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How many rules has your last main villain broken, of Peter's Evil Overlord List?
eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html

>My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.

Serious maintenance problems are already pretty bad without anyone being able to access them.

#30 and #31 are too meta.

#63 is not terribly relevant (vast garbage dumps are great)


>I will not have a son. Although his laughably under-planned attempt to usurp power would easily fail, it would provide a fatal distraction at a crucial point in time.
>I will not have a daughter. She would be as beautiful as she was evil, but one look at the hero's rugged countenance and she'd betray her own father.

No kids? C'mon.

#5 is just begging for players to assemble a team of professionals of various background and run a heist.

I remember reading through this entire comic even though I have absolutely no knowledge of Linux and shady Microsoft/Apple/Oracle business practices. I guess office comedies weren't a thing yet back then.

I am surprised.
Mine is guilty of nearly a tenth of the list.
Although it's mostly the culling of potential support for the heroes.
The major one is the face-hiding helmets for his minions.
When you have undead and demonic abominations bringing you your food, you don't want to see their gruesome mugs.

>Don't turn into a snake. It never helps.
This always cracks me up.

Currently doing a Gurps Superhero campaign.
Our primary villain is a Dr. Draken and Shego expy duo who treat crime as a hobby.
They willfully follow every rule for fun and a few times have mocked us when we've been captured for falling for 'the oldest trick in the book'.

>REFUSE TO follow every rule for fun

Isn't that more like Señor Senior… whatever his name was?

Sounds like a blast desu

Only relevant one my Big Bad ever broke was 22, since he consumed a ton of power. Probably took the competence too far though, since he ran absolute rings around the party for 2 and a half years in a 1-20 campaign. They did beat him in the end, but whenever we do something in the setting and something seems off, they always immediately suspect his return. As much as I love the list, it can make for some painful encounters in tabletop.

Holy fucking shit, this takes me way back.
Both the overlord list and the comic.

A team of professionals attempting to out-pro the villain despite his near-limitless resources? I don't see a problem with this.

Senor Senior Sr.
And his son, Senor Senior Jr.

While Sr. did treat villainy as a hobby to stay entertained in show, in game Dr.Sergi and Ultraviolet are quite obvious as Drakken and Shego inspired, albeit with actual, legal jobs they do for a living and the theft, kidnapping and world domination attempts are how they kick back and have fun.

>copyright 1999
Dear god, I was a freshman in high school when I first read this. It's too early to feel this old OP.

What do they do for a living that gives them the time/money to pursue super villainy?

Do I need a degree for it?

>If one of my daughters actually manages to win the hero and openly defies me, I will congratulate her on her choice, declare a national holiday to celebrate the wedding, and proclaim the hero my heir. This will probably be enough to break up the relationship. If not, at least I am assured that no hero will attack my Legions of Terror when they are holding a parade in his honor.
I want to steal this so badly.

I tried Looooong Ago. Dang heroes just had to muck it up. Was actually going to have the BBEG 'retire' (hibernate and be reborn in their first (only) child.

thx OP my retinas just bursted

Some.

Villains shouldn't be perfect for the same reasons heroes shouldn't.

They might do something sub-optimal if emotionally provoked, for instance, because it's more interesting when the heroes learn about a villain's flaws and try to deliberately exploit them, rather than just blowing up stuff until the bad guy is defeated.

>I will not include a self-destruct mechanism unless absolutely necessary. If it is necessary, it will not be a large red button labelled "Danger: Do Not Push". The big red button marked "Do Not Push" will instead trigger a spray of bullets on anyone stupid enough to disregard it. Similarly, the ON/OFF switch will not clearly be labelled as such.
This is retarded.

An on/off switch isn't there for the heroes' convenience, it's there because pretty much every system has a tangible need for a way to quickly turn it off. When my superweapon malfunctions in testing - that's what testing is for, right? If I knew for sure it works, I wouldn't test it or make a prototype. - I don't want it to explode and take out my entire secret lair and all my minions because they couldn't figure out how to shut the damn thing off.

Preventing unauthorized persons from using the device is the job of my security team.

>I will not have children
I had a villain with a loving wife and two healthy children dedicated to the family business.

The party tried to convince his wife to turn on her husband and save herself. They were legitimately surprised when she led them on, then betrayed them, laughed in their faces, and told them she loved her husband and would never hurt him.

When's the last time your villain had a stable family life, Veeky Forums?

