickery or interests to curry favour with the party. Sure, eventually you'll find a point where the two will be irreconcilable, because they're villains, but it will make the party think about said villain's motivations and perhaps even consider bargaining with them rather than being simply another person on the hit list.
and the delisous irony if the players do the thing the villain wont do
That would make you think again!
As Meat Loaf the Drow once proclaimed, "I'd do anything for Lolth, but I won't do that."
It would be a good moral quandary to have a big bad that is actually morally in the right but directly against the party's quest giving king or other powerful entity which is also not evil so to speak but whose action would lead to disaster for the big bad who in turn fights for his people against the perceived fight and so on until the heroes are involved on one side or the other not knowing the motivation of the other and earning the focused enmity of the big bad in repeatedly deviating their pore helpless followers as they see the enemies the players face. The possibility of the players finally beating the big bad to find they were actually a lawful good and selfless leader to a nearly defenseless people fleeing the king that ignorantly deemed them terrorists sent you to destroy. Maybe a jurnal found after killing the powerful lvl 20 druid leader of the community describing the relentless hounding and narrow escapes from the relentless demons bent on the slaughtering of their people and how they foil every attempt to turn them away or kill them and how they grow ever closer to reaching the helpless city and the wholesale slaughter they believe would take place if the party makes it that far and ending in the reluctant decision to prepare a final engagement they would attend to personally with the last of the city's defense with the thought being they had to stop the party before the city was discovered or the helpless townsfolk would be slain so they knowingly prepared for the final stand to fight to the final man in a last stand against evil.
In the game I'm currently running my villain has interacted with the party twice (So far). In both instances the characters were terrified.
That isn't to say the players were informed this encounter terrified them, nor that I instructed them they should be terrified or implied it. I simply described the encounter and half my players stated "Nope!" while the other half said "NOPE!". The players had a visceral reaction. There is a place in the world I built which the players are literally afraid to take their characters. That place is where my villain resides, waiting.
I've found the key to motivating the players is to simply provide a situation, describe it to them in detail, offer to answer questions, and watch them withdraw in terror. Then, with a kind smile, tell them they don't have to do anything about it if they don't want to. Explain to them there's a whole world out there they could be exploring. The returned thought is always "But if I walk away, will it stop?". The answer, of course, is no. If they walk away it won't stop. It will just stop being their problem. And that is the moment heroes are born.
Heroes aren't interesting because they're heroes. Heroes are interesting because they're people. A GM who thinks the hero is boring is a GM who doesn't care about their players' characters.
The villain exists to provide flavor and context to a world. It's the players and their characters that create the adventure.
This video claims heroes are reactionary and villains are actionary. That's only true at the outset. The characters react to what the villain is doing. However once the players have a plan of action the villain begins to react, striving to continue their plot despite the players actions.
Finally, when the villain and the players meet on relatively equal footing (or as close to it as the villain's power allows), that is when both cease to react and instead act upon one another until only one side remains.
Counter-Exemple :
Matt Murdock/Daredevil is the hero of his story, but it's without *him* that the world continues on business as usual.
In an unjust world, the hero who wants to make things right writes the plot.
But again, without criminals and villains... there is nothing to correct, fix, fight, or take action against.
True, but it's Kingpin who's boring without Daredevil, not the other way around.
But without Kingpin, Daredevil would just be an office employee.
Without Kingpin, Daredevil would be out in the streets avenging whatever injustice the courts can't fix.
Without Daredevil, Kingpin's just a rich asshole in an ivory tower frying himself some basil and parsley omelettes to the sound of classical cello music.
The notion that Daredevil would just be an office employee without Kingpin is directly contradicted by the plot, as Daredevil was going around punching people way before either Kingpin nor Daredevil became aware of one-another.
In the beginning, D. was just trying to dismantle a human trafficking network.
The best Villain I ever created is a Clown that was the head of Satanic cult at a Circus. I'm still doing the campaign, but my players hatted (in game) him so much that I made his death the 1st part of a ritual to turn himself into a God. The PCs are now struggling to stop all the rituals for full Godhood. All Hail Giggles the Clown!!!
I'm so using this idea
Sounds a lot like Kefka from FF VI. I like it😁
God king giggles the merciless
That's great!
OMG id have nightmares haha
I fear nothing. Nothing is really scary. Just wait until you encounter nothing. You will fear it too.
...The Nevereennnnding Stooooorrryyyyyy.... :P
@Backstage Bum precisely. Fear nothing.
Aw, did you give them anything at the top to deliver on that fear they created for themselves? That sounds like a ripe opportunity for some good storytelling
But the spirit Shadow that do strength ability score damage are just that.
The cold touch of nothingness .
" Feel the cold touch of nothingness as Death draws near. Say goodbye to sweet Heaven as the Darkness creeps over you."
Everyone thinks "nothing" is black.
But it's blue. From the outside.
For me best villains are the ones that aren't evil, but their goals just go agaisnt the player's, so you can sympathize with them, or maybe they became evil because they lost someone, or their town got destroyed and they want revenge, whatever really, but something that makes you actually like the villain.
Also, boring and plain villains are useful, but they should be just a tool imo mainly for humour and having fun with the players, imagine your players are carrying a magic item to the capital or something, and there's this thing kinda like Gollum that wants it, but he's just so pathetic and plain, but still, it's fun and can make some interesting scenes, but he shouldn't be the main villain tho.
My current campaign has two villains. One is someone that wants to corrupt the souls of the kingdom's greatest heroes so she can claim them in Hell, and as such is sending things to kill the friends and family of those heroes. The other is murdering those same heroes and preventing their resurrection so that they go to heaven and the first villain doesn't get their souls. Plus, if they die, their families are safe. The heroes are all high level, but because of the threats to their family, can't go and sort things out for themselves, letting the party take center stage. The party still thinks all the attacks are being done by the same entity. Shhhhhhhh.
Yeah making a villian not see himself to be the villian but either feel misunderstood or is so far out that he/she doesn't care what needs to be done in order to save whatever it is he/she is trying to save makes for amazing story telling.
Especially if it turns out the pc's and the villians goals are actually the one and the same..
