Villain Motivation: Help

that was such a good villain, they were prevalent through the whole show but only ever did ONE thing

What about this guy?

his only goal was to make sure there was never peace

Actually to be correct, his goal was "lolsorandumb" in the sense that he did what he liked with no consequences, and not even in the smartest way. just because it was fun

Well, it's because Walpurgisnacht and the other witches" were those "force of nature" villains I was talking about. They operated off animalistic intelligence and instinct, meaning they wern't something that could be reasoned with, they didn't need an explanation for what they were doing beyond simple predation, and, in a strange way, that actually made them alot scarier than something with a big master plan or understandable end-goal.

That "elder god tier" thing, why is that so popular? I keep seeing praise for villains written that way, but honestly the appeal is lost on me.

It was popularized by people that watched movies where the villain had an understandable goal but went about achieving it in a morally wrong way. Often time the media will go out of it's way to point out why the villain's methods are flawed... but retard grognards instead interpret this as praise of the villain's methods. They're the kind of people who unironically say shit like "Hitler did nothing wrong!" and actually believe it.

So, the same idiots who liked Watchmen and think Doctor Doom is a good guy,

I enjoy that archetype of villain the most, though. I hardly or rarely agree with them, but I really enjoy when the villain's end goal could be seen as more just than the heroes sometimes.

>for the sake of revenge
>their lifes meaning is fighting
>to save the world from a bigger threat
> to save his family
>Etc...

Pretty much any of these, sans the second. Pick which one ties to your PCs the best for maximum emotional impact. If your PCs have strong family ties and/or have lost those they loved, make the BBEG motivated by family. If the PCs have been working to save the world in a good way, have the BBEG work towards the same goal, just going about it in a morally worse way (because they're trading morality for efficiency or something). This might also lead to some interesting sessions where the PC's and BBEG's interests temporarily align and they have the option of forming a temporary alliance.

A route that always works well in RPGs is that of the Well-Intentioned Extremist (tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WellIntentionedExtremist). It doesn't require the GM to be a skilled writer to pull off, and immediately gives the PCs a good reason to both fight and sympathize with your BBEG unless they decide to join him.

The Mother a cute

The problem with this in a tabletop setting is that if you're too convincing, the players will just join the BBEG, and then you've got no campaign unless you're doing some kind of faction-warfare sandbox like Fallout New Vegas or something.

The quest givers' bosses are now the Big Bads. It's easy.

I like villains that are evil just cause they're fucking evil, though I don't think this bars them from being complex characters. A man can lead a troubled, twisting life and come out with goals that are just simply selfishly evil. You can be sympathetic towards them yet still hate their fucking guts.

Of course any kind of villain is acceptable if they're written well

I feel like if you've been running a game for 2 fucking years and are just now creating a bbeg you kinda fucked up

Nigga you retarded?

You can run whole campaigns without there ever being a big bad. Or a surprise reveal that there even was a bad guy behind all these disasters.

Great tier and mid tier are fucking boring

Read the post buddy. He originally planned a simply evil for the sake of evil boss, but their sensibilities have changed, and he needs to write a more fitting BBEG.

Why not have a villian who wants to collect the souls that were promised to him?

Any and all motivations can work. What stories need is interesting conflict, not interesting villains.

Who?

One who is not really a villain, but just finds himself accidentally in the role of BBEG. Like The Squid from The Man Who Killed Batman. He's not a bad guy, he just accidentally achieved the things Bad Dudes everywhere wanted to do. He's hoping everyone around him doesn't find out he doesn't know what he's doing.

Logain was shit tho

"HURR DURR, I'M GOING TO ABANDON THE GROUP DEDICATED TO DESTROYING DEMONS AND IGNORE THE DEMON THREAT SO I CAN ACCUMULATE POLITICAL POWER ACCUSING EVERYONE WHO DOESN'T FALL IN LINE OF BEING PART OF A CONSPIRACY."

Have you considered a villain that does pure evil, is aware of the evil he does - but is unable to deviate from the actions he set in motion?

Like a thief that accidentally steals from the mafia, and is forced to do jobs for the mafia?
Or to fantasy it up, a thief that accidentally steals from Hell, and is forced to do jobs for demons?

Witches in that show had no personality or characterization. They were not even characters, just obstacles. Fighting the Walpurgisnacht was like fighting a hurricane. They do not count.

>So I've been running a campaign for about 2 years now, things have been going pretty well and I've finally decided its time to unveil my BBEG
You can't plan a BBEG without knowing your players and what they like.

Motivations are a lot less important than what the villains actions are.

What do your players like, and what has happened so far in the game?

This.

