How to be a Fun Villain

[Aradin]

Recently I've started my first foray into creating a plotline that has me lined up as the antagonist to some good-aligned characters. I've never done something like this before and am having fun so far. That said I've played on Arelith long enough to know that any conflict can leave a sour taste in the mouths of the players who are forced to deal with such antagonists.

So I'm looking for some tips and opinions from all folks on what makes an enjoyable antagonist. There are other threads that touch on this and I've read them all, taking certain lessons to heart: putting the story first, being willing to lose without 'trying' to lose to the good guys, checking in with people OOC during and after tense situations, offering flexibility when it comes to PVP, etc. But the more advice the merrier!

I'm also looking for ideas/inspiration for antagonistic actions to take that don't involve PVP. Do you remember a time when Cordor Jim blackmailed a politician and generated some fun situations for other citizens? Do you remember when Necromancer Suzie defiled gravesites and stirred up some enjoyable RP for her paladin foes with that? That's the stuff I'd love to hear about - conflict without direct fighting.

Thanks for any and all offerings!

[Royal Blood]

I think there are a lot of interesting plots that could be considered from the angle of trying to 'do good' but using something nefarious to do so. Like maybe there is an argument to be made for the animation of corpses if it spares the living from having to die.

I think exploring 'grey' areas can be a way to be antagonistic without being outright evil and by doing so avoid outright pvp resolutions.

Politically I think there's a lot to work with too. Find something someone wants or needs and use it against them. Look for ways to make deals with leaders who oppose each other.

Other than that just making things 'matter'. Like it's easy OOC to dismiss things. Maybe a faction puts down a banner to mark territory. Like okay, you know OOC there's not territory claiming mechanic. But IC this is an affront to your honor. When I played Ravares she regularly took the temple into surface settlements territory and set up banners, shrines, or just mockery statues in order to infringe upon her adversaries sense of honor. This even got DM attention occasionally too which helped stir the conflict after she had departed.

[-XXX-]

The most successful villains seem to fill the role of antagonists in stories of individual characters (very often played by players that the villain player knows and trusts OOC).
Cartoon villains attempting acts of general misdeeds do not seem to get very far - it tends to play out more like a "monster of the week" situation before that character gets pushed into irrelevance by getting collectively kicked out of all towns.

The biggest disparity here stems from the standards of general character goals as they seem to have established themselves over the time:
- The goal of evil character RP is to create fun for good characters.
- The goal of good characters is to work together in order to deny access to evil characters to towns.

"Good guy" RP largely consists of recording everything that happens IG, then sharing said information among a vast network of self proclaimed "goodly folk" in order to enact an effective exile from all surface settlements of everyone who does not meet the paladin-like moral standards.
I wouldn't be surprised if merely digging up some graves or openly blackmailing someone would have had a rather uninteractive follow up (group "e-mail" with an enclosed dossier gets sent and your character might have some issues with hanging out in settlements all of sudden).

Pretty much the most viable way of playing a villain on the surface ATM is to be a secretly LE character presenting themselves as some sort of paladin who smears everyone they don't like. The extents of how fun this concept can be however is a matter of a debate IMO (genuinely good characters seem to be doing a rather terrific job with their "mean girls gossip blog" themselves already ).

[D4wN]

I'd love to pipe in with this topic. I have seen the absolute best good vs evil stories where both sides actually collaborated on the story. Some of the most memorable stories for me are the Neli Ore plot, the story with Charlotte Crowe and the Iron Brand and the story with Sydney Harrow.

The reason these were all incredible is even without OOC trust, both sides were happy to accept both losses and wins and to use the protagonist/antagonist stories to include lots of other people across the server in their "war" / fights / stories. It's important that during the story both sides can take/have loss and wins. And that both sides treat each other with respect. Knowing that PVP is not the way necessarily to build a good story. For evil to have a win, sometimes good maybe needs to choose not to immediately break the disguise of a lowbee evil character or to choose to perhaps let them peacefully unsummon their undead summons whilst doing low level writs rather than to threaten them and jump to take their head for a good old fashioned "good" KB.

For good to have wins, perhaps evil need to make a mistake, or create something with the intent for the good guys to undo it and be the heroes.

