The villain's motivations are incomprehensible

The fuck are you talking about? My villains always have incredibly understandable motivations.

Just because Evil for Evil's Own Sake has gone out of vogue doesn't mean it's incomprehensible.

And besides...being the bad guy is so much FUN.

Don't confuse motivations with goals.

There is no one "best" way to do anything in an rpg, although there are lots of ways of doing it wrong.

An incomprehensible motive is awful because it's impossible to understand and so boring. If they just do crazy shit because they're crazy it's pointless, but if they, say, kill people because their neighbour's dog tells them to, that can be interesting.
Serial killer esque villains are great not because they're truly incomprehensible, but because everything they're doing is totally rational to them, and their logic can be followed if you accept a couple of totally illogical beliefs.

-Motivations
-Purpose / Goal
-Methodology
-Judgement

Even some of the villains in your pic aren't like that, or not entirely.
M Bison isn't evil, he's deluded and believes he can save the world from evil by dominating it.
IT isn't evil and loving it, it's a creature that needs to feed.
Sidious isn't being evil for the fun of it, he's evil due to lust for power and going mad off the intoxicating power of the dark side. He's not just doing it for a lark.
Bolas doesn't even think about morality, he's simply trying to recover his lost power, because he's a dragon, and all he cares about is power.
Sauron isn't loving anything and he certainly isn't enjoying himself, he's a desperate fallen angel trying to follow in his master's footsteps.

It can be. The big issue is making sure their money-making scheme still makes some degree of sense. Genius billionaire starts a war through a series of terrorist attacks, then sells advanced weaponry to all sides? Evil, makes sense. It's the sort of thing that someone with intellect, resources, and a critical lack of morals would do. However, really grand acts of villainy (raising R'lyeh, releasing a techno-virus to turn everyone into cyborgs, etc.) tend to have little profit involved in them. It really depends on the sort of plot you want.

Defeating the hero.

For the Riddler, he's even upset that he has to commit crimes to defeat Batman. For the Joker, he doesn't care either way.

Is it?

>M Bison isn't evil, he's deluded and believes he can save the world from evil by dominating it.

No, M. Bison is absolutely evil in almost all his incarnations. I just chose Raul Julia's version because...who wouldn't?

>IT isn't evil and loving it, it's a creature that needs to feed.

He feeds on FEAR. Corpses aren't afraid of anything. He kills because it's fun and he enjoys it and the taste of people. He doesn't need to kill, and actually it's detrimental to his food supply.

Pennywise isn't just hungry. He's a sadist.

>Sidious isn't being evil for the fun of it

You haven't watched nearly enough Clone Wars. He literally has a protracted lightsaber fight with Darth Maul and Darth Maul's brother because he's bored and just feels like having some fun. He also revels in the power of the Dark Side which, lest we forget, is literally synonymous with Evil.

>Bolas

You didn't read the latest story with him, did you? He spends time fighting the Jacetice League and has fun being a moustache-twirling villain because, fuck it, he feels like it. He actually thinks to himself that he could probably be doing this in a more efficient way, but sometimes it's fun to just be a dragon.

>Sauron

Yeah, I'll accept that, with the proviso that Suaron's original motivations were lost in his descent into evil. By Tolkien's own words, at this point (that is, by the end of the Third Age) he's pretty much evil for the sake of it, cruel for the sake of it, etc.

I'll probably change the filename to "paint it black" or something else. The point is, I miss evil for the sake of evil villains.

I'll admit to not really keeping up with mtg for a while now, and I never really cared for anything in Star Wars beyond the films too much to be honest. I'll argue the Emperor we see in the OT (and to a lesser extent in the prequels) isn't evil for the hell of it, he's evil because he's corrupted and mad with power (which is pretty similar but with a minor and imo important difference)
If we're going off any other version of Bison I'll give it to you (although Raul Julia's version is indisputably the best)
And finally, yeah you're probably right about IT, on reflection. But it doesn't change the fact it's base motivation is to feed, and it's just having fun with it along the way.

Still, you must admit the more interesting villains here are the ones who start out with understandable motives before degenerating into madness.

What do u mean by judgement?

To be honest my favorite villain in that pic is Devimon, who's goals are by no means incomprehensible. In his own dying words:

>You have used up all your power. That wasn't very smart, Angemon. Now, you're of no use to anyone! You can't get away from the dark forces; evil is everywhere, so don't savor your victory! There are other digimon that are just as powerful as I am. Some of them are even stronger! I wonder what you'll do when you run into them! You haven't won at all! What a waste of time! HA HA HA HA HA!

I love that even though he's dying when he says that, he's basically just shrugging his shoulders and saying "Okay, it took literally everything you had to defeat me, and I'm small potatoes compared to the other horrible creatures out there. I'm dying. Evil isn't."

Because it protects the GMs ego. A character who has something to care about is a character who can be effected. A GM who wants a villain to be totally emotionally and morally invincible can easily achieve that by removing personal purpose from them. GMs generally want this because (while most wouldn't admit it) their villains wind up being GMPCs.