The best villains are those that can still be wrong, but are reasonable. Nothing sucks more than as a player being confronted with the idea that, "You were the one wrong all along." That works better for stories, or if the players have already agreed they enjoy that shit.

For the most part, a game is far more fun when your PCs come out as heroes. So in this case, you want a 'High Tier' villain. Maybe in the future you can move it up to Great Tier, but never strive to make the villain 'holier than thou'.

Even Shit-Tier villains are better than those. Even if I personally enjoy Elder God Tier, and love to fuck my players over with it once and a while.

It annoys me because "lust for power" is under shit tier despite being the motivation of a LOT of people IRL

Guys, a kind of related question. I am making small campaign with this setting:

A group of adventurers/vagrants arrive an island in order to escape the famine afflicting other lands. The island is fairly large, capable of housing a population of 5000 people across 3 towns across the land, with 2 of them on the coast and the third and largest in the center.

The island exists as a town now because it used to be a maritime tactical location for a country long ago before its collapse. All that remains from those times are long destroyed fortresses on either side of the island, and the local population, who are descendants of the soldiers and peasants who manned these fortresses. They live a quiet, peaceful lives, and crime is nearly unheard of.

What kind of villain, if any, would go with this setting?

>think Doctor Doom is a good guy,
Actually that's more because Doom is likeable and charismatic, while Richards is an asshole and an actual fucking monster in the comics universe. Dude is 100% a horrible person in almost every way.

Someone who despises the intruders for disrupting their peaceful island life, or even just for the potential of the intruders disrupting it. Maybe have a cult leader or some shit talk about how "these foreigners bring the famine with them! They will kill us all. We must drive them out!" etc, etc.

Your arrangement of tiers based around villain motivation has ensured that only the most boring, trite, and cliché villains are at the top. You apparently have no fucking taste.

Also, yes, you read that right. The "justified" villain trope has been used so God-damned much these days that it's become as boring and cliché as the thing it was originally an alternative to.

I want evil for the sake of evil again. At least that will feel fresh.

I'm being serious about Logain.

He abandoned the ancient order of demon slayers and his king to be killed in a disastrous battle. Then throws the kingdom in disarray by trying to grab power when the shadowspawn are rising up to kill everyone.

He hires assassins to kill any left over demon slayers and continuously divides the nation by accusing people of conspiring with enemy nations.

Also I remember that he alienates both the dwarves and the magic users in some way.

Basically hes power hungry,massively incompetent, and willing to stab his fellow humans in the back at the worst time possible for those things.

Elsewhere story where we have Doctor Steel vs. the Elastic Doom when?

I never get this constant loghain dicksucking. There is nothing to indicate that they would have lost if he had gone in, all it makes him look like is a whiny bitch who didn't like the king and wanted to rule and then secure his line.

A giant, hungry coconut crab. You can't deny that would be the absolute best.

>Basically hes power hungry
I wouldn't call him that. Yes he's incompetent and willing to stab fellow humans in the back at the worst time.
But he's not power hungry. Dude got fucked over by the Not-French for years, and has a MASSIVE hate-boner for them. And he's a paranoid lunatic.

I was truthfully agreeing with you, friend. He had no moral high-ground and in the end was a silly dude who threw the country into a civil war.

Well, he is sort of a peasant militia leader who fell upwards into society after taking part in a successful revolt against invaders.

He shone during times of war, but he sucked during times of peace. So when the nobles of his land started to talk to the nobles of their former invaders again, his old hatred resurfaced, transformed as paranoia.

Didn't help that the only HQ for the ancient order of demon slayers in the region was based in the country... of their former invaders.

lol my bad.

I'm so used to the "heres your (You)" posts.

That sounds so silly it might just work.

Logain was crazy. He never really believed the demon threat was serious, while the long past threat of foreign invasion was very real in his head. He was fucked by Orlais in the past and couldn't tune in with the present

Think bigger.

Just do what you like the most and what you think will fit the character. Sometimes, the awnser is "what I didn't choose before".

When I was forever-DM I used to drive myself mad trying to find a villain that everyone could enjoy, but in the end I understood I was doing wrong. Unless your players are clones, they will like different things. One of my players loved the cruel and smug demon cultists who was, de facto, evil for the sake of evil; others believed him to be too bidimensional. But when presented with "villains" that just found themselves on the other side and were arguably sympathethic, this specific player didn't give a fuck and a couple others were uncomfortable because they felt like the bad guys and didn't want that. And then there was the faggot who believed villains based on actual people that exists irl to be "unrealistic", because he got a businessmen mind and cannot really comprehend someone doing something with no self-profit involved.

