How do you design a compelling "evil mastermind/puppetmaster behind the scenes" character, Veeky Forums?

Does american TV really cause that much brain damage?

Make the character be always in the spotlight in some way with all of his bad intentions being right there in the open, but nobody sees them, not even the players.

>ur american!1
No, i'm not from an idiot country that allows fascist racist neo-nazies like tronald dump.

whoa there trumpsters poltards, how about you fuck off?!

You do realize that George Soros is pretty much a Lich, he's had six heart transplants for fuck sake.

When did Soros ever do anything good?

Soros is:
pro-EU
anti-boarders
pro-Israel
pro-refugees
anti-hate
anti-fascist
pro-open society

What he's done that isn't good mhmmmm? nothing, get rekt fascist scum

Could you guys stop replying to bait?

>pro-EU
>good

LOVING
EVERY
LAUGH

No, no, you are bait. I don't believe you are real. I don't want to believe you are real.

racist brexiter spotted, fuck off /pol/tard grandpa and get with the times it's 2016!

>fascist
Unlike Soros, I never worked for the Nazis.

Any proof of that?
Also he was forced because he was jewish so it doesn't count, you'd join because you're a fucking nazi you stupid white male.

/pol/ very much kid? how about you FUCK. OFF. back to /pol/? Veeky Forums is a lgbt, antifa and refugee friendly board got it kiddo?

Can we please talk about BBEGs instead of politics and bait?

Basically, it's what said. Give him actual, believable reasons, credible goals, and don't let him pull something out of his arse or escape/succeed in an unbelievable manner.

Ah, I feel better now. You got too obvious.

MOOOODS, DELETE FUCKING EVERYTHING IN THIS THREAD THAT ISN'T ABOUT TABLETOP

>Be on the right side of history
>Ur le bait!!
naw fuck off nazi.

He looks like he replaced his heart or something

But user, evil (at least evil in stories) is nothing BUT politics and bait.

>antifa
Danke für deine Offenbarung, Bernd. Falschflaggaktionen benötigen aber etwas mehr Feingefühl.
Now if you would kindly stop the bait and just post " I heff bin ze evilmastermind all along, you foolz!" so we could get on with the thread?

On topic:
Apart from having believable goals, which shouldn't be obvious right from the start, the most effective way to play this kind of BBEG is following advice for creating a murder-mystery plot. Meaning you need to sprinkle non-obvious clues around. (Yet obvious enough that the players catch them or at least remember them when the plan becomes known to them.)
The moment you hear "So THAT was why..." you know you've done it right.

>Danke für deine Offenbarung, Bernd. Falschflaggaktionen benötigen aber etwas mehr Feingefühl.
Woah there anti-refuge neo-nazi how about you mc fuck off eh whitey neo-nazi?

I sincerely hope you aren't implying Soros is an agent of good.

stop feeding him any (you)s, he'll wither and go away without them

holy fuck you need to fuck right off this board. Yeah, I'm getting baited but an already decently interesting thread is being ruined by someone (hopefully playing at) being a retarded SJW. Mods, please.

On topic, you make them rational but still have a good reason to be against what the players want. This is the really tricky part, because if they're smart, thinking beings they'll deal and compromise when they need to, and doing so with PCs ruins them as a villain.

For personal tastes, I like it better when masterminds aren't that imposing/dangerous on their own. It's always annoying as a player to finally corner the bastard, only to find out he's *also* a super martial arts master somehow. Getting to the villain should be the fight itself, once the players do this let them resolve the rest easily.

As everyone in this thread has said, give them limits.

Decide at the beginning of the game what areas he's meddling in and how big his resources are. He can change his plans as the campaign goes on, but having an idea of what they're invested in and roughly what they're capable of stops you from bullshitting everyone by making him asspull a solution to every problem.

They don't need to be related to the PCs party in any way, but they should at least be a known figure in the campaign in some capacity aka as a noble, or a mercenary captain or a banker or priest or whatever.
Cardinal Richlieu from the Musketeers might be a good example.

The most important thing about a mastermind BBEG is his facial hair. You might be thinking goatee here, but you are wrong. That's henchman-level at best.

>anti-borders
>anti-europe
>pro-'refugees'
>pro-'open society' aka anti-native
Found it right fucking there

Don't tell me what to do, nig.

This is bait, but people like this do exist unironically believing these thing's.

>Veeky Forums is a lgbt, antifa and refugee friendly board got it kiddo?
Blue board doesn't mean 'safe space', baiter. Grow up and stop trying to speak for everyone here, it's not your place to say what this board is or is not.

