Villains - What's the right balance of 'evil'?

Villains are often some of the most interesting characters to write, especially when you're in something of a DM or administrator role, and most RPs will probably have a wide variety of different kinds, even if there's one Big Bad Evil Guy over them all.

A lot of the best villains have tragic backstories or twisted origins, but sometimes this can go too far and create a character who's sympathetic but not threatening, or where their evil schemes are at odds with their supposed nature. Then there are the ones who are just evil for the sake of evil, drowning puppies and pushing grandmothers in front of cars.

What do you think is a good balance? Is it better for the villain's motives to remain a mystery forever, be revealed late in the game, or should they have an early reveal? Perhaps more importantly, how powerful or all-knowing should they be? What are some favorite examples (good or bad) from your RPs or existing media?

In my old Bleach RP, the villains were often of the "I'm evil because I am" variety, and as a player, it was something that disappointed me. The few who were different really stood out, though. One that I was intrigued by was of the mad scientist variety: a dead man named Daedalus who possessed no spiritual power in the afterlife, but was fascinated by it and studied it, eventually growing to be obsessed with the evil spirits, Hollows, and how they functioned. He eventually developed methods by which he could manipulate the forms of the Hollows, using them to create armor, weapons, and even a massive airship -- all out of the cursed souls of the damned. He had no sympathetic motive, nor did he want to take over the world: his goal was an unrelenting pursuit of greater knowledge and mastery, and putting down anyone or anything that got in the way of that goal.

When I eventually became the admin of the RP, I asked myself a lot of the questions above. It was my first time in the driver's seat, and I wanted to make a good impression, make a memorable villain. The one I did make, I played very low-key for the better part of two years, while more flash-in-the-pan enemies took the spotlight: a massively powerful Quincy survivor, the new pseudo-mechanical beasts created by an enemy human organization, an ancient vizard whose sole power was turning the powers of everyone around him into his own strength. They served as obstacles and hurdles, but none of them felt like they had long-term potential.

 

I would concur with your sentiment about villains being the most interesting characters, Will.

In terms of balance, I tend to like a villain who appears to have one set of motives, but turns out to actually have a different goal entirely. I tried to write a character started out moving in one direction as a big bad and through a series of circumstances and events changed direction. She was still just as evil but she had to adapt to different events and therefore had to move another way. However I had to cut her plot short when the aforementioned Bleach RP sort of came to a halt.

As for the memorable villain, I think that the second case you mentioned had a lot of potential. I would have really enjoyed seeing that particular plot continue and being a part of it. However, Post Terminus is likely to have another great villain that you'll have a hand in, Will. I don't doubt that you've got tricks up your sleeve!

 

I don't know if I would say villains are always the most interesting characters, but that's mainly out of a desire to make sure I dedicate myself to interesting heroes and everything in between, too. I would say that they are the easiest to make interesting, at least for me, because they almost by definition come prepackaged with something not quite right about them. That's such an obvious starting point for building something unique.

I honestly don't believe a character needs to be a threat in order to be a great villain. I also don't think you need to hide their motives, necessarily. To me, it's much more simple than that: if I make a character that people love to hate, I've done it right. The most success I've ever had in that regard is when making villains who utterly believe they're in the right - and, more than that, who can put together an eloquent and mostly sensible argument to support themselves. Just throw in a little lack of understanding, a twist of hypocrisy, plenty of arrogance, and way too much emotional investment in a flawed ideal, and you have yourself a nice villain cocktail. Just think of someone like Cersei from Game of Thrones.

The most recent villain I made, who I like to think was a success, was one I made after I read Atlas Shrugged. I pretty much just made a posterboy for objectivism: he was ambitious, he only respected people like himself, he didn't believe in charity or helping others, and he enjoyed a very privileged life that allowed him to achieve at the expense of others and thus to continue to keep these ideals close to his heart. I then added a playboy streak and a tendency to think horribly degrading things about others while putting on a facade of perfect manners. The result was a character that had other characters rather charmed and their players howling all sorts of delicious hatred. Unfortunately, I found myself having to drop him when some players wouldn't play ball and made their characters somehow psychically aware that hating the guy was reasonable and fair.