But most importantly, and this is something I have always done, is to keep their memories alive. I still talk about Neli Ore, Charlotte Crowe and others IG with my character and share their stories with others. Playing an evil character can be very demoralising, can take up a lot of energy and can be very difficult to do. I will always support anyone who wants to play an evil character and tell a good story.

To play a good antagonist I believe that patience is the key. With everything you do, ask yourself... Is this creating fun for the other side? How is this adding to someone else's story? How is this adding to the server overall? Is there something I can do that doesn't involve PVP?

I don't think it's just the job of team evil to create fun for team good. Truthfully, I believe it should be the goal of both parties to create fun for each other and for those around them.

[Ninjimmy]

For my take, I'd say like -XXX- said, you get "outed" pretty quickly on the Surface if you commit acts of villainy - unless you can somehow spin it that you were doing good and start setting settlements against each other. This does happen semi often but usually both sides have a Good alignment so its not really evil evil.

There is definitely a discrepancy in RP with what the expectation is, Evil characters usually want to provide good RP for Good characters (not all, some will just be griefing a-holes but they're definitely the minority) while Good characters will want to "Win"/Defend their home (though again, there will be some who just want to give evil characters stuff to work with by being captured/assaulted I don't think that it's the majority though).

In that sense, knowing who to play with is a pretty key element of the Hero/Villain mismatch.

My own plan for an evil guy I'm bringing up is to essentially do what -XXX- describes but by spying on good settlements and reporting it to evil settlements, with a side piece of highway robbery with well choreographed RP outs and a small gang.

I'd also add, competent mechanical build but RP'ed as "incompetent" so the good guys can get away/win is fun too, the "Team Rocket" if you will. Benefit to cheeky evil, the "Paladins" look like real jerks if they kill someone who's largely harmless. Or so they appear...

[-XXX-]

I think that a lot of issues that players can struggle with when trying to invent a compelling "good vs. evil" story arc stems from the flaws of the server design.

I'd divide them into two points:
attention economy
uneven stakes


Attention economy: there is a vast number of fantastic stories being told by players. Whether these stories truly succeed all depends on how much attention they are given by the rest of the player base.
D4wN pointed at some examples of great villainous RP - and while I would not want to downplay their excellence in any way, they were just one of many.
Ultimately a good deal of what truly makes these stories stand out is how much attention they were given.
Here's where the settlement system kicks in. On the surface the settlements are being largely controlled by the "good meta" (meaning either good aligned characters OR characters who present themselves as such). Players of these characters can then dictate what stories gets attention and what don't - they can either opt to completely disregard some plots or squash them before they get fully realized (just imagine that a mayor of the town starts exiling characters that merely interact with some nefarious character - you can see how detrimental this could become for telling a story, right? While it can be completely IC and a part of said story, the implied OOC inconvenience can often influence things ~alot~).
This is one of the main reasons why so much attention revolves around settlements - their leaders have a great amount of control over what stories and characters get attention and which ones won't.

Uneven stakes: this one's fairly self explanatory. People often keep reiterating that "IC actions have IG consequences". Well, this doesn't seem to apply to characters evenly.
On one hand a villainous character gets completely pushed out of society after being exposed (furthermore there are characters running around whose sole purpose is to keep track of events and remind everyone who the "unpopular kids" are, in order to exclude these characters from any possible future endeavors and ensure that their downfall stays permanent).
On the other hand, what's the worst possible scenario for a good aligned character? They get killbashed and are forced to respawn? Anything that goes farther than that needs to be consciously inflicted upon the character by their own player.

[DangerDolphin]

(1) I run up on someone with an evil summon. This could be a demon, devil, zombie, whatever. I confront them and accuse them giving them a chance to show me some RP. They pull the, "It's not mine!" schtick and they get bashed.

Giving people RP is a two way street. Though the topic of this thread is about being a fun Villain, being 'Good' or 'Neutral' does not magically absolve you of your OOC responsibility to make things enjoyable for other players. It sounds like in this case you are:
A) Initiating PvP on someone who's probably going around doing PvE stuff
B) Based on the latter part, it sounds like you are an established level 30 and in a superior mechanical position.