They both just want to save the princess trapped inside the palace but where as the PC's are simply trying to get the mad king into understanding he isn't protecting the poor girl but actually torturing her the villian is creating an army of undead to take over the palace so he can save her..but ofcourse killing hundreds in the process since "the end justifies the means"
I think the best villians are the ones who have valid goals but the heroes simply can't allow it due to their own goals
Precisely. A well-written villain believes himself to be the hero, like Javert, Magneto, or Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men. True chaotic evil villains are fun as short-term obstacles, but they just aren't interesting enough to sustain a campaign.
My BBEG is a vengeance paladin who swore an oath with his father (a leader) that he would never be a friend to the enemy (the nation of the pcs) that destroyed his home and his people in a war. His side defended unsuccessfully. Now a generation has passed and he is getting revenge.
Not sure if that is power or wealth...
Great video, Cody. I love the Black Friday example. Haha! It’s sad, really. Humans!!!
I think screen time is a lot to do with this and I've changed how I deal with big bads appropriately. In a book or film you can see the villain away from the 'Hero'. You see them attacking peasants and bullying the weak. Hurting people loyal to them. Flashbacks of the past. Imagine if you only saw the villain when they appeared opposite the hero in those mediums. Who would care about the Joker if you saw him twice a movie? Defectors, escapees and victims telling tales of the villain. Scrying and far off sightings. Things and NPCs the PCs care about being killed and destroyed. Up the level of involvement of your villains in the campaign. Don't just use them once when the PCs confront them.
It would be a good moral quandary to have a big bad that is actually morally in the right but directly against the party's quest giving king or other powerful entity which is also not evil so to speak but whose action would lead to disaster for the big bad who in turn fights for his people against the perceived fight and so on until the heroes are involved on one side or the other not knowing the motivation of the other and earning the focused enmity of the big bad in repeatedly deviating their pore helpless followers as they see the enemies the players face. The possibility of the players finally beating the big bad to find they were actually a lawful good and selfless leader to a nearly defenseless people fleeing the king that ignorantly deemed them terrorists sent you to destroy. Maybe a jurnal found after killing the powerful lvl 20 druid leader of the community describing the relentless hounding and narrow escapes from the relentless demons bent on the slaughtering of their people and how they foil every attempt to turn them away or kill them and how they grow ever closer to reaching the helpless city and the wholesale slaughter they believe would take place if the party makes it that far and ending in the reluctant decision to prepare a final engagement they would attend to personally with the last of the city's defense with the thought being they had to stop the party before the city was discovered or the helpless townsfolk would be slain so they knowingly prepared for the final stand to fight to the final man in a last stand against evil.
Couldn't agree more. In my current campaign there is no one villain, and confrontation is neigh-on impossible. They might face down individuals who have done things they find intolerable, but there's no 'big bad' to fight. They don't know who or what their fight is with, they just see the foot soldiers carrying out work that's causing widespread suffering to people who have done nothing wrong. They're slowly unraveling details and making guesses at the truth but fighting a nameless, faceless enemy is hard work and they can't really grill the people they've caught for information because they know no more than the party members do.
100% yes! Your PCs should hate and/or fear your villain long before they ever meet them face-to-face.
@@Error-eb9gv I made a short story arc kind of like that. There are several factions none of which are evil but all who oppose each other:
1) lycanthropy-infected druids (druid-bloodhunters) who protect their sacred places and use animal sacrifices to keep an evil demon trapped in a cave under their forest.
2) an ambitious lord who wants to restore their provincial town to prosperity by mining nearby ore deposits that happen to be in the druids' territory.
3) a lonely young wild-magic sorcerer who was born among the druids but accidentally fireballed in one of the sacred groves and has been exiled and sneaks into the town to visit a girl.
4) girl in the town who has fallen in love with the druid-sorcerer boy but also wants to make her loving father (a loyal servant of the lord) proud.
Haven't found time to play it yet so I don't know what side my PCs will take.
"You comb your hair..."
Hah. You fool. You thought I know what personal hygiene is?
I love this comment
The necromancer raising an undead army... but he’s the hero
Antihero
Chaotic evil
He could be raising the victims of the real villain to prevent further victims.
Another example is Atrocitus from Green Lantern. He is bloodthirsty, evil and violent. But why us he that way ? Because the leaders of the Green Lantern Corps constructed robots that commited genocide on his entire space sector, including killing his family in front of him. So he decided to take his revenge and for all others that felt injusticed.
it could be the necromancer is trying to make a spell that can revert the undead back into the living
Or just a pragmatist who wants to stop a greater evil without unnecesary dead. If those he raise already died from war, disease or whatever, then using an army of undead to fight a greater evil is just a way to spare the living the need to die at this greater evils hands. Sometimes undead might even be a better choice for fighting that enemy.
I made this question list for a group I was DMing for, but I think it could also work for NPCs.
1. What is your character's biggest dream?
2. What is your character's biggest fear?
3. If you character could have any one wish granted, what would it be?
4. What is your character's relationship like with his or her family?
5. What do your character consider the most important event of his or her life so far?
6. How honest is your character about his or her thoughts and feelings?
7. Does your character have any biases or prejudices?
8. Who was the most influential person in your character's life?
9. What is your character's answer to the train moral dilemma?
10. Does your character have any deep regrets?
I'm going to use this (I might edit or add some things). Thank you for sharing.
@@chestersnap I'm glad like it. I hope it is useful to you.
You're basically saying every motivation can be turned into fear. "I want to get an education" can be "I am afraid of being useless"
desire isnt necessarily fear of not having something
Well, fear is an instinct that protects you. You should always listen to it but never let it drive you. It's not always fear that drives you, but it's one of the most basics.
I love me some villians. They are my fav characters of all the time. But, BUT, but, there are GREAT stories with no villians and great hooks without villians. Lets save people for lets say a huge thunderstorm of raw magic, or lets talk about stoping the conflict in a city that has groun out of resentment of years without one of the sides being intrinsically evil. It put players in a very interesting situations where things aint black and white where wveryone is complex and has different motivations but they shouldn't go murder hobo on them because they are just reacting to stuff as they are.
"Heroes are boring." Citation needed.
Yeah, they're boring if you handle them wrong.