But all in all, I never got a single villain that was disliked by everyone in the party.

>accusing people of conspiring with enemy nations.
Wasn't the king actually planning an alliance with Not-France?

He was still wrong about everything else, and almost destroyed the country he wanted to protect with his actions.

>Morally grey shit
>For the umpteenth time
It was interesting the first few times, but can we go back to good old fashioned villains?

That's like saying Galactus or Lavos from Chrono Trigger does not count as a villain.

Who is the first guy?

There are three universal things people ( and beings in general I guess? ) have a reason for commiting crimes: Money, Power and Feelings. The only thing that makes it original is the end goal or a multiple-factor type of crime.

Bad guy from Dragon Age origins.

General who betrayed the king and tried to take power because the king was trying to reopen peaceful contact with an enemy nation that the general fought against in the past.

>Also, yes, you read that right. The "justified" villain trope has been used so God-damned much these days that it's become as boring and cliché as the thing it was originally an alternative to.

Railing against the very concept writing rounded characters to be contrarian is the dumbest thing this board does when it comes to GM advice.

>The "justified" villain trope

The "trope" of characters having more motivation than "I am evil" is not something to object to.

The villain that screws you over so they can protect a greater population. In the end the story essentially boils down to you being a revenge-obsessed dick

Evil for the sake of Evil is not the antithesis to well rounded. You can have characters who are both.

My favorite villains tend to be the ones that are crazy in a consistent way rather than lolrandum. Usually with some kind of delusion about the way the world is. That, and the nostalgia villain. Someone who lost something and will stop at nothing to get it back, relive the past, or try to keep going as if nothing has changed.

>Wizard whose spouse or child died that revived them as a mindless undead or imitated them with a construct and convinces himself they're alive and reacts badly to anyone suggesting this is not the case
>Powerful sorcerer trying to recreate their childhood, the last time they remember being happy, and forcing the world into that shape
>Undead creature seeking the pleasures it knew in life (friendship, food, etc.), carries on despite being anathema to everyone around it

More minor antagonists than true villains or BBEGs, but I still enjoy the tragic figures that have to be put down. How far would you go to bring the comgy times back?

I don't know much about your campaign structure, but one thing I've started liking recently is

>Villain who is against the PCs personally, and has few, if any, wider goals.

They work very well for RPGs, especially because they can motivate players who don't necessarily connect with the things you want to connect to, and guarantees investment in bringing them down.

is this always correct? Delphine in last exile is Shit Tier for the graph, but goddamn if she's scary.

but on the inside they just want to be loved.

>Loghain
>arguably better than the hero's

triggered

The best villains are the ones with good motives/ideals in theory...
...but with their head too far up their own ass to consider the flaws in their plans/the harm in their methods/their own hypocrisy.

Shit tier villains are those who do it for the lulz.

Villains that want power are arguably largely understandable. Greed isn't inherently evil. and is in fact largely celebrated under the capitalist system. It when to slides into taking from another that it becomes villain behavior

Galactus has motivation and personality, he occasionally talks and argues with the main characters, such as with Rachel Summer as Phoenix where he basically shamed her, or with professor X on the Scrull Planet, or with his heralds.

Compare this with the wild bear attacking DiCaprio on the Revenant movie. I don't think anybody would say the bear was a "villain".

Bump

I've got one for you. And it'd be the greatest mindfuck of all time.

The Big Bad is the father of one of the characters. Best to pick the one who is the 'main' character of the group, the leader as it were, the one who you spend the most time interacting with.

Here's the catch. The BBEG? He adores his child. Truly, and utterly loves them. He was already on his way to the top, and he knows the balance of destiny is that it can't be maintained. Oh he'll get there, and live like a king for a few decades MAYBE, but he's gotta go down eventually, the gods, or somebody else, will fuck it all up.

So, he's engineered everything to insure that his child and their friends are the ones who bring him down.

Why you ask? Because he loves his child. He loves them enough to not care about alignment differences or 'base philosophy'. He loves them to the point that he's going to give them the most precious thing of all.

He's going to give his child immortality. He is going to engineer the situation so that his son or daughter is the one who dethrones his evil empire, stops his evil plot, and saves the kingdom/world/universe from their dear old dad.

Oh sure, there'll be emotional anguish, there'll be tears, there'll be betrayal. But the point is, at the end of it, their child will not only be strong enough to take them down, safe from ANY threats and independent and strong. But they'll be famous, heroes, get all the ladies/guys/whatever they want, maybe even go on to found their own kingdom that'll probably last a lot longer than their dad's evil empire ever did.

