How do you make a good female villain?

>So how do you craft a believable, memorable and threatening female villain?
The same way you make a good character in general; you give them a clear motivation, an understandable goal, and interesting means.
>goal
what do they want, in a general big picture kind of way? try and pick something that you and your players can understand wanting but not necessarily agree with (i.e. wanting to murder someone who fucked you over, an immoral desire, but an understandable urge).
>motivation
why they have the goal they do? since you've built your goal on something universally understood it shouldn't be too hard to figure out why this character wants that thing.

Specifically for female characters think about their upbringing and the culture they're from, what would they be encouraged to want, what might they want due to being denied it?
>means
this is how your villain accomplishes their goals and also what holds them back from them. their skills, strengths, flaws, resources, allies & rivals. There should be a healthy mix of positive and negative in there, leaning enough positive that they'd succeed without the PCs' actions but they're not the only concern they have.

If you want to highlight your villain's gender, think about how their background in their specific culture would have influenced their abilities. Think about how they might be perceived by others due to being female and how that affects their ability to achieve their goals through various means in both positive and negative ways.

>Anita Sarkeesian

Sorry buddy, this is for TABLETOP games. You're looking for /v/ and/or /pol/

...

>Pokemon campaign
please explain

>How do you make a good female villain?
Courtier/concubine of the emperor. Most women who people tend to consider villains aren't war leaders or conquerors they are women who were given power (via marrying the right man or having the right son) and then manipulated themselves to higher positions while being ruthless and evil. One specific example I remember is a concubine of the Chinese emperor who got into a power struggle with another concubine and ended up winning. Afterwards she had her rival's son poisoned and had the concubine's arms and legs cut off and forced her to live like a pig.

For the voice finding issue, you don't have to change pitch unless you sound like Louis Armstrong. Pay attention to the way women speak - they have different emphasis and rhythm to men.

Draw out vowels for a sexy voice. Talk faster for an excitable nerd girl voice.

Don't underestimate the power of body language, either.

If all else fails, just repeatedly state that the character is female.

Make her motives, no matter how much they hurt everyone else, genuinely in the best interest of her immediate family, especially her children.

Tamora from Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus is a good place to start with this type of female villain.

You don't. Only a weakling would ever be afraid of a woman.

That's more likely to make people horny than afraid though

random idea: girl given as a sacrifice/bride to a dragon, managed to trick(charm?) him to have him under her thumb.
Now a powerful (and rich) witch, looking for forbidden rituals to get even more power and immortality/eternal youth

maybe listen to/read stories about crazy bitches? that can always help.

Big tits

Capture the extraordinary cruelty that a female with some mental pathology is capable of. I'll give you a famous one. Emperess Lu Zhi and her brutal murder of Consort Qi and her son, Liu Ruyi.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consort_Qi

>"Emperor Xiaohui (Liu Ying, Emperor Hui of Han) kept King of Zhao (Liu Ruyi,King Yin of Zhao) by his side in the palace and checked for poison in any aliment delivered to him. Emperor Xiaohui also brought Liu Ruyi with him wherever he went. In one early morning in the twelfth month of the first year of Emperor Xiaohui, the emperor went on a hunting trip; this time King of Zhao was left alone because he could not wake up early. Emperor Xiaohui supposed his mother would not plot against King of Zhao as several months had passed without any occurrence. Nevertheless Empress Dowager had an assassin force venom down King of Zhao's throat....She then had Concubine Qi's limbs chopped off, blinded her by gouging out her eyes, cut off her tongue and locked her in the pigsty, and called her a "Human Swine" (人彘). Several days after, Emperor Xiaohui saw the "Human Swine", and after realising that it who the "Human Swine" was, the emperor was so sick of his mother's cruelty that he virtually relinquished his authority and indulged in carnal pleasures."

what are the relevant differences between a man and a woman that would make them not able to be certain types of villains?
If it's about muscles just make her a fantasy race known for being super strong like ogres, orcs or whatever.

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Báthory
lizzie-chan did nothing wrong!

>limbs chopped off, blinded her by gouging out her eyes, cut off her tongue and locked her in the pigsty

so this is where asanagi takes his ideas from

Think of a male villain and I take away reason and accountability.

usually (it heavily depends on the culture, but) women and men will do evil differently
one of the most basic examples would be that most male villains will do dirty work themselves (for fun) and women won't dirty themselves (and just watch as one of their goons do the job)
but yeah, nothing stops you from making an half-orc musclegirl tomboy that just bashes skulls for the skull throne

What the shit are you doing on teej, Anita?

