Introduction to Villains and Heroes
00:00:02
Speaker
creatures by the man you and I are not so different I'm not like you you're a murderer well to each his own I chose my path you chose the way of the hero and they found you amusing for a while the people of this city but the one thing they love more than a hero is to see a hero fail fall die trying In spite of everything you've done for them. Eventually they will hate you. Why bother? Because it's right.
Types of Villains in Storytelling
00:01:03
Speaker
All right, Mark, you've cornered me. I cut our episode off last time, but you found me and you're going to make me do the rest of it, aren't you? This show must go on, Ben. Hey, you guys. We are back with part two of our episode on villains. Last episode, we went through a taxonomy of different kinds of villains you might meet, masterminds and monsters and all kinds of other villains.
00:01:26
Speaker
And we just thought the topic was too big to contain in one episode of this podcast. So this week, we're back to complete that story. The Rogues are going to take their revenge. This week, we're going to start, Mark.
The Importance of Villains' Presence
00:01:41
Speaker
this week we want to bring all those elements together that you know we we basically set the table last week we talked about the different type of bosses you might fight and villains you might fight and this week we're hoping to kind of put them together in a way that you could use at the table so i think we want to start with the villain's thumbprint those villains, they've got to live in your player's heads rent free. Their fingerprints need to be all over the game. Their villainy, their evil, it needs to be effectively everywhere so that the players don't forget they're there, so that the players are feeling threatened by it. And when that villain finally shows up, it's going to be an event.
Strahd as a Case Study
00:02:18
Speaker
I don't play a lot of modules, Ben. I know you've ran this module a few times and you've both been a player and you've run it. But tell me what makes Strahd such an effective villain, because it sounds as though from everything I've seen and what little I've played, he's always around. Like you can't escape him.
00:02:34
Speaker
This is something you find with literary villains as well. Like you think Sauron is kind of like this in Lord of the Rings. Strahd is just somebody who's got eyes and ears everywhere. He's somebody who has monsters and lieutenants and creatures out there in the dark. And his will is felt all over the land. and He permeates the Rovia.
00:02:54
Speaker
And I bring up that name in particular because I can't think of any other module that has a villain that people actually know the name of. Oh, that's a really interesting point. Again, we're kind of being D and&D specific here, but what about like Vecna? That's true. I could say, but I guess Vecna is a little bit more recent. Yeah. But Strahd goes back for quite a while. I remember Strahd when I was playing second edition, I think he was, people were playing the Ravenloft and Yeah, I think there's no question he's at the top of the mountain. Yeah, so the I always kind of wondered like what made him resonate with people and I think it's the fact that he's kind of shows up a lot. First of all, he's he makes himself known. He doesn't let the players forget he's there.
00:03:39
Speaker
I think it's a really good point. Hey, you guys in the, uh, in the comment section, if you're reading this on YouTube or if you want to drop us a comment, I want to know who you think wins Strahd or Dracula for best vampire. What
Strahd vs Dracula
00:03:51
Speaker
do you think? mark strater Well, I mean, it's Luke Cage. He comes to get his money. No, uh, no, I had, I mean, I got to go with, I mean, isn't Strahd Dracula, this needs the same thing. I mean, that's the thing. one of the One of the points about Strata that makes him really memorable is he's your classic vampire aristocrat. And so vicious, but also, in a weird way, kind of noble. So here's the thing, friends.
Vivid Villain Presence in Games
00:04:20
Speaker
Villains, to be effective, they need to be felt by the players. And there's a couple different ways you can do that. One way is that they need FaceTime with the players. And we're going to talk in a moment about how to make that FaceTime happen without things going totally sideways. News flash, guys, it's going to go sideways. Yeah, they' just going to try to figure out how to control that ah sideways momentum. But go ahead. I will say this, though, there's there's other villains that are sometimes felt more than seen, but they're still very vivid and the evidence of their evil needs to be vivid. I'll give you an example
The Jaws Example
00:04:50
Speaker
here. Mark, think about Jaws. We used Jaws last week as an example of a monster who he's killable and you don't see him very much.