Everything beyond that? They did it because they enjoyed getting power, wealth, babes, and ruling over folks. They did it because they were strong and others were weak.

The campaign? The entire campaign existed solely so that the protagonists WOULD be heroes.

The end of the campaign is when the players realize that they played into the Villain's hands, and he won. He was the legendary evil emperor, brought low by their own child and their companions, insuring the story would be told centuries upon centuries later.

Because that's what parents do. They sacrifice themselves for what's best for their kids. A Lawful Evil Parent wouldn't care about the philosophical differences between parent and child, they'd do what they thought best for that child.

And setting things up so that their child ends up being the famed hero, earns their way to the top, slaughters minions, defeats the evil armies, thwarts all those rituals, and undoes the evil work of decades, is just perfect. It'll turn them into a powerful, independent, warrior capable of facing down perhaps even the gods in time! What more could an LE parent want for their child?

Pure fucking gold

The villain's motivation only matters insofar as it's significant to the plot. LotR never said why Sauron wanted to rule Middle Earth (it probably talks about why in the Simarillion but that's another matter) but it's a good story nonetheless.

the best part is that you can literally slot this motivation into literally -any other goals- they have. They were trying to end the world?

Of course not. Oh sure, that's what they said, it was to raise the STAKES. If they really wanted to end the world they could have set it up to go down years ago with a little more planning, no chance of interference.

Also, we can go with the opinion that they'd not be pulling any punches either, not exactly. They'd throw lethal challenges at their child, again, because it's what's best for their child.

And inarguably, they'd have succeeded! Your PCs will be what? upper levels right? Like around 15-20 or equivalent when you're done? That puts them stronger than almost any other being on the average DnD campaign world. Most high ranking nobility and powerful warriors cap out around 14.

They'll be rich, famous, have done the right thing within their own morality, and have earned it, and their happily ever after will be perfect.

Bonus points if you have them discover years after in the epilogue that good old dad deliberately chained himself to some kind of soul anchor so that he could make sure nobody tried to crib on his kid's final victory and happy ending.

Another bonus is that what this dad is doing is INARGUABLY evil.

They are throwing all their minions, all their trusted allies, and everyone under them for their personal (relatively speaking) benefit. It's the largest con in the world.

He's caused the suffering of thousands, even millions of people, all so that his child would be raised to be as strong and powerful as they possibly could be.

Your pic is posted all the time as if it was gospel but there is no scientific way to produce a good villain. A good villain fits the story being told.

What kind of story do you hope to tell? What kinds of stories typically develop as a result of your PCs' actions?

TO SAVE THE WORLD FROM A BIGGER THREAT
This is one of the most based motivations out there, because you can't fault the BBEG for having it. It presents the perfect juxtaposition between securing the existence of the kingdom/species/galaxy/etc at the cost of freedom, or securing freedom at the possible cost of thousands, if not millions of lives.

This works even better if you make it so that his innermost circle, his body guards, understand fully what's going on, make them all outsiders or something, things you can't actually kill only banish back to their home planes. They find it weird, but understandable, and help him the whole way.

Gaunter O'Dimm from the Witcher 3

Basing my BBEG off of him. He's pretty neat as a villain

Wasn't this a plot arc in Order of the Stick?

basically, I just strung it out longer and made it into the main campaign.

Also that Dad didn't engineer the situation so that his son would grow strong and beat him, the premise of this one is that the Dad engineers the whole thing from start to finish specifically for their kid's benefit. They might have started off the despotic overlord, but once their kid was born they made sure their kid would grow up to beat them.

Doesn't make it any less awesome of a plot.

unless you're this fucking trash piece of shit.

Thoughts on this villain?

>Cosmology has a sort of "conjunction of planes" story to it. World used to be inhabited by elves alone.
>First event populated with dwarves and some non-fey monsters
>Second event caused by trying to reverse the first resulted in humans showing up
>Humans not treated so great at first (slaves)
>One human manages to steal the source of elven magic which he rused under the guise of an abolitionist movement (supported by sympathetic elves)
>He ascends to relative-demigod status and leads the humans to do what they do best: populate and exterminate.
>One elf is locked away (sacrifices) as a chosen elf, damacles sword, failsafe in case the elves lose with powerful magic to return at a set time.
>Elves are a husk of their former selves
>Dwarves fell second
>Humans rule the land and treat other races like second class scum.
>Demigod human learns about this and realizes he will die. Elf contingency will return and lead the elves back to victory. Enters a magical sleep with an obscure prophecy magic to allow for his "sons" (descendants) to wake him when the elf re-awakes.