On topic, I like BBEGs that completely come off as nice people and the PCs would never think twice about being evil because they're clearly an asset to the party. Then the group takes another look and realized they've been doing the ditty work of an asshole that would have been obvious if they took a slightly closer look along the way. Shane as posted above is also a good example.

THIS IS THE PERFECT THREAD TO A QUESTION I ALWAYS WANTED TO MAKE.

TO PEOPLE THAT ARE ARE TELLING >>/POL//
I HAVE SOME QUESTION:

HOW THE HELL SOME GUY X DISCUSS POLITICAL RELATED THINGS (LIKE THIS THREAD) OR A /TV/ THREAD ABOUT MOVIES RELATED TO POLITICS, WITHOUT DOING SOMETHING THAT WOULD MAKE YOU TELL THE GUY X "BACK TO /POL/?

get the FUCK out you stupid NAZI.
Spotted the neo-nazi!

>O-oh n-no!! he spotted us being in the WRONG side of history!!
>I-it's clearly biat!!! i'm not in the wrong side of history!! n-nazism and fascism is good!!

ITT: Serious /pol/tard invasion and DIRE need of ACTION ANTIFA.

Carefully.

If all /pol/tards GTFO we wouldn't have fucking stupid conservative and nazi retards.

>WITHOUT DOING SOMETHING THAT WOULD MAKE YOU TELL THE GUY X "BACK TO /POL/?
your only hope is to time the thread when the ironic/overly sensitive are asleep

and good luck doing that, because they're neets

Ooooorrrr
we make all stupid filthy and dumb fascist scum go away???

study actual masterminds from history, then turn them evil.

the general principle is to use a form of competence to gain power, be blocked by something you can't openly remove, get/wait for someone unrelated to yourself to start up some shit and either direct it at your obstacle or use it as pretext to usurp it.

that's a very clean and effective approach which is why you call them masterminds. if you want the players to oppose them they'll need a realistic way to do so. a typical weakness is a time when they didn't bother with the pretext.

alternatively you can just make some funny shit up. just remember you get bonus points for logical motivations and choices relying on knowledge the characters would actually have without retarded bullshit reasoning.

>get the FUCK out you stupid NAZI.
Nah. I hate the /pol/tards as much as you do and all the stormfags can go die in a fire. But a) you're in dire need of rereading the rules, things like
>you must be 18 to post on Veeky Forums
and b) you're also completely missing the point of the anonymous culture fostered here. You can speak for no one but yourself, and trying to do otherwise is retarded. If calling me a Nazi is all you have, you're doing nothing but making wild assumptions about me through some mouth-frothing desire to feel like you made a change. On an anonymous image board. For board games.

You're being retarded and childish. Calm down.

>we make all stupid filthy and dumb fascist scum go away???
Make them go away? How? Like, with guns? Isn't silencing a person's voice wholesale for your own convenience because you can't properly think of how to debate them like adults... Wouldn't that be... fascism?

this is bait

sort of

Another good thread ruined by sjwfags and /pol/tards arguing. You're both wrong by the way. My grandpa always said there are three sides to every argument. The way one side says it is, the way the other side says it is, and the truth. You're both closed minded and half right. Additionally, it's 2016. Stop responding to bait and feeding trolls. That's how threads get ruined. The trolls are retarded but if you fall for their tricks you become the guy that was fooled by a retard.

From time to time I make the BBEG the party's boss's boss. The good guys are basically there to act as enforcers when one of the evil lieutenants isn't doing their job well, or to knock out overly ambitious rivals.

The best evil masterminds are patient and happy to accept incremental progress towards their goals.

>If calling me a Nazi is all you have, you're doing nothing but making wild assumptions about me through some mouth-frothing desire to feel like you made a change
More to the point, how is him calling you a Nazi supposed to change your behavior?

If you actually were a Nazi, you'd just say 'Yep, I'm a Nazi' and he'd have no more arguments left.

>the middle ground is always right
>everyone is wrong, only I know the truth
Okay

I like diverting my PCs attentions and pointing them towards a mastermind who's actually a good guy (but seems like a bad guy because their motives are so inscrutable to the untrained eye). It's also fun to drop PCs in the middle of a shadow war between two masterminds and leaving them to figure out who to support (assuming they don't decide to take out both).

>HOW THE HELL SOME GUY X DISCUSS POLITICAL RELATED THINGS (LIKE THIS THREAD) OR A /TV/ THREAD ABOUT MOVIES RELATED TO POLITICS, WITHOUT DOING SOMETHING THAT WOULD MAKE YOU TELL THE GUY X "BACK TO /POL/?

By going to /pol/. That's where political discussion belongs. Now if you wanna talk about Soros' new evil tabletop RPG, sure, do it here.

Soros himself? Not Veeky Forums, take it to /pol/. It's really not difficult.