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_of_Kiev
Did nothing wrong. In fact, she's quite literally a saint in our religion.

If you can't do a female voice just discribe what she says and hope the players can imagine in the blanks.

She's still antagonist material. Antagonists don't need to be Joker-tier randumb evil or regular wrong doers, they just need to have an objective opposite to the party's.

Or...
youtube.com/watch?v=IO3iUYnQeSE

Just get a full on, cackling, broom-flying, cauldron-stirring witch in your villain squad.

Tons of male villains prefer not to get their hands dirty and watch their henchmen do things for them, though. I don't really think the gender of the villain has to limit or influence the rest of the character's design.

The BBEG being above doing dirty work and making their minions do it instead until the end when the party shows up to confront them is literally one of the most common cliche's in fiction. You are actually retarded or only read comics (i.e. retarded) or something if you think it's a female stereotype. See fucking Sauron minus actually actually fighting anyone.

>Make her the same way you make your male villains. But she just happens to be a woman.
This meme-tier answer still gets repeated? I sure hope it's bait. You do not make a good female villain by doing this, you make a bland piece of garbage. If you can just swap the character's sex and nothing changes then you've made a bad character. Men and women are different. These differences are integral to their characters, personalities, and outlooks. You make a good female character by making something like Buffy, not something like Rey.

>not something like Rey.
The trick is to make good characters, man. Not everything has to be tied to the genitals.

>Being this retarded
You're drinking too much tumblr koolaid user. You make an interesting character by making an interesting character, if the character is defined by being a man, woman, apache helicopter, gay transgendered black muslim or whatever the fuck else they're shit. Rey is shit because she's a bland as fuck copy paste of Luke. Had the protag of 7 been a dude named Duke Cloudwalker who was just Not-Luke™ he would have been just as shit.

They could make Rey a little less boring by revealing that her competence is based on some kind of object reading and showing that she can't do shit with a new lightsaber while she can do crazy shit with an older one.

But they won't do that. She'll just be Fem-Luke forever.

Man, she really WAS a great villain, wasn't she?
And somehow they really cocked up the second series with that tumblrshit.

But male Rey would still be fucking insufferable.

That would actually be a pretty good explanation and twist.
Having it be one of those rare force talents like Battle Meditation. I'd be down with that.

Also, to be fair, she wasn't THAT competent. She was fighting a dude who took a space crossbow laser to the gut, and who just fought a trained melee soldier and kicked his ass... and THEN he was still beating Rey. Her "win" was briefly matching him before they were split apart by a whim of fate.
So y'know...

Do you really have to make a female voice though? I just make a normal voice in case of voicing a female character, I do change my voice in some case but it's more for humorous situation (The ambassador of the US have a cliché texan accent, the raiders the pc interogate is a 14 years old kid with an uneven voice)

>The atrocities described most consistently included severe beatings, burning or mutilation of hands, biting the flesh off the faces, arms and other body parts, freezing or starving to death.
>Báthory's initial victims were the adolescent daughters of local peasants
>According to the Budapest City Archives, the girls were scalded with hot tongs and then placed in freezing cold water.[23] They were also covered in honey and live ants.[23] Elizabeth is also suspected of cannibalism.[23]
>Nothing wrong

I mean, she touched the millenium falcon's controls and instantly became a skilled pilot, touched the old-ass lightsaber and instantly became a competent jedi, etc. It'd make sense.

And it'd give her a skill to actually learn instead of just being able to do whatever.

Well it'd be a cool twist, and could give her a legitimate plot reason for getting her skills up to matching end-of-the-OT Luke in a fraction of the time, which leads to a cool option--having her and Luke work together to battle Ren and Snookers in a 2v2 showdown.
Sounds cool.

And it'd give the character some reason to think about her beliefs, and it'd give her plot hooks and room to grow.

Would she be big about respecting her elders and those who came before, since they're the source of her power?

Would she do some shit where she tried to seek out the possessions of famous people to gain their skills, and end up looking like the average PC?

Would she lean entirely on her power, causing a dramatic moment where she loses her legendary item and is rendered helpless? Or would she predict this situation and train her own skills along with her talent?

If Buffy had been a man, she'd still be a great character.

If Rey had been a man, she'd still be lame as balls.

