What do you do to humanize your villains, Veeky Forums?

I rip off Star Trek

>Some fanboys try to make it out like Vader had any leg to stand on about being in the right
But that's the thing, on the OT he thought he was in the right. Sure, Emps was unabashedly evil, but Vader just wanted to bring order to the galaxy.

Is that the comic where the stormtrooper finds Darth Vader's diary? Man, I absolutely loved that one. Ending still makes me feel funny inside.

I once had my PCs discover three dead, raped toddlers hidden in a privy in a roman senator's house. I played it 100% straight. They've never hated a character so much in their whole life.

bump for comic name

Even in the original trilogy he was part of a Fascist, Xenophobic, Empire. Also he had a rep for being kind of a murderous psychopath whom you should give a wide berth to, else he might use his fucking space sorcery to suffocate you.

Like, no one earns a reputation like that unless they go out and do it. In his head he might have thought this was all necessary to make sense of a chaotic universe, but he was all fucked up on Dark Side for decades, and let that be his guiding path to wreak terror upon the Galaxy.

I always thought of him as a broken person.
Going in first time i had zero knowledge of the EU or anything.
Something somewhere happened and he just chose the path that let him take his issues out physically which made him feel better. Somewhere some time he met the old dude who just fed the fire.

The dark side and Sith philosophy, which is arguably worse.

In a sense, that's exactly what Vader is, and always has been, and then he met the old man who took advantage of that. The Prequel trilogy turned him into a a little psycho with brief moments of clarity, who became a big time psycho with one brief moment of clarity.

Maybe it was his uprbringing as a slave, or being torn away from his mother to be inducted into a cult of Space-Warrior Wizards, or maybe it was just that puberty hit him hard. Who knows?

Also, I'll say this, there was definitely a good story in the prequels, somewhere, but it was bogged down by horrible writing and actors trying to cope with being the first to have to do everything against a green screen on such a huge project, leading to stilted performances (and maybe some poor directorial choices, because there were some legit good actors in that). Hell, the guy who played Jar Jar got fucked over big time, despite the fact that he pioneered mo-cap acting. He doesn't get his dick sucked like Andy Serkis, he just gets hate from people who accuse him of ruining their childhood.

There's an edit floating around that cuts down the Prequel Trilogy into just one movie, and it is such a massive improvement. They managed to make Anakin not a whiny little sociopath who probably Jedi mind-controlled Padme into loving him (In the regular prequel trilogy she kind of just loses all her personality by the third movie) and makes him seem like a good guy who has a lot of anger inside of him, but trying to do good, and makes his relationship with Padme more natural and progress normally (Thanks mostly to adding some deleted scenes that were cut from Episode II initially). It also makes Palpatine actually subtle and slowly corrupting him rather than just going "Hey, kid, did you know being a Sith is totally awesome and can keep your loved ones alive forever?"

Anyway, my point is, that Vader is interesting character without having to contrive reasons why he was justified.

I don't need to if the party are villains.

The empire was evil only because the rebels were the protagonists, you could easily make a movie portraying the rebels are terrorist scum trying the destroy order and civilization.

They blew up a fucking planet in the first movie, to make a point.

...

Get better players

Darth Vader is a fucking space gestapo officer. The Death Star is the moral equivalent of a concentration camp, but mobile, and Vader's primary motivation in the first movie is the defense of the Death Star.

In Empire and ROTJ Darth Vader is more like an aristocrat, whose motivation is dynastic in nature. He wants his son as an apprentice.

I don't always humanize villains. Usually it does more harm than good but when I do I make it more personal to the characters.

For instance, one time during a side quest in a much larger campaign, the group was helping one of the players in particular hunt down a warlord that killed his family a long time ago. Thing was, this guy was of the same culture as that player, and they were a generic warrior nomad peoples that had slowly started to go extinct. This caused a bit of conflict with the player because the warlord he sought to kill represented the best and likely only chance to keep his people relevant at all and he might be able to grow them into a mighty civilization again. Killing the warlord would certainly lead to the fracturing of his warband and the eventual slow extinction of his people.

