Creating Villains, Large and Small

After reading the articles about creating backstory for a location a person asked about how much work should go into creating a villain. I felt like I have been giving the same response to questions like this so I first talked with some other writers I know.

I know everyone is looking for the magical piece of information that makes creation easier. But, they gave the same advice I had at the start—you put in as much as you need.

The problem becomes the question, how much is needed? You can't really ask another person how much is needed while you are working on your creation. You go until you think you have enough to run your encounter, adventure, or campaign. There are some thoughts that can provide guidance.

How big your villain needs to be helps define how much information you need about them.

If this is the villain of the encounter, they don't need a lot of background information. These might be the henchmen of a greater force, or they might be the group of bullies on the space station. These are the bad guys you are throwing into the adventure to move through an encounter.

If you a working on a villain that is manipulating the kingdom the campaign of multiple adventures and months of gaming is based around, you might want a little more about this villain. This one is going to be a driving force, directing all sorts of conflicts with behind-the-scenes maneuvering and manipulations. The depth of their story is going to help drive the adventures and encounters the characters will face. It will therefore also direct how the characters develop.

Villains have personalities.

They are characters in your game. Non-player characters (NPCs) ran by the game master (GM) should be built out as much as needed so they can be played to their best effect. Again this goes back to how often, or how long, the NPC is going to be used. Those expected to have short lifespans in the game shouldn't take you long to put together what's needed. The emissary of the Krogon fleet who keeps interacting with the party over the next half dozen game nights probably should have more work.

The villain is the hero of their own story.

This is a writing tip that works great. The evil king, pirate lord, superhero villain, or even the orc raiding the village are all motivated to action for a cause. Sometimes that cause is to not starve, for others it is bringing order to the universe. No matter who they are, they are doing what they are doing for a specific reason and they see themselves as the main character of action. Sometimes the motivations are noble, other times they're not. Again, larger motivations drive greater action. This means the henchman may not have a great reason for what he is doing, but the queen probably does.

Be willing to advance your villain.

NPCs can and should advance like your player's characters. When creating advanced or leveled encounters I like to start them at the beginning and work them up from that point. This works for creatures that are larger, or those that can gain levels. For those characters who are going to be involved over longer periods of play, I start with what is needed and advance them as needed.

A friend ran a campaign where are nemesis was a mage. We encountered him early on and continued to run into him. He kept thwarting us and slipping away. The wizard started out as a low level encounter and continued to advance as we did. This allowed for a series of encounters with the same character that were always challenging and not over powering. The same can be done for many character types and monsters.

Villains don't have to be absolute evil.

Many villains in a story are only villains to the heroes. This goes back to their motive. When the villain happens to be of a different faith, political faction, foreign government, etc. they are acting in their interests the same way the heroes will be acting in their interest. In our own history many wars have been fought where both sides claimed they were fighting on the side of the same god.

The hardest part is determining if you have enough information to run your villain. You can't ask your party if they think there is enough information, but you can probably find someone else that can look it over. If you can't do that, you have to make your best guess. Of course, you can add to encounter on the fly.

Take notes and be willing to change what is needed to make the encounter, adventure, and campaign work. If they do happen to kill your villain before reach the climax of the storyline, consider their sibling, cousin, close friend, or second in command.

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