Lazy Villains

/thread

It's more about the villain not recognizing that the hero beating them is, in fact, mightier than them, and thus more right by the philosophy they proclaim, which seems to happen more often than not.
Only example of the villain acknowledging the hero being right by virtue of their might I can pull from the top of my head is Senator Armstrong.

>Soon my do-good half-brother the prince will drink from the poisoned wine i planted at the coronation ceremony. With his death *i* will be king!

>commits numerous atrocities and crimes in order to prepare for an even greater evil.

Let me clarify my problem.

>Might makes right! I deserve to be able to crush these people!
[murderhobo_noises].mp3
>No! How could I have lost! I still want to crush people! Fuck you guys, might is only right when *I* do it!

Villains should be hot and sexy with loud farts that poot out their butts

He truly did nothing wrong.

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...Explain further.

Not really. "Might makes right" almost always just means "violence is okay when I do it", rather than being some kind of coherent philosophy about force and ethics.

Which is better plot design?

A) Having a lazy villain be taken down a peg by a well written BBEG
(creating a tenser stand-off at the end of the adventure because this guy brought many oooh shit moments)

B) Having a satisfying villain be curb stomped by a lazy villain because they don't need the competion
(showing that you can be as sophisticated as possible but at the end of the day a fatal wound is a fatal wound, and also creating dichotomy of there not being closure from the initial villain being defeated by the heroes)

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tfw when you're the best clan

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>Behold! I know everything and my plans are flawless! Obey me unquestioningly as if I were a God, but don't call me that or I will kill you.

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Oh hey /d/

A, unless you're playing a super-serious, 'rational' campaign.

Tell me if my villain is shit
He's an ageless being who believes that magic is inherently dangerous to life itself because of its tendency to accumulate power into beings which call the attention of cosmic powers, so he is attempting to very slowly kill all the magical species in the world (including all intelligent life) mostly by empowering proxy villains with much more short term reasons for being shitheads. Once everyone is dead, he intends to simply go to sleep and wait for new, mundane intelligent life to evolve for him to live among.

Are you sure?
youtube.com/watch?v=-7hBZNsPnyg

By his logic, wouldn't he want to kill the new intelligent life as well?

>the villain is literally named Savage Opress
The absolute state of Star Wars

>can't we confront later, I was in the middle of a nap...

He believes (correctly so) that the magical life that currently exists was transformed to be that way by gods that are now dead and/or dying, a process which he is also helping along, and that despite various creation myths, both life and consciousness were spawned spontaneously, and would do so again if he simply waited long enough.

Yeah, usually sith have much more subtle names like Sidious, Maul, Bane, or Tyrannis

Right, like the Death Star, Star Destroyer and stormtruppen wasn't hammy either in the OT.

What's the downside of drawing the attention of cosmic powers? They'll kill all intelligent life?

Kill all life period. Most importantly, including himself.

Sounds like he could find an easier way out of his predicament by packing his stuff and moving to another world. If that's not possible, it sounds like your villain is a hero.

My villain just wants to cuck the world

the secret golden rule of villainy is that their plans should not actually make perfect sense. near-perfect, yes, but not 100%.

The act could be considered heroic in a sense, but there are a few aspects of it that keep me from thinking about it that way.
1. Above all, the driving motivator for his actions is self preservation, not a vested interest in the existence of life or the good of the planet. Which leads to
2. He does things very, very slowly as to avoid putting himself in any kind of risk
3. The reason he believes he should do this is because he is aware of a time in the past when such a magical amalgam threatened the world, and was extinguished by an extraterrestrial power. Obviously that power did not destroy the world, but the fact that it simply might have was enough to drive this villain towards trying to make sure neither it nor any others of its kind, assuming there are others, would feel the need to come to earth

Alright, your antagonist isn't heroic, but there's not really a lot to say that he's really villainous. It sounds like a well reasoned decision.

>Tell me if my villain is shit
Hmm, depends on if you are going for a bit of a downer vibe where the villain is right.

>the Strong Prey on the week
This is SOMETIMES true. Other predators may need to eat more or less often.

He's right if his assumptions are all correct. Which he obviously thinks they are, but doesn't have a lot of solid proof.

Here come the Asteroids!

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Is the Chicxulub Asteroid a good villain?

Ok then the premise sounds decent then. The hard part will be the execution though. How do the players find out about and track down such an entity? How does said entity respond to such a direct threat?

Good question. I've run a couple campaigns in that setting and each time he was hinted at once when they started digging into the affairs of the antagonists they were actively dealing with. OOC, they recognized it as being the same entity, but I haven't begun to really introduce him yet. Additionally, part of the whole shtick would be that he would flee and just wait for his enemies to forget about him or die if he thought he was being tracked, so there probably wouldn't be a second chance within a single campaign.

Depends on what type of emotional connection the players have with the villain. If you make the party hate the villain on grounds of banal mediocrity, some spoiled rich bastard who tortures children but panics when up against even odds, option A is better.

If that connection doesn't exist, option B would be best as now players are invested emotionally into not only being deprived of the glory, of vanquishing an intelligent evil opponent, but that deprivation being the result of some snot-faced equivalent.

I don't know, it sounds like he's been at it long enough and lived long enough... yet nothing he fears has come to pass.

It's kind of like he's living at the beginning of Cretaceous period and wanting to kill off the dinosaurs in the hopes of stopping the asteroid from hitting a few million years down the road.

>I don't know, it sounds like he's been at it long enough and lived long enough... yet nothing he fears has come to pass.
Yeah basically. I just like the idea of an ancient, insidious power inspiring evil throughout the world turning out to be a mere coward.

>Additionally, part of the whole shtick would be that he would flee and just wait for his enemies to forget about him or die if he thought he was being tracked, so there probably wouldn't be a second chance within a single campaign.
That... would be very unsatisfying.

#
You mean like in Luke Cage?

The way I would go about it would be to instead lure it to them with something it really wants, or figure out where the first place it would flee to was.

The cold, emotionless super-assassin that's skilled at everything that could potentially be used to kill someone (i.e. everything) that you invariably sic on your players because you're sick of their bullshit. Guilty as charged.

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A Jewish traditional sacrifice of a red heifer that has no spots nor blemish and had never bore the burden of the yolk.

>the villain conquers the world by bringing people together and persuading them to join his union through talking and mutual benefits

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The Strong Prey on the seven days.

Jews want to sacrifice a red cow to bring on the end of the world where they are given thousands of 'goy' slaves (in their texts we are nothing but cattle to them)

Uh... I'm not certain that person is aware of the purpose of a hijab. (Almost called it a burka till I googled that to make sure I was spelling it right and saw an image that showed the different varients).

Most of the actual muslims aren't, in the west anyway. See them wearing a hijab and yoga pants at the gym

Shitty Deus Ex Machina.

Pervert

"Rock falls, every one dies" is not a villain, just the DM throwing a fit.

But by beating him you also prove him wrong since you're stronger and therefore right. There's an easy solution to this paradox.
>Murderhobo 9000 grabs BBEG arm
>Murderhobo 9000 starts jabbing the BBEG's arm into his face repeatedly
>"Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself."

He believed very little that was wrong, it was literally just his implementation that was batshit insane. Creating an America where the strong ruled the weak etc wouldn't have achieved his goals. But using a small, easily managed war to end war as a business? Fuck yeah that'd work he was a good man at heart. It was his actions that made him Evil, but I'd have liked to have seen him and Raiden agree to just talk things over.

No he's pretty cool.

>taking hentai this seriously

Guys. Guys. Stawp.

>Any of you would have done the same.

>/pol/
Go back

Or a useful plot device to bring out villainy in people who otherwise wouldn't be manifesting it. Imagine if we knew that Asteroid is going to hit us, 3-6 months out, there is only so many shelters, its too late to build new ones, societies laws mean nothing anymore as the slim chance of you getting into a shelter is non-existent and let's be honest, what are they going to do? Kill you? You're dead anyway. There is no consequence on you as you're dead anyway. Do you become a nihilistic monster engaging in the freedom of murder, mayhem, rape and enslavement? Do you turn to new gods and cults, determined to prevent disaster by sating fate with the blood of sinner and innocent alike? Do you empire build, knowing that although time is short this is the only taste of power and prestige you'll ever get? Or are you one in the bunker, plotting a future knowing the past you're leaving behind is plotting, begging and pleading at the doors you so cruelly shut on them? With the right GM or story teller it could be great, but with anything else I agree with you shitty Deus ex Machina.

Problem: Murderhobo 9000 does not give one half of a rat's ass about the villains ideology. He kills the BBEG in the most efficient manner he knows. If someone brings it up the idea of him being the strongest, he asks if that makes him king or something.

>I’d rather forcibly convert people to my religion rather than make it actually appealing

Is he a well written villain?

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>le go back to /pol/ meme

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Is this the original "rocks fall, everyone dies?"

Nigger you just took that from Yiddish Policemen's Union

Well obviously. If you could change your religion to be more fashionable with current values, that would come with the implied acceptance that it's not real and dependent only on what you say it is.

Wait, I think I've seen this in Gurren Lagann

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> I'm going to kill everyone because the one girl I loved for 3 generations won't smile at me

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> the burden of the yolk
Think you mean "yoke". Not many people use cattle to carry part of an egg!

In large parts of the world the main purpose of the hijab is to act as a public marker of faith/cultural identity. The theological reasoning behind wearing it is secondary, if it gets thought about at all.
It's a similar practice to the way lots of Christians wear crucifixes.
Also what said.

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strictly rules-as-written speaking, yoga pants are halal (source: Algerian co-worker)

"Speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring thee a red heifer without spot, wherein is no blemish, and upon which never came yoke"

I mean, despite everything, they do sound better.

More In-Sidious at least.

Badum-ts

Only from his point of view. Form the point of view of the party his head's just an ugly wage packet, philosophy has no resale value.

Yoga pants don't show skin. Be clean brother.

Deffo

>what is every dictator/revolution leader ever?

>I'd have liked to have seen him and Raiden agree to just talk things over.

If his theme lyrics have any meaning is that Armstrong agrees with you, but violence breed violence, and in the end, it has to be this way.

Honestly, it feels a lot like the long standing Metal Gear trope of having military men wanting to make their own countries. Except Armstrong wants to change America into his ideal rather than fucking off somewhere else.

He's pretty much Solidus Snake Mk. II.

There must be an easier solution then going all 'Halo' on the universe.

I run a game that has a lot of vaguely antagonistic NPCs, some of which the players work for and some of which they oppose. I tried to write a motive for each of them that basically sounds rational on the surface, but has a key flaw that if closely examined would unravel that NPC's ideology. Then when the PCs interact with them, the PCs can go along with the surface level interpretation of the NPC's goal, and a cursory criticism allows the NPC to argue and rebut and defend their ideology. Digging deeper angers the NPC, causing them to become antagonists. If the PCs just kill or defeat them without understanding their ideology, one of their underlings or followers just pick up their torch and continues in their stead. To truly defeat that bad guy, they would have to unmask the hidden flaw in their logic and reveal their ideology to be erroneous.

>If the PCs just kill or defeat them without understanding their ideology, one of their underlings or followers just pick up their torch and continues in their stead. To truly defeat that bad guy, they would have to unmask the hidden flaw in their logic and reveal their ideology to be erroneous.

So what you're saying is, just kill everyone who badwrongthinks until there's nobody left alive to pick up the torch.

>RULES OF NATURE

>Is immortal, uber magical being with impossibly strong body, impossibly strong magic, impossibly high knowledge of every science and complex plans who are beyond the understand of every mortal man.
>"Really guys, it's just about being human."

it's not a meme, it's instructions, now do it faggot

On top of that, he's a psyker who hates the Warp, other psykers, and the gods, despite the Warp ostensibly being the source of his power. You think he'd be more likely to ask for the gods to maybe chill or use the situation productively instead of going against them head on.

>The Law of the Jungle is that the Strong Prey on the week!

>For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack

The moral of the story is we need more Kipling in schools.

I actually based a racial culture in my setting on the Law of the Pack, except obviously from the perspective of humanlikes.
>When negotiating or arguing within the tribe, always seek out a judge before attempting to solve a dispute by force.
>When food or other bounty is distributed, the very young and the very old gain the best, then those that have acquired, then whatever is left is left to be traded or disputed.
>When one of those who brings the bounty is a judge or a parent, they have first say as to how the goods are used.
>When the tribe calls, come. If the tribe asks, do.
>When deciding between kinsmen and strangers, favor kinsmen but do not seek to wound strangers without cause.
>When hunting, hunt for use, not for sport.
>When at home, none shall invade on your privacy, not even a judge. When a judge has need of you they will call from outside.
>When celebrating, celebrate in private, not in public, as noise attracts foes and looks unsightly.
>When a kisman breaks the law, call a judge. If a judge breaks the law, call the tribe.