He killed the guy. Reasoned that if his people were to live on, he wouldn't want them to be brought up in the footsteps of that particular guy. Better death than subversion I guess. The rest of the players didn't really agree with his choice.

youtube.com/watch?v=AKArCuRQVNM

>Don't do this
>There are actually assholes in the world.
Not that user but:
1) It's still a perfectly valid antagonist. Not every antagonist has to be actually villainous.
2) He can still be villainous even if he has an admirable goal. Nothing stops him from being an asshole. He doesn't even try to achieve his goal peacefully. He only cares about his own. He doesn't care about people his braves slaughter, they're just pigs to him deserving nothing more.

>Implying that the good guys can't do a good old Exterminatus once in a while

Well, keep in mind that when Anakin was taken to be trained he was about to hit puberty and already thought Padme was cute, and she was only a few years older than him.

Then he gets taken to the Jedi Temple, trained into thinking that emotions and loved ones are bad along with all the strict physical and mental regimen, and this entire time his crush grows and festers in his heart.

His emotions get the best of him on multiple occasions, and barely scrapes by because of how strong in the Force he is until he gets his hand chopped off.

He gets vindictive and wants revenge upon the man who maimed him, and all this time Palpatine is quietly waiting and influencing him from the shadows, knowing that Anakin is probably going to be home his tool of destruction and devastation of the Jedi Order.

Finally, he gives Anakin the "tainted apple" of the power of immortality that a Sith can do, and all he asks for is to trust him. He manipulates facts and his personal image to make him be seen in the right, and when the crucial moment comes Anakin sides with the one man he believed had his back since his time at the Temple, and not Yods or Obi-Wan, who were trying to teach him things he didn't want to understand, nor give up his crush (now desire/love) of Padme.

Then it all comes crashing down and he's turned into Vader, and Padme dies and doesn't know that her kids are out there in the galaxy.

The story is good, but holy God did they go overboard with green screen, mo-cap, and CGI.

Then again, most movies in the late 90's and early 2000's went heavy on CGI to try and hide bad acting, when it just needed to have a better casting director.

Have some perspective.

No one cares about your magical realm fanfic. They care about what their character did, is doing, and is intended to do. They're not there to enable your sad sack tolkien world. They're there to enjoy interacting with friends and pretend they're not 150lbs overweight.

>There's an edit floating around that cuts down the Prequel Trilogy into just one movie, and it is such a massive improvement
Do you happen to remember what it's called?

What you've just written and what is indeed fine is the overarching plot. Problem is, it had a lot of pretty awful appendages and the scenes themselves were rather atrociously written and directed

Be a better DM then. Either way, someones fucking up if this is your view on it.

The point of telling a story, of making a world, is to cause intrigue and interest in that same world. If you don't, your players end up unabashedly uninterested in anything but themselves, like you said.

Using an example from DnD, there was that one story about the DM that made his characters play completely evil characters aiming for immortality. Once they had essentially conquered the world, the players were then pit against their own self made evil overlords, albeit a few hundred years later.

That would put them in the spot where they are automatically attached to both the villain and the "Hero".

Its not about the player, its about how you involve the player into the world at large. If you can't manage that as a DM, thats your fault, not your players.

His rep can't have been that hardcore if fucking Motti basically called his religion shit and made fun of him to his face and was surprised at what happened.

Imagine saying something like that to, I don't know, Heinrich Himmler, or Che Guevara. They'd just shoot you in the mouth. Yet this little faggot talks that maximum shit to Darth fucking Vader.

Emps must've kept him under wraps or something.

Child rape or murder is one of the most unforgiving crime so yeah, you generally have no conflict about what to do with the guy

Nah. Most at the time believed jedi and the force to be some sort of propaganda the order used to make people fear and respect them. Some even believed the jedi weren't even a thing as its a big galaxy and theres only 300ish of them in the old order before the fall so most people don't even have 6 degrees of relationship to someone who's seen one.
Guy legit thought vader was just a dude in a scary suit to intimidate using borrowed "power" from a now dead organization that he thought was literal propaganda and urban myth.
He was surprised when he found out it was in fact true to some extent that the odder parts of the story actually existed and were currently squeezing the life out of him.