I also think that truly memorable villains should be almost relatable and likable. The above villain I wrote was obsessed with two things above all: self-improvement and family. Both of these are good things to care about, but when you take that to an extreme, you can get a wildly arrogant over-achiever with a tendency to get controlling and emotionally abusive to the people you love.

 

I think a lot of it, too, is "what makes a character a villain?"

For one, I have a powerful magic-using woman who just has no empathy and central nervous system. She loves nothing, fears nothing, and is a sheer b*tch. Her backstory is that she's never been recognized and had to claw her way up from birth, so power is her thing. She's utterly terrible.

But! I also have a man who's one of the best criminal masterminds, steals from museums and private residences and sells on the black market - just so he can donate the money to hospitals to help children afflicted with severe illnesses (anonymously, mind you) because his sister has battled with cancer and he wanted to do something about it.

Both are my villains, technically, but so shaped by their backstory! :)

 

To me a great villain is one of two things: someone who is relatable and has clear motives, perhaps even a twisted logic to justify it and just enough good or tragedy to make the reader like them, pity them or understand the motives behind their actions. Not necessarily evil, but dancing somewhere in that grey area of 'if you had experienced their path perhaps you'd end up the same.' - the other type, and possibly the easier to write is the enigmatic agent of chaos with no back story and no rhyme or reason for their motives - fear is scary and the unknown is fearful so you can create some wonderful characters that way. Throughout various games I've played both and even heroes that have become villains over time - those were fun!

 

I have always loved the stories where you see things from the villains point of view. When a character makes you feel conflicted, makes you wonder if they're right or wrong, and makes you question your own values, that is a good villain.

Good vs evil is never clear cut in the real world, why should it be in the games we play and the stories we tell? Sure, we try to escape reality for a while, but it can also be a great release to explore the things that bother us in real life via the pages of a book, the movie or tv screen, or the rpgs and stories we write.

Movies like Maleficent show us there's always two sides to the story, and the reality of it is usually somewhere in between. We're taught from when we're young that she's the one in the wrong, that she cursed that poor defenseless baby... But then this movie showed us a reality where a man made some very questionable choices, betraying a friend to improve his lot in life, and then Maleficent's actions didn't seem so cartoonishly out of nowhere, and the king was no longer the victim everyone believed him to be.

 

I absolutely adore villains with understandable motivations. Particularly ones who believe they're doing something for the greater good only to discover that the decisions they've made have tipped them into the very morally dark territory. Some of the best villains I've seen written are the mysterious ones where you've only a faint idea of their motivations but they're intriguing and dark and draw you in. I liked to see well rounded characters too - especially the likes of the morally ambiguous man/woman who only lets few into their emotions, will do ANYTHING to keep them there and destroy ANYONE who threatens their happy family and on the surface appears loving, kind and generous while moonlighting as thieves, murderers or terrorists - believing that the reason they're doing such things is for the safety of what happiness they've managed to find.

 

I think the timing on a reveal is based in what the character is good for. Are they a short term antagonist meant to stir up the hornets nest? Then revealing them early in and letting people understand them is a good idea - after all they may not be around long enough to make this a forever love affair. But if its a major enemy, someone meant to be the puppet master behind the various ill intentions playing out in the group, then I'd certainly hide their intentions/history. Let it be a thing of wonder to learn more about them because that kind of enemy is effectively a part of the world lore.

Though I completely agree on them NEEDING to be 3 dimensional. Too often I run into players wanting to run enemies as these Disney evil characters - doing bad things just "because". They like to make hollow threats and then promise to carry out on them "next time" but the player never wants to be that evil so they back off when next time comes.

 

I think it all depends on the site and the people role-playing with you... also the rating of the site. One of the main things though, is a reason. I find a lot of people forget that. They make villains who like to do evil things simply because they are evil. They never give the motive behind it.

 

Many possible variants of villains exist. There is also the banality of evil, or what happens when basically good people do nothing. I like villains who are believable for the world in which they are written, have some serious flaws or other defects that present actual difficulties to them and, like so many others have already said, have some rhyme and reason for being evil, even if becomes evident only later on in the game.

 

I like my evil to be a little over the top and as evil as evil comes, maybe with a little random streak of goodness mixed in for good measure.