The main problem some people have with making female characters is that they forego details that they would have included when making male characters.

Any man who acts like Buffy does would be insufferable to the general population.

To be fair, I think people are downplaying what a kickass ship the Falcon is too. You can be a barely competent driver but if you get behind the wheel of the fucking batmobile you'll probably outrun the pair of dimestore cops that are chasing you.

A game where you play pokemon trainers.It was fun. Though my game was more like the comic then the game or the show.

Players would be going around the world collecting badges, the more you collect the higher you would seed in the torment. They would earn cash by battling in official Pokemon league battle grounds. The fights where recorded and put on a few 24-hour t.v channels with more well known trainers getting better slots

I'm actually fine with her piloting Falcon. I'm not fine with her beating up Kylo Ren without any lightsaber training whatsoever. When Luke first met HIS archnemesis, he got his ass kicked, and his hand was cut off, and he was training for the whole second movie.

>2017
>still "doing voices"
>not playing online like normal people

All non-spergs play voiced games, user.
Text games are always a glacially-paced nightmare.

But this Erzebet is a 14 year old version who hasn't done that yet and just wants to become the #1 idol in the world!

>Text games are always a glacially-paced nightmare.
>admitting you can't read fast
>admitting you can't write fast
Is this your first day on a computer?

Text chat Rping is fine, but I would do it 1on1 not with a group and GM.
Same with PbP

He's right, though. Text games ARE very slow compared to voice-based ones, especially if the group insists on writing each action in flowery prose - which they often do.

>Text games ARE very slow compared to voice-based ones
They're not.
>especially if the group insists on writing each action in flowery prose - which they often do.
Cool anecdote. I bet it's made up too.

>Nuh-huh.

Do you have a single fact to back that up?

Text games are generally slower. It's harder to convey stuff like body language / tone of voice, too. A lot of things get less impulsive because as people write out stuff they get second thoughts. It's easier to make mistakes which cause confusion.

But it's not. What the fuck even makes you say that? Is it your own ineptitude?

Don't reply to the obvious troll, you idiot.

It is.
>slower
Check out the average speed differences between typing and dictating.
Check out the average speed differences between somebody comfortably reading and listening.
In most cases, this goes to the favour of the speaker / listerner. Even amongst authors / 'skilled readers'.

>Harder to convey body language and tone of voice
Instead of using body language and tone of voice as you speak, you have describe it with words, in addition to whatever you're saying.

>less impulsive
This is based on my own experience. As people write, they have time to change their response. This may not be as common as I think it is, so I am willing to concede this point to you.

>mistakes
If you make a mistake while speaking, it is easier to detect / people can correct you faster. If you do it while typing, it can first be corrected when you are done writing. Which may cause confusion.

But I'm enjoying myself.

>Check out the average speed differences between typing and dictating.
>Check out the average speed differences between somebody comfortably reading and listening.
I checked it out and found nothing to support your claims. Post some links.

>she's quite literally a saint in our religion
Isn't every Czar an Orthodox saint by default?

>When Luke first met HIS archnemesis, he got his ass kicked, and his hand was cut off, and he was training for the whole second movie.
I take your point, but I'd also suggest that Luke's arch-nemesis was a lot more formidable.

Luke was training, left early, and got fucked up.
Rey was sitting at home, picked up a lightsaber, and won.

news.stanford.edu/2016/08/24/stanford-study-speech-recognition-faster-texting/

Wherein they test text-to-speech devices on androids. Note that people who use text-to-speech devices usually speak a little bit slower than they normally do.

quora.com/Speech-Recognition-What-is-the-difference-in-speed-between-dictation-vs-typing

Wherein they cite wikipedia, which in turn has some sources that compare speaking and typing, as well as listening and reading.

humanfactors.com/newsletters/human_interaction_speeds.asp

Wherein they include several sources and reach the same conclusion. However, it does say that the fastest writers can outpace the average speakers. And unlike speaking, faster writing shouldn't be any less comprehensible.

Oh, didn't you know? She's taking shots at 40k now.

Don't you this it's part of the problem?

Actually I'm pretty certain I've read somewhere before that the Falcon's ship class are a huge pain to get used to flying due to the strange cockpit position.

So by all rights she should've crashed it a minute or two in and the movie would've awkwardly ended early.

>Short story
Acquire a fetish for dominant women, then go full magical realm.

>Long story
You write a female villain by writing a good female character who's also a villain. Start out by making her powerful and realize that power can take on multiple forms. This is why I recommended learning to love dominant women, because there's quite a few flavors of them. You can have some stupidly strong monstrosity, a cold and calculating mage, a spoiled queen who demands the whole world bows before her beauty or an unscrupulous businesswoman who actively uses blackmail and intimidation as part of her business strategy.

In the end we're dealing with women, so don't be afraid to make them feminine. If their femininity contradicts their villainy, don't worry because that contradiction can actually be quite interesting. Nobody would expect the questionable megacorp CEO to enjoy flower arrangements in her free time, nobody considered that the sadistic mage greatly enjoys baking cakes and who would've ever thought that the domineering queen melts whenever she sees children? Giving them interests, hobbies and likes unrelated to villaining around all day humanizes them and makes them more memorable. It also makes for interesting stories such as "remember when the sorceress tried to adopt the ranger's wolf companion?".

This is something I'm going to catch a lot of flak for on nu-Veeky Forums but women are weaker than men and have been for as long as humans have been around. This has engrained within women the desire to remain seen as likeable and innocent in society as to avoid conflict (which men are better equiped to deal with). As such deceit, manipulation, hypocrisy, lies and emotional blackmail are part of any female villain's arsenal. If she's cornered, don't be afraid to make her spin a tale about how she fell in love with Goon Commander #41 and how he forced her to do all of this. Even better if the PCs believe her, then you can make sure they live to regret it.

>The average adult reading speed for English prose text in the United States seems to be around 250 to 300 words per minute.
>People comfortably can hear words that are spoken at from 150 to 160 words per minute. However, when normal speech is increased to 210 words per minute, using compression, there is no loss in comprehension
So text games are not only not slower than voice games, but are actually faster. Thanks for proving my point.

The OT was a clear, clever tabletop campaign with drama, action, mystery and managed to get the players emotionally involved. It had highs and lows, a satisfying conclusion, etc.

The Force Awakens - and the coming movies -are basically what happens when an otherwise okay GM brings his girlfriend into the game and makes shitty choices.

Mainly though, I'd say that: Yes, Rey is a rather bland mary sue, and I can understand why people would be less than pleased with that, but I also feel that there are plenty of male mary sues that people are largely fine with. I think that maybe there's a tendency not to take the male mary sues too seriously and just to enjoy their ass-kicking for what it is, while holding Rey to a different standard. Maybe we're just used to tough guys doing ridiculous shit, while Rey stands out more. *Shrug* I'm not saying she's an awesome character or anything, but it does feel like there's been a bit of an overreaction against her.

Nobody thinks that Ripley or Sarah Connor is a Mary Sue.

Read the full text. The section for reading speed assumes that you're not reading the text in-depth.
If your players are not reading in depth the quality of the game drops dramatically, as they lose details and otherwise good quality posts become general summaries.

Still, reading/listening does go to the reader's favour at 180 compared to 150-160 per minute.
But that doesn't off set the insane difference between writing and speaking.

Pretty simple desu senpai.

youtube.com/watch?v=wse_hgca220

>If your players are not reading in depth the quality of the game drops dramatically, as they lose details and otherwise good quality posts become general summaries.
What is this contrived scenario you just pulled out of your ass? Have you ever played a text game? GMs don't make their players read entire fucking novels on the fly, and neither are the players required to write huge blocks of text with intensely hidden details contained within. The average ingame response is only a few words long.

...

The original trilogy was incredibly good -- actually, just the first two movies, because, let's face it, Return of the Jedi didn't even begin to stack up to them -- while The Force Awakens was derivative bubblegum that was, at best, entertaining, but hardly a work of art or excellence. But I don't know that we're gonna see many (if any) Star Wars movies that come close to A New Hope or The Empire Strikes Back. The Force Awakens fares a bit better when the prequels are included. Admittedly, they set a very low bar, and I quite understand if you dismiss them as trash and suggest that favorably comparing to them means nothing, but it does seem like some people treat The Force Awakens as if it were the first Star Wars movie that was lackluster, and that's clearly not the case.

I think the characters are part of it. You've got bog standard "Strong female protagonist with tragic past that doesn't affect her at all" and "Loyal, secretly good, non-threatening black man". So people inclined one way or the other rate the movie better or worse because of that. Plus those tweets during production that outright said the First Order was supposed to be white and evil.

And, of course, take all that away and you get a set of characters who aren't really that interesting. Within 20 minutes of meeting Luke you know he's a dreamer who likes to fiddle with technology, you've got an eye on his social life and family situation. Within 20 minutes of meeting Rey you know she wants more portions.

>Nobody thinks that Ripley or Sarah Connor is a Mary Sue.
But that's not really the point. They are more down-to-earth and believable characters, but there are plenty of male action heroes who aren't, but who don't seem to catch much flack for it. Again, I'm not suggesting that criticism of Rey is invalid; it just feels a bit more... enthusiastic than I'd expect.

more portions,* because holy shit, Rei Ayanami gets more characterization than that and she's literally an emotionless doll who does nothing she isn't told to.

> but there are plenty of male action heroes who aren't
Yeah, but none of them in Star Wars. Star Wars is not Terminator 3 or some other dumb shit. It's Star Wars, a franchise with millions of rabid fans. Standards are to be expected.

>Yeah, but none of them in Star Wars. Star Wars is not Terminator 3 or some other dumb shit. It's Star Wars, a franchise with millions of rabid fans. Standards are to be expected.
Fair point.

Just to add to your "Desire to remain seen as likable" thing.

It doesn't even have to be that. Part of what makes a villain a villain, is that they use EVERY weapon they have. If they think being attractive/likable/innocent is a good tool to their goals, then they will take advantage of that whenever they can.

"Villain who pretends to be redeemed, only to escape" does this. If the majority of the heroes appear to be attracted to women, then the character will try and take advantage of that, because in my experience, people are more likely to consider "maybe she's given up?" if there's something about her that they want to keep seeing show up in the game.
The "Sexy Villainess" trope doesn't just exist for fanservice, it's because ever since spies, ninja, and male dominated law-enforcement/authority have been a thing, sex appeal has been considered a "weapon/tool" to achieve ones goals. Attractive people have an easier time in life, and it's a sign of corruption to be freely willing to take advantage of that no matter what.

Granted, not every female villain has to pull the "evil seductress" thing off, just like not every male villain has to be hiding behind paperwork and law enforcement, but don't be afraid to use it just because it seems "magical realm".

Spider-man with his lame puns and one-liners is insufferable

The current BBEG in my campaign setting is a woman whose children died of the plague and who is desperately trying to find a way to bring them back to life.

It doesn't help that she used to be a Fang of Vemnas (Paladin) and she's basically a blackguard mashed together with cleric.

She's gone crazy after the death of her children and is seeking out any means of returning them to life. She's currently trying to, with the aid of a Gnoll Cleric of Yeenoghu and a cabal of Orcish Clerics, realign the plane with the rest of the "standard" D&D planes. Doing so will allow the devils, demons, other gods and such things to re-enter the plane. It will also cause an energy which the tarrasque feeds on to re-enter the plane.

The tarrasque which is currently buried under a mountain range which is a massive Stone Dragon God and who is only able to be contained because said energy has been missing from the plane for ten thousand years.

The party's having fun with that. And I'm having fun roleplaying a woman who is past the point of return and who is willing to damn an entire plane, and possibly more, just to bring her children back.

>one of the most basic examples would be that most male villains will do dirty work themselves (for fun) and women won't dirty themselves (and just watch as one of their goons do the job)
you mean real world villains, like hitler or stalin, or fantasyland male villains who are based around your ideas of what male or female villains should do?
Because it seems to me that you are just spewing a lot of bullshit.

Why not just buy diamonds and pay a cleric to cast raise dead.

alright /pol/tard, let me get it straight to you
What was answered was how to make a female villain rather than a stereotype.
when OP makes a male villain or NPC he doesn't focus on what makes him male but on what makes him a villain that works in his setting.
He doesn't have the viallain say or do something so that his players know that the character is male.
And he should do the same for a female villain.

I keep resurrection rare and expensive. When she was introduced, it wasn't as a BBEG. She was just a paladin who went crazy and was trying to track down a Ring of Wishes.

They first ran into her at 8th level.

>I keep resurrection rare and expensive
Why not just assemble a gang and keep robbing caravans. Or banks. Or treasuries. Or temples. It's a much simpler solution than making apocalyptic deals with demons.

So? It's twats like you that made her internet famous, if you shits hadn't sperged out in 2014 no one would know who she is. She's a monster of your own making

When I say rare and expensive, I mean, RARE. There's one guy on the continent who can cast True Resurrection. One. And he was killed by the party. Accidentally, but still dead.