Basically imagine a random guy in an edgemaster trench coat mafia get up came up to you and said he's a wizard and if you don't worship the ground he walks you'll be sorry.
At best you'd ignore him as a crazy and at worst you'd be like me and tell him to fuck off with his shit.
Now imagine if you suddenly can't breathe and the wizard is making it very clear that while his hand is 10 feet away he's the one crushing your windpipe.

I never got why people put rape on the same pedestal as murder. One is vastly worse than the other and we constantly show murder in what are now casual and public settings.

I make them competent, compassionate leaders who hold themselves to the same standards they hold their subordinates to.

Loyalty is a transaction, paid up and down the chain. Much easier to keep track of, using a combination of actual markers to track favors.

A favor done is a favor to be repaid, it erodes the capability of a man to neglect his debts, and it's offensive to refuse to allow another to carry their burden - in addition to calling them weak, it also does weaken them.

Meritocracy is the name of the game. Anyone in my Evil Empire can step up and challenge me, whether it's on a single point of policy or for the whole shebang as leader. However, pursuing things past their resolution is both disgraceful and offensive to not just me, but the Empire that you should hold yourself above it. If you were truly right, you would have been proven by being able to win your case.

I don't even begrudge the Heroes their quest, although I shall oppose them. Conflict, be it with words or blade or arcane might, conflict leads us to the truth of our selves and our ideals.

But it has to be structured. Mindless violence merely causes destruction and distraction, as evidenced by the damage wrought by adventurers. At best they're wasteful, at worst they aggravate underlying problems with temporary solutions.

So, yeah. I tend to make my villains cynical people focused on "success is the definition of righteousness". If your cause is truly right, and you are capable enough to make it work, then you SHOULD win. If I lose, than either my ideals or my self was flawed, and that is as it should be.

My players fucking hate that though. See . It was pretty funny when I had the BBEG present them with an itemized bill for damages caused along the way, then told them not to worry about paying it back. Especially since I had just monologued about his views on debt and obligation.

It didn't help that the Jedi and the Sith are more of a Red and Blue morality system than a black and white Good vs. Evil.

Keep in mind that Anakin was supposed to bring balance to the force, because the Jedi were too strong, and the Luke had to re-do it because instead of reeling the Jedi back Anakin went full Vader and tipped it the other way.

Jolee Bindo had that shit on lockdown.

We can understand murder more. B person wants to achieve X goal, and C person is in the way of it. Depending on how much we understand X goal we may even be able to understand the reason C person was killed. It's possible to understand murder, and not agree with it.

Rape is basically torture. It's taking someone and torturing them for your own enjoyment. At best the rapist just doesn't care that the victim is being tortured and psychologically scarred, at worst they like it more because of that.

Are you saying that nobody has ever murdered for no reason other than fun?
Or that nobody has ever raped to accomplish a goal?

Well, a lot of the problem with Child Rape is how we deal with rape as a traumatic event.

It is survivable for one thing, by definition otherwise it would be murder.

It's actually usually a lot less traumatic for children to make it out to be.

And now I have to say "Usually" doesn't mean "always", so no you can't go diddle kids and say "I'm not the one who hurts them, it's society!" The whole basis behind no-consent for children is that they can't assess how they'll react to your advances, and the imbalance of power in the relationship is too vulnerable to abuse whether by accident or design.

And if you fuck it up, or even do everything right and have a "healthy" sexual relationship with a child, they could still be one of the ones that gets damaged by it due to things happening on their end, internally, that you can't fix or control or whatever.

So, in the balance of things, it's not worth it to risk even a single child getting messed up for life so you can have moist genitals. And now that I've hopefully forestalled any assumption that I am defending or encouraging sexual relations with kids -

A lot of the time it IS far more damaging to them how society stigmatizes them and treats them as damaged. Kids are used to not having any power, they don't feel violated like an adult does. Usually.

