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Raise Your Rogues Gallery
20 Plays5 months ago
In this episode of Tabletop Tune Up, Mark and Ben dive into the world of villains and how to craft memorable antagonists for your RPG campaigns. Drawing inspiration from cinema, they explore how different villain archetypes—like the Authority, the Bully, and the Mastermind—translate to the tabletop and the unique challenges of portraying them. They discuss effective ways to reveal villains and create emotional stakes that keep players on edge. Learn how to create complex, memorable foes and bring your rogues gallery to life.
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Overview
00:00:01
Speaker
I'm bored. What plaything can you offer me today? An obscure body in the SK system, Your Majesty. The inhabitants refer to it as the planet
00:00:27
Speaker
Most effective, Your Majesty. We'll destroy before annihilation.
00:01:17
Speaker
Welcome back to the Tabletop Tune Up, everybody. My name's Mark, and I'm joined here by my friend Ben. How you doing? I'm good. How's everybody doing today? Well, they can't answer.
00:01:28
Speaker
because they're not here, Ben. Well, how are you doing today? You know, not that bad. Not too bad. Hey, we got some exciting stuff to talk about today. We sure do. I am frankly surprised it took us this long to get to this
Exploring RPG Villainy
00:01:40
Speaker
topic. Mark, what are we talking about today? I don't know. Procrastination. That's a common gem problem. Yeah. but Procrastination is the greatest villain in all gems. But today we're talking about villainy. We're talking about villains. Good ones, bad ones, and all of them in between.
00:01:58
Speaker
Raising Your Rogue's Gallery is our episode title, and today we're going to talk about all the different kinds of villains you might have. A taxonomy of terror, you might say. Mark, you've got some particular views, though, about how it is that villains work in RPGs, maybe a little bit differently from the way they work in some other kinds of stories. Why don't you and give us your thoughts here? Ben, I have opinions.
00:02:22
Speaker
ah shit and You're going to listen to them. It's my podcast, and you're going to listen to them. Yeah, we're we're thinking about villainy and thinking about games and how different villains are in games versus say like on screen or in books. I'm just going to bring this up. Hot take. Darth Vader.
00:02:42
Speaker
Wonderful villain. yeah Like we all love Darth Vader, one of the best villains on screen of all time. Darth Vader, not a good villain for a game. He just, I don't think he would work as as we so depict him in the movies. Here's the thing, cinema, the camera is able to focus on a villain in cinema, follow them around. Some of the great moments of villainy is Darth Vader choking people, using his force to just abuse his underlings. You get to see his management style and nobody likes a boss who chokes his subject. No, no, not a good boss. But that's part of what makes him so good is that the camera can follow him around and we can we can witness those things firsthand. We can't really do that at a game table, at least not how we typically play the game. So what are your thoughts on that, Ben? Hot take or not?
00:03:34
Speaker
Okay so Mark you think Darth Vader is not the example of a good RPG villain because a lot of his villain is happening quote unquote off screen. who Who can you think of that would be a better example? Here's a villain I'm going to throw out there that I think players would hate.
Iconic Villains: Joffrey and Others
00:03:49
Speaker
I know I hated him on the show.
00:03:51
Speaker
And I know a lot of people really wanted him to die a horrible death. And that would be Joffrey from Game of Thrones. I don't know if I hated a villain more than Joffrey. You know, it's funny. The actor is apparently such a sweet guy in real life. I'm sure. But my goodness. Yeah, we all hated Joffrey.
00:04:07
Speaker
Yeah he played me what a what a great job he did with that character but let's let's talk about why i think he's such a great going for a game. All of his villainy his debaggery all that stuff happened. In front of the players you know literally that the characters in the book you know that would be in a game they would be the player characters right so if you're playing are there something or if you're playing yeah one of these other characters is virtually like it's happening right there in public right in front of the court everybody can see it happening.
00:04:36
Speaker
And he's insulated by all these people who are much tougher than him. Um, he's just obnoxiously annoying. What a fantastic villain. I wish he was in my game terrorizing my players. You know, I was going to say, if you had Joffrey in a game, your players are going to be all like, Oh yeah, let's go take him out right up into the point where you introduced them to Greg or Clegane or whatever your game's equivalent of that it would be. Mm-hmm.
00:05:02
Speaker
Now look, I actually disagree with you about on-screen versus off-screen villainy, and i I think you're generally right, but I do think it's possible for people to do cutaway scenes and games.