This is your chance to make an impression on the player of a villain. Maybe they are new to the server, new to trying out evil - in which case this is their first impression of meeting their opposition. Moreso, they will remember this encounter in future and pay it forward.

At this point, you have the chance to do one of a hundred different things. You can warn them verbally, destroy only the zombie/demon, beat them unconscious (We have an amazing subdual system now), note them down as someone to send spies after to lead you to other evil people, follow them personally, demand they give you information for their life, try to redeem them and explain the harm the creatures cause, and so on.

Now let's say that none of the above is relevant to your character. They are things that your character would never do. Your character has 8 intelligence, 8 wisdom, and has no imagination or foresight.

You can make mistakes. You do not have to 'win'. I'm not talking about OOC mistakes, but IC mistakes. As the player with the overwhelming mechanical advantage, you can be an adult and throw it away.

- Maybe you subdue the necromancer and smash their zombie, then think you see more necromancers, and go to look for them, leaving the player to escape. IC you would kill them, but you think they'll be unconscious for an hour or more, so "this is fine".
- You subdual them down, and think they're dead. They're bleeding all over. It looks like they're dead right? So you leave.
- Maybe the demon summoner is fleeing after you obliterated their creature. You could easily one shot them with your gonne, but instead you RP tripping over on some unsteady ground and falling on your face.
- As you are not an evil character - and also are roleplaying a person with actual emotions and not a video game avatar, you feel great remorse at the idea of murdering another. This could be stupid because if you don't kill them, they may go on to burn down a village. But you can't help it, and decide to show mercy and leave them alive.
- You badly overestimate the enemy. Although they are level 10, and you are level 30, you think you've seen one of those demon things before and it's way too powerful for you. You decide to run away and raise the alarm instead.
- Oh my god, that zombie looks exactly like your dead brother. You have a traumatising memory of when he was killed in front of you years ago. In your fear, you fail to take action and turn into a broken mess. You run away in shame.

I could literally make these up all day - the point is, if you are resorting to killbashing someone on the first encounter, you have failed. You may as well go and play on an action or arena server, because you have missed the point of a roleplaying environment.

[DangerDolphin]

. I've been one-lined and even no-lined by higher level evil characters in low level areas. Apparently that is just fine. But when team good or even team neutral gives those exact same PC's a taste of their own medicine...

Really? Where did I give you the impression in my post that was fine? More to the point, I said that doing so would encourage others to retaliate later on in the same way.

It honestly sounds like you're going on barely in character revenge sprees, rather than reporting the incidents to the DMs as you should be doing.

More so, it's disturbing that you've neatly split the server into these 'teams', as if we weren't all one community of roleplayers.

[-XXX-]

I could literally make these up all day - the point is, if you are resorting to killbashing someone on the first encounter, you have failed. You may as well go and play on an action or arena server, because you have missed the point of a roleplaying environment.

Many of these people with evil summons who cry about being killbashed by higher level characters, are actively hanging out in lower level areas so they can target mechanically weaker characters themselves. If I see some guy in the Bramble Woods with a Mane of course I'm not gonna one-line him. But if I see a guy in the Bramble Woods with a summoned Balor or Pit Fiend, it's on. I've been one-lined and even no-lined by higher level evil characters in low level areas. Apparently that is just fine. But when team good or even team neutral gives those exact same PC's a taste of their own medicine suddenly we "failed" and should "go play WOW or something."

Edit: Walking around right outside a major "Good" aligned settlement with evil summons is a poor choice to make ICly for your character's wellbeing, like that of taking your elf shopping in Anundor or going sailing by yourself unwarded. Sure, I feel sorry for any new players who unknowingly do this and get bashed by some epic character, but they should take it as a learning experience. If you want to PVE with evil summons without facing IC consequences go play in the Underdark. And I don't want to hear about how good/neutral people on the surface are bad role players because of it, it's not like a Priestess of Hanali would be welcome to walk around the Underdark with a summoned Deva or Celestial Avenger and not eventually be PVP'd.