But yeah, kids, adults, almost always people can get better from rape (excluding confounding factors.)

Not sure if it's the one he's talking about, but I know of one called The Phantom Edit that's meant to be about 90 minutes long. Done by the dorky guy from That 70s Show. Yes, really.

Not saying that at all (there are plenty of serial killers who enjoy murder, and there are documented case of rape being used for reasons such as eugenics).

But in the majority of instances representing these actions in modern fiction killing is being presented as a character wanting to accomplish a goal and rape is presented as a character violating a person for their own fun.

> Rape is always about power!

Rape is often about power. It can also be a learned response depending on the type of rape, of which violent assault is the rarest kind. A lot of rapists, like for instance child rapists, believe that since they aren't causing any physical damage that the only harm comes from the context the rape is viewed in.

Other times they excuse it as a transnational issue. That's your classic "Wife Rape" where the husband felt entitled to sex by providing income. Marital "Rape" has at times and in different societies actually been codified as an obligation.

Sometimes it's not even about power, there's no analysis, the person is just an opportunistic rapist. Like when a girl at a party is making out with you, but passes out and you keep going. The other person isn't even present, and you aren't trying to harm them, just get off.

I was expecting an "Amon from Korra" style speech, but damn I like that, especially the escort part.

As and I said nothing about power. Just that person A is enjoying themselves and is either uncaring that person B is not consenting or that lack of consent is the reason they are. And that's the reason I think we put rape on the same level as murder, since it's probably about on the same level as torture with the added element of it being primarily just for the fun of the person doing it, whatever source that fun comes from.

The big problem for me is that Anakin's fall to the dark side is very abrupt and almost forced seeming. He has these troubling vision's of Padme dying in childbirth and then the Emperor is all like "Oh yeah, i totally know a way to save her, all you need to do is join with me and murder a bunch of children" Anakin is all like, "Seems legit"

Then when he meets up with Padme and she's all like "WTF?!?" and then Obi-Wan appears and he totally assumes they're colluding so he force chokes her

It would have been much more believable and more in keeping with a lot of how his character is presented in Episode IV and also the earlier prequels if his fall had been brought about by him deciding that Obi-Wan and the other Jedi were pussying around and not getting shit done with respect to evil Sith shenanigans, so he decides to pretend to turn in order to find out who Darth Sidious really is and gets sucked in - Imagine the film ID but with less football hooligans and more lightsabres - then while he's doing that, he hears or has a vision of Padme's death, and blames himself for not being there. Then Darth Sidious starts working on him, until he blames Obi-Wan for her death, and then comes out with the "Did you know the Force can bring people back to life. The Jedi totally know about it but they won't tell you" so he becomes suspicious of the whole Jedi order. Then Sidious reveals himself to be Palpatine, Anakin is shocked, but decides he still needs to do his duty as a Jedi. So off he flies to the Jedi Temple, ranting and raving but they don't believe him, especially as Palpatine has leaked videos of Anakin doing bad shit to the whole Galaxy, so a fight breaks out, and then Obi-Wan shows up, the person he blames most for Padme's death, they fight, Obi-Wan wins but refrains from landing the killing blow, Anakin is then rebuilt by the Emperor into Vader, never having known that Padme lived long enough to bring two children into the world until the events of the OT

Equating malicious neglect with torture is stretching it quite a bit.

It can be torturous for the victim if that's how they choose to deal with it, but your insistence that the act of torturing is somehow intrinsic to being raped is one of the things that fucks the victims up.

After all, what if they don't feel it was tortured? Does that mean that on some level they were asking for it somehow? Or are they broken now, since they aren't feeling what everyone is saying they should feel.

What if they had an orgasm during it? What if they had the best fucking orgasm of their life! Does that excuse the rapists actions?

Nah man. You gotta have more nuance when dealing with this sort of thing.

Rape isn't NEARLY as bad as murder. I mean, if I raped your mom she could get better. If I murdered her, she would be gone forever.

