Who are the major antagonists of your setting/campaign? I’m talking BBEG types, to put it simply, and their immediate subordinates. What goes into a villain that is narratively compelling?
Only fags day "bbeg."
>>97734022Being Right. My favorite villain I used in a campaign was right for all the wrong reasons, and the player's decisions throughout the campaign weren't perfect, so when they finally confronted the antagonist he had them pegged as being players in not-so-good outcomes, and they couldn't bring themselves to challenge him.
>>97734022I always prefer to take the Octopath Traveller approach where any main antagonists in my campaigns arise from the backstories of my players. I don't go in with some big evil wizard or demon lord or whatever already planned. Maybe later on if the campaign builds up to it, but never at the start.
>>97734022Pretty much this >>97734301If you want your players to care about an antagonist, the antagonist needs to threaten them personally, or, preferably, have already taken something from them.Nobody gives a shit about some demon lord that's going to destroy the world. Yes, they'll "care", because they're heroes and they're supposed to "care", but they won't really care.In an ideal campaign, all the player characters should have something that disrupted their normal lives. Safe, happy, comfortable, sane people don't become adventurers. Find out what disrupted a player character's life and put a personal face to it. An evil wizard can be an antagonist, sure... but they're a more effective antagonist when you both apprenticed under the same mentor who was an adoptive father to you both, and then he betrayed and murdered said mentor for secret forbidden knowlege. Make it personal. Make it hurt.
>>97734022most big bads have been pretty generic and forgettable. It was never really about them and more about the experience of the party having to deal with some form of larger or smaller conflict-scenario.
>>97734022They need to be someone the players love to hate. Look, let’s get one thing straight, from a narrative standpoint, the BBEG is the final obstacle of the adventure, that’s what they’ve always been. So one way or another, the PCs will have to fight and defeat them in the end, and the players know that. So you might as well give their characters ample reasons to hate this enough that the fight feels natural and deserved. Because it’s not much of a memorable villain if the PCs only motivation for battling the BBEG is “because the plot said so”.But, almost paradoxically, you don’t want a villain that is so goddamn insufferable that the players themselves can’t stand the villain to the point that any scenes with the BBEG in them feels like a chore. Otherwise your BBEG is going to be memorable for all the wrong reasons. So you gotta make it so players are enjoying the times where they are sharing the spotlight with the villain.Thus; the BBEG should be someone the players love to hate.>>97734290> Being Right. Pretentious bullshit No player wants to deal with a BBEG that’s just a soundboard for the GM’s unsolicited opinions. But I will admit, I can’t think of a faster way to get players to attack the BBEG mid-monologue. It’s really just to make the GM shut up. >>97734301> villains that sprung forth from PC backstories Yeah, this is ideal. It’s just not always easy to pull off effectively, especially if you’re trying really hard not to single out (or look like you’re singling out) any one PC as the “main character”.
>>97734290>was right for all the wrong reasons Please elaborate.
>>97734022They are atmospheric and esoteric. Their voice is imagined as raspy or echoed. The rare event of facing them in person should mean the chips are down, in contrast to being a repetitive throwaway encounter, really emphasize the gravitas of their supremely evil power.
>>97734022>Who are the major antagonists of your setting/campaign? I’m talking BBEG typesA dude in armor who was once the greatest hero, decided he wanted more power, and he overthrew the gods and waged an endless war against the remains of their creations before he remade the world through cataclysmic magic and got bored hunting down survivors. The old gods are hiding from him. He no longer cares. His lieutenants bicker and squabble for favor that he will not give and the few survivors begin to take back certain lands. He has sat on his throne on top of a burning skull fortress on top of Olympus made into a volcano, under which lies the beast that will end the world, for hundreds of years. He has a sword thats a black hole and armor chiseled from pure evil. He does not need to eat sleep or breathe. He does not age. He is waiting for someone, something, that gives him purpose. He is Lord Death.
>>97734022>Who are the major antagonists of your setting/campaign?Primary one is Acme, Apex of the Blooded. Basically the most powerful vampire lord ever with absurdly powerful psychokinetic powers to boot. That said he isn't super evil, there is just a deeply personal beef between him and the primary protagonist. Acme mainly wants to manage and administer the world (from the shadows, lol) for the chaos coming 100 years in the future when the spirits start materializing and the possibility of the true immortals that "ascended" might return. Literally the only thing in the multiverse that Acme fears are the true immortals. So spends most of his time plotting global spanning plans just in case they come back. Other lesser villains are petty baddie of the week types that the protag can usually handle in more standard ways. But at this time there is no way for him to directly take on Acme. The last time he tried Acme literally dropped the top of a mountain on him. Before that Acme broke his spine then turned him into a vampire thinking that breaking him and turning him would gain the protagonist obedience. It did not.