00:05:13
Speaker
So I'll tell you why I think that's true, and I'll tell you a couple of things that I think you can do to make sure you do that right. I think most people haven't done this, but I don't think it's something you cannot do. I think it's something that's actually kind of cool. And I have done this in games where you have a cutaway scene, and I'll usually place it kind of either at the beginning of a session or at the end of a session to kind of contextualize some of the action and the things that are going to go on in that session.
00:05:36
Speaker
What's cool is that you can use it to fill in story in advanced plot and fill out some of those characters, which is something that you need to do for the players, not for the characters, right? You're right that the characters wouldn't have seen that. But technically, there's no rule that says you can't give scenes to the players that their characters just aren't present for. And so if that helps fill in the story, that's great. But there's some caveats. There's some things you need to do if you're going to do that well. Number one, you need to have players that are not going to met a game.
00:06:04
Speaker
Number two, don't tip them to anything you don't want them to know in these cutaway sequences, either as players or as characters. Number three, remember, they're not going to have any agency in that cutaway, right? Their characters aren't there. So if you're going to do it, make sure it's quick. And again, put it somewhere consequential so that what it really is, it's a moment where you can heighten the stakes, where you can maybe explain something that happened. I could argue with you on this, Ben, if you're wrong.
00:06:33
Speaker
well to each their own that's the look I would just say this folks, maybe there's a in between. Maybe we take a page out of video games where.
00:06:45
Speaker
If you play a game like System Shock or some of these popular kind of horror games, a lot of times you're going to find audio clips or you're going to see that the effects of what that villain has done. I think when the players are tangibly handling something or maybe seeing the repercussions of what that villain has done, um you could even have an encounter where they they come across ghosts who can tell about the villainy of this person.
00:07:11
Speaker
There's a little bit more interactive than just say a cutscene where they're not really a participant in. So maybe we can find a milligram, Ben. For our listeners, it's whatever you need it to be. Take the approach that works for you and your players. Some players can get really engaged by that if you're telling a good story. Other players are going to get bored and wonder why you're wasting their time. As always, know your group. I can't argue with that.
Villain Archetypes in RPGs
00:07:34
Speaker
So let's talk about some of the villain archetypes and I'm going to call back to Joffrey. When you're kind of looking through these archetypes, think about where Joffrey might fit in. And you could do this with name your favorite villain and kind of think about this. So we're just going to kind of run through a few of the archetypes that might work well for your game. Ben, why don't you start us out?
00:07:53
Speaker
Yeah okay so the first thing is there are villains that you might not actually think of as villains most of the time or if they are they might be villains who rate only a one on a scale of one to ten. Could be people like J Jonah Jameson or they could be maybe Magneto at times who's not really doing evil he just kind of wants to be left alone but he's still generating problems for you. Or one of my favorite antagonists you think of Belloc and Raiders of the Lost Ark He's just a rival. He's just going after the same things. Indiana Jones. Yeah, we're thinking about rivals. We're thinking about we call this the antagonist, Ben. Like this is a person who's not guy. He's just maybe not a villain as per se, but he does push the story and he can become a villain, right? That's right. I mean, when Belloc finally seals Indiana Jones in that tomb, I guess to the Nazis, and he takes them off and they're going to go to Berlin. He's a villain.
00:08:45
Speaker
Yeah, he he took it, he took it too far. You know what I mean? Like there was no going back after that. So he, you're right. He just became that villain and what a great villain he was. Yeah. So if antagonists get desperate or if they're pushed into a corner where they really have to reach into their psyche and find out, do I really hate this guy who is my player character rival? They could turn into villains. They could also turn into companions or friends or, or, or allies, I guess is a better word.
00:09:15
Speaker
Yeah, it could be really interesting. You could do the redemptive arc too, and I think there's a lot of good story there. One of my favorite things that a GM did was he made antagonists for my characters that weren't actually part of the adventures. I had a character who was like a pulp archaeologist, and every time he'd come home, he'd find these chiseling relatives that tried to, you know, mortgage his house.
00:09:34
Speaker
selling land under his name in Florida. Wow. And so, you know, it was like, no, I have a thing to fix now. I have to go take care of that thing. Somebody's resolving their family issues at the table, it sounds like. It was fun because it created a problem that you didn't solve with your fists. Let's kind of get into that, the villains, so the the you know, the threats. We're going to start with one who's maybe not even really a traditional villain. I guess he kind of is the monster.