How do you deal with things like regret rape, or intoxication when it's not clear how impaired the person is, or when both people are impaired? Are those "torture"?

The reason people put rape on the same level as murder nowadays (once again, marital rape was once institutionalized) is because we value individuals so much more as individuals than as parts of the community, then we did in the past.

And rape was kind of a big thing, what with Feminism and all and Marital rape.

Everybody glosses over that it was just as shameful if not more for a man to be raped back then, since they were considered to be more capable of acting, and it used to be that being a man also carried expectations of physical vigor and strength to fight off an attacker.

So rape got demonized. And while it is a cruel and terrible thing, the motto that "rape is worse than murder" has fucked up how we deal with it.

So we need to get back to telling people that they are strong and that rape sucks, but it IS survivable, and that's why we call them Survivors and not Victims.

Hey, what if we demonize rape like we already see...

But we ALSO demonize Murder to a much higher degree?

Reminds me of one country that blew up two cities for roughtly the same reasons.

Hard to do. Lawful murder exists in a lot of cases. Demonizing it exposes you to bellicist civilisations or individuals.

I don't always humanize my villains. But when I do, It's the little things.
He seems tired of all this shit or his monolgue is interrupted by the bad news carried by some henchman and he has to deal with disappointment/anger. He admits his mistakes when they happen. He reacts to the player wearing silly shit.
Things like that. He can be still very much evil dickhead but he has some moments that can be called anti-climatic.

He's just a fucking guy in a big world. Who happens to be evil

It's kind of hard to really humanize a villain in an RPG, because they players probably won't be seeing them on their "off time". They'll likely encounter the results of the villain's actions and face them in battle, but they can't see what they're doing when not fighting the PCs or torching villages, or whatever.

What I do, though, is usually give a villain some reasonable motivation, which drives their actions. Pretty much nobody does bad things just because it's evil (although in fantasy you can have demons that are literal embodiments of evil, which probably would). They do it because there's something to gain. They might feel their actions are justified in some way (it's for the greater good, they should be the one ruling the land, they're on a crusade for their god...), or they're just assholish enough that they don't give a damn about others as long as they get what they need.

What if the players attempt to use some kind of arcane scrying to spy on the BBEG to discover his plans, but when they check in on him at various points of the day he's usually playing cards with his henchmen or such.

>I never got why people put rape on the same pedestal as murder.

Because men and women are different.

Women see rape as being as bad as murder because women were not usually the victims of murder. If an invading tribe conquers an area the men will be killed but the women will be raped and then absorbed into the conquering tribe.

Even very bad men will not usually murder or seriously harm a women, partly due to socialisation that men should not harm women and partly because women are not a threat to him, a woman can be kept in line with only minor threats and violence.

So although women intellectually know that murder is worse than rape they do not really understand it emotionally because they are not at risk of being murdered. But rape is still a real threat to them and something they are afraid of.

Men and young boys do get raped as well but they get murdered a lot more. So the threat of murder is a lot more worrying and visceral to males.

Dukat was best antagonist.

Also he genuinely did care for the Bjorans. Had he been more harsh they might not have got close enough to put a bomb in his house.

>Rape is always about power!

I never understood this.

Rape is about sex. If a man who was about to rape a women was offered consensual sex by her instead he wouldn't refuse it because he really wants power.

When people steal they are not doing so because they want power, they steal because they want the item they are stealing.

>Reminds me of one country that blew up two cities for roughtly the same reasons.

The two (while there are parallels) aren't really the same. The Empire of Japan was an incredibly hostile nation that had declared unilateral war against the US, and had displayed time and again that they were unwilling to compromise Officially, at any rate. There was some internal dissension, but it was far from unified. Dropping the nukes was an effort to prevent a full-scale invasion that would kill at least 1M American lives and millions of Japanese military and civilian lives.

Alderaan was a largely peaceful planet that had done nothing to merit being completely annihilated by a power that was, supposedly, charged with its protection.