>>97735114The players were convinced when they confronted the villain they would just kill him and the region would return to peace and prosperity. The antagonist then met the players with several minutes of dialogue highlighting the fact that as long as people like the players exist then having him in his position is a blessing to the people of the region. That the player's actions have further destabilized on going events. That if the players were to kill him then who was going to occupy this position of lesser evils and keep things in check. They had to no choice but to surrender and walk away humbled. Sometimes the villain is Right, sometimes you win by accepting what they have to say. You cannot win everything through brute force, especially if you had no considerations of the overarching outcomes.>>97734955fag
>>97737320>Primary one is Acme, Apex of the Blooded.Is he known for his expert deployment of boxes of TNT and false tunnels painted on the sides of mesas?
>>97738462> fagYou’re just mad because you know that I’m right
>>97734301This would be the most ideal way. I definitely get more hyped when my backstory is mentioned in any way.How do you handle player backstories that don't really have a clear goal or enemy? Something vague like I want to make money or I want to be the best baker?I know Octopath has characters like Tressa, but even then, she's written to have some mystery (even if the ending was fumbled, but that's another conversation).
>>97738508No, but he does have a pension for buying up businesses and putting his name on them to rebrand them.Meaning there probably is Acme brand blasting sticks and Acme brand paint, among many other things.
>>97734955> sharing the spotlight with the villain.This guy gets it.>>97734022> Vaesen CampaignUmma Noitson. Witch and the rouge member of Thursday's children, secretly possessed by Serpetus. Stole years of her friend's life. Based on the Alfa from M.I.B., has a lot of “implants” from different vaesen. She wants to make everyone in the world to have the sight by orchestrating the vaesen invasion of the mortal realm.> Spire Campaign1. Mundus Rex / Kaspar. The arch prefect of the Aelfir Empire, responsible for the Spire. Secretly a high-ranking member of the resistance, long wolf disillusioned with the ways of the revolution.2. Sin, the immortal choose of the Heart trying to slang the Spire into the chaos of the Heart.> Homebrew Fantasy Parody CampaignThe tallest emperor Poot-Look of Pun-Pun clan, a kobold with divine powers acquired by cheating.> Mythic Bastionland CampaignMessiah Padishah Emperor Solar. He omitted the powers he begged God for to create a human realm since he believed that no one should possess them individually. Now, everyone secretly has them, leading to the occurrence of the Myths. Seers are inbred descendants of Solar’s wedlock with a female clone of himself.Not really a villain thought.> Alien CampaignNot clear yet.1. Dr. William Weir, designer of the Event Horizon ship.2. SHODAN, the Weyland-Yutani AI obtained after cannibalizing TriOptium Corporation.3. Palmer Eldritch, a mysterious space pilgrim appeared from the false timeline. He gained a cult following and spreading new type of drug among space colonists.
Shamelessly ripped of Guilty Gear: The Missing Link, in that the apparent leader of the enemy forces is a traitor named Testament, who is actually in thrall to a trapped, anti-god weapon named 'Justice'.He is currently gathering the elements needed to free Justice from it's prison, which includes powerful souls. The plan is to kill 2 of the 3 Great Kings, one of which involves misleading the party to think one of the Kings is actually responsible and using the party to kill her. It is working as planned.
>>97739422God, I love Guilty Gear. What system is campaign? Is it a cooorazy shōnen magi-tech action?
The Lords of the Six SwordsThe Sword Saint of the Seventh PathThe Archmagos of the Academy of the UnseenThe Upstart King and his RebellionThe Elfin Heir to the Empty ScabbardThe Lost Champion of the Six KingdomsThe Shorn King of the Horned OnesThe Silverline Company Board of TrusteesThe Dreamweaver Shai-TannIt That Waits Beyond the FlameThe Queen of the Cthonic ImperiumThe Council of Thirteen Daemons BoundAll antagonists. It's up to the players which ones are the primary antagonists and which ones are allies of convenience.
>>97734301>his players come up with backstories>ones substantial enough to make villains out ofI'm jealous.
>>97739645>All antagonists. It's up to the players which ones are the primary antagonists and which ones are allies of convenience.I'd love to hear more about these guys please!
>>97739645> The Shorn King of the Horned OnesFor a split second, I read this as “The Shoehorned King”. And now I wanna know what HIS story is.
>>97734022I want my setting’s ultimate evil to have corrupted all of its servants, a bit like picture related, what do I need to consider?
cult like dark wizards
>>97734955>No player wants to deal with a BBEG that’s just a soundboard for the GM’s unsolicited opinions. But I will admit, I can’t think of a faster way to get players to attack the BBEG mid-monologue. It’s really just to make the GM shut up. This. I've come all this way, do they expect me NOT to fight the villain? Yeah man get your speech over with already, let's get on with the boss battle so I can kick your ass.