Here's where the bad guy comes back in. The PCs are the descendants (two are unaware of this twist). The elf has re-awoken. He seeks simply to restore his people from the tatters and possibly revenge, possibly a mutual coexistence. He also has to stop the PCs if he has any hope of stopping the demigod from we-awakening.

Interesting?

I hated that game so much.

It wasn't even possible to save anyone with the good guy victory unless you bought up all the land in the game first. You had to basically become the land lord mogul of the world and pour the money back into the defense fund because lord knows taxation wasn't a possible option.

The options for that entire series were so damn ham fisted. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning did it way better.

isn't that the elder scrolls mythology?

No. But definitely influenced by the Witcher mythos.

It's a fucking stupid motivation. If he was trying to save the world from a bigger threat, why didn't he tell anyone? It's just contrived 2deep4u shit.

Not the guy you are replying to but...

It's possible that a BBEG using this motivation does tell people. And, like most people trying to avert prophetic doom, most people don't believe him.

Except for a group of true believers. These are his "minions". Most people don't believe the BBEG.

And if you aren't with him... you're against him.

is there a Meme Tier?

Personally, I don't like the very concept of world-threatening BBEG, I tend to play smaller-scale campaigns. That way, villain motivations are easier to come by and the story is a lot more relateable.

My main villains tend to be people like: A drug lord moving into politics looking to become "El Presidente" by any means necessary, the second prince of an empire who wants to inherit the throne and so he wants access to the lucrative mines of the neighboring kingdom and other stuff like that, or maybe the corrupt general of an enemy nation just looking out for the interest of his friends back home.

I find those kinds of games much more compelling as opposed to some threat to the whole world that only a couple plucky adventurers can stop.

My personal favorite kind of villain is the kind who does it because it needs to be done. Perhaps its to keep a greater evil in check or something, but I find it more interesting when they genuinely apologize for what they do, and wish to stop but their work is necessary, like the yin to the yang.

better if you pick one of the other PCs, so that the dad is constantly trying to pick off the 'leaders' of the party to get their child to be the true hero of the tale.

Loghain was actually right in abandoning ostogar. Cailan was a bit of an idiot, but a kindhearted one. Loghain's forces wouldn't have been enough to save them.
Solas confirms it in DAI, using his elf-god powers to see alternate timelines or whatever his methods were.

Also, the Orleisian treatment of Fereldan was horrendous. The nobles and Cheveilars of Orlais would abuse, rape, and just plain murder the peasants for any reason. Loghain remembers how they treated Fereldan, and if you talk to Leliana about Orlais, is how the Orleisian nobles treat their own.

Loghain didn't know this, but Cailan planned to unite Fereldan and Orlais by marrying Empress Celene. Uniting the countries would be inviting back in all of the abuse of Orleisian nobility on top of the nobles of Fereldan.

Loghain's retreat as Ostagar was just, while banning the Wardens, the actions of Arl Howe, and his justification of any means to "strengthen" the country were misguided and cleary wrong.

bump

Meh

Reminds me of this low level villain concept I'm planning to use in a campaign at some point.

Basically, this [fantasy race] Knight is a pathological liar with a reputation as a beacon of goodness, whose order is gaining influence through a large city.
He claims to believe in truth and justice (and maybe really does), but will do awful shit when he knows no one will see or speak up.
Then he'll regret it, and eventually he'll make up excuses for why it didn't count and his behavior is justified. In his mind, he is Good, so what he does is Good.
In the end he's just a bully with low self-esteem, who cares about feeling good, not doing good, and willingly blinds himself to the damage he causes.

He's manipulative, but bad at it. He preys on young-adult, vulnerable, often marginalized idealists (in the 16-20 range, being around 24 himself).
They usually don't have moral compasses yet, they want to belong, they want an identity and a cause, they feel powerless and want to change the world.
So he grooms them into believing him to be much wiser, and indoctrinates them into following an extremely reassuring and simple worldview.
When they're part of his order, he exploits peer pressure to silence dissent and criticism, to gradually radicalize his little clique.

His reputation protects him (he's quick to erase his mistakes and misdeeds), and his main defense is painting accusations as [fantasy race] discrimination.
He believes there are people who deserve death and against whom anything is justified. Those are usually his ideological opponents.
But he's quick to include those who are not pure (read: radical) enough, and those who point out his flaws, even on his side. Especially if they have evidence.
And the PCs will. So if they speak up they'll get on his very literal shit-list.

But I think we've all seen, known, or had a friend targeted by that guy. That should make him easy to hate and fun to expose as a giant hypocrite.
At least I hope.

Evil because fake motivation.

He's just evil because evil in reality. Reveal this late by having him punk an idealist lieutenant and that will often make players despise him.