The equivalent would be the US trying to convince a rebellious Texan senator to stop working against them, and them nuking Houston to punish him.

>When people steal they are not doing so because they want power, they steal because they want the item they are stealing.

Rape is also used to assert dominance, as it's the ultimate form of domination against another person (male AND female). While the sex is often enjoyable for the person doing the rape, part of the thrill of rape is taking by force what they otherwise could not get, and asserting that THEY are in control.

Also, we are very, very lucky to live in a time where military planners don't use mass rape as a psychological weapon against their foes. For almost all of human history, that was the case, all across the world.

Rape is the ultimate mind-fuck because it makes the person who is raped essentially an object, and not a person. It takes that which should be enjoyable and makes it horrific. It dehumanizes them.

The players won't care, because they're going to kill that motherfucker anyway. They won't give a shit, he's going to die on the end of their swords.

The only time they're go "Hey, maybe she has a point" is when the villain is a cute girl and maybe they'll get to dick her in the bargain.

Me, I give the villains motivations that are reasonable, but are warped and vile. This guy tortures and summons demons for his country. This guy wants ultimate power because his reign deserves to last a thousand years. This guy is a mass-murder because he genuinely believes the untermensch don't deserve to live, and are (From his point of view) not really 'real'.

>I mean, if I raped your mom she could get better.
I didn't knew your dick could cure cancer, faggot.

Vader had, in fact, no legs to stand on.

this, bumping for this. that sounds great.

I make them a mod on Veeky Forums

I use pretzels, OP

JUST WALK AWAY.

>bring balance to the force, because the Jedi were too strong
As much as it comes across like this the actual intention was never "there are too many Jedi". Lucas intended 'balance to the force' meaning kill all the Sith. The films were just shitty at getting that across.

Give them a reason. For instance, I made a Goblin Chief who used to be just a dumb follower, but after being abused by Humans, Got his crap together and gathered a goblin army. He's still evil, but He wishes to turn the normally lazy and weak goblina into an organized nation, not for his own greed, but so that they can stand up on their own.

American here, we probably should nuke Houston.
>Keep in mind that Anakin was supposed to bring balance to the force, because the Jedi were too strong

This is pure fanon and 100% wrong. The Darkside is not the ying to the light sides yang. It was, is, and was always intended to be a corruptive and imbalancing effect and influence on the force at large. The 'imbalance' to the force referred to is the damage to the force - the essence of the universe itself - done by the Sith during the last great war. The Sith basically damaged creation itself with their sorcery. THIS was what Anakin was supposed to fix.

Anakins fall to the dark side makes a lot more sense if you watch The Clone War's cartoon - which while often saccarine and childish as you would expect a Lucas Arts cartoon to be - did a very good job of showing Anakins slide to the dark side and his growing reliance on violence and his propensity for irrational anger in a way that is much more nuanced and effective than what is shown in the movies.

I agree that the situation isn't exactly the same, but Alderaan has a ruling family that is actively supporting the rebellion, if not part of it (Bail and Leia Organa) and seems to have lended troops, or at least gear, to it (since the soldiers on the Tantive IV and the rebel troopers have the same uniforms).
So I think it would be more like "Texan is trying to secede from the US and is founding and providing technical advisors to mexican terrorists, federal government nukes Houston".

A better comparison than Texas would be Saudi Arabia, which is funding and helping Daesh

Sauce of Comic?

Dehumanize the heroes.

I think Alderaan is part of the Empire.

The dark side of the force works better if you think of it as an twisted excess rather than some "9 alignment thing".

The dark side is what you get when you twist the force according to your desires. You turn it into your tool and stop it from flowing naturally.

Anakin started to twist the force to enable his passion and frustration. Palpatine twisted the force because he was greedy and ambitious. A true jedi lives in oneness with the force and demands nothing from it.

Actually, One Villain Idea I had had him slowly and steadily become dehumanized. He started out in the first installment as a man who hated the way Humanity was, and wanted a perfect society... through kinda brainwashing methods. But, after 12 other Installments, he's slowly degenerated into a Humanity-Hating being, having mutated himself physically and trying to do so mentally. He, at this point, denies that he was ever Human.