Ventilation ducts are mostly already too small to crawl into, and I can assure you that they are still maintained just fine.

Name one thing wrong with ever turning into a gargantuan snake

No hands. Difficulty speaking.

Not being able to fit through doors
Low agility

>I will hire a talented fashion designer to create original uniforms for my Legions of Terror, as opposed to some cheap knock-offs that make them look like Nazi stormtroopers, Roman footsoldiers, or savage Mongol hordes. All were eventually defeated and I want my troops to have a more positive mind-set.

This is a solid plan.

Dire mongoose

Being stabbed by a spunky street rat with no shirt?

Or shoes, for that matter.

you could accidentally in to a gay mating ball.

Is that the thing from the bottom of that one Quake 3 map?

>My pet monster will be kept in a secure cage from which it cannot escape and into which I could not accidentally stumble.

To be fair, the point of any animal cage is to prevent escape. That's kinda why we put them in cages. Overlords taken out in this fashion tend to be so because someone, accidentally or intentionally, let them out.

>If the beautiful princess that I capture says "I'll never marry you! Never, do you hear me, NEVER!!!", I will say "Oh well" and kill her.
But princesses are generally married for their inheritance and lineage, not so you can bang them. After all, you can just bang them, you know, even if they don't want it. You're a supervillain.

Assuming your plan was to marry into a royal lineage, killing her seems like it's bound to end poorly for you. Convincing her family (if it's a more realistic setting) or her (if it's a more progressive setting) seems a lot better use of your time.

>When's the last time your villain had a stable family life, Veeky Forums?
Here's something I wrote up, but never implemented:

How to write a villain with a stable family life: Start with your basic fantasy storyline, but skip to the end.
>Aging, noble, and wise king has found an heir in a young hero who saved his eldest daughter, and the kingdom, from the evil manipulations of the former vizier.
>The young betrothed couple remain in love as they go on adventures saving the kingdom from various threats.
>But who will now serve as vizier?
>A young, handsome, and bright noble steps up to humbly serve, and is very good at his position.
>And what of the king’s younger daughter? She is free to court as she chooses, but somewhat resents her older sister’s permanent position over her.
>The new vizier runs the daily business of the country while the king-to-be continues to have brave adventures, proving his worth as a champion, but never learning anything about how to run a kingdom, and the older princess is only a little better. The vizier grows worried about his future having serve such fools.
>The vizier’s continued efforts to increase the law and security of the kingdom are always thwarted by the Princess’s consort’s “ethical” concerns, citing that measures that could prevent crime and disasters are not needed as HE is always there to stop the crime and disasters.
>The vizier remains loyal on the surface, but endlessly seeks a way out of his fate to powerlessly clean up after this fool.

...

>I will never build a sentient computer smarter than I am.

I had a villain get "possessed" by an AI he made once, via getting a neural mind-machine interface cybernetic implant that the AI subtly re-designed to allow the AI to control the guy.

>The only light in his days of service are the family lunches. More often than not, the Fool and his Princess are absent, off adventuring, usually defeating but failing to kill a local necromancer. These lunches allow him to enjoy the pleasant company of the kind (if somewhat naïve) King and his younger, more charming daughter.
>One day, an opportunity arises after the incredibly gifted, but madly arrogant necromancer once again fails in an attack on the city. While being held hostage, a few choice words plant the seeds in the madman’s fevered mind to attack the Baron of the neighboring allied nation.
>The attack badly wounds the leader, and the vizier suggests a royal convoy to aid their ally. The young Princess leads the reconstruction efforts after the necromancer’s attack, proving her worth and winning the hearts of both the neighboring barony and the ailing baron himself.
>The Baron asks for the princess’s hand in marriage, and the wise King reluctantly accepts, knowing that his daughter’s heart truly yearns for the vizier.
>The young princess marries the Baron, accepting that the people of the Barony need her strength.
>Unfortunately, despite the vizier ensuring the King send the "finest" healers, the Baron dies.
>The young Baroness is "understandably distraught," and needs help running the barony, and asks for her father to send the vizier to aid her, after all, her older sister and her consort should be able to manage the kingdom, right?

...

>I will design fortress hallways with no alcoves or protruding structural supports which intruders could use for cover in a firefight.
But your own men could also use them for cover in a firefight. Indeed, modern defense-oriented architecture often includes things like concrete barriers that serve multiple purposes such as thwarting speeding vehicles or allowing men to take cover if suddenly shot at.

