Anti-villain concepts [Archive] - Wizards Community

Anti-villain concepts [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
JulesCARV
01-13-06, 10:08 AM We all know anti-heroes. Y'know, the knight whose father was slain by the evil lord, and is driven by a thirst for revenge, and to hell with anyone who gets in his way, good or evil, the righteous crusader whose fanaticism in pursuit of justice leads him down dark, twisted paths, etc. Yada yada yada.

What about anti-villains, though? People who are basically antagonists, opposing the heroes, but who are basically sympathetic? Not sympathetic as in, "well, they had tormented childhoods" or "they used to do good stuff" or anything like that: actually sympathetic in the sense that their actions, right now, often seem justified, at least debatably, were it not for the fact that it's so inconvenient for the heroes.

I'd say this is a "101 anti-villain concepts" thread, but really, those threads never come out to exactly 101 or 1001 or whatever anyway, so I'll just ask everyone to post their ideas of how anti-villains could be worked into games.

1. Modernizing king who seeks to limit violence (honor killings, brigandry, duels among nobles, etc) by stripping the commoners and nobles of weapons (beyond the "farming and cooking implement" level) and concentrating them in the hands of the state army and police. His forces have no sympathy for heavily armed adventurers. ("but we only use our weapons for good!" / "So, you wander around killing people and taking their treasures, but you make sure that you only do it to evil people? I'm sure the judge will like hearing that one if you refuse to give your weapons up. Look, if evil is such a concern to you, you can apply for the Royal Army or Militia, as I did, and you'll be armed appropriately for your mission, but you can't just wander around with a small armory on your back without authorization and expect us to take it on faith that you're acquiring your treasure from wicked brigands and orcs, and that you haven't robbed any merchants yourselves.")

2. Spellcaster who uses socially unacceptable forms of magic for the common good (e.g., someone who uses undead assistants in her business, raised from the bodies of people who agreed to give their bodies over to her in exchange for gold). Note: I don't care about the "can necromancers be good" issue. I'm just saying that, whether this person is good or evil, she could be sympathetic.

3. Person from a villainous society who, while still in many ways evil, is significantly better than most people in his society. (e.g., southern white circa 1830, "Of course black people are less intelligent than whites, and can never truly become civilized, and will always exist, to some extent, in a state of savagery, but still it is wrong to enslave them and treat them as property, whipping them bloody as is so often done. Couldn't they live as free people, freed from the whip and chains, without going to absurdities like giving them the vote or treating them as whites without acknowledging their immutably barbarous nature?")

4. Ruthless overlord who makes everyone opposed to him disappear (whether through assassination, abduction, or any other means) and ensures that no one could ever challenge his rule. Rules over a historically troubled land that has been continually plagued by civil wars, rebellions, and invasions. Now, with the ruthless overlord enforcing the peace, common people are finally beginning to be able to build businesses, improve their lands with irrigation projects, etc. The intelligentsia and old nobility hate his abuses, but many commoners love the peace and order that he has brought.

5. Secondary villain who obeys the main villain's orders, and is loyal for personal reasons, but isn't personally evil. Doesn't always approve of what her boss says, and maybe even consels him to reconsider particularly evil courses of action, but is loyal through and through. ("I can't claim to approve of everything my brother orders, but he is kin, and if you are trying to defeat him, I will stop you if there is a single drop of blood left in my body!")
Morka
01-13-06, 11:30 AM 1. Modernizing king who seeks to limit violence (honor killings, brigandry, duels among nobles, etc) by stripping the commoners and nobles of weapons (beyond the "farming and cooking implement" level) and concentrating them in the hands of the state army and police. His forces have no sympathy for heavily armed adventurers. ("but we only use our weapons for good!" / "So, you wander around killing people and taking their treasures, but you make sure that you only do it to evil people? I'm sure the judge will like hearing that one if you refuse to give your weapons up. Look, if evil is such a concern to you, you can apply for the Royal Army or Militia, as I did, and you'll be armed appropriately for your mission, but you can't just wander around with a small armory on your back without authorization and expect us to take it on faith that you're acquiring your treasure from wicked brigands and orcs, and that you haven't robbed any merchants yourselves.")

In a city in Cormyr, Forgotten Realms setting, there is a law forcing people to attach their weapon in their scabbard with an "honor knot". It's just a special knot that can be untied as a full-round action. Someone caught without it on his weapon would be put in jail. The same way, spellcasters would have their 4th and 5th fingers tied together, preventing them to cast spells with somatic components.
I think back in late Middle Age or in Renaissance, only nobles were allowed to have weapons, because their duty was to protect their subjects.
This is the same reason why shaolin monks use so exotic weapons. Most of those weapons were used as tools by the lower classes, and the shaolin monks developped ways to use them in combat.

Now back with the main subject :D:

6. After defeating the evil necromancer and clearing his lair, the PCs found a secret chamber with an altar. On the altar lay a mummified baby. They can also find a secret journal, describing how the evil necromancer was a former adventurer, who took a wife and had a child. A year or two later, his beloved child died, either of natural disease or killed by another evil entity. This made the former adventurer almost crazy, he tryed to raise his child, but was unable. Orcus/Nerull/Shar or other evil entity convinced him he could give him the power to raise his child from death, if he was willing to do one or two things for Him...

7. There is still the stupid adventurers who stole the Brass Dragon's hoard (made of golden art objects), and sold it to an innkeeper who himself sold it to a wealthy collector. Now the Brass Dragon is furiously searching his hoard, and destroying everything in his path...

8. The "cursed ones": evil lycanthropes, the warrior who found an evil, intelligent sword (or simply a Berseker sword), the poor man dominated by a succubus...

9. The ghost who wants to stay in his haunted house. In fact, there should be another reason why the ghost doesn't rest peacefully, a reason the ghost either ignore or don't want to remember.

10. Nature vs Civilisation: woodsmen are wildly cutting all the trees in a forrest, either by stupidity or because the king force them to. As a results, treants, dryads and other sylvan creatures are attacking all the nearby villages.
Lyinginbedmon
01-13-06, 01:42 PM 11. The Ranger who hunts boar in the woods for the nearby city purchases a house previously occupied by a group of mages working on summoning spells. She spends many uneventful weeks there and even becomes attuned to the nature (Woodling, Monster Manual III). Until she ventures into the Room of the Infernal Stain, and the summoning ring is reactivated, bringing forth an Demon wolf that rapes her, impregnating her with it's seed and creating an Unholy Scion (Heroes of Horror). She gives horrid painful birth to the creature, immune to its control but unable to remove it, alone in the house, the Demon long since gone.

But that's not all! The US Wolf wants it's own pack, so remembering that it's an Evil Outsider, it takes on a Oedipal relationship with it's mother, attempting to birth it's own group of demon wolves from her as its father did.

So, the Ranger goes insane from isolation and constant raping by her own child, who she can't refuse due to lack of ability and strength (Think, level 3 Ranger with Animals as favoured enemy?). When the house is resold and adventurers are hired to clear it of the horrid abominations attracted by years of Taint (Heroes of Horror again), she lashes out at them the moment they open the bedroom door. They kill her, and an unfortunate force for good is destroyed, and the US Wolf now knows they're there...

Actually did this one in a recent game to introduce Taint for a horror campaign. Magnificent results!
Rudysseus
01-13-06, 06:06 PM 12: Not just a single person, but a group of them. Think of it like the Fellowship of the Ring, although if the evil people exchanged places with the good. A task needs to be done, and the various groups of evil people (works a bit better with more intelligent, semi-lawful groups) gather and appoint representatives (which would account to having different PCs in the same group, despite being evil) that are ordered to work together to accomplish the task. (my game's version was they were ordered to go and kill an evil presence that jeopardized the separate evil organizations' existence). So while the "villains" can literally be from any background, they have a somewhat "sympathetic" reason for others to say "oh, well...they ARE trying to save us. even if that is only a side effect"
Harrow Blade
01-14-06, 02:02 AM 13) A good church order or paladin order is set on destroying an artifact as in the wrong hands it could cause a world wide catastrophy. However this artifact is the only thing keeping alive a group/community of good peaceful creatures/people.
cerberuspuppy
01-14-06, 11:02 PM The current storyline in Order of the Stick has them butting heads with a Paladin. That sort of thing can easily happen, especially if the party is Chaotic or just plain unruly.

One way to go about your idea is to set up a Law vs Chaos conflict as opposed to a Good vs Evil one.

When I am running a game, I create a character (last time it was a Justicar) who will hunt the party down, beat the snot out of them and bring them to justice if they should ever get into the habit of running around blowing everything up.

Sometimes a conflict on both axes can be interesting. The two main styles of this are Robin Hood (LE authority opposed by CG rebellion) and Falling Kingdom (LG authority crumbing into chaos or besieged by CE hordes) Either can be poignant and dramatic. In the first, the party is constantly on the run from the authorities and has to avoid civilization. In the second, civilization is falling down around their ears- the orcs are overwhelming every city one by one and the nobles can't get their act together.
cerberuspuppy
01-14-06, 11:27 PM You can do different things with conflict and alignment, or you can give alignment a secondary place. A good way to do that is with political conflicts. Two schemers may share similar alignments and philosophies, but hate each other for purely personal reasons- and the party might even have to choose between them.

The party might have to work for a LE lord, because there is simply no other legal recourse. They can't just murder him in his sleep, and they can't make any charges stick to put him in jail for even a day. It's interesting to see how a party deals with something like that. Do they ignore his alignment and take their orders anyway? Or does the entire focus of the campaign become how to take down this lord without getting themselves killed in the process?

Such a character can be interesting in his own right. He is Lawful Evil, after all- he might have great respect for the law and tradition. He might act according to a strict code of honor. He might refuse to actively harm women and children, but refuse just as strongly to help them when during a famine. He might pass up a chance to cheat on his taxes, and then kill the man who did. He might admire the Paladin's discipline even while shaking his head at the shining knight's naivite. All this is without even getting to the "lawyer" type of LE, who might look for any advatageous loophole in the letter of the law.

That's even assuming that alignment is a major distinction. You could have a plot less like Lord of the Rings and more like Song of Ice and Fire (aka "Game of Thrones), where just about every major player would flunk just about any D&D alignment test. That kind of political viper's nest can provide a nearly endless font of conflict. The party doesn't even have to be involved in the intrigues; they could be warriors, even "pawns", or maybe they are just sick of being manipulated and they rebel against all the politicians.
Arilou_skiff
01-15-06, 09:29 AM The humanoid (orc/goblin/gnoll/hobgoblin whatever) Warlord who, while he is a brutal conqueror, is also thinking ahead: Rather than simply slaughter he subjugates, builds cities and walls, creates trade-routes and to some degree offers protection (both from other humanoids and more "civilized" races) in exchange for taxes. Essentially a humanoid who has crossed the line between banditry and government :p

A fiend who is out to claim the soul of an evil mortal. He has no actual interest in anything else on the material plane, but is simply seeking to claim what he considers as his.

A desperate magician looking for a cure to a plague has gone far enough to use living humans to experiment upon.... Only he actually wants to cure the plague, and thanks to his inhumane experiments is very close to doing so. Do you stop the inhuman experiments or do you allow him to finish his work, thus possibly saving thousands?

The classic: A member of an oppressed group who uses questionable methods to fight for the freedom and survival of his group. Think Magneto.
Morka
01-16-06, 08:56 AM I once designed a LE cleric of Auril (Forgotten Realm goddess of winter, cold & snow) in a little community. As long as he was receiving his tithes, he was able to "control" the goddess. But if he was about to miss food to sacrifice to Her, he couldn't guarantee the village would survive the next winter...

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
JulesCARV 01-13-06, 10:08 AM	We all know anti-heroes. Y'know, the knight whose father was slain by the evil lord, and is driven by a thirst for revenge, and to hell with anyone who gets in his way, good or evil, the righteous crusader whose fanaticism in pursuit of justice leads him down dark, twisted paths, etc. Yada yada yada. What about anti-villains, though? People who are basically antagonists, opposing the heroes, but who are basically sympathetic? Not sympathetic as in, "well, they had tormented childhoods" or "they used to do good stuff" or anything like that: actually sympathetic in the sense that their actions, right now, often seem justified, at least debatably, were it not for the fact that it's so inconvenient for the heroes. I'd say this is a "101 anti-villain concepts" thread, but really, those threads never come out to exactly 101 or 1001 or whatever anyway, so I'll just ask everyone to post their ideas of how anti-villains could be worked into games. 1. Modernizing king who seeks to limit violence (honor killings, brigandry, duels among nobles, etc) by stripping the commoners and nobles of weapons (beyond the "farming and cooking implement" level) and concentrating them in the hands of the state army and police. His forces have no sympathy for heavily armed adventurers. ("but we only use our weapons for good!" / "So, you wander around killing people and taking their treasures, but you make sure that you only do it to evil people? I'm sure the judge will like hearing that one if you refuse to give your weapons up. Look, if evil is such a concern to you, you can apply for the Royal Army or Militia, as I did, and you'll be armed appropriately for your mission, but you can't just wander around with a small armory on your back without authorization and expect us to take it on faith that you're acquiring your treasure from wicked brigands and orcs, and that you haven't robbed any merchants yourselves.") 2. Spellcaster who uses socially unacceptable forms of magic for the common good (e.g., someone who uses undead assistants in her business, raised from the bodies of people who agreed to give their bodies over to her in exchange for gold). Note: I don't care about the "can necromancers be good" issue. I'm just saying that, whether this person is good or evil, she could be sympathetic. 3. Person from a villainous society who, while still in many ways evil, is significantly better than most people in his society. (e.g., southern white circa 1830, "Of course black people are less intelligent than whites, and can never truly become civilized, and will always exist, to some extent, in a state of savagery, but still it is wrong to enslave them and treat them as property, whipping them bloody as is so often done. Couldn't they live as free people, freed from the whip and chains, without going to absurdities like giving them the vote or treating them as whites without acknowledging their immutably barbarous nature?") 4. Ruthless overlord who makes everyone opposed to him disappear (whether through assassination, abduction, or any other means) and ensures that no one could ever challenge his rule. Rules over a historically troubled land that has been continually plagued by civil wars, rebellions, and invasions. Now, with the ruthless overlord enforcing the peace, common people are finally beginning to be able to build businesses, improve their lands with irrigation projects, etc. The intelligentsia and old nobility hate his abuses, but many commoners love the peace and order that he has brought. 5. Secondary villain who obeys the main villain's orders, and is loyal for personal reasons, but isn't personally evil. Doesn't always approve of what her boss says, and maybe even consels him to reconsider particularly evil courses of action, but is loyal through and through. ("I can't claim to approve of everything my brother orders, but he is kin, and if you are trying to defeat him, I will stop you if there is a single drop of blood left in my body!")
Morka 01-13-06, 11:30 AM	1. Modernizing king who seeks to limit violence (honor killings, brigandry, duels among nobles, etc) by stripping the commoners and nobles of weapons (beyond the "farming and cooking implement" level) and concentrating them in the hands of the state army and police. His forces have no sympathy for heavily armed adventurers. ("but we only use our weapons for good!" / "So, you wander around killing people and taking their treasures, but you make sure that you only do it to evil people? I'm sure the judge will like hearing that one if you refuse to give your weapons up. Look, if evil is such a concern to you, you can apply for the Royal Army or Militia, as I did, and you'll be armed appropriately for your mission, but you can't just wander around with a small armory on your back without authorization and expect us to take it on faith that you're acquiring your treasure from wicked brigands and orcs, and that you haven't robbed any merchants yourselves.") In a city in Cormyr, Forgotten Realms setting, there is a law forcing people to attach their weapon in their scabbard with an "honor knot". It's just a special knot that can be untied as a full-round action. Someone caught without it on his weapon would be put in jail. The same way, spellcasters would have their 4th and 5th fingers tied together, preventing them to cast spells with somatic components. I think back in late Middle Age or in Renaissance, only nobles were allowed to have weapons, because their duty was to protect their subjects. This is the same reason why shaolin monks use so exotic weapons. Most of those weapons were used as tools by the lower classes, and the shaolin monks developped ways to use them in combat. Now back with the main subject :D: 6. After defeating the evil necromancer and clearing his lair, the PCs found a secret chamber with an altar. On the altar lay a mummified baby. They can also find a secret journal, describing how the evil necromancer was a former adventurer, who took a wife and had a child. A year or two later, his beloved child died, either of natural disease or killed by another evil entity. This made the former adventurer almost crazy, he tryed to raise his child, but was unable. Orcus/Nerull/Shar or other evil entity convinced him he could give him the power to raise his child from death, if he was willing to do one or two things for Him... 7. There is still the stupid adventurers who stole the Brass Dragon's hoard (made of golden art objects), and sold it to an innkeeper who himself sold it to a wealthy collector. Now the Brass Dragon is furiously searching his hoard, and destroying everything in his path... 8. The "cursed ones": evil lycanthropes, the warrior who found an evil, intelligent sword (or simply a Berseker sword), the poor man dominated by a succubus... 9. The ghost who wants to stay in his haunted house. In fact, there should be another reason why the ghost doesn't rest peacefully, a reason the ghost either ignore or don't want to remember. 10. Nature vs Civilisation: woodsmen are wildly cutting all the trees in a forrest, either by stupidity or because the king force them to. As a results, treants, dryads and other sylvan creatures are attacking all the nearby villages.
Lyinginbedmon 01-13-06, 01:42 PM	11. The Ranger who hunts boar in the woods for the nearby city purchases a house previously occupied by a group of mages working on summoning spells. She spends many uneventful weeks there and even becomes attuned to the nature (Woodling, Monster Manual III). Until she ventures into the Room of the Infernal Stain, and the summoning ring is reactivated, bringing forth an Demon wolf that rapes her, impregnating her with it's seed and creating an Unholy Scion (Heroes of Horror). She gives horrid painful birth to the creature, immune to its control but unable to remove it, alone in the house, the Demon long since gone. But that's not all! The US Wolf wants it's own pack, so remembering that it's an Evil Outsider, it takes on a Oedipal relationship with it's mother, attempting to birth it's own group of demon wolves from her as its father did. So, the Ranger goes insane from isolation and constant raping by her own child, who she can't refuse due to lack of ability and strength (Think, level 3 Ranger with Animals as favoured enemy?). When the house is resold and adventurers are hired to clear it of the horrid abominations attracted by years of Taint (Heroes of Horror again), she lashes out at them the moment they open the bedroom door. They kill her, and an unfortunate force for good is destroyed, and the US Wolf now knows they're there... Actually did this one in a recent game to introduce Taint for a horror campaign. Magnificent results!
Rudysseus 01-13-06, 06:06 PM	12: Not just a single person, but a group of them. Think of it like the Fellowship of the Ring, although if the evil people exchanged places with the good. A task needs to be done, and the various groups of evil people (works a bit better with more intelligent, semi-lawful groups) gather and appoint representatives (which would account to having different PCs in the same group, despite being evil) that are ordered to work together to accomplish the task. (my game's version was they were ordered to go and kill an evil presence that jeopardized the separate evil organizations' existence). So while the "villains" can literally be from any background, they have a somewhat "sympathetic" reason for others to say "oh, well...they ARE trying to save us. even if that is only a side effect"
Harrow Blade 01-14-06, 02:02 AM	13) A good church order or paladin order is set on destroying an artifact as in the wrong hands it could cause a world wide catastrophy. However this artifact is the only thing keeping alive a group/community of good peaceful creatures/people.
cerberuspuppy 01-14-06, 11:02 PM	The current storyline in Order of the Stick has them butting heads with a Paladin. That sort of thing can easily happen, especially if the party is Chaotic or just plain unruly. One way to go about your idea is to set up a Law vs Chaos conflict as opposed to a Good vs Evil one. When I am running a game, I create a character (last time it was a Justicar) who will hunt the party down, beat the snot out of them and bring them to justice if they should ever get into the habit of running around blowing everything up. Sometimes a conflict on both axes can be interesting. The two main styles of this are Robin Hood (LE authority opposed by CG rebellion) and Falling Kingdom (LG authority crumbing into chaos or besieged by CE hordes) Either can be poignant and dramatic. In the first, the party is constantly on the run from the authorities and has to avoid civilization. In the second, civilization is falling down around their ears- the orcs are overwhelming every city one by one and the nobles can't get their act together.
cerberuspuppy 01-14-06, 11:27 PM	You can do different things with conflict and alignment, or you can give alignment a secondary place. A good way to do that is with political conflicts. Two schemers may share similar alignments and philosophies, but hate each other for purely personal reasons- and the party might even have to choose between them. The party might have to work for a LE lord, because there is simply no other legal recourse. They can't just murder him in his sleep, and they can't make any charges stick to put him in jail for even a day. It's interesting to see how a party deals with something like that. Do they ignore his alignment and take their orders anyway? Or does the entire focus of the campaign become how to take down this lord without getting themselves killed in the process? Such a character can be interesting in his own right. He is Lawful Evil, after all- he might have great respect for the law and tradition. He might act according to a strict code of honor. He might refuse to actively harm women and children, but refuse just as strongly to help them when during a famine. He might pass up a chance to cheat on his taxes, and then kill the man who did. He might admire the Paladin's discipline even while shaking his head at the shining knight's naivite. All this is without even getting to the "lawyer" type of LE, who might look for any advatageous loophole in the letter of the law. That's even assuming that alignment is a major distinction. You could have a plot less like Lord of the Rings and more like Song of Ice and Fire (aka "Game of Thrones), where just about every major player would flunk just about any D&D alignment test. That kind of political viper's nest can provide a nearly endless font of conflict. The party doesn't even have to be involved in the intrigues; they could be warriors, even "pawns", or maybe they are just sick of being manipulated and they rebel against all the politicians.
Arilou_skiff 01-15-06, 09:29 AM	The humanoid (orc/goblin/gnoll/hobgoblin whatever) Warlord who, while he is a brutal conqueror, is also thinking ahead: Rather than simply slaughter he subjugates, builds cities and walls, creates trade-routes and to some degree offers protection (both from other humanoids and more "civilized" races) in exchange for taxes. Essentially a humanoid who has crossed the line between banditry and government :p A fiend who is out to claim the soul of an evil mortal. He has no actual interest in anything else on the material plane, but is simply seeking to claim what he considers as his. A desperate magician looking for a cure to a plague has gone far enough to use living humans to experiment upon.... Only he actually wants to cure the plague, and thanks to his inhumane experiments is very close to doing so. Do you stop the inhuman experiments or do you allow him to finish his work, thus possibly saving thousands? The classic: A member of an oppressed group who uses questionable methods to fight for the freedom and survival of his group. Think Magneto.
Morka 01-16-06, 08:56 AM	I once designed a LE cleric of Auril (Forgotten Realm goddess of winter, cold & snow) in a little community. As long as he was receiving his tithes, he was able to "control" the goddess. But if he was about to miss food to sacrifice to Her, he couldn't guarantee the village would survive the next winter...