Motti just didn't believe the hype because, by the time he got to his position, all the Jedi were dead and gone, and he had never seen anything to prove such a thing existed.

He was wrong, of course.

>2) He can still be villainous even if he has an admirable goal. Nothing stops him from being an asshole. He doesn't even try to achieve his goal peacefully. He only cares about his own. He doesn't care about people his braves slaughter, they're just pigs to him deserving nothing more.

This is what I was going for with my post, I don't get why the other user was shutting me down so hard.

The main driving force for conflict in the world is a failure/unwillingness to communicate over conflicting goals, it's when compromise is simply impossible or (far more likely) never even seriously considered in the first place. The video-game NieR is an excellent example of this.

Humanized villains are overrated as fuck.

Nothing is overrated, it's all in the execution. Anything can be amazing and enjoyable if executed correctly. Humanized villains or absolute bastard villains can both work fantastically or terribly, depending on how they're written and acted.

Shit, nigga. You should know Sengoku Rance is a work of fiction.

In stories, murder is easy to handle. Blam! Someone is turned into meat. Clean, efficient. Not much fallout.

Rape though? Rape has too many fucking consequences. Trauma, relationship consequences, social consequences, pregnancies, inappropriate fetishism, etc.

That's why its recommended to stay away from rape. Rape is a fucking mess to deal with. It doesn't mean that rape in fiction can't be done well though. Picture related has tons of rape, and it probably made it a better story as a result.

I try not to make my villains explicitly evil, rather differently minded. I hesitate to actually call them villains. There is a conflict, wherein both sides have a reasonable point of view on how it should be resolved. The players are exposed to both options and parties from an early point in the game, and are allowed the choice of the resolution. Those choices, however come with consequences.

Unless someone is the extra planar embodiment of unmitigated evil or straight mentally ill, there usually is a reason for their behavior

No, it's overrated. I've seen so many of the damn things and so many people talking about them it's like "goddamn there are other kinds of villains, guys"

This reminds me of the Dictatorship intalled by Porfirio Diaz on Mexico. During his regime, the country had a fuckload of advancements, but given his status as a dictator, and he used to silence his opposition, too.
He might've lifted the economy of the country in his time, but does that justify his actions in the end?
It's certainly interesting to let the players interact with cases like this. In the end, they'll probably kill the guy, but the journey is what counts.

how do you breathe

>Picture related has tons of rape, and it probably made it a better story as a result.

I don't know if it made the story better, but at least it did a good job of at least not fetishizing it. Whenever rape pops up it's deeply traumatic and has long term psychological consequences. Like how Guts couldn't stand to be touched and freaks out whenever there's any sort of intimacy at first.

...

Make them outright evil but hella charismatic.
If it just comes off as being an annoying edgy antihero, all the better since now the party hates them harder, it's a win win situation for me.

What game is this?

Not really?

I mean you have

1. Villains with motivations for their actions.
2. Automatons that function from a script.
3. Elemental embodiments of evil.

Even the Emperor has a motivation- UNLIMITED POWER

Fucking Gargamel has a motivation- he hates Smurfs. Why? Can't remember.

So... literally Redcloak from OotS?

When someone finds that the one thing they want but can never have, lies just in reach beyond the forgivable, that is when they abandon their humanity.

So, in your subjective experience it's overrated. Good to know you don't have anything of value to contribute.

The Screamer

I knew a girl who was drugged and raped. She just went about her life and it didn't turn her into a ruined mess or anything.

Murdering a person's family member probably has a much bigger emotional impact.

>subjective experiences have nothing of value to contribute

I don't know where you are from but please go back.

>Not really?
>Lists 3 villains
>appears to think that of all the villains that exist throughout the history of the world and story-telling they will fall into one of these 3 little categories
>appears to think non-humanized villains have no motivation

>I met this one person this one time
>This other thing is probably worse based on my sample size of 1

Sound logic at work