How To GM: How I Come Up With Villains

Last week I wrote about antagonists, and how I make them. I defined antagonists as those who oppose the players, that did not mean that antagonists were in some cosmic war between good and evil with the players. In fact I think the opposite should be true; antagonists proper need to be morally grey, or at least sympathetic and vulnerable, in the player's eyes. There should be questions, on some level, about the justness of the player's goals when they meet an antagonist.

None of that should apply to villains.

Villains are a type of antagonist. So all the thoughts I have on villains start with my antagonist article, so go read that again. Make an antagonist using those guidelines in your head, and come back here.

You're back? Cool.

You've made a character who has was hurt by a part of the setting that your players don't like, has a primal need that is sympathetic, and who cannot be ignored by the players cause he keeps getting in their faces? Got him in your head? Good. Here's the next step.

You're going to make the dude weaponize his pain.

Let me explain what I mean by that.

So in the previous article I talked about that little twinge of sympathy, of pain, that I think someone should feel for an antagonist. The dude is hurt and is trying to solve the pain he is in. He is trying to rise above it, to do something positive, with his pain, even if his methods are messed up in the players' eyes. The fact that he happens to be opposed to the players is tragic and a sign of the breakdown of the setting and the people within it, as opposed to a problem with the antagonist himself. The person may not be on your side in whatever conflict you're in, but they are clearly trying to rise above something. They are using their pain as a tool to better themselves and the world they are in. They just so happen to have a methodology or ideology that your players can't allow. Villains take that center spot of pain, that little twinge that you feel when you think about where they came from, sharpen it, and use it to hurt others. They have given up on being better than their past and do not think the world can be made better. Or if they do think the world can made better it's so inimical to what's actually good that no one in the story can allow him to go on as he is doing. You could almost certainly convince an antagonist, given enough time, of the rightness of your path. It may not be likely, but it is possible. Villains have made a choice that cuts them out of society fundamentally. You can't "convince" them. Convert back to the common way of doing things? Maybe. Possibly. But they are lacking something that is so fundamental that you cannot just hope to reason with them. Nor should you.

All of this is to say that you oppose an antagonist's views and mission; the opposition is not necessarily personal, although even if it is it probably has more to do with petty reasons on the parts of the players than anything genuinely wrong with the antagonist. You are opposing the villain for being him. You might be able to respect an antagonist for having the guts to stand up for what he believes in, and even if you don't that may on the player, but a villain properly speaking doesn't believe in anything. He's in the  black pit of his own mind, rejoicing in a pain that no one in their right mind should. And if he cannot be turned, he must be destroyed.

Villains are so much more personal. They get under your skin and make you like hating them. That's because villains have taken their life experiences and made them into a weapon that they can use against others. You can't reason with them, you can't commiserate and even really sympathize. They must either return to being like the rest of us or be destroyed, lest we be destroyed first. And yeah, there's a tragedy in that, but most people aren't going to mourn what they're killing as they're doing it. And kill them we must.