The anecdotal evidence presented here by you vastly differs from my own.
Even then, "eye for an eye" is hardly a constructive OOC attitude - just because someone else's conduct is suboptimal doesn't give you the license to behave the same way.


Also, the alignment of summons is hardly indicative of the alignment of the summoner, yet seem to be one of the founding stones of the good vs. evil RP. An argument could be made that conjuring a celestial and compelling her to fight against impossible odds is a much more morally questionable act than doing the same with a fiend.
Then again, this is a remnant from the times when the type of the summon depended on the summoner's alignment and players somewhat just accepted the deva=good, demon=bad mentality without exploring any farther.

If anything this only gives yet another incentive to opt for a melee cookie cutter build with maxed out bluff and stay as far as possible from anything spellcaster-related if you want to delve into evil RP.

[Aradin]

Some good food for thought so far. If we could keep this on-topic about tips for being an enjoyable antagonist, that would be really appreciated, thanks.

[DangerDolphin]

Apologies for derailing your thread, I should have made a "How to be a Fun Hero" one instead

[Apothys]

Not gonna lie, these comments are making me nervous to even try and RP anymore in case Judge Dread comes riding over the hill.

[Anime Sword Fighter]

good god i wish we could retire team good vs team evil discourse

in my experience, and this is contrary to the opinion of a lot of people including some DMs I think, I really enjoy when people use fixtures. Yes. Fixture spam. I enjoy when people do it. With these caveats - that they acknowledge their fixtures are going to be bashed - that the fixtures have narratives about them and are reasonable.

Once someone made a bunch of pillars or something that were created with the intent to meld the shadow plane into the material. this allowed people finding them to dispose of them as they chose (or not), to RP the effects of interacting with them in different ways depending on the players. it was fun, a neat little story to pack up into each character's knapsack of tales.

this is of course different than just making a bunch of chairs and declaring that this is your chair army and because of this you are the rightful king of cordor or whatever.

[Ninjimmy]

Then again, this is a remnant from the times when the type of the summon depended on the summoner's alignment and players somewhat just accepted the deva=good, demon=bad mentality without exploring any farther.

I actually like that though, best way to bluff your alignment is having a couple -streams that someone without IC in-depth spellcasting knowledge won't realise is unrelated to your own character. "Look, my EDK is a silver dragon, I can't be evil. Let me in your gates"

In fact, that might be the big takeaway, is Evil needs to be subtle when in "Good" settlements - the problem is that we don't have a super good neutral one (I like Sibayad for that, personally, but it's a bit removed and bit small).

... Though think we can all agree high lvl's dunking on lowbies is a gross not fun way to do Good v Evil conflict for either side, at least if you're plan is to killbash rather than hit with a subdual that then stokes the vengeance flames.

[Zavandar]

good god i wish we could retire team good vs team evil discourse

amen

[Ork]

I look at Vivian LeChance back in the day as a great villain. I can't speak for the player, but I feel like 50% of the time you're waiting for your scheme to be revealed. Vivian use to place cursed objects around towns like Guldorand, and it was up to the player to how that affected them. I thought that was brilliant because you're really weeding out the players that you want to continue a story-line with. The players that chose to ignore the curse items can like-wise be ignored, and the players that play along get more.

Creating a mystery to be solved, either in the world or within yourself, allows players that buy-in to continue investing until they can discover more.

Learn to ignore the bad players, and invest in those that invest in you. Equally I'd focus on making encounters memorable. Some players will never have fun with villain plots. That's not okay, but it happens.

[Petrifictus]

My favorite tip on well played villains is to give them limits like personal morals and codes they never break, as they make them more real.

Our Main Man, Karstaag might be bloodthirsty ogre who would love to snap or collar your neck, but killing fairies? Nope, too pretty and that brings unwanted bad mojo.

[PEST CONTROL]

Lose. Played a lot of villains over the years, know you are going to lose and be alright with it. In fact make your losing fun! Decide your going to be murdered, executed, cursed or whatever, and roll your character at its prime. People like that, and generally remember you for it.

[MissEvelyn]

(1) I run up on someone with an evil summon. This could be a demon, devil, zombie, whatever. I confront them and accuse them giving them a chance to show me some RP. They pull the, "It's not mine!" schtick and they get bashed.

Giving people RP is a two way street. Though the topic of this thread is about being a fun Villain, being 'Good' or 'Neutral' does not magically absolve you of your OOC responsibility to make things enjoyable for other players. It sounds like in this case you are:
A) Initiating PvP on someone who's probably going around doing PvE stuff
B) Based on the latter part, it sounds like you are an established level 30 and in a superior mechanical position.

This is your chance to make an impression on the player of a villain. Maybe they are new to the server, new to trying out evil - in which case this is their first impression of meeting their opposition. Moreso, they will remember this encounter in future and pay it forward.

At this point, you have the chance to do one of a hundred different things. You can warn them verbally, destroy only the zombie/demon, beat them unconscious (We have an amazing subdual system now), note them down as someone to send spies after to lead you to other evil people, follow them personally, demand they give you information for their life, try to redeem them and explain the harm the creatures cause, and so on.

Now let's say that none of the above is relevant to your character. They are things that your character would never do. Your character has 8 intelligence, 8 wisdom, and has no imagination or foresight.

You can make mistakes. You do not have to 'win'. I'm not talking about OOC mistakes, but IC mistakes. As the player with the overwhelming mechanical advantage, you can be an adult and throw it away.

- Maybe you subdue the necromancer and smash their zombie, then think you see more necromancers, and go to look for them, leaving the player to escape. IC you would kill them, but you think they'll be unconscious for an hour or more, so "this is fine".
- You subdual them down, and think they're dead. They're bleeding all over. It looks like they're dead right? So you leave.
- Maybe the demon summoner is fleeing after you obliterated their creature. You could easily one shot them with your gonne, but instead you RP tripping over on some unsteady ground and falling on your face.
- As you are not an evil character - and also are roleplaying a person with actual emotions and not a video game avatar, you feel great remorse at the idea of murdering another. This could be stupid because if you don't kill them, they may go on to burn down a village. But you can't help it, and decide to show mercy and leave them alive.
- You badly overestimate the enemy. Although they are level 10, and you are level 30, you think you've seen one of those demon things before and it's way too powerful for you. You decide to run away and raise the alarm instead.
- Oh my god, that zombie looks exactly like your dead brother. You have a traumatising memory of when he was killed in front of you years ago. In your fear, you fail to take action and turn into a broken mess. You run away in shame.

I could literally make these up all day - the point is, if you are resorting to killbashing someone on the first encounter, you have failed. You may as well go and play on an action or arena server, because you have missed the point of a roleplaying environment.

I love everything about this response

[-XXX-]

good god i wish we could retire team good vs team evil discourse

amen

The real discourse is about team selfish vs team generous here.

Praying instead of talking rarely solves difference of opinions.

[Petrifictus]

Lose. Played a lot of villains over the years, know you are going to lose and be alright with it. In fact make your losing fun! Decide your going to be murdered, executed, cursed or whatever, and roll your character at its prime. People like that, and generally remember you for it.

Same apply to all of you heroes out there!

Also to the winners: try making loss fun too for the loser, making it fun is not only responsibility of the loser. It hurts a lot when player get a bitter taste of defeat and being treated ”not deserving a cool ending.”

[Seven Sons of Sin]

A villain is only as good as a hero.

A hero is only as good as a villain.

Like all forms of roleplay, you have to find and seek out people who are willing to give you the time of day. When I played my "villain", I entered a server environment where my greatest opposition was other ... villains. It was un-fun, because the notion of playing a corrupting Sharran who had no one to corrupt was ... boring.

And, again, evil =/= villain. "Villain", I think, is a broader narrative role where you're reliably an opposing force to the "heroes" of the server.

Some general advice:

1. be a villain that opposes something in the server, not just in the playerbase.

This'll help with longevity, and be non-specific, to allow for any manner of hero to step in. It'll also mean that you have constant goals and sources of conflict.

2. think of encounters and plots that go beyond killing heroes, or kidnapping them.

This is really hard. I think the unspoken third option here is "corrupting" the hero, but this is also very hard. Having played a long, long time, I think the best villains are ones that invoke a great sense of terror. It's amazing when there's a meeting of LGers or whatever and some are literally so bloody scared of just walking without wards. Plots that attack a character's mindset are great.

3. victims should be sparing and impactful.

see the stuff about "attention economy" and "repetitive plots."

4. have moments where you can be an anti-villain.

A great villain will make all heroes guess at some point. Have them stand for something that pit them against other villains or nefarious forces. Also use this sparingly.

5. have some cool philosophy

Don't be that "villain that is just MISUNDERSTOOD." Maybe this is controversial, but there's definitely the whole Thanos idea here. Villainry has to be charismatic. You have to be charming, or funny, or sauve, or cool, or badass, or something. Not just "here's my reasonable motivation and you're all just misguided." Heroes should WANT to not PvP you because you're just so cool, you know?

If you're petulant, Snuggybear-ish, lame, etc., they'll just killbash or yawn or roll their eyes. (this goes for heroes too, but they always seem to get a free pass).

[-XXX-]

this goes for heroes too, but they always seem to get a free pass

I wouldn't really put it that way. Playing heroes isn't really easier than playing villains and vice versa.
It's more about the flaw of the state of the setting as I tried to outline it before - the consequences for villainous characters are much more dire than it is with heroes.

Just look no farther than PEST CONTROL's statement for evidence - villain characters are expected to lose and roll by default.
This is incorrect IMO - just because there's a rich list of fantastic villains who went this route doesn't mean it's the only way.
Mesmer, Vippin, Valtheran, Nyhmax, Jel, Ann Thrule, Asen, Gravelle.... these were all great antagonists who weren't exactly (in)famous for losing.

[Xerah]

I played a villain PC in the public eye for around 3 months. The whole thing was a gentle slope of escalation in order to provoke other PCs into action. I was not once involved in PVP during that entire arch.

One thing that helped me was tossing out (sometimes crazy) ideas to a group in discord and talking out the plan. While that might not have been where we settled, talking it out lead to other RP choices and directions. Contrary to how the narrative goes, these people were not OOC friends and came to me ICly when I said "Who wants to join!?".

It's not always easy to find something to do this one, but if I can do something that is fairly symbolic but has a minor effect, that is usually a good rallying point. A good example was when I banned all Harpers in Cordor. We didn't know who was a harper (aside from one or two) but it created this RP "exclusion zone" that those PC harpers would have an atomspheric feeling of "behind enemy lines" whenever going into Cordor. Part of the reason for this was trying to force the hand of someone coming to assassinate her after which I was planning on rolling her (though it never happened).

There were numerous other policies like this, for example forcing guards to swear their allegiance to Cordor in front of a devil (which never happened but the rumours were good enough), flooding the sewers to get rid of a minor problem (the NPCs in there are just homeless and don't pay taxes anyway) and working with another evil PC group to set up an attack on the City (which she told people it was coming because of her obvious grand divination power). I did consider other things, like numerous exiles and evictions (never happened) or increasing taxes to 50% (to pay for all the broken scrying orbs) but a lot of people would feel personally attacked on that so I avoided those options.

If you can push the buttons of PCs without directly negatively affecting them, then you've got a good base to work from.

[Ninjimmy]

5. have some cool philosophy

Don't be that "villain that is just MISUNDERSTOOD." Maybe this is controversial, but there's definitely the whole Thanos idea here. Villainry has to be charismatic. You have to be charming, or funny, or sauve, or cool, or badass, or something. Not just "here's my reasonable motivation and you're all just misguided." Heroes should WANT to not PvP you because you're just so cool, you know?

Side-bar: Comic Thanos' motivation (that he wants to shack up with the cosmic manifestation of death) is way different from being just "I'm misunderstood", but equally works as that motivation is understandable and for most somewhat relatable (who hasn't had an unrequited crush?), but you still want to stop him because the only way he can see to go about wooing her is omnicide.

Having a motivation or plan that makes sense but is also, when viewed objectively, insane can make for a fun Chaotic Evil take. You may have to play them as smart to have any longevity but the Gnoll who thinks he can become Yeenoghu by eating 50% of the races on the surface will at least stick out in memory even if he loses.