00:04:58
Speaker
But man, he is just intimidating the heck out of that movie. And whenever he eats somebody, it is vivid. There's a body washing up on the shore or a body part, or there's a fountain of blood in the middle of the ocean. I think every time I go swimming, Ben, I i feel his presence in some way. That's right. However you do it, the villain needs to be evident in your world and vivid. When you finally do bring that villain out, early or late, one of the things to really think about is,
00:05:28
Speaker
How are you going to introduce that villain?
Introducing Villains Effectively
00:05:29
Speaker
Go back to our section on player introductions. We did a whole episode on player introductions. All of that stuff could apply to your villain, too. So take a look at that and see how you can really make that moment where the villain comes in really expressive of who that villain is introducing him in the perfect way. I think Darth Vader's introduction to Star Wars is great.
00:05:48
Speaker
There's some other ones that can sneak up on the players, though, too. One of my favorite kind of villain reveals is that, oh, it was you all along. and The person you thought was an ally or a friend or ah somebody good turns out to be sinister. Yeah, those are fantastic ones, man. When you pull the wool over the players and surprise them with that a villain they didn't know, if it makes sense and it falls logically, oh, it just drives them crazy. I love it. Yeah, the sense of betrayal is palpable.
00:06:16
Speaker
So now let's talk about what happens when you do introduce that villain.
Protecting Villains from Eager Players
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Speaker
Mark. I want to talk real quick about insulating your villains, Ben. This is probably one of the most important things you can do when you when you create your villains. If you want that villain to last, you need to insulate them.
00:06:31
Speaker
And this is how you protect them. You want them to have screen time with your player characters. But let's face it, they're just, they're all murderer hobo's, you know? Yeah. I mean, most player parties, as soon as they know that guy is the villain, they will go straight at him. Mark, you and I played a long time ago with ah a friend of ours, a player who every time you brought a villain out to monologue or whatever, he was like,
00:06:53
Speaker
I threw my knife at him like before the guy got a sentence out yeah there's just like this eagerness it's like it's like palpable how much they want to get the first shot and take them down so the players aren't going to stop at anything to defeat your villain so we need to insulate them here's some of the ways we can
Public Villain Encounters
00:07:10
Speaker
There's all sorts of ways to keep in mind, and you could combine some of these in different ways, but you could give them a lack of actionable information, Ben. Like, they don't know if this is the 100% if this is the person. Maybe they're operating at 60% or 70%. Is that enough to go full Murderhobo? Yeah, I mean, most player parties fancy themselves as good guys, heroes. And the idea that a player party could take down an innocent person, that could be enough to stay them if you can implant some reasonable doubt.
00:07:39
Speaker
I'm going to tell you one of my favorite ones. This is one I've used in several games. I love
Villain Protection via Allies
00:07:44
Speaker
it. It's have that encounter with that villain in a public place. I've had an encounter with the villain that the group hated. They hated with the passion of a hundred hot sons men. They had to sit down at dinner with that villain in a public place in a party in their honor. And it just drove them nuts that they were sitting across the table and they could see the villain. They're like, that's why we're at this party.
00:08:09
Speaker
It had to be as awkward as that dinner in Cloud City between Darth Vader and Han Solo. It's tough. That's one little trick. Have it in a public place where they can't feel like they can fully express themselves.
00:08:23
Speaker
And by express, you mean draw steel, throw spells, get laser bolts, and all the other kind of things. That's what I'm talking about. But let's also talk about that powerful ally. I think about Cersei in Game of Thrones. She had a lot of insulation standing next to Ser Gregor. Oh, yeah. The Mountain. So if your player characters think they're going to take on Cersei, are you going to take on Ser Gregor? Probably not.
00:08:46
Speaker
And it doesn't have to be just one guy. I mean, I think a lot of player parties will know that they could probably take one bad guy down, if even if that guy's a powerful lieutenant. If you have 10 Gregor Cleganes, if you have an army of immortals standing nearby, like whatever it's got to be. So the villain in this that case kind of insulates themselves with their
Consequences for Player Actions
00:09:05
Speaker
allies. And that gives them that protection that they need to get off that monologue that you you want to do or have that conversation with the players face to face where they can maybe have those failed threats, maybe some smack talk or just outright hostility. But it's tempered with the fact that they could all have a full party wipe.