00:09:59
Speaker
monster. What are some examples of monsters? I mean Godzilla, Jaws, you know, zombies kind of, you know, supernatural kind of threats. Forces of nature that are not really there to do evil as a kind of moral thing, they're just their wreck and stuff. I mean Jaws just wants to eat. He's the big shark. Godzilla just wants to crush Tokyo.
00:10:23
Speaker
yeah These are creatures that these monsters can't really be reasoned with. They are in some sense a force of nature. The monster is somebody that you don't reason with because they're not making choices that are bad choices. They're just doing what they do. and Another thing that you notice in a lot of these films and stuff with monsters, these aren't these aren't things that can outright defeat. You know what I mean? Godzilla is kind of set up as something that is unstoppable. You're trying to survive the monster or you're trying to outsmart the monster in some way.
00:10:50
Speaker
Some monsters can be defeated. Other monsters can't. Jaws, you can defeat. Godzilla, probably not. The trick with monsters, though, is that they should feel overwhelming. Jaws, even though you could kill a shark, I don't know where he is. I'm scared he could come get me. Let's face it, if you're in the water, it's overwhelming. There's not much you can be able to do.
00:11:12
Speaker
Let's move on to ah another type of monster, and this is a great villainy type monster, the authority. In comics, you've got the kingpin, the emperor, and Star Wars. I think this is where Joffrey Baratheon fits in for you, right? ah Yeah, and I think he does fit in there. He is an authority. So authorities are people that have power, power that people think they have to obey. That's important too. An authority is somebody that everybody around you, your NPCs, your Mentor character the innkeeper that you're visiting they all think this person has their office in some kind of legitimate way and so when that authority makes choices that they find evil they feel like they've got to tolerate it in some sense or at least up to a point they might be evil because they're immune to response i mean when you think about it you like.
00:11:56
Speaker
Am I going to go take on the Emperor? Well, if I do, I got to get through his army first. Yeah. Part of the reason he can be evil is because he knows I've got to do that. Yeah. Well, we'll talk about insulating your, your villains, but they got fantastic installation protection from the player our characters and we're going to, we're going to dive into that a little bit later.
00:12:12
Speaker
There's another wrinkle with their authorities too that's kind of interesting, which is that authorities can think that they are required, not just entitled, but required to use the powers of their office in some way that's evil because that's what the officer requires. If you want to like get nerdy about this, go all the way back to like Thomas Hobbes. It's part of the power and the office of the King that they've got to enforce justice and they've got to use the sword. And that's not something you or I get to do if we're not King.
00:12:38
Speaker
And so yeah they could be saying, look, I know that you don't approve what I'm doing, but I got to do it because that's what the office requires. That's what this is. Well, let's move on to another one. This is one I really like a lot. This is one I've implemented in games before. Always to great effect. This is the bully
Complex Villains: Masterminds and Henchmen
00:12:56
Speaker
band. We all hate bullies, right? It's just putting me right back in high school. So the bullies, I like to think of a classic one, Johnny Lawrence in the Karate Kid. We could argue that maybe it was the Karate Kid who was the bully, but you know, that is a philosophical conversation for another time. It's a very interesting Reddit thread, let's say.
00:13:15
Speaker
Yeah. So Johnny Lawrence, you know, just a great bully picking on that, you know, Daniel Biff from Back to the Future, Regina George in Mean Girls. You know what? I have not seen Mean Girls. Oh my gosh. She's horrible. She's just, just the meanest. Here's an interesting thing though. Joffrey is also a bully. yeah So now we, we know that we can could now combine some of these villain archetypes into combinations. They can make some for some really fun combinations.
00:13:43
Speaker
Okay, so I could have an antagonist who's also an authority. Yeah. Can I have a bully who's also a monster or does that one just not combine well? there might be a things you could do to like make that happen. I don't know. I don't think I've combined them, but no, I'll take that back. Maybe we'll talk about this in another episode someday. I did have a sea bass that was mounted to a wall who did talk a lot of trash to the party. He was both a monster and a bully. One of the things that I think stands out about the bullies is that they are mean.
00:14:15
Speaker
Yeah, and I mean that they have intimate knowledge of your characters or their weaknesses, their psychology. They know how to get under your players skin. Yeah. So when you're thinking about creating a bully type villain, you want to find people who know what your character's psychological weaknesses are and exploit them.