>>97747787>cult like dark wizardsOkay, why?
What would be a good villain for a small level 3 campaign, no more than 5 or 7 sessions long? I don't wanna do anything too lame or too high-concept.
>>97753077Honestly?If this is D&D 5th, you could arguably have the Big Bad be an ettercap that’s setup a nest too close to town and you got spiders everywhere. Especially considering that an encounter of 1 ettercap and 1 giant spider is basically a boss fight for a lvl 3 party of 4
>>97751656Because it's cool.
>What goes into a villain that is narratively compelling?Being sexy
>>97753077Young green dragon who lives in the nearby woods and is using the local goblins to raid nearby villages for him
>>97757882> Being sexyKinda falls into the same problem as making the villain a soundboard for the GM’s opinions. The players are already primed to hate the villain, so her being “hot” is going to be completely squandered on people who legitimately couldn’t give less of a shit. She’s a Bitch, and that’s all the players care about.If you must have spank material in your campaign, make it a side character that’s not especially pertinent to the plot.
>>97738462That's so vague and generic I can't believe you didn't just make it up right now. Can you elaborate with actual specifics? What was actually going on in this region that made the antagonist a blessing?
>>97734022A member of an ancient deified adventuring party who became immortal over the course of their adventures. He's more or less trying to prevent another demon invasion (the thing his party stopped back in the day) by cutting off the plane from all other realities.
>>97759173I don't know, I'd say sexy villlanesses are a stylistic choice.
>>97757882>puckee spamming his commission againhttps://www.reddit.com/r/ImaginaryCharacters/comments/1ije3o4/celira_darkflame_evil_sorceress_by_kartstudio/https://desuarchive.org/_/search/image/GDZmUhxqu54xZ2D05FkNRQ/>52 times since November 2023
>>97734022A good villain is threatening. Not sympathetic, not funny, not misunderstood. You can surround them with underlings that are, but the villain themselves cannot ever lose his intimidating demeanor until the moment they actually lose.
>>97734301To me this suggests your characters are selfish, if something doesn't concern them personally they don't care? Sure, Conan had personal beef with Thulsa Doom, but he was going to have his death cult whether Conan came after him or not, so killing him still served a greater purpose, he didn't found the cult because of anything to do with Conan.
>>97762216i disagree, in fact you can have the exact opposite where a villains underlings play it completely straight and the villain himself is a goofball and it can work perfectly well.
>>97762993>i disagree, in fact you can have the exact opposite where a villains underlings play it completely straight and the villain himself is a goofball and it can work perfectly well.What are some other good examples of this besides picture related?
>>97734022A crazed Oracle who believes that his God, who has been absent for millennia, has graced him personally with visions of the coming apocalypse. Taking it as a personal quest to stop the end of the world, he's using his precog to ostensibly prepare for The End and become the messiah. Problem is, along the way he's killed the party's friend, kickstarted a civil war, radicalized bandits and brigands into zealots, stole divine artifacts, and plots to murder a demigod and take their place. All necessary if tragic from his perspective, but the PCs sure don't fucking like seeing their friends die for nebulous predictions.The visions of the future keep feeding his ego and he's becoming so deranged over time that the subordinates he hasn't converted to his megalomania are starting to turn away from him, despite knowing the genuine person he once was. The party will even have an opportunity to turn some of those against him.
>>97762993Joker is a shit villain tho. He's also a bad example because he's not funny.
>>97734022How do you redeem a villain and have it make sense, especially if love is involved?
He's a giant robot gangster who runs an interstellar human trafficking operation. He was originally a military pilot whose consciousness got linked to his mech's computer. After his original organic body died, he turned to crime to get more so he could feel human pleasures like sex again.
>>97734022in my fantasy game the big bad was a wizard that used to be part of an abolitionist group that wanted the two major rival nations on the continent to abolish slavery. He was ousted because whereas the main group "line" was campaigns of liberating slaves from captivity and assassinating their masters through espionage and trickery, he believed that it would be efficient and effective to conduct terror campaigns, mass killings, ambushes, riots, things like that. He was ousted from the group and went pursuing rumours of an occult ritual used by the old elven kings from antiquity, a weapon they used to keep unruly vassals in line called "The Sands of Wrath", what he discovered that the Sands was really a ritual that summoned a "Rakshasa Lord" partially into reality, which would manifest as a "hurricane of fiery wind" that would destory entire cities. He started using this ritual to attack major cities, but whereas he was oriented towards a specific goal, the Rakshasa Lord that the ritual called on was forcing him to cast it more and more, eventually it would drive him to begin casting it indiscriminately or die a slow, fiery death. He was p cool.
>>97734022The main game I run these days in Delta Green. I don't really have a major overarching villain other than like, the Great Old Ones, because they're the source of all the agent's problems. But they're not really villains because it's not like the agents are ever going to try to throw down against Yog-Sothoth.I tend to think of my campaigns as having "arcs" and each arc has it villains, usually corresponding to enemies they've made in previous scenarios or factions I want to pit them against. I also have my players play different agents in different cells, so cell "V" can go after X factions while Cell "I" goes after the Y Faction and there's thematic and tonal consistency maintained throughout, and so my players aren't thinking "hey why are my agents from this cell going after X, shouldn't we be chasing down that dickhead from the last scenario?"So, in the current arcs, Cell "V" are going after the "Karotechia", these are a bunch of immortal nazi occultists based in South America. They've been fighting them for about four in-game years across seven scenarios. The bad guys there are "Die Dritte Triumvirate" the trio of nazi wizards that run the Karotechia. You can read their wiki pages for deep lore but basically you have a necromancer surgeon, a wheelchair-bound wizard who wants to become a god, and an immortal cannibal hyperchad who goes around eating everybody's brains. Cell "I" are going after the Exalted Circle, basically the modern continuation of the old "esoteric order of dagon" except instead of a bunch of new england fishermen, its an international cabal of plutocrats. They're basically using their wealth to finance and cover-up an international human trafficking organization that collects people from third-world countries to be sacrificed to Cthulhu. Their leaders are the Quanyouyin, the "deathhless chinamen" from Lovecraft's lore.
>>97734022Basically it's two wizards fighting each other and causing natural disaster levels of collateral damage whenever they fight. They're not necessarily evil, but the players have an incentive to stop them by deadly force if necessary. Also gives options for players to make morally grey or evil choices. Allying with either one is a possibility, but so far the players have lost too much to both so I don't see them doing that. I think they're compelling in a sense that hurricanes and other natural disasters are common enough in certain parts of the world that people hunker down and get used to them. But what if you could to kill the thing causing the hurricanes? Certainly the wizards are vastly more powerful than the players, but they ARE mortal and therefore killing them (or making deals with them) is within the realm of possibility. Also, so far everything has been collateral damage, but antagonising either one or both is also possible.
>>97759241The campaign heavily involved slavers and captives. The players would kill the slavers and free the slaves, who would seek refuge in neighboring towns which threw off commerce. I will skip ahead. When the players confronted the their big bad he then pointed out how he is in a unique position, and he's the one who ensured that the slaves were fed, clothed, and treated well. Without him there would be no one to do so. The players were made to consider that their ambitious were aimless and devoid of real solutions to the real problems. They took it in stride and realized defeating the villain would require much more than just slaying him. They decided to work with the people of the land to rehabilitate the slaves to ensure regional stability. Their goal is to put slavers out of business, and that's good.
>>97781237There are no actual details answering anon's question, this is all just lore. What system were you playing, what was the party composition, and what encounters happened before, during, and after the final confrontation?
>>97781279Planning on doing this idea too? it's strange you want so many details. Nobody else in this thread is giving those details but for some reason you want me to detail all of this. Sorry it doesn't suffice? it's 5e, the party was a paladin, a rogue, a sorcerer, and a druid. All kinds of encounters happened, the most prominent being the slaver camps.
>>97771049Hell yeah, another slaver campaign
>>97747879Yeah, I expect you to hear what the villain says and understandable decide not to kill them. That's the whole point in that they're correct. That the greater threat exists beyond him, it makes sense. You just kill him and don't tackle the greater issues that plague the region then you solve nothing.
>>97781435>Hell yeah, another slaver campaignWhat was your previous one?
>>97734022>BBEGUgh.
>>97735615>They are atmospheric and esoteric. Their voice is imagined as raspy or echoed. The rare event of facing them in person should mean the chips are down, in contrast to being a repetitive throwaway encounter, really emphasize the gravitas of their supremely evil power.So, they only exist as empty GM promises?
>>97786025>BBEG>Ugh.Why does the term seem to be so hated here?
>>97781462See this?!This shit is why we don’t let you GM anymore, Carl!
>>97790681>filtered by roleplayingshut up and role the dice, Kyle
>>97790882Lame roleplay aside, he does have a point. Nobody is interested in the GM’s opinions, and using the game to get on a soapbox and shout your opinions is not something the players are going to appreciate, or tolerate for very long.
>>97768472>Joker is a shit villain tho. He's also a bad example because he's not funny.What are some GOOD examples then?
>>97790023The local lord has a disdain for BBEGs, they insist upon themselves.
>>97791123you got filtered, that's okay anon, the world doesn't revolve around you
>>97796151>they insist upon themselvesWhat does that even mean?