00:09:24
Speaker
if they want to push it too far. Something that you're kind of keying into here, which is that players also need to have storytelling instincts and trust in kind of the process when it comes to villains. You know, I mean, they've got to be willing to let some of those settings do the work and realize that, you know, if I'm reading the room, this is not the moment where we just start going after the villain. We need to have that interaction. We need to have that bit of story come out because the villain's got to say his part, too.
00:09:54
Speaker
you're You're right about that, Ben. But one thing you got to really do as a GM when you have these types of interactions is you can't make a threat that you can't back up. Oh, that's really true. What I kind of mean by that is like if your players are just going to go along with the idea of like, well, you know, this is a game and the GM is not going to really full party wipe us. If we push this scene too far, you got to be willing to do it. You got to be willing to wipe that party.
00:10:19
Speaker
Yeah, you really if you want to stick to your guns on this, you got to be willing to really push it to a point where like players can't think they can just get away
Fair Play with Defeated Villains
00:10:29
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with everything. Mark, you I know this about you because we've played together for a long time. You were stern but fair.
00:10:36
Speaker
If we wipe, we deserved it. you know we're We're not here to just completely stomp on player characters or players, but the stakes need to be evident to them and you need to back them up. I do think that like the flip side of plot armor is the deadly dangerous dice that roll and can sometimes undercut the player's sense of their own heroism.
00:10:57
Speaker
Yeah, and we'll kind of touch on what happens when your player characters succeed. So we'll we'll get right back to that. But I'm going to talk about one more way to kind of insulate your characters. And I'm going to argue that this might be the weakest of the examples. But I do think it can have its place. And I think if it's done right, it can be quite effective. And that is when you've captured the players.
00:11:17
Speaker
the the reason why i think it's the least effective is because the players don't really have much of a choice sometimes having the choice and having to make a choice that you don't really want to make causes the player ire but when you've got them captured they don't have a choice they just have to take it and that just kills a little bit more resentment doesn't it I would largely agree, except I did have a really great session or two where my character was captured by his arch nemesis. And we've talked about this on this podcast before. I do think that if you do that, to your point, you can't entirely rob the players of agency. What yeah made that whole thing effective was that my character had a little thing he could do. he couldn't
00:11:54
Speaker
pick up his guns and go after the bad guy but what he could do is start just carefully trying to to subvert the bad guys henchmen and start to turn those guys and make a better deal and hey you know what now he's free all the sudden a whole different story begins to merge where are the characters triumphant because he could take a little advantage and turn it into a bigger one and that makes you feel ten feet tall.
00:12:16
Speaker
Yeah, the main thing that like just handle that last one deftly, you know, and it can really be effective. I just don't think it's as effective as some of the other ones, but it still has its place. Yeah. The common denominator in all of these, right, is that the villains are getting that screen time to explain some story point or frankly, just to get under your players skin a little bit and reinforce their villainy.
00:12:38
Speaker
So here's the thing, friends. These are all ways of helping stretch out your villain's lifespan a little bit. Players, as we know, are going to be going after those villains as hard and as fast as they can. And so you've got to be thinking, too, about, hey, if you want that villain to come back, if you want them to be a recurring villain, what do you do? And Mark, I have had so many experiences as a younger GM where my players just killed. Can't come back. That villain is gone.
00:13:04
Speaker
Well, then I got to tell you, I've gotten many experiences as an older GM for that scene. All right. So what do we do to get those villains out of Dodge and help them escape and live to fight another day?
Villains' Escape Routes
00:13:17
Speaker
Well, you gotta plot and plan, man. You gotta have a trap door, like an s escape route. You gotta have a way to get them out of, you know, combat when you need to. And here's the important thing, Ben. It can't be a contrived, lame, get-out-of-dodge free card. It can't be that that door that was on the other side of this dungeon that's deep in a mountain, all of a sudden opens out to a balcony where the guy's got a waiting griffin to ride off into the sunset. yeah Players know when they're being jerked around like that. One thing to say here, too, though, is if you lose the villain,
00:13:45
Speaker
play fair and lose him fair and square. That's not the end of the story. Maybe there was somebody worse that that villain worked for. Maybe that villain's got family that are going to come to avenge him. You can play the full gamut of of options here. Yeah, I've seen players come up with some of the most creative things and pull out all the stops and take down a big bad. And I wasn't quite ready for that, but I got it. You know, you got to give those players props. They did it. So that is worth celebrating.