>If I must have computer systems with publically available terminals, the maps they display of my complex will have a room clearly marked as the Main Control Room. That room will be the Execution Chamber. The actual main control room will be marked as Sewage Overflow Containment.

If you must have publicly-accessible terminals, doesn't that imply these maps are actually necessary for the public? I'd hardly think such a location would be appropriate for an execution chamber.

>The vizier becomes Chief Advisor and Warlord to the Barony. His decisive actions quickly lead to the capture and “rehabilitation” of the necromancer, who now practices his dark art under close scrutiny of mages loyal to the Baroness.
>Aided by new, undead forces, the Chief Warlord finally defeats the rampaging ogres on their far border, but rather than kill them, he unifies the tribes under his chosen ogre, a powerful, yet clever man-beast who is now one of his Lieutenants.
>The victorious warlord is given the highest honor he could ever hope to receive, the hand of the woman he has loved for many years. He donned the sacred, ceremonial black spiked armor worn since ancient times by the Barons of this land.
>He has become a Baron of a fine land, enjoys the love of a beautiful, wickedly clever woman, and can finally put into action the brilliant plans he has held onto to establish order on this lawless, magic torn land.
>The streets are safe in the Barony. No law-abiding citizen need fear any bandit or monster.
>The only ones who need fear are their enemies upon their two remaining borders. He has terrifying plans for those that threaten the flourishing of his people, his land, and his legacy.
>But, his ally, the old kingdom never needs to fear. He would never seek battle with them, just as he would never have risen to power by harming the father of his darling wife.
>Sure, he fantasizes about the day when he finally can crush that fool Prince, but the kind, old King cares for the fool. And his sister in law has never done slight against him. So he waits for the naïve old King to pass and the perfect opportunity to arise.
>For now, he takes joy in the fact that the Barony’s celebration over the birth of his son and heir dwarfed the pitiful wedding of the Fool Prince and Princess.

>If my supreme command center comes under attack, I will immediately flee to safety in my prepared escape pod and direct the defenses from there. I will not wait until the troops break into my inner sanctum to attempt this.

>If my fortress comes under attack, I will immediately leave my secured defensive position in the assumption that my secure defenses will fail, instead of only leaving the safety of my inner sanctum once it's clear that safety is no longer viable.

>Since nothing is more irritating than a hero defeating you with basic math skills, all of my personal weapons will be modified to fire one more shot than the standard issue.
Actually pretty much all popular guns have extended magazines nowadays, even small carry pistols. Problem is, they tend to, get this, extend, and thus are more likely to snag on clothing when you draw them. Don't really feel like getting defeated by the hero because I wasn't confident that ninth .45ACP round would do something the first eight didn't. A decently-practiced shooter can reload in a second or so anyway.

The answer to me would be simply custom gear that the enemy can't predict.
Which is how you get strange weapons that the heroes don't expect.
>What's the recharge time on a pig shaped lightning gauntlet?
>*shrugs*

So he's a competent, reasonable leader that improved the lives of his subjects? He sounds like one of the good guys to me; only a villain if your setting is stuck in Because I Say So morality.

>So he's a competent, reasonable leader that improved the lives of his subjects? He sounds like one of the good guys to me; only a villain if your setting is stuck in Because I Say So morality.
Good point, however he does frequently allow evil for the greater good. As well as being motivated, but not ruled by, jealousy, spite, and hatred.
Most importantly, see:
>The only ones who need fear are their enemies upon their two remaining borders. He has terrifying plans for those that threaten the flourishing of his people, his land, and his legacy.
Guess where the PCs live.

Thats the easy way to have angry pc's, try drunkards that heard the other countrys women were better lookn. Or any thing not overdone. Some things are better to not be overkilled or they get repetive. Get creative mate.

The problem is that the defenses never, ever hold up against the heroes. One way or another, the bastards will break into that throne room for the climactic finale. So might as well just leave early.

I've read this summary somewhere before....

>I will not imprison members of the same party in the same cell block, let alone the same cell. If they are important prisoners, I will keep the only key to the cell door on my person instead of handing out copies to every bottom-rung guard in the prison.
Broke this one. Bad guys took the party's stuff and locked them up together. I wanted to let them stew so they could contemplate how well and truly fucked they appeared to be.