Good point. Lol. I might have thought to say so but I have given up long ago on saying "no, I'm not" when someone on the internet comes at me with a retarded accusation.

Also I recall someone made a thread the other day about likeable bad guys and Hank Scorpio came up. He was a really good example and relevant to this thread. Genuinely nice guy that cared about his accomplices. Even if he did have all those crazy schemes and doomsday weapons and whatnot. Plus I want his jetpack. At least I'm pretty sure he had a jetpack.

Killing facists it's being on the RIGHT side of history nazi, fuck off with your white privilege and check it.

Bait thread?

Also, on topic:

Don't make him some high profile person like a dictator or something. Have him be some relatively obscure advisor, a man with many connections and influence but little formal power. Formal power might be some long term goal for him but since I assume your story is just starting have him stay in the shadows.

Also, on the manipulation itself, don't make it some hyperlogical grand plan that perfectly unfolds. Have him be a great improviser, somebody who has backup plans when his main ones fail. Make him a great people person, a casual liar, no firm loyalties to anyone...you get the idea.

Depends on the game and the setting.

In a sort of straight forward game they have to be relatively obvious or the players will run around and never uncover them unless you set up some "choo choo" action to insure that the mastermind comes to light.

In a political game you can literally throw a rock blindfolded and hit either this guy, the magnificent bastard, or the smug snake. Everyone is plotting all the time. Even in their sleep.

Come up with a plan for the BBEG, as well as several cover stories that serve as red herrings.

Start the BBEG at step 1.
Start the players at step 1.

Amerifat here, sure as shit does
One too many sham-wow commercials probably

>six heart transplants
Okay what the fuck
Really? How? How has he fucked up six different hearts? Where's hia phylactery?

If we don't reply to bait, what else would we do with ourselves

>implying fascism is so far off from what uncle barney sandals offers

His phylactery is a giant pile of cursed money he has filtered into circulation. on another note, would that work as a phylactery?

Maybe someone who does a lot of royal bookkeeping? He'd be low profile, trusted, and quite literally have his eyes everywhere.

Indeed. Littlefinger springs to mind. Alternatively, you could go the Frank Underwood route and have him be a minor but highly ambitious politician who schemes him way to the top.

I don't see why not. One big fat stack of cash

>Fight Fascism with fascism

Literally jafar
On a side note, disney has some great villians

Depends on the setting. But I'd lean towards no - your phylactery has to be a single object and a valuable object, IMO. A pile of cursed money would only work while it stayed together.

(Plot hook: a lich's phylactery has been deliberately disassembled and put into circulation this way. Since it was made in parts, it's not considered "broken" or "destroyed" and will resume reforming the lich if ever collected in one place.)

But today I identify as an African woman and you can't tell me I don't or you're a fascist, racist, misogynistic rapist neo-Nazi who needs to check his own white cisscum privilege and not vote for Trump or you're oppressing me.

Here's your final (You). Don't spend it all in one place.

Actually Trump would make a great BBEG if he was given one or two likeable traits.

Also anyone know of any good mastermind type examples to adopt and alter for BBEGs? I'm thinking like Light from Death Note or Edmond Dantes, for example. People that are just mildly damaged enough to have a terribly vicious streak and be severely flawed if well-intentioned people, but still make their allies say "Holy fuck, I'm glad they're on OUR side."

well, its split across the world, and eventually will be taken out circulation due to wear, so no its not a good idea

Well trump is a good example of a choatic good rich guy, soros is lawful evil, Bill gates is true nuetral.

What about a brick of gold stored in National Gold Reserve?

Give him a winning smile

>literally Jafar
Fuck, right. Disney does have some great villains

>People that are just mildly damaged enough to have a terribly vicious streak and be severely flawed if well-intentioned people, but still make their allies say "Holy fuck, I'm glad they're on OUR side."

Perhaps the Mentats from Dune. Maybe even the Emperor if BL hadn't turned him into a moron.

>Actually Trump would make a great BBEG if he was given one or two likeable traits.

I fucking despise Trump, but admit that he can be funny and charming to the right audience when he wants to be, in a brutish, classless way. He's also got an aura of artlessness to him -- as if he's so authentic he'll just say whatever's on his mind, at length, in a way that common people wanted to say but couldn't.

He's like your crazy uncle. Sure, he's racist, but you feel like he's got your back, and he says what he means. It doesn't matter that he's a piece of trash who is conning you; he FEELS authentic, and that's what matters.

If he weren't likable on some level, he never would have won the Republican primary.

Wow that's closed minded.

>Actually Trump would make a great BBEG if he was given one or two likeable traits.
compelling evil guys need a purpose. trump's more of a parasite.

Generally national sovereignty is more than a compelling enough purpose for a villain.