00:14:11
Speaker
I think a good example, if you want to see a good recurring villain in a story, go watch the first Captain America movie. The red skull in that movie has a great introduction where he finally pulls off this fake flesh face and we see his grinning red skull for the first time as Captain America is looking across a catwalk at him. They trade punches here and there and then the catwalk separates. They've got enough room to talk. This is another way to insulate and then The next thing he does is he starts leaving. And in fact, he's been leaving. Basically, he sees Captain America on a monitor, and he's like, oh, this is done. And he's already on his way out. A lot of times as GMs, we might go, oh, that's the moment where the alarms go off, and he's going to go in there and try to take care of this.
00:14:55
Speaker
Yeah. And you got to make sure it's within the rules too. Like it needs to follow yeah the rules and we got to be playing by the same rules that the players are playing. Make it fair. Friends, we have for you a villain lifecycle checklist. This is going to collect a lot of those things we were talking about before and hopefully put them in a ah schema, a blueprint for you. And one thing to your listeners, if you're going along this checklist and you're like, why this kind of relates to me a little bit and you kind of get to the end of it and you're checking off all those, you might be the villain.
Villains' Agendas and Actions
00:15:25
Speaker
Yeah. All right, so here we go. Number one, ah villains are probably busy doing evil schemes and laying traps for the players long before the players ever set eyes on them. Remember, villains have their own priorities. They're not here to mess with your player characters just for your player character's benefit. They're out doing whatever it is that is motivating them, world domination or billions of dollars or whatever it might be. So have them doing that stuff before the players ever see them. And as soon as they're aware of the players, which could be before the players ever see them, start having them send lieutenants or lay traps or create problems for the players that they're not even present for. it
00:16:01
Speaker
Yeah, and you've talked a little bit about villains having a bit of a life before the player characters. Now they're meeting the player characters for the first time. You need to have them with a great intro, just like the players have
Memorable Villain Introductions
00:16:13
Speaker
a good intro. When Darth Vader steps onto that ship for the first time, when we are in the first five minutes of Jaws, you you know, the very first time in the 2015 Godzilla movie from Legendary that you see him show up at the airport.
00:16:26
Speaker
It's amazing. Your players should in some sense, even though they hate villains, they should in some sense be like, oh, that was cool when that guy showed up. You can't tell me when that T-Rex in Jurassic Park showed up. Oh, yeah. Oh, my gosh. I mean, monster villain. Well, so they need colorful intros and they need colorful escapes. We were talking a moment ago about how we want to have villains get out of combat or how we want to insulate them.
00:16:52
Speaker
One sort of thought here is think about whatever that is going to be and then think about a way to make it memorable. And we were talking a bit about that last week. We'll talk a bit more about making villains memorable this week too, but don't just make it any old kind of plane that they get on. Make it like the Red Skull. He's got this weirdo rocket helicopter plane because that's amazing.
00:17:11
Speaker
Yeah, and that color colorful escape doesn't necessarily have to be just a villain. It could be the players. If you're going to have an escape from the villain, make it colorful as well. The breaking of these entanglements should be just as exciting. And Mark, I think this is where it makes sense to start talking about our fourth point here.
Villains' Evil Acts
00:17:27
Speaker
the villainy of the villains. They need to be doing dastardly deeds. They need to be doing stuff that you go, wow, that is evil. It's doing medical experiments on kittens. It's kicking puppies. I don't know what it is. Mark, whatever it is, we got to hate them for it. Absolutely. You just got to build that kind of loathing. As a GM, I feed off that.
00:17:48
Speaker
Well, I'll say this too. If the villains are villains that know the players intimately, like we talked about bullies last week, or maybe if this is a recurring moment for the villain where they've had some history with the players and they're returning now, that villainy can be really targeted at the misery of the players. And I think that's great. That's what makes a great rival.
00:18:06
Speaker
Yeah, also just to another point, villains need weaknesses
Villain Weaknesses as Opportunities
00:18:10
Speaker
as well. Just like the player characters have weaknesses, the villains should have weaknesses too that the players can also exploit. And you had some examples of some good villains with kind of weaknesses baked into them. Yeah, I think when you think about villains,
00:18:23
Speaker
Think about weaknesses that are interesting contrast points with your heroes. If you have a super smart player, maybe his arch nemesis is somebody that's super strong, or vice versa. If you have a super durable character, maybe he's facing off against somebody who's kind of sickly. Think about all the different kinds of villain weaknesses you might have. They could be physical weaknesses. They could be psychological weaknesses, where maybe these guys are drawn into puzzles and traps. Could be social weaknesses, where they're outcasts.
00:18:53
Speaker
One that you had mentioned to me that I liked, I thought when you brought it up, I'm like, Oh God, that's brilliant. Yeah. Like Dr. Freeze from Batman. He was, what was his thing? He had like a ah ah wife or something that was frozen. What was his?
00:19:06
Speaker
Yeah, Mr. Freeze, he's like a ah Batman villain with a really tragic past. And I think they really did a great job of that in the animated series. His wife had some kind of terminal illness. And so he got into cryonics so that he could freeze her so that she could live until a cure could be found. And of course, all of his efforts in villainy, bank robberies, other things, they were all just efforts to preserve and extend her life. And so he had this whole tragic backstory that motivated his villainy.
00:19:36
Speaker
And what makes that so interesting is you could be fighting this villain for a while, and then maybe later in the campaign you discover this. That would be kind of like, you would it would make you pause and go,
00:19:46
Speaker
Oh man. What an amazing turn. Yeah. I'm conflicted now. Yeah. All right. Let's move on to our next point.
Understanding Villains' Motivations
00:19:54
Speaker
Villains need great motivation. Players need to understand what's going on in that villain's mind, why it is that they're doing what they do. Mark, even though we had this in the notes, of course, as soon as we say this kind of thing, I think of exceptions. I don't know that anybody knows what the Joker's motivation is.
00:20:07
Speaker
in In a sense, though, I would say it's trying to find out his motivations, which is also kind of maybe you are never going to figure them out. That's kind of part of the enjoyment of of that particular character, isn't it? Yeah, I do think, though, that conversely, like when you think about the magnetos and the doctor dooms of the world, right? These are guys with very clear motivations. Don't miss that about your villains.
00:20:27
Speaker
And also, like lastly, let's talk about the villain's final
Planning Villain Endings
00:20:31
Speaker
chapter. They need like a planned ending. These are usually at the campaign arcs as they're kind of winding down, but you need to be really thinking about that villain's demise and what it means, not only for the players, but the story as a whole. When that villain's gone, does all of the air go out of the campaign? Is that what the whole campaign was about, was putting that guy's thing to a stop?
00:20:51
Speaker
If we're playing like a superhero game, what does that ending mean for the villain? It could just mean that they're captured and sent to Arkham Asylum. They might come back again some other day, but that story is wrapping up. I know it's kind of hard though to plan an ending when you've got players who may get a lucky die roll or other things. so try to have in mind what you think your ideal is, but also try to think about what would happen or what you would do to tie things up neatly if that villain ends up catching a bad saving throw. So we got one last thing we're going to go over and we're kind of just going to go over this again because we talked about it briefly in our last episode, but I do want to circle back and kind of end on it one more time with your
Creating Memorable Villain Traits
00:21:34
Speaker
villains. Please make them memorable.
00:21:37
Speaker
I don't know how you do it. It might be their weapon of choice. Maybe it's a two by four. Maybe they're always smoking and you find evidence of the cigarette butts being burned out in his victims. Maybe they stutter. Maybe they have a limp. Maybe they have a Pokemon collection. I don't know, but if you can make- They're leaving Pokemon cards at their crime scenes?
00:21:57
Speaker
Honestly, I just thinking about it now, Ben, I could just imagine players finding out that the villain has a Pokemon collection and their goal is to steal his collection. That sounds like a really fun game. So seriously, just if you think about it, if you make these things memorable, their minds, they're not going to forget your villain. And essentially, that's what you want. You want that one to live in a little part of their brain is like memorable.