00:14:33
Speaker
Make them feel small they try to build themselves up by making those around and feel feel tiny so. Yeah boys are very effective at the table i can't stress that enough like it somehow. Triggers something deep in all of our psyche if you ever been bullied and let's face it then a lot of us gamers have been below. That's exactly right so the boys very effective don't leave that one on the table.
00:15:01
Speaker
That's really great. One other thing to note too about bullies is they're often social. They like to play to a crowd. So try to come up with occasions for bullies to show up whenever there's a lot of people around. Mark, last episode you talked about Dylan Sasse. This is a perfect example of when you want to have a lot of that stuff ready. to go These bully retorts need to dig a little deeper than most. They gotta hurt. All right. Well, there you go. Hurt your players. Let's move on to the mastermind. Masterminds are classic villains. They are the ones who know all the angles, who are thinking about all the elaborate plots. They are often successful in society. Lex Luthor, Hans Gruber, let's say, from the Die Hard movie. I'm thinking of ah Mr. Glass in Unbreakable. I mean, he's kind of a mastermind. yeah Here's the thing with masterminds, they're difficult because there's a certain level of intelligence that's involved that I maybe don't have.
00:15:52
Speaker
That's the challenge of playing smart characters too, right? So the flip side of that is that mastermind villains challenge you as a GM, but you've got some tools in your tool bag though. Make sure you make down notes of things you want to do, marks you want to hit. Don't be afraid to pause the game for a little bit. You just say, Hey, give me a little time. You need to make sure your mastermind is a step ahead of the players. They have elaborate plans, trap doors, contingencies, escape routes.
00:16:16
Speaker
You got to make sure that like they have all those in place. and that means That means you have to have those in place as a GM. they got to You got to be thinking ahead as to what the players might try to do to them. One of the things that you have as an advantage though is that you actually know what all this different Impacting points and elements of the venture going to be and so in a certain sense you as a gm can i don't wanna say metagame but you can give your mastermind access to more information than other characters might have simply because they've probably thought through all this stuff.
00:16:49
Speaker
Now, when you're thinking about weaknesses for masterminds, if you're going to give them those strengths we just talked about, make sure that their curiosity or their ability to be intrigued by puzzles or unanswered questions is something that they might do irrational things for. Maybe these people are bored by their intellectual lessors that they're always hanging around.
00:17:07
Speaker
They also might not suffer a player trying to one up them in that intelligence department. Their EU maybe couldn't stand that low. So that might be a way to kind of engage with the players when you have somebody who is playing that, also that kind of rival mentally.
00:17:21
Speaker
The best of the doctor doom appearance isn't fantastic for you're going to see a lot of that. Oh, yeah. Well, I also want to talk about, um, femme fatales and I kind of, I'm going to put them into this group, Ben. I know some might think of femme fatales as a separate thing. Let's face it behind the makeup and behind the beauty that disarms the person. There is a ah devious mind there with elaborate plans and she's just using what she's got. She's not bad. She was drawn that way.
00:17:49
Speaker
to quote a femme fatale. And this is an interesting kind of villain, but it could be really kind of kind of awkward at the table. So I'm not sure if a femme fatale works particularly well at most tables. Certainly don't think it would work well at mine. You're right that you want to be thoughtful about reading the room. You know what I mean? Players are often not going to be up for this kind of thing. But I will say you don't have to dispense with the concept altogether. What you could do is you could have the femme fatale be working on NPCs.
00:18:16
Speaker
So that scientist you were going to extract now he's not where you were expecting me to be kidnapped and right and then you've got a old driver for a whole new plot element correct i mean the film still could be a villain but it may be the media players are coarser. Maybe aware of it in there but it's just so could be a very fun. Rival particularly if she starts to like use her wiles on maybe other NPCs that are befriended the group like all you fell for that.
00:18:44
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. People you want to rely on might get a little less reliable around a femme fatale. Well, we're talking about characters that now might be working for a mastermind if they're not masterminds themselves are the henchmen. And boy, we love henchmen. Henchmen in this category are not just the kind of faceless MOOCs and troops and goons that every you know mastermind villain has. Mark, who are some of our favorite henchmen?
00:19:08
Speaker
Clarence Bottiger is my all-time favorite. If you haven't ever seen Robocop, I hated that guy so much. You know, Boba Fett is essentially a henchman. Odd job. And the entire category of Bond lieutenants, I think, are great. Taking off his hat and throwing it. It's ridiculous.
00:19:23
Speaker
So here's what's cool about henchmen, right? Henchmen are people that set themselves apart from that larger group of faceless MOOCs. When you're creating a henchