So this is a bit of a brainstorming topic to gather some ideas and help on how to create a good story motive, but something I tend to have trouble with is how to create an interesting and enjoyable villain with a motive that seems logical and real. Most of the time I tend to notice several of the cliché ideas (eg: I am a warlock, I am a psycho, I was tortured, I want to destroy the world, etc) but trying to place them into a story can be hard because the character either comes out 2 dimensional or they feel like they are forced to do bad things because of 'reasons' and they are meant to be the bad guy.

So the question is:
- How do I create a better villain that doesn't feel forced?
- What are some ideas for motives that can be used besides your standard 'take over the world' scenario?
- What sort of history should a villain have in order to drive them down the path of evil, rather than seek redemption?

Villains, in my view, should be forged from the settings and backstories they come from. In some instances you could have them created knowing absolutely nothing but an insatiable lust for <x, war, food..> like the levvies from supernatural. Or, and what may end up as more interesting of a character, you have ones that came from a situation that changed them. Some event, influence by another, discovering something to change their philosophy. They could be driven to a single cause that people would think is evil but really comes down to your perspective (revenge, perhaps).

You could also have an anti-hero character, or someone who isn't necessarily evil, but takes causes that would be to the majority morally incorrect to reach a just end or at least something that they feel would make the world better. In the end, I think it all comes down to the motive.

I'm hoping that tackled the asked questions, just something to think about.

Depends on weather you're making a villain who realises they are evil. Most people don't think of themselves as evil. Hitler and Stalin for example almost certainly thought they the good guys. And truly evil people are very uncommon; Most people don't wake up and want to murder and rape and destroy the world.

They may be well intentioned extremists, who are doing horrible shit because they truly believe that it will create a better world in the long term. After all, if a few million people have to die to create a utopia, isn't it worth it? Every great empire needs to crack a few skulls to establish himself,
Maybe the reason they are trying to rob fort Knox is because someone close to them needs an expensive surgery to save their life and its the only way they think they can raise the money in time. Sure, eventually they'll be caught but its not as though the doctors are going to undo the surgery just because it turns out the money was stolen. He realises what he's doing is wrong, but he'd rather save the life of someone he loves.
"I was tortured" doesn't really work simply because generally people know their torturer and simply want revenge on that person. It doesn't make them evil. But if there is a general target, for instance, a Germanic Warlord who returned to find that the romans had slaughtered his people and enslaved his wife and children. He doesn't know who ordered it, only that it was Rome. So he takes up arms and leads an army to destroy rome, sacking his way across Gaul and Italy to get there. In his eyes, he's the good guy out to destroy those who wronged his people, in the eyes of the people he ironically wrongs in sacking his way across the lands, he is a monster responsible for unspeakable atrocities.
Perhaps he's a crusader; The leader of his faith has declared that god wants them to retake a holy city and slaughter the infidels that have stolen it. As far as he's concerned, he's the good guy whose doing the will of an almighty benevolent being.
Or maybe he's just ambitious and ruthless, coveting a station above his own and willing to stab people in the back and blackmail his way to the top.
Perhaps he views his countries leadership as weak and feels their going to lead only to ruin, so he leads a coup in order to install a better leader (which doesn't even need to be him) who will be able to keep the country stable and perhaps even improve it.

As for not going towards redemption, well, if the person thinks their the good guy then anyone trying to turn them toward redemption is, to them, a liar trying to convince them to become evil.

A good villain is based on the concept for Blue and Orange morality. They are not inherently evil, but the path they have chosen is directly blocking the protagonists of the story. For example, an army general is not either an angel or a demon, but rather just a dude who wants to win this war for his country or return back home to his wife and kids.

This is not to say you can't have a villain that is entirely evil; what would a villain be without evil? However, you've got to have the right motives. Perhaps he has to get something important back. Or maybe he's trying to save his family. All of that usually would be nice and all, except he's going the wrong way about it. Sending out his minions to sack villages, killing suspects, the usual evil stuff. Get what I'm sayin'?

The scale of the setting is very relevant when constructing your villain. If you're basing it on an entire world, the villain might be from the neighboring nation, working to advance it's goals. Or if you're running an rebellion, the villain might be an occupier. If you're using just a single country, it might be an overly ambitious noble.

It might make it interesting if the PCs and/or the players aren't sure at the start who the villain is. Making one or both of those struggle to identify the opposition can make for a good story.

Outside comedic mockeries, few villains see themselves as evil. If they do commit acts beyond what is culturally acceptable in their society, they'll always justify it somehow. Build your villain as you would a PC, just use a different set of morals.

I think one of the few people who actually tried to make themselves the villain was Lelouch from Code Geass. Ironically, he did so to promote unity and peace though I think it might have been revenge driven at first. Or you could go the Batman route, where a lot of the villains are actually based on facets of Batman/Bruce Wayne. Only they've been twisted or exaggerated to extremes.

Nothing unifies a group of squabblers better than a common foe.

A villain raising the dead and doing his or her best to take over the world is a typical such case. For some reason, people typically don't like the idea of the world being ruled by the undead... Ungrateful breathers, right?

The consensus of this thread seems to be to kind of suggest that villains are (or should be) people too, within the context of the story and that they should therefore have a strong, justified motivation. I don't think that's strictly true. Be prepared for graphic scenes of references to literature, anime, tv shows, and films.

All stories are driven on conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist. Because the antagonist is what stops the protagonist achieving their goals, they are frequently typically 'villainous', in order to, uh, vilify them and make it easier for the audience to identify with the protagonist. For example, in WW2 films, it's abundantly clear that the Holocaust-mongers are the bad guys because they're behaving like assholes - we therefore root for the protagonists. If you have a strong villain, even if they're hammy or clichéd, you will probably have a strong narrative.

Who says anything about a villain having to have a good motive, though? In Othello, Shakespeare gives Iago all of one line to justify his woolly motive (iirc; he was passed up for promotion in favour of Othello), which is given as part of a soliloquy and thus only and explicitly for the audience's benefit. It doesn't make his scheming against Othello throughout the rest of the play any less villainous, however. Everything Iago does and is is in service of his slightly rubbish desire to cause Othello's downfall - and explicitly says or does nothing else once Othello's ordeal is over because he's done his bit. Does it make him any less deep as a villain? Perhaps. Does the play suffer for it on the whole? Not remotely. The play is not about Iago. The play is about Othello's downfall; it's Othello we care about - which is something I think can easily trip RPers up.

Since RPing is telling one story from many PoV's (as I see it), one would think it lends itself to including villainous characters, but I'm not so certain that strong villains or antagonists are actual major agents in fiction - there are certainly many examples of strong villains and antagonists barely taking action, whether literally or more generally. While Iago doesn't shut up in Othello, he actually does little beyond talking the other characters into torturing themselves with their own personalities. Jaws is widely considered to have been so scary because of the suspense of the shark not really appearing in shot very much. In Harry Potter, if Voldemort's going to turn up, he's going to wait until the end of the book. In Doctor Who's reboot, the villainous force of the finale of a given season appears briefly or is hinted at throughout the season (and is assumed to be responsible for at least some of the disasters of the week) before appearing in the final two episodes of the run. Much of whatever actions any of these characters do take is off-screen - and therefore, a PC that is also the (known) villain who is posting at the same regularity as the other PC's is not in keeping with the trend here.

Of course, as Elri says, the villain need not be known to the audience or the other characters, and therefore taking action on-screen remains in keeping with that trend, because it is typically ambiguous and amid red herrings anyway - Agatha Christie's bread and butter.

I think this trend exists because the antagonist has a narrative advantage - in order for there to be a plot, they must be a sufficient threat to overcome, otherwise the audience doesn't care. We don't actually need to see the antagonist or villain do very much in order to believe that they are a threat, and they certainly don't have to appear in person to hinder the protagonist. Giovanni is the highly unsympathetic villain and overarching antagonist in the original cartoon series of Pokemon, but it's the comically incompetent Jessie and James that get sent to bother the protagonists. While they are also antagonists and villains, they couldn't really be said to be particularly threatening. However, by using them as Giovanni's proxies, it implies his authority (and therefore, asskicking quotient) and preserves it, because the audience doesn't actually know very much about him as an individual or purely as a combative opponent.

A common thread in these examples, by the way, is a surprisingly simple motive, when reduced to its essence.



All fiction is derivative. No plot has not done before, in essence. Your villain will have the same general motive as another villain from somewhere else down the line. Napoleon the pig from Animal Farm is in it for material wealth and agency; just like Team Rocket. But they're not the same villains, and Animal Farm is no less disturbing to me because I can find similar motivations between anime villains fifty years Animal Farm's junior. It seems to me to be about style, rather than substance - not necessarily a criticism.

It's about finding the right balance for your world and your plot, and working out how those actions that the villain takes gives the work the right tone. Jessie and James maintain a comical, child-friendly tone by squabbling, being stupid, and generally fucking things up; when Giovanni steps in, it's gonna be a lot more serious because he packs a lot more heat than his cronies. Note that this works even with the predictably simple motive of Money&Power. The Dark Knight is a lot darker with themes of legitimate Chaos, and it sets that tone by raising the actual damage output of its villain: the Joker blows shit up, and people die. Extremely srs business indeed.

Long story short:

A high-quality villain is typically a fairly complete person, though he, or she, need not have had any sort of good life. Something put him/her on a dark path, after all. Explaining the justification could take many pages, or it could be done in a single sentence. Occasionally, it might even work to not explain it to the players. But for the sake of consistency, we suggest to have a reason in private at minimum.

Thanks so much for the feedback guys. Certainly a lot more information than what I thought would be available.

I found the Blue/Orange Morality point that a few of you mentioned interesting as it's something I haven't heard of or thought of until now. Having something as "Evil" because of it's construct and requirements is definitely a trait I'll be keeping an eye out for. I was looking around online and found a some good examples:

- Stargate: The Goa'uld are certainly this, as being taken as a host is repeatedly used as Nightmare Fuel, but for the Goa'uld it is an essential and natural part of their biology. After all, would you want to spend your entire life swimming back and forth in a pond lacking opposable thumbs and sex organs?

- Death Note: The Shinigami. Their entire existence revolves around killing human beings, and they need to do it to survive. Their greatest sin is to kill someone to preserve the life of another, which is apparently too close to playing God. Ryuk dropping the Death Note onto Earth out of boredom seems pretty cruel, since it turns Light Yagami and others into callous killers, but to him, killing people with a Death Note is just a part of nature.

Both of these parties, Goa'uld and the Shinigami, are evil in the eyes of us humans/heroes, but in their own eyes they are simply doing what is natural to them. This goes back to what @Ellri was saying in how the villain may not view themselves as evil simply because of the nature of the world.

@Jig's statement on how some powerful villains rarely showed up is something that I can both agree with and admit is a cool way to create tension. By knowing as little about your enemy as possible, you don't know what they are like or how dangerous they will be during an encounter. Throwing out another example would be Vaas from Farcry 3. You as the player rarely meet him, and yet each time you do it seems to be that he has become even more crazier then the previous encounter.

Again, thanks for the info.

No problem,@NuttsnBolts. It's a fun theme to discuss.