>If I absolutely must ride into battle, I will certainly not ride at the forefront of my Legions of Terror, nor will I seek out my opposite number among his army.
BBEG went ahead of his invading army searching the jungle for the macguffin's hiding place. He was escorted by secret service knights and fucking dragons, but still.

>I will treat any beast which I control through magic or technology with respect and kindness. Thus if the control is ever broken, it will not immediately come after me for revenge.
Uh... dragons. They were going to be pretty pissed at the mind control thing no matter how they were treated.

Broke number 14.
>Get captured as party beats a retreat, taken to main villain.
>Figured my character would get tortured or roughed up.
>Nope
>instead the guy is fairly polite, just asking what we know and how we found it out
>explain that were just pawns, mercs hired to do the dirty job of eliminating him and stopping his plot while providing plausible deniability
>Says it's about time to kill me, this whole time the rest of the party is inbound on my location but still ten minutes out
>ask for one last cigarette, get told no, then beg "I'm just a working guy, a schlep trying to get by, it's not like I can do anything to you, so let me have one last one"
>"how long will it take?"
>idunno 5 minutes?"
>proceed to role play 5 minutes of dialog with the dm, telling the villain of some of our exploits, trickery, and lunacy, wherein he occasionally rolls dice without telling me why
>five minutes are up, dm says huh, then ic says"how would you like a job, paying a third more than you're current contract?"
>meet party at the doors a few minutes later, announcing that we have a new job

I turned one last cigarette into a successful job interview

>mfw

That's pretty awesome honestly

That's one of the best moments in my role-playing career

...Piss-poor example.
Said street rat would have been crushed into paste if the evil overlord in question had actually stayed in snake form.

>My main computers will have their own special operating system that will be completely incompatible with standard IBM and Macintosh powerbooks.

How come people don't do this in real life? Shouldn't most Governments have their own OS by now?

Cost of production, maintenance, bug testing, etc...

Mind you, my father once worked on and helped maintain a system that handles credit card accounts and transactions for several different banks, it was a completely new and original OS built only for this purpose. Being an original OS was it's biggest security feature.

By that logic it's not worth being a villain at all. Every villain thinks they're the one who will prevail against the heroes.

>PCs living in neighbor nation of the competent, reasonable leader that improved the lives of his subjects
>Thats the easy way to have angry pc's
It is the easy route, fair enough.

>try drunkards that heard the other countrys women were better lookn
What? I’m actually not sure what you were going for here as to set the Baron up as an antagonist.

>Or any thing not overdone. Some things are better to not be overkilled or they get repetive.
Literally everything that’s not odd for oddity’s sake is overdone. Originality is a pipe dream.
Novelty plus familiarity equals interest.

> Get creative mate.
It’s difficult to creatively generate a scenario for the PC’s to live within the well run Barony and yet consider the Baron a villain without knowing who the PCs are:
If they are hometown heroes, they could return from a mission to discover that the Baron has granted their peaceful village to the same ogres they grew up battling to keep out their whole lives and the Baron’s men are there to forcibly relocate them from their ancestral home.
If they are wandering mercenaries, the Baron could set them up for a retrieval job in the Cave of Wonders to be paid with what ended up being cursed treasure and when they finally escape, they discover they’ve been marked as criminals for desecrating a sacred magical site and spreading dissention and lies about the Barony.
If they are just good, loyal citizens, they could be contacted by a group of rebels that have proof that the Baron poisoned the last Baron and countless other atrocities and cannot abide living under the rule of an opportunistic murderer but are powerless against his authoritarian control of the nation.
And so on.


>I've read this summary somewhere before....
Well, technically this is the fourth time I’ve posted it in the last four years. If that’s what you mean.
Unless that ellipses was implying something else, like the obvious Aladdin reference or something I’m not aware of.

>I turned one last cigarette into a successful job interview
Part of being an effective leader is spotting, and then acquiring, quality talent.

Just clone yourself.

Well he got it, the rest of that campaign turned into occasionally acquiring bonuses up until we pulled off a suicide mission with no significant loses and the new boss just made us a permanent part of his organization

It is full of bad ideas
>If an enemy I have just killed has a younger sibling or offspring anywhere, I will find them and have them killed immediately, instead of waiting for them to grow up harboring feelings of vengeance towards me in my old age.
Degrees of Kevin Bacon, unless you want to kill off every person on earth you will piss sombody off by killing someone close to them. If you kill your enemy's children you risk their friends hating you, if you kill their friends you risk the children of their friends hating your, so on and so forth.