@Backstage Bum My paladin is true neutral and he just wants to go on big quests to get treasure, fame, and keep his paladin powers. Then again, all my characters are true neutral, even the heroic ones, because I think the alignment chart is stupid anyway
Superman. Cyclops. Vision. These all have a background that puts them on the side of good, but they are very powerful, which is boring, and without something to struggle against, they could just as easily be convenience store clerks. Now, those whom some will cite interesting heroes will point to the troubled heroes, the anti-heroes, and the partial heroes. See: Batman, Wolverine, Deadpool. Some heroes are interesting because they are flawed, confused, scared, or otherwise not perfect. For examples of these, see Spiderman and the MCU Iron Man (particularly in the first two solo movies).
@@MonkeyJedi99 Your comment indicates YOU are more interested in villains -- and that's fine, but nothing indicates we have to have the same opinion. Both you and Taking20 suggest Heroes only rise to confront evil -- and that does happen, but some heroes already exist, and something opposing them comes into range. Why are you focused on just one side? Compare that to a world where an interesting villain and interesting heroes collide!
@@vrodaire2801 Yep opinions are like.... Everyone has one, some marry one, and nobody has to like the one you prefer. It is the differences that keep us going.
"Weatlh and power" You forgot change. Wealth, power and change. A good villain is also looking for change too or to impact the world, it is something overlooked by a lot of writers or GM's in games.
Change can be a very big motivator for a NPC, and can even make them SEEM like a villain. Take, a 'villain' who wants to kill all elves, he could be doing it for all three motivations mentioned, Wealth by owning their land and resources, Power by removing a strong threat and gaining their artifacts and the change is the removal of that said race and impacting motivations which could be a variety of things but for example could be to remove the link to the Feywild in some sense if that is how you wrote them into your story. You could even make a King NPC who just wants change in general who is a low level, with no items of noriety but just wants to make a tunnel which breaches through a horrible mountain range which alters the time for travel around the kingdom, but the villanous thing about it is he also wants to destroy a tribe which uses the area as a home, or wipe out the whole ecosystem in that area to make it safe. Change is a huge motivation for an NPC and shouldn't be forgotten. It is key to WHY they are doing their evil.
I still think that old-fashioned pure evil villains can be interesting. Remember Disney villains, for example - motivated by greed for power, basically, but still memorable. That's what I try to recreate in my games, at least.
The thing with simple villians is to keep in mind _why_ they work. Their simplicity puts the emphasis squarely on how all the other characters react to the villian.
Let's go back to grandpa Tolkien for the example of Sauron. Sauron is a pretty bland, simple character in LotR. He has some interesting abilities and a fancy maguffin, but even Scar from the Lion King is arguably a deeper character.
How is such a character the villian of a genre-defining classic? Because the story is about the characters' different reactions to the threat he poses.
Aragorn, Boromir, Denathor, Theodin, and Faramir all have drastically different reactions to the theat Sauron poses and that's just the main humans. Gandalf, Saruman, Elrond, Galadril, Gimli, Frodo...again all different reactions.
The story is built off of dealing with those different reactions. The villian is there to drive those reactions and indirectly create the meat of the story.
I would argue that a villain's worth is measured in how great an effect they have on the story. Sauron never appears in person in LotR. But he casts a shadow over all of Middle Earth, with armies fighting for and against him, and many protagonists nearly killing themselves multiple times each to thwart him.
You can't _not_ pay attention to Sauron and his actions.
@@dynamicworlds1 Sauron isn't the direct antagonist in the LOTR. The "real" antagonists are his various leutenants and servants - Saruman, the friend of the King of Rohan, and the Ring Wraiths, even the regent of Minas Tirith. Sauron is just an overarching presence to tie it all together.
"The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself." - FDR
So exact. So true.
Heroes are boring?
...Boy do I have some book recommendations for you!
I like the idea of using a villain’s own fears as his motivations. This adds a lot more depth to the villain as a person than just “some generic evil dude who’s doing bad stuff and must be stopped.”
Sloth as a villain- "my brain, it trembles" beutellegeuse from ReZero
Pixar would like to have a word with you. Villians are typically a minor part of the story, just one more obstacle along the way.
Your heroes do not need to be going against a specific thinking individual. They can be going up against a force of nature, a cataclysm, an ideology, and system. While you typically want a "big bad" as a conclusion to an arc, that climax to the adventure doesn't necessarily need to be pulling on the strings as an antagonist to the players.
Sloth could indeed be a villian. A slothen individual doesn't want to work and will do everything to avoid it. Make a deal with a devil? Poison a rival or person harassing them (which causes a political fallout). Be in a position of power/authority/responsibility but refusing to act even though it is incredibly important for the players that they do. Thus the "villian" or antagonist is an obstacle for the players to over come. This type of villian would unlikely be a combat related villian, but more of intrigue or diplomacy. Though I guess depending on the deal with the devil it could turn out to be a combat related one. Or if they are of such esteem and power they have powerful obedient protectors that must be overcome.
The problem with intricate villians is the PC's have to care. Else you are just doing obvious exposition dumps. So this largely depends on the group you are playing with. Though if you can craft your adventure correctly, finding out these motivations maybe the key to winning over over coming the obstacle. But again, if the players aren't interested in that they may just smash their way through. Which means you can either hard wall them (which isn't a very good GM thing to do) or allow your intricate story to fall to the way side.
Probably best to have several back stories on the "back burner" and if the players go digging, you can utilize one. What you don't want to happen is that you spend all your time and energy developing this really good villian and motivation, and your players just one shot him without even talking. That's where you have bad GM habbits of doing "cut scenes" or "exposition dumps" forced into the game.
The game is a group collaboration. As in a lot of the really memorable stuff will be spontaneous and some times thought up by the players themselves. Having good characters and back stories on hand is good to fill in the blanks when your players are having a hard time getting into it. But if you have a very proactive group your improv will play a better role for a more exciting experience.
"Railroad our players with static character goals". I don't think you understand rail road. As forcing exposition or cut scenes on your party is rail roading. You have to rob them of their freedom in order for you to show off your cool character you developed. And some times this can annoy players as they feel like you are attempting to upstage their characters with your own. The focus of the game is the characters. The game master shouldn't be attempting to interject themselves or their characters at the expense of the players. Yes part of the fun is for the Game Master too, and on occasion this will be tolerated. But if you are doing this regularly, you're not going to have a very happy group.
Dynamic villians are good. But they should make sense. They shouldn't be all knowing, as in using the knowledge of the GM in order to set their plans. Having a basic template for the intelligence, strategy, and planning is a good one. I had a GM who constantly had his creatures abusing every mechanic imaginable. The whole "well players do it." is bullshit. They should be acting as logical thinking individuals within the world. The players will indeed have an advantage there, though some might role play away some of those advantages.
I think you're over using fear. By such a loose usage of the word you can literally apply fear to every motivation in all of history. Why did you raise your children? FEAR. Why did you eat? FEAR. Why did you walk? FEAR. Why didn't you walk? FEAR. What you are doing in your examples is looking at basic decision making processes regarding future outcomes, and refering to it as fear. And in some cases fear isn't even necessary or relevant. The shoppers waiting on black Friday? Perhaps they find it fun and exciting? Perhaps they want to stretch their money further? Perhaps they wanted bragging rights? Some people make poor decisions as they value or weigh certain outcomes out of proportion. It's about perspective.
Really well thought out and descriptive comment. I just wanted to add in that the story is definitely about the heroes journey not only in d&d but in literature as we see the characters go through the heroes journey. Their interactions which each other and the world can be just as interesting as interactions with a well thought out villain. Heroes don't always have to be reactionary either they can also be actionary characters attempting to bring down nobility or seek vengeance.
I can't even remember the last time I made a proper "Villain" for any of my campaigns. I just create a universe with several opposing factions that all have their own motivations, and the "antagonist" becomes the leader of whichever faction the players opposes the most.
In my campaing the players are plane hopping searching for seven magical artifacts that whe put together can grant a wish. The catch is, there is no planned villain, there are only the people that they somehow harmed that now want to get back at them or want their stuff back (e.g. they stole a gith astral skiff from a gith kindergarten on the Prime Material plane, that is how they are able to traverse the planes. But now they are on Vlaakith's (the gith lich queen) watchlist and are being hunted down by one of her generals). It is not about having one big bad evil guy, it's about having everyone one they pissed off going after them while they search for the artifacts. And you know what, from a bystander's perspective the PCs are technically the bad guys.
I start with a goal that will put them at odds with the players and come up with a why. Then I come up with how the players will first encounter them or their forces. I make the PC's care by having the villain go after the things they care about whether it be that one city they enjoy visiting or that one NPC that they like. And sometimes, I just have the villain give the PC's chance to join. My absolute best was a wizard in a 1-20 Pathfinder campaign who was fed up with the injustice in the world and decided he wished to destroy almost all in the world except for children, including once they were raised himself, using the orbs of dragonkind. He met the players as an unconscious and bleeding man in their first dungeon and they healed him so they felt that anything he did was on them. He destroyed a couple of their towns, took a parent that used to be one of his old adventuring buddies (elf), and gave the party multiple chances to join. The party went after the orbs knowing that he was tracking them and that gathering them all in one place was risky but knowing that doing nothing would have been worse.
ty, this is without doubt inspiring
“Heroes are reactionary.” If you write a reactionary hero, in a status quo without any issues.
Perfect timing Cody, I needed an idea for 3 of my villains and this helped tremendously! Thank You!
I just came across your channel yesterday. Thanks for the great content, the upbeat style and the positive messages!
This was a fucking awesome and timely video, cuz I was just getting to the point where I was working out my campaign villain, trying to figure them out and make em nice an' spicy. That point about fear was especially interesting! Thanks for sharing this man :DD
Seriously, thinking about fear as motive has me thinking about real life too, great job man xD
I would not have ruled out Sloth, though I do admit is is very difficult to pull off in a game:
To the slothful villain, anything that threatens the Status Quo is the enemy.
For an example; Imagine a villain who is trying to stop the good guys from bringing about some sort of social change. This social change will not cause the villain to lose any real wealth or influence, maybe they are a CEO or some large land owning lord who will have influence regardless. This social change will only require the villain to adjust to the new political environment, all they will need to do is learn a few additional steps in order to exercise their power.
To the Sloth, the existing system doesn't require any direct input to reap the benefits and is thus superior!
This is also why the are very difficult to use in a Narrative sense, as this sort of villain will always be reacting to the environment instead of trying to change it themselves. They are also less of a direct threat as the Status Quo is already accepted by the masses... until it is not. These sort of villains do not tend to get over thrown by a small group of heroes 'cutting off the head,' they tend to be mobbed by the masses they ignored for the longest of times.
But if you where to run a campaign that involved the political intrigue leading up to a civil war:
Sloth will be your reoccurring Villain until some power hungry figure takes the rains forcefully away and the war kicks off.
Those villains are rare because, for the most part, in typical stories it's the _heroes_ defending the status quo of the world against a villain who wants to bring about massive change, rather than the other way around
My opinion is sloth can be implemented either as a past event in their backstory and thus as a motivator, or you make that particular character more of a figurehead or secondary villain. Like an irresponsible king who ended up in power by whatever means and treats his kingdom's treasury as his personal wallet. His motive would be maintaining his lavish lifestyle now that he's the king and totally letting his self-control out the window. Beating his followers and servants, abusing his power, all that good stuff. The people would be neglected, ambitious subordinates would take action uncontrolled, and ultimately corruption would spread, allowing for more of a team of villains.
I brought a child changeling witch with a floating head (looked just like her, same name but spelled differently) as a familiar. The gm killed her after she tried to trick the party into eating a dead party member with Cook People, and she is now a demi-lich villain we have to deal with near the end of the campaign.
I believe the best way to have a good villain is to give them a good background, give them motivations, give them reasons for the motivation, give them key events that shaped their life, and once you know who the character is, and why they act how they do, the rest falls in place easily enough.
I plot around the heroes stories, making them the interesting asset in the story.. doubled up with an intersting villain.
That's the world I want to be a part of, not just biding my time as a boring 'my choices don't matter' hero, hoping to outlast the exciting, all-powerful, focused on, villain.
8:11 "Everything you do is motivated by fear." That is as absurd and reductionist a claim as the hedonist assertion that everything you do is motivated by a desire for pleasure. I'm not going to say that fear isn't a powerful motivator. It is. But to say that it is behind everything we do is just wrong. For each of the examples you give about how something is *really* motivated by fear, I can think of multiple other factors that could cause someone to do those things. And I would argue that sometimes using fear as the deep motivator behind your villains actions is demonstrably not the best way to take things. To use your example of Anakin's turn to the Dark Side, while it certainly wasn't bad that it was fear of family loss that caused his turn, I think it would have been much more interesting if he had instead just come to the realization that the Jedi kind of suck and turned against them for purely ideological reasons. Laugh if you want for citing fan-fic, but I've read some versions that take that route and they make for a much more interesting Vader.
I was done at the "fear of missing out on saving money on an Xbox"
A protagonist can be motivated, but they, like the villain, need a goal.
Exploring the world is a goal. Climbing a mountain. Mastering their martial art. Stealing all the things. These can all be goals.
I kinda like the idea of maybe a villain in response to the heroes having a reaction like that of the Joker.
Gandalf was boring? Heroes can also drive the story by the choices they make. Guessing this is good for the newer DM's though.? Maybe. Meta-gaming can easily cripple many starting DM's.
Very interesting. I always worry my villains are bland or boring. I try to wing it as I go when it comes to them though I have started to build bigger bads up with lesser bads my pcs run into. If I had to have my favorite villain I've ever created was a ultron-eque warforge who served the god of destruction.
I think heros can be more active if they start the campaign as rebels who are fighting against the status quo, then the enemies are on the defensive. It would take some work, but you could probably work with your players to figure out a cause they think would be cool to fight for and start off the story where the established ruler has been running things this way for a long time, but now your characters are starting a revolution.
My player always tries playing the hero, but I make sure he causes trouble. I mean lots of trouble.
Consider this: Villains are reactionary, too. We just don't get to see what they're reacting to because this isn't their story.
There is no such thing as an "actionary" person.
My favourite villain I’ve ever made went something like this:
A Dragonborn sorcerer who had a thirst for knowledge to a point where he was willing to sacrifice others in pursuit of knowledge, however, he was good at making the sacrifices of others seem like it was of their own will.
Thing is, I made him as a PC, but introduced him as an NPC, and he developed with the party, until the end; he picked up a dragon’s orb and tried to learn how to utilise it
Only problem is that he didn’t have the will to take it over, and it consumed his mind and instead brainwashed him into releasing Auld’eir, the dragon encased in the orb, and he would stop at nothing to achieve this.
But when the party learnt of this character that they had actually bonded with as an NPC had become a puppet of an ancient dragon capable of resurrecting dragons and Dragonborn in which would be absolutely loyal to him, so the party had to make a decision:
Kill the NPC and save the kingdom, but lose a close friend in the process
Or, try and find a way to release his mind from the stone, and release their friend from the dragons control.
Except there was another, and I gotta say, this player became a badass during this moment.
She was a warlock, who had made a pact with the undying, had finally learnt the secret to immortality, or moreso the ability to resurrect herself at will, via a charisma check and an offering to her higher up, in the form of a personal and permanent sacrifice, like the loss of an eye, or an inability to read, so on and so forth.
She can also apply these to other people, whether or not they want her to or not, although they can resist it, but if they’re not strong enough to resist, then she can revive people and choose either something from them or from herself to offer up.
So she told the party to kill him.
They did it, although they didn’t, neither did I at the time, know what she was thinking.
And then she let it out.
She started speaking to her pact holder, and only her and the monk could understand what she was saying, And the monk was mortified.
The barbarian for once using his brain, asked what was up.
The monk said “she’s offering her power to revive him.”
And everyone else’s jaw dropped and she smiled nervously, her and her character are both shy, which I find adorable personally.
Fast forward to this year, and we continue this campaign as a crossover campaign/adventure, whatever you wanna call it, and she has now gained the ability to cast magic through Draconic means, as the NPC she saved felt indebted, and shared his knowledge with her and even aided her in attaining her new magic.
But she’s also blind now, because she needed to sacrifice something in order to complete the ritual, so the monk taught her to use her ki to sense her surroundings, and she gained truesight.
And the barbarian taught her spacial awareness and how to sense when things are going wrong, so I allowed her to have danger sense passively, but she has disadvantage on any visual checks normally due to blindness, so I made it break even.
And this was my most proud moment as a DM, because 1) this was her FIRST CAMPAIGN. EVER. And 2) it was all the players ideas to give her the lessons to do all the aforementioned stuff (except the dragon sorcerer junk, that was me)
I needed to hear this. My campaign is kind of a sandbox full of problems, and I'm setting up the Lawful "Good" Paladin of the Crown to be their first nemesis. I was focusing on what he's doing, but I need to do the legwork to work in his motivations. Much appreciated, Cody.
I would argue that love is the most powerful motivation:
1. People sacrifice time with their families to wait in lines for Black Friday because they love them and want to acquire a gift for them.
2. Bilbo (while afraid of missing out on adventure) was ultimately motivated by his (suppressed) love for adventure.
3. People can believe in a Kickstarter project and give their money (blindly sometimes) because they love the project and they have a hope of seeing it fulfilled.
4. I go to work because I love my family and would not want anything to happen to them. (This does incorporate fear, but the love prevents the fear from being realized)
5. I comb my hair because I value myself and I show myself love by caring for my appearance.
6. ( I didn't go to college) I have always been able to care for myself and my family. Love for them prevents me from making unwise financial decisions.
7. And while I do fear loosing my teeth, I brush my teeth for a love of my health. If I lost them my life would go on.
8. People sacrifice their own lives because they love ideals, institutions, beliefs, and people.
Fear motivates animals. Love motivates people. If we make our villains more relatable to ourselves, we make more memorable villains.
I think you don't need an antagonist to make an interesting plot, because heroes can be just as interesting without a villain. Just to throw in some classics, the story of Oedipus never needed a villain to begin with. A clever plot uses the reaction of the heroes to make them fall, because they are humans, they have flaws, and they are easily fall into hubris. Just write a fatalist story, and you will be fine.
Harry Potter is a great example of how I am going to disagree with you about heroes being boring. It's just the main hero that tends to be as interesting as drying paint. The supporting heroes often are awesome. The whole Weasly family, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin and Hermione are incredibly interesting and don't even need a plot or a villain to be enjoyable. They would work perfectly for a slice of life series. I'd further argue that they are who made Harry Potter so great. Voldemort doesn't do much in the first few books. Sure, there is always a mystery to solve which involves him, but people didn't fall in love with the world when they read the first book because of Quirrels actions.
When I think about my favorite animes (Noragami, Nichijou, Steins;Gate, most of them don't even have a villain.
I believe that every major NPC should have fears, motives, goals and goals. I find it much more enjoyable when player characters decide to join a cause or help an allied NPC instead of just reacting to the villain.
Noragami, the villain is Nora and her father, Stein's Gate is "the convergence" and Nichijou....have you even seen the Principle v Deer one? (honestly though those are 3 great animes, you have good taste man)
If you're just sitting down to think of a good villain I'd suggest thinking of their alignment, you may hate the alignment system but it can help make you think of what could possibly motivate them to act in alignment. also the further from chaotic evil the more compelling a bad guy can become. try figuring out a way for a good aligned character to have competing goals with your party in such a way that no agreement can be met without significantly changing your characters goals and you may have written an interesting story.
I like to think that most D&D characters, heroes or villains are motivated by one of nine things:
Love
Lust
Fear
Survival
Pride
Greed
Idealism
Curiosity
Revenge
I wouldn't call Conan boring.
Valdagast yeah, he's a pretty decent talk show host.
This video strikes me. I designed my Tier 1 BBEG for the campaign I'm running to be a complex, interesting force in the world.
Small setup: campaign is set in a legendary-age Chinese type of setting(as opposed to a specific time period, I've incorporated what I feel are the coolest aspects of Chinese history, folklore, and legend and kinda mashed it all together to make a setting).
Taoism is a major religion within this setting, as is the concept of the Mandate of Heaven being required to rule over the empire.
So in comes Yukou Zehei, a rogue Taoist, former Imperial advisor, and necromancer who has been creating Jiangshi(Chinese vampire-zombie monsters) to both serve as a small army and cause enough disruption to weaken the Emperor's defenses, as he had come under the belief that the current Emperor had lost the Mandate of Heaven, and therefore had lost the right to rule. He himself has no interest in becoming Emperor, but he wants to find someone that's "fit" to rule and has the Mandate of Heaven.
So the party busts in to his ruined temple fortress, ready to bust his head open... and then nearly join him after he explains himself :p He kept a record of everyone killed by his actions, making a bead for every one of them, making it so they would be remembered in the new age as martyrs, unfortunate but necessary losses to ensure a proper emperor sat upon the throne, even with plans to compensate the families after the new emperor was found.
I think I screwed myself with that character, cuz I can't think of a T2 BBEG that's nearly as compelling.
Just think about existing characters that are already influenced by these actions or your setting. Is this dude working alone? Which demonic evil empowered him .. and why? What about the current Emperor? Has he really lost the Mandate? Does he thank your party for getting rid of that threat? Does he employ them for his own means? ... And maybe .. with time and tasks passing your party comes to the conclusion that he lost his mandate for real .. so you open up so much - what do they do with this information? Public it? Keep it secret? Overthrow him by themselves.. in every case, it would strengthen your first plot hook by putting the party in the same position as your BBEG .. but maybe they want to choose other means. And if this mandate-thingy really exists in your world, you could always throw in some deities or holy destinies to step up your game ;) The more you think about your world the more hooks you will find. What if one of your party could get the mandate - but just one. Would they fight over it? Would they reject? Could you reject a divine providence?
He was working alone, though he had been trying to recruit people to his cause. He originally thought the PCs had found his clues and come to assist him.
As for the Mandate: while my players currently have no way of knowing for sure, the Emperor still has the Mandate and Zehei's divinations into the matter were being messed with to lead him to that conclusion. I plan on bringing in the demon/devil thing near the end of T2/beginning of T3, but I don't want to use it as the T2 BBEG.
I've been thinking about pushing in an anti-magic cult that exists in the empire from the rural areas into the more populated areas near trade centers & ports. Use that for the T2 storyline maybe?
@@TheTrunks340 That sounds amazing. Quick question though : What system are you using? I'm pretty new to rpgs (I only played dnd so far) and I'd like to try some new stuff. Your story and world sound really interesting and I'd love to know what you built them with ^^
@@Siegmernes I'm using the 5e D&D system. Everything else is just a skin on top, really. Different aesthetic, some different cultural things, some fairly unique weapons(look up the Chinese dagger axe, they're really cool), an interesting governing system that's a mix of divine right monarchy and meritocracy, and on top of it I added the Taoist deities and Buddhist entities(being that most people agree that the beings in Buddhism aren't actually gods in the typical sense) to the mix.
I've also been doing D&D for like, 15 years, so I didn't have too much trouble building the world(which contains more than just the Chinese setting- after the PCs beat Zehei, they took a trip to an Egypt like setting where the natives are all a custom fey race I made and their gods are all Archfey). And for 5 of my 7 players, my campaign was their first ever dive into D&D, and they took to RP quite well, though they do enjoy the "kill it with fire" bits :p
Pro Trunks "cuz!?"......I believe the word your looking for is......because! Not so nice being corrected is it!
I had a incubus who leveled alongside the party, though a bit higher to prevent from from cutting the campaign fast, who wanted to revive a Succubus queen who he secretly loved. To do this he turned an entire island, where the campaign was focused, into chaos as he had to corrupt five stones that governed the races on the island. He did this willingly, to bring back from a immortal prison, the one he loved.
That’s some great advice I didn’t even know I needed. Thanks a lot!
Anyone else get really confused when he said 'avarice' in place of envy?
Nope, definitely caught me off too. When he started listing the sins and said Avarice then greed all that was in my head was that those are the same are he missed one.
I was also confused.
"heroes are boring"....
Deadpool: "Hold my beer"
He's an antihero, not a hero.
@@RashidMBey I never truly understood the term "antihero." the word "anti" meaning opposite, opposed, or against and "hero" meaning of heroic quality, traits, and acts would suggest that the term "antihero" is the villain. antihero would be just another way of saying villain . I digress, antihero has the word hero right in it. deadpool is in fact a hero. he simply has non heroic qualities such as selfishness, and goes about heroic actions in a non-heroic manner such as killing all the bad guys to save the innocent person, instead of capturing them. in summation, deadpool is a hero. not the one you want but the one you need, and the one willing to get the job done at any cost.
@@omniscientbeing4224 Antiheroes are protagonists who are written to be intentionally in contrast with the classic conception of hero. It's when a protagonist is /against/ the idea of being a hero, and that may include sharing qualities with classic villains, too. Deadpool does, and he's also a prop character. I'd love to have this discussion, but I'm at work and I don't know how deeply you'd like to discuss this, but I love this subject. :)
Correction.
Deadpool: "Hold my chimichanga."
So I must use fear to teach my children to be good people...
I now understand.
My coolest villain was a cloud giant I made for a one-off based on Spyro. I took Gnasty Gnorc and turned him into Dynast Gnjork, a cloud giant empress who, using a rediscovered artifact of her people, is able to freeze dragons in crystal and then plans to 1. Take their loot. 2. Take their eggs as hostage and sacrifice. 3. Use the loot to hire and army. 4. Overthrow the dragons. 5. Use the loot to hire a cabal of liches to cast Proctiv’s Move Mountain and create another sky city. 6. Use her new resources to rally the giants and her army and conquer the world. 7. Bring back the giant god Annam All-Father.
You didn’t watch Jojo bizarre adventure when you said hero’s a boring
Heroes aren't boring, but villians most of the time are.
The best villain I made was a mob boss who initially helping the party take out competition and helping civilians but eventually his tasks got more and more sinister with a final task of killing the corrupt lord of the land. It ended more spectacularly than even I had planned
Thank you Taking20 i have been creating my own world but i had problems with a good villain this actually helped me come up with a few ideas which i am working out.
How dare you sir. Absolutely rude.
I feel like you could describe anything as being fear motivated, to the point that it ceases having any meaning.
If we use the 7 deadly sins to motivate heroes, we could also use the 7 heavenly virtues to motivate heroes... Interesting.
I might be inclined to use 2 for each, which play off of eachother: 2 sins for a more complex villain, 2 virtues for a more complex hero, & 1 of each for a powerful neutral character. It's not the only system of coarse, but it's a viable one.
Death is my favorite villain.
I’ve written a fully detailed character profile for the “angel of death/grimm reaper”. He can’t be killed (already dead), but can be defeated by player’s creativity (if I find their idea impressive). His biggest agenda is to control the mortality of all living things. He’s often cold, calculating, and ironically charismatic.
I’ve run Death as a campaign character in multiple games and my players LOVE him.
Your theory about heroes being reactionary isn't entirely accurate. Yes, it's true that when a villain comes to disrupt society, the hero must respond entirely to the villain's actions but that's assuming a really big thing: the hero is trying to maintain the status quo while the villain disrupts it. Many stories flip that on it's head. You mention Harry Potter which is a great example of what you're getting at. I'd bring up Eragon in response. The villain is already in charge. His war is finished and he won. Eragon rises up to disrupt the status quo and remake the world into one he believes is good. The Hunger Games has a very reactionary main character but most the "good" side characters are entirely action-focused. Star Wars is similar as well.
So if you want to make better heroes, try taking that approach. Throw your player characters into a world where perceived evil has already won and the heroes must work to fix what is already broken. It's the type of story that (I think) Critical Role is working towards in their current campaign where the characters all have various problems with the empire in charge.
As for your villain advice, I think there's just one thing that you have to keep in mind: your villain should always, on some level, think they're the hero.
When you're talking about the seven deadly sins around 5:45, avarice is basically a fancy word for greed and you're missing envy because you basically said greed twice.
Man that last bit of the video is pretty amazing!
The coolest villain I ever created for a game was my current villain in the campaign I'm running. Thraxysilian the Covetous, an adult red dragon who masquerades as Silas Trakane, CEO of the Eliakim-Trakane Mining Corporation. The players accidentally sold some magic items to some shady figures who ended up pulling off a heist on the ETMC's vault, so Silas confronted them, first in human form, then as a dragon in all of his glory.
Pretty soon the players will find out that Thraxysilian runs the Zhentarim and controls the actions of one of the NPCs that they've all come to trust. It's gonna be one hell of a cool reveal.
Thanks for making this video, it's really going to help me flesh out Thrax as a villain and a motivator for the PCs. Looking forward to many more!
Love the building in this video. Very linear and easy to follow. Well done.
The biggest issue i struggle with is finding ways to balance a great story, and player agency. A part of that is knowing your players well, a part it preparing an interresting world that's dynamic and gives the dm lots of levers to pull to create exciting stuff. Such a world takes a lot of prep time for a dm but when it comes together, it's a lot of fun. I once led a campaign where an elder evil was laying seige to the world by preventing spring from coming, but the exciting villain people enjoyed most was the greedy warlord who ruled the tropics which are fertile regardless of season. He sat on top of the world food supply becausee he was scared of running out himself
Something I feel is good to add to this: creating a personal relationship between the villain and the players.
My most remembered villain in the time I have been a GM is still the one from my first proper campaign. He was a powerful wizard (Whom the players nicknamed "Flooter." I have no idea why) with divine heritage who was not initially revealed to be the villain. The players were employed by a group of wizards to aid them in finding magical map pieces. They were cursed such that they could not scry or detect the pieces. In the players searches and dungeon delves they ran into a particularly bold and outspoken mage (Flooter) on multiple occasions. Once asked, the group that employed them revealed that this mysterious wizard was once a companion of theirs, but (going to the latter half of the video) had a vision once they began looking for the map and feared what might happen when they assembled it.
Knowing this, a magic spell was placed on Flooter to prevent him from entering their library. The group did not want him getting his hands on what few pieces they did have. This created a very interesting dynamic between the players and the villain who was actively attempting to prevent them from achieving their goal. While he did not want the map pieces found, he was not expressly evil and didn't want to murder the party. Also the party, knowing they had clearance into the library and not he, happily bartered with him. Near the end of the campaign they began promising to steal map pieces from the library in return for one thing or another while still working to find the pieces. That may sound counter productive, but what they earned from it in the long run was worth it (This was a marathon campaign that lasted 2 years).
To this day I can mention Flooter the wizard and the veteran players of my games will groan with how much they hated him and then spew stories of when he undercut their attempts and blackmailed them and tricked them. Through the non-combat interactions he became someone they remember much more than any tyrannical warlord or sadistic occultist.