00:22:25
Speaker
Oh, what is that noise? That, my friend, means that it is time for our tune up segment for this week. And this one's really brief, but I think it's really great. And it corresponds neatly with our villain's episode topic. All right.
Playing Characters Smarter or Dumber
00:22:38
Speaker
Hit me, man. What are some tips to role play a character who is much smarter or much dumber than you are? And I like how they kind of snuck in two questions. I suspect this listener is smarter than we are. Let's see what our tips are here. So smarter or dumber. So let's start with smarter. Mark, what do we do for characters that are smarter than we are?
00:22:54
Speaker
I always think that like when you're playing a character that's really out of your league, smart, you got to rely on that dice a little bit. This is where you as a GM need to step in and you know extend a little grace to your players. GM has to buy into the fact that this character is a genius. And so there are many times when you're going to allow the player to roll a dice and you're going to reveal some things to them to let them know that like, Hey, you're playing a genius. And I get that you're not.
00:23:17
Speaker
That's interesting. So you're imagining this is characters who are smarter than their players, but these are players you're talking about, not necessarily GM characters. Yeah. I mean, I'm sorry. Yeah. Maybe I wasn't very clear about that. These are players who are playing characters whose intelligence score is larger than theirs. Okay. Now I understand the GM buy-in part. So that makes sense. I think also the corresponding is true, right? If you're playing a smarter than average villain, you've got to have the players buy into that too.
00:23:45
Speaker
I think some of the things we talked about last time in terms of masterminds apply here, right? If you're playing that as a GM, you can give your villain more access to information. Certainly they can see a lot of things that players can't. But Mark, what are some of the things you would do to help the players feel smarter?
00:24:00
Speaker
One thing the players can do, just take a moment and look at all the skills that your smart character is going to have and use those as much as you can. There are things that your dumb character barbarians or low-int characters in this space, they're not going to have a big skill list to draw upon. So you should be looking at that sheet and using those skills as much as possible.
00:24:21
Speaker
I really like that advice too, because these kinds of characters will tend to go to their strong suit first. They're going to go to their intelligence before they're going to go try to solve problems with their fist. If you have a high intelligence character, then lead with those skills, lead with that intelligence, because that's how your character has probably gotten through most of their life already.
00:24:39
Speaker
Exactly on the flipside Ben if you're playing a low intellect character Maybe you're relying on your fists because that's how you got through much of your your life I remember this one comic book actually it was the second ultimate series back in the 2000s Hulk is fighting this ah version of the abomination and of course the abomination in the series is fully articulate His mind is great And in the opening exchanges, abomination is beating him up and talking about how Hulk is so stupid or whatever. Of course, as happens, Hulk turns the tables, he gets angrier. But in the ultimates, Hulk is talking sass to him. He's sitting there, like, beating on him as he says things like, how many legs has spiders got? What is the square root of this or that? You know, he's just, like, asking him questions as he's beating him up. Like, you're not so smart. It doesn't matter if you're smart. I will outsmart you with these fists.
00:25:30
Speaker
Yeah. I think of one of the the great characters that we've seen recently and in film was the Drax, the Destroyer. Oh yeah. Like he's just this kind of like lovable. He's dumb as rocks. Dumb as rocks. But he's funny. He's got a heart of gold. And if you're playing a character like that at the table, you got to be willing to make purposeful mistakes, but don't derail the entire game. Don't make it arduous for the rest of the players, but just have fun and revel in that kind of stupidity. I will say the bit where Drax is like, I'm moving so slowly that I'm invisible. Sounds like exactly the kind of thing I would expect at an RPG table from a player that was playing up a dumb character. you know I said just a moment ago, don't derail your game. Derail your game. Have fun, OK? Just a little bit. yeah Yeah, I think that's kind of the appeal of those characters, that they are there to be a little bit of humorous comic relief from time to time. Kind of a bit of a chaos agent, aren't they? Yeah.
00:26:25
Speaker
Well, this has been great. Mark, I think we have covered in two episodes our villain's topic for today. We put the villains to rest. Is there anything else we should wrap on here? My brain hurt. All right. Well, it sounds like we're wrapped up for this week, everybody. We're looking forward to visiting new topics with you next week. Until then, keep those dice rolling.