>I will not fly into a rage and kill a messenger who brings me bad news just to illustrate how evil I really am. Good messengers are hard to come by.
>If an advisor says to me "My liege, he is but one man. What can one man possibly do?", I will reply "This." and kill the advisor.
A mailman is harder to come by than a highly educated and experienced advisor, who knew? Also good luck getting honest and useful ideas when you kill advisors who disagree with you.

>When I employ people as advisors, I will occasionally listen to their advice.
Why not always listen? Listening and following are two different things.

>If my advisors ask "Why are you risking everything on such a mad scheme?", I will not proceed until I have a response that satisfies them.
You sure you won't execute him for disagreeing with you?

>If the beautiful princess that I capture says "I'll never marry you! Never, do you hear me, NEVER!!!", I will say "Oh well" and kill her.
What was the point of wanting to marry her anyway? If it was to legitimize your control over a conquered kingdom you not only automatically failed but you gave the existing nobility plenty of reason to hate you.

>I will hire a talented fashion designer to create original uniforms for my Legions of Terror
Hugo Boss designed the uniforms for the Nazis.

>Players expected to plan an elaborate break in
>Just burst in with automatic rifles and body armour gunning down anyone in their path.

>A mailman is harder to come by than a highly educated and experienced advisor, who knew? Also good luck getting honest and useful ideas when you kill advisors who disagree with you.
If my advisor is stupid enough to think "just one man" can't do anything to hurt me, he's too stupid to be my advisor.

I do think killing my advisors in front of my other employees sets a bad precedent and hurts employee morale, though.

Still, though, the point isn't "disagreeing with me," it's "making a transparently stupid argument."

As for occasionally listening, it's possible to disagree with your advisors, that's not the same as ignoring them.

>Hugo Boss
Yes, and so we should do what the Nazis did in having a talented fashion designer create *ORIGINAL* uniforms, rather than mimicking what was original when they did it.

There can only be one!

>10
He's got a few bases of operations and uses them. On the other hand he usually doesn't handle interrogations personally. Why wouldn't you do it in a secure location?

>30
Does it count if he just doesn't do this? He's an extremist, but he's not vindictive enough to kill perceived innocents for a maybe. Doesn't seem like an efficient use of resources.

>36
He tends to put people in separate cages, but the cages are typically in the same room.

>38
Not that vindictive.

>46
He doesn't kill underlings.

>49
He's also not retarded enough to think this would work.

>69
Does the writer think everyone has infinite fucking resources or something?

>98
Apparently the answer is yes.

>unless you want to kill off every person on earth you will piss sombody off by killing someone close to them
Fair point.
But don't leave a vengeful younger sibling if you can help it, especially if they are trained in the same way as the person you just killed.

>kill advisors who disagree with you.
He killed him for being a dumb advisor who thinks one man can't do anything significant. He was dumb at his job. The messenger did his job well.

>Why not always listen?
"Occasionally" was used humorously here.

>You sure you won't execute him for disagreeing with you?
Now you're just being childish, also see above.

>you not only automatically failed but you gave the existing nobility plenty of reason to hate you
Recognizing when a plan has failed and moving on to secondary plans is a valuable trait. Why would the nobility hate him after he frames Gilda for the murder?

>Hugo Boss designed the uniforms for the Nazis.
Congratulations on missing the point again. "Original uniforms" are better than imitating failure, that was the point. It wasn't that designer uniforms will make you succeed.

>Does the writer think everyone has infinite fucking resources or something?
Why does an adequate maternity and foster care system necessarily require "infinite fucking resources"?

>Apparently the answer is yes.
Or a thorough immigration screening either?

Oh my fucking god I remember that level! Thanks, now I feel positively Jurassic.

The problem is less the hero counting and more the villain not counting how many bullets he fired

I think it's great that people are trying to argue against these, but to seem to be missing the point of 90% of these rules is to buck the meta and tropes of Overlord Society in a way that would fuck with outsiders. You obviously wouldn't keep important information away from the people who will come in contact with it.
All you'd need to do to keep your legions of terror from fucking up and dying to your silly rules is have security clearances set up with training regarding what they will encounter with said clearance.


Also, the majority of these rules aren't made to entirely coincide with each other; I.E. there are two anti-kid rules and three pro-kids rules.