>one or two likeable traits

"tells it like it is" and "spouts our propaganda not theirs" are reasonably likeable. "alpha not beta" doesn't hurt either.

>chaotic good
What makes you say that? Not agreeing or disagreeing, I'm genuinely interested in hearing your rationale. Soros I don't know enough about to agree or disagree and Gates I'm on board with your appraisal.

Boy i do love the screams of children

> Trump
> Good

> Gates
> Neutral

Bill Gates did a lot of shady shit in order to get to the top, but in true robber baron fashion he's trying to buy his way back to morality by helping save the world. Unless he's lying about being an atheist, he's doing it purely out of altruism.

Donald Trump fucks whores behind his wife's back and brags about it, slanders war heroes and mocks disabled people.

This is partially correct.

Trump has swagger like other great Americans like Dutch coda and patton.

He also has kind of figured out what the actual people in America, not interest groups or generalized minorities but people are pissed about. That mostly happens to be liberals acting high and mighty and morally superior without warning it. Trump is a conservative backlash to this attitude.

Not him, but I could see it. Says what he feels is right even if it causes controversy, socially progressive well ahead of the curve, chaotic or lawful depends on your particular viewpoints.

>Since it was made in parts, it's not considered "broken" or "destroyed" and will resume reforming the lich if ever collected in one place.)
So the villainous group are forcing a regime change so all the currency gets recalled and replaced?

With trump its hard, depending on your definition, he wants to remove the old political class because he rightly feels that they have become too corrupt and distanced from the common man, and he wants to return to a time before that. What do you make of it?
Soros is a real life supervillian. He has literally crashed whole systems of banks, funds both domestic and external terrorism in the us (see blm) and chooses to support a new world order under socialist dogma, not for the good of others, but so he can kick the ladder down to cement his position. sounds pretty fucking evil. Thats all on record for more about soros, go to /pol/

if he meant to sacrifice the population of new york to convince ctulhu to destroy america then it would be. but his entire actual plan is to never stop being oblivious of his own incompetence. if it works, then they deserved it.

progressive how? in what sense rather.

McCain certainly deserves to be mocked, the dude sincerely wants to arm terrorists with surface to air missiles etc.

I've often said that you get the enemies you deserve. The Left is so terrible, so absolutely self-righteous and ugly and mean-spirited, that anything that triggers their snowflake sensibilities makes mainstream Americans happy. It's tempting to feel that way, just because of how monstrous the Left in America has become.

Unfortunately, in Trump, he's not a conservative backlash, he's just anti-Democrat. He's a centralizing national socialist whose racism is less masked by doublethink and paternalistic pretense. Like Mussolini, whose fascism was a heresy of socialism (not conservatism), Trump's ideology as it is is just repackaged leftist policies from the 1960s.

Hes more of a paleo conservative if you ask me.

Then mock him for that. That's an honest criticism, and we can have a debate about that.

But disparaging the guy for his history in Vietnam -- getting captured and mercilessly tortured, and refusing to be allowed to get sent home so he could be an example for the other POWs who weren't the sons of admirals -- is morally and intellectually indefensible, and the fact that Trump has never really apologized for it is further evidence that he is unqualified for the presidency.

Like in terms of being the Grand Marshal of the Israeli gay pride parade and putting women in charge of construction projects, both before those were mainstream things to do. He also doesn't mind having viewpoints dissimilar to most of his base on stuff like the whole Trayvon Martin thing, trans bathrooms, the Iraq War, etc.

>Actually Trump would make a great BBEG if he was given one or two likeable traits.
or nanomachines

He also funded radical anti-church, anti-traditionalist movements like FEMEN in every country in the world then pulled their funding when they came to Israel.

>alpha not beta
>lies about penis size
>can't please his wife, resorts to paying for sex
>can't handle his male-pattern baldness
>can't handle opposing opinions and whines like a little bitch when proven wrong or questions are "too hard-hitting"
>can't roll with the punches and ever EVER deal well with a question that wasn't planned out and approved ahead of time
>threatens to sue anyone who makes him look bad, which often takes minimal effort.
>even the people in his OWN camp think he's a whiny, narcissistic, bitchy little egomaniac
>alpha

That's not what that word means, fool.

If you can degrade or put down a complete traitor like McCain, who is definitely not a war hero but someone who knowingly supports the enemy and still to this day won't stop doing it, you should. People need to stop looking at him as a war hero.

He didn't pick the right way to do it, but its a tricky position to be in: faced by a coward who hides behind his veteran status. As a veteran, I hate vets who turn traitor worst of all.

>and the fact that Trump has never really apologized for it

The moment he said it? Nobody who harps on this nonsense claim has ever watched the conversation.