My favorite villain I ever created was a supervillain named Paragon. He was the son of a well loved hero who pushed him away trying to force him to take up the torch. All Paragon wanted was to live a normal life despite his incredible powers. But time and time again, he found himself thrust into extraordinary situations. One of these had a profound psychological effect on him and he decided that if he couldn't live a normal life, he'd live how he wanted. He played both sides of the hero/villain lifestyle as a mercenary and generally just tried to keep to himself when he wasn't working.
Im a very new gm, really just working on my first campaign. I think this helped a lot because I didn't have a strong notion of who my villains were, I was more focussed on the plot of my campaign and how I wanted it to be different from games ive played in. Thanks a lot for the tips
Lothric Vondila
He is the current main villain of my campaign. He's a tiefling lich who never wanted to be a lich.
He's also our barbarian's father, and he's currently creating a spell of Godhood for her.
Everything he is doing is for her, not himself. He believes that it is what's best for her, not worried about who he hurts protecting her. This is, of course, where he clashes with everyone.
He just recently sent assassins who TPK'd the party. Now those 2 who survived are finding a way to resurrect their party to defeat Lothric once and for all.
I eventually want to run a kobold litch. All of his minions would be larger than him, but he'd train them to fight like kobolds, so the party would encounter things like a bunch of trolls operating an elaborate death trap.
This video actually gave me a life lesson alongside good advice for D&D. Thanks guys!
I haven't run him yet, but a halfling bard:
He is a psychopath who has an obsession about heroes.
He will encounter the party as an ally and the chapters of their journey will be told by him, due to him writing a book about their adventures.
When he has enough material, he will lure them into a prepared dungeon to kill them, because a good hero story ends with a tragic death on the hero side.
Down there they find skeletons of the heroes he encountered before them. So basically he is a serial killer with his pattern being building up adventure parties to kill them later and keeping his stories as trophies.
I'm running my 3rd campaign, and have gotten my players emotionally invested in a villain for the first time.
He's a kobold Scale Sorceror named Nelthon. He was never supposed to survive, but somehow escaped with 4 hit points and an alarming amount of gunpowder, (though not before dropping his map with the details of an upcoming kobold raid on it) - before collapsing the entire mine behind him. The party had to dig their way out.
I've promoted him to full on character levels, and he's now the shaman leader of the Blackwax kobold tribe, who have been recruited by a syndicate to steal explosives and war supplies across the region. Nelthon's about to stage the biggest kobold raid in the history of the kingdom, and it's aimed squarely at the village of one of my players.
They've gone to the village to defend it, but if Nelthon does his job and manages to kidnap the gnomish engineer living in the village without getting killed by the players, they are going to absolutely hate him.
I love the fact that my biggest baddest evil guy to date is a level 5 kobold.
My best villain was a guy who when after a Vault that anything put in it would be erased from history and memory until taken back out, and this Vault acted as a prison for the most dangerous items, creatures, and people. But my villain felt that his love was inside, even though he couldn't remember who they were, and he made himself in Lich and then stole the Vault, opened it, and started searching for his love. He found her but she had been turned into a statue so he was taking items from the Vault and giving them to people or releasing creatures to find the one thing that could reverse the process and release his love.
I introduced a monster called a Grigarith a while back that left a lasting impression by swallowing the players. Needless to say they became even more mortified when one of the horrors started speaking down the road.
I think that pride is a great idea for a villain. The broader options of not fearing death and recklessness make insane villains that are unpredictable and creates a sense that his lack of fear of death is a strength over the players but the players must counter the villains over aggressiveness by taking time to outsmart and plan for a greater story that is actually very easy to dm. Just act as the villain.
Our campaign of three years is almost done and the next session is going to be us fighting the army of the undead raised by the main villain who is an evil undead guy. And our DM has run it so well. He makes the story so dynamic and we’re so ready to kill the villain that I didn’t even think about how “generic” he could be considered until watching this video. And I think that’s one of the ways you can tell how good our DM is. Instead of it just being another undead army with another necromancer leading it, the necromancer is someone who is part of different realities (think of the end of bioshock infinite) and there’s an even bigger bad guy who will destroy reality if we don’t defeat the necromancer. It feels like an incredibly dynamic character because he has a clear set of motivations and all his servants we’ve fought that have almost killed us make us want to kill him even more. There are so many layers and we’re all itching to be back in person so we can finish the campaign.
I think my favorite villain I've made is Mortol the Black a powerful caster who's whole motivation is to topple the empire he was born into because he was spurned by his love (the princess of the empire) because their affair was found out so he wants to seize control of the continent so that he will never be at that level of disadvantage again.
Such good stuff here!
Gotta add one thing to your very astute commentary. There are *two* motivators: fear… and love. Self-service is motivated by fear; self-sacrifice is motivated by love. Not often a villainous motivator, but how awesome a character would it make, especially an adversary?
One of my favorite villains I made for a campaign was originally thrown in as a joke. A 6 inch tall Iron Animated Figurine that had trained a Chicken as a mount and was "ruling" over a poor Farmer's Chicken coop as "Chicken King". They beat the little guy and actually punted him out of the door. At that moment I had them unable to find the remains because I decided I could do more with this guy. The next time, they encountered him riding a Cockatrice and was now out for Revenge for the heroes "usurping his throne". He kept coming back in more ridiculous situations and was a source of groaning from the party. (This guy again? But in a good way, they actually enjoyed it.) Eventually he met his ultimate end falling into a Volcano.
The villain in my ongoing series on one-shots is an awakened parasitic mold colony that gets more intelligent the larger it gets. The mold is trying to create a world-wide colony of itself so that it can fulfill the directive it was given by the firbolg that awakened it: balance the wilds.
The mold almost never takes direct action, instead fostering events over in-game months or years.
Ps, it is now an exceptional druid in it's own right and has a vast network of awakened animal servants.
It took 4 sessions for the players to figure out that there was 1 main villain, and now they're excited to play again. There are 3 batches of no-longer-one-shot characters running around all heading toward the same ideas.
You sir helped me evolve my big baddie into my parties favorite villain of every single story we ever went through. Thanks for that extra push to make then something special to me and 8 other people