Villains, need to be Villains or I Ate My Villain, I Ate His Little Face and I Ate The Mess He Made

 Way the hell back in the post ‘I Understand, You’re Still a Jerk’ I mentioned that there were two points I wanted to expand on.

One was the underwear gnomes plots that frequently come up with bad guys, and how those plots need to make sense.

The second is that villains need to be villains.  They need to be the kind of people the players want to oppose.  

In tabletop games and similar rpg areas, the function of an antagonist is different from the function of an antagonist in say fiction. The job of an antagonist is to move the story forward, to move things along and in fiction to provide a specific foil to the main character or team. However, in a RPG you aren’t writing the heroes. You don’t determine their motivations. You don’t determine how the players view their own characters or each other, or the world, all you do is lay it out for them.

An antagonist you see, is the meal you lay out for your players to eat. It’s only by interacting, in many ways consuming the thing that it accomplishes what it’s meant to. And if you’re successful, the players feel satisfied and they speak fondly of the experience like a fine wine or meal.  If you screw it up, it’ll be like that time they got food poisoning from bad Mexican food.

The various traits, the tragic motivation (which should be seen in how he acts not unloaded at the heroes like the bad guy needs a psychotherapist) are the seasonings and preparation of that meal.

Like a master chef you have to know though what it is that your customers want.

If they’ve come to you for some simple fair, say wanting to beat up an orc warlord to let off some steam and have a nice scrum, let’s call it a hamburger villain, then don’t lay out a sneaky political lawyer villain, let’s call it a  soufflé villain, for them.

Also keep in mind there can be gourmet hamburgers and crappy soufflés. Simplicity does not mean bad and complexity does not mean good.

Using the meal analogy it’s also important at times to worry about your player’s nutrition by varying the kinds of threats and enemies they encounter. Hamburgers, soufflé, hot dogs, quiche, lasagnas, and maybe even some sushi, as the time proceeds on. Don't just feed them the same stuff, unless that's what they really like.

Early on it can be helpful to give your players a buffet of threats, meanies, weirdoes and monsters to oppose, use it like a taste test to see what they like. Also learn what your own specialties are.

And again, don’t forget. The purpose of the antagonist is to be consumed. Consumed by the adventure and the players. He has no value unless he’s fought against, opposed, and either overcome by the party, or proves too much for them.

And during the course of that, your presentation is going to get messed up a little. The party is going to pour gravy all over it, and splatter ketchup on your Filet Mignon, because that’s how they enjoy eating it. When they call your villain with deep emotional-trauma a “Momma’s Boy” to his face in the middle of his monologue, you’re succeeding, not failing (or they wouldn’t bother insulting him!)

A freeze dried preserved meal that you put on a shelf so you can show off how talented you are, and how well made it is, isn’t a meal anymore, and it won’t satisfy anybody.