It's the interpretation of strength as a means to protect one's self from alteration or harm. The villain has no tangible goals, meaningful loves or grounded convictions, because he has none of that he has nothing to loose and no reason to change. He can be secure in himself.

Of course this also means he can't form any meaningful attachments to the party, develop as a character or engage in any conflict with thematic tension. He has nothing to loose but also nothing to bid and therefore nothing to gain. There can be no gamble or tension with this kind of character.

>BUT
A character who loves evil can still be played well, you just have to look at why he loves evil or how he focuses his evil.
The Monarch from Venture Bros is a good example. He attaches his obsession to a specific character and puts a lot of stake in the art of his work. He wants more than chaos, he want glory, pride and respect.

In the case of eldritch horrors they can be incomprehensible on the grand scale but they really aren't characters. They are an environment to navigate or a mystery to solve. Even then there has to be some pattern to unravel in order for play to be meaningful.

>TLDR
-A villian who doesn't give a shit isn't worth giving a shit about
-Nothing changes if there is no risk
-OP is a pussy as bitch
-Incomprehensible works to highlight PC problem solving not you OCdonutsteel

>M. Bison is absolutely evil
Not from his point of view. That's the whole point. He's trying to save the world through conquering it.

>IT kills because it's fun and he enjoys it
Would humans fear IT if IT weren't an actual physical threat? Just target people with a clown phobia and dance around them? You can't actually believe this.

>the dark side is synonymous with Evil
wew lad

>Bolas
Basically an immortal god and a dragon. Human values don't apply through the lens of immortals. Anyone who thinks they wouldn't get desensitized to the concept of death over the span of infinity is either a saint or a retard.
Death would be meaningless, and therefore not "evil". Plus, being bored and fucking with people is something that fantasy gods just do.

>sauron
AKA tolkien Arthas.

The corrupting effect of "Ends justify the means." in story form. It's not exactly evil for evil's sake.

I would argue in the case of Sidious and Sauron, they are not the main villains of the story. In Star Wars Luke primarily fights Vader. The conflict begins and ends with Vader and Sidious pops in at the end to deliver exposition and act as a framing device for the final conflict between Luke and Vader.
Of course that's just the original trilogy, I know very little about the big old blob that is the EU.

Sauron never even appears in person in LotR. The characters are fighting his influence. It's a story of the protagonists braving the dangers of middle earth, dealing with their own fears and interpersonal conflicts and overcoming the overarching conflict of war. Sauron is the cause of problems that start the story but as a character he's not really a centrepiece.
Once again this is in context of the story. In the larger lore there is more nuance to him. Ultimately though once he looses that nuance and goes full dark lord he pretty much becomes a menacing background fixture.

Dastardly isnt incomprehensibly evil. He just wants to win the race by any means necessary (which is kinda evil i admit, but thats quite a good reason). or intercept the pidgeon, rather important strategical target, which definitely isnt evil at all.
He would be chaotic neutral

There is no best motivation, it all depends on how you execute it. Any motivation can be great for a villain if you know what you are doing.
There is also a matter of personal opinion. For example, I fucking hate those well-intentioned dindu villains who are pretty much good guys who just do some amoral shit while I love people who are evil for no other reason than greed or ambition while I know a lot of people have exactly the opposite opinion.

He had one bad day, threw his reason away and his mind let go of the wheel

Not that guy but IT literally transforms into his victims worst fears to feed off their fear. You clearly don't know the story

because it requires the least effort to avoid plot holes. it's like Tzeentch, his motivations are so incomprehensible that even if he does something in one book that would directly negatively impact stated goals in another book there's no actual conflict between them because we "Just can't see the full picture" or something and the publishers don't have to work as hard.

>Not from his point of view.
From MY point of view, it's the Jedi who are evil!

>using new Rita Repulsa as an example of anything

Absolutely disgusting

>using new Rita

Original Rita was the Mystic Mother who was corrupted by evil. Same with Lord Zed who was also corrupted by ancient magical mcguffins.

That was Sauron's original goal, however he instead got so caught up in enjoying domination and cruelty for it's own sake he became a manipulative satanic figure whose only goal is to cruelly dominate the world. For the sake of the events of LOTR with him as the eye his original purpose is so long off in the past that it's easy to go without mentioning it.

I feel like only sheltered suburbanites who've been raised to think everyone is good at heart dislike inherently evil villains

I like villains who are evil without the need of some tragic backstory.
I mean, in the real world we have people screwing other people for their own benefits and they aren't like that because their parents abused them when they were little or because they experienced a traumatic loss, they are just assholes who at most didn't have someone close to them to tell them to stop with their shit.
I find the idea that a villain can only be inherently evil or turn evil because of some horrible event kind of stupid.

>The villain's motivations are shaky, but reasonable enough.
>He executes them in such a complex way, playing xanatos speed chess to deal with obstacles, that they quickly become incomprehensible