They say the clothes make the man, but the villain makes the campaign. Look around your favorite stories – whether they’re movies, TV, book, comics, RPG modules – and 90% of the time you’re going to find an awesome villain. It has to be something your players love to hate, but also a character they love to learn more about. A good big bad evil guy (BBEG) is a balancing act of depth and destruction.
Villains aren’t necessarily hard to make, you’ve been watching them since you were a child, but they do take a little extra thought and planning. As we touched on in the final thoughts of our recent podcast on running RPG villains, here are 5 things I make sure to understand about my BBEG and what it’s going to do before the party is ready to confront it.
1. Start With a Cool Concept
What’s Your Darth Vader Look Like? Your Cthulhu? Your Thanos? Your evil archmage or ruthless dictator? Come up with something neat, something your players will remember. Something with a strong concept people won’t forget.
Villains have to be memorable and hook the party into wanting to learn more about them. You might think starting from a pop culture base is cheesy – and it may be – but you want to try to come up with a concept that is as unique and memorable as your favorite villains. Think about what makes them stand out and try to capture some elements of that in your campaign BBEG design.
2. Villains Needs Motives That Make Sense
Your villain must make sense from its own point of view. Figure out why they do what they do, and make sure those are reasons that anyone will instantly understand when you tell it to them (because an instant may be all the attention your players give it).
The villain may be greedy, evil, and/or unsympathetic, but those motivations must have internal logic within the villain’s context. When you explain what the villain is doing and why, you don’t want players going “that doesn’t make sense!”
Take your time here. You should aim to spend at least as much time planning out your villain’s backstory and motivations as you would a PC you were creating. Its character should be at least as deep as the PCs’.
3. How Will Your BBEG Bedevil the PCs?
Exactly how can and will this villain hurt your player characters? Will it show up personally to destroy them (or at least make them run away to lick their wounds)? Does it have political power where it can seize their homes or have them arrested and put on trial? Will it kill family members or otherwise destroy things they love?
Think about this from the PCs’ point of view. What would they hate for the villain to do from both a mechanical and story-focused level? What will really frustrate the party?
At the same time, remember this is a game. Steer clear of triggering topics, like sexual assault, violence against kids, and anything that might touch a personal nerve with your players. Because, if you go too far here, it could ruin the game for your players, and nobody wants that.
In other words, hit the characters where it hurts, not your friends playing them.
4. Escalate So the Players MUST Deal With It
Every DM has a story of a time their party ignored the villain’s big plot. Players can be stubborn, and they don’t always take the bait.
Cut this off before it starts by planning out how the villain’s plan ramping up will make the players pay attention. Take step 3, and build it up to a level that cannot be ignored. For example, if the villain is building up unstoppable magic power, you could have it complete a ritual that interferes with PC magic or gods or somehow keeps them from leaving to go on other quests.
If this is your Big Bad Evil Guy, make sure it’s theirs’s, too.
5. The Final Showdown: How Will It All Pay Off?
This is worth thinking about before the showdown actually comes up. You’ve spent levels and levels frustrating the party with this NPC, how can you bring them to a final fight that feels truly climactic. Here’s what I try to do:
- Make the players face the villain on its turf where it has the advantage.
- Make sure the villain is in control of the situation at the beginning of the battle.
- Break the party’s formation: Attack the back-line spellcasters, KO the healer, use some spell or attack immunity abilities in the books (like Globe of Invulnerability, Foresight and things like that). Make the players go to plans B, C and beyond to dig deep and win this fight.
- Make the entire fight (which may include pre-fights with minions) long enough for the players and the villain to use all their cool stuff. Everyone should leave everything they have on this battlefield and know it.
- Make sure the villain has an epic death. It should not succumb to a few well-placed save-or-suck spells. Give it ways to shrug some of them off and trade blows before finally succumbing to the party’s desperate last blows.
Building a great villain is a project that’s going to last your entire campaign – sometimes your entire lifetime if you keep coming back to one really good one. With the right process, you can make sure your BBEG is worthy of the coolest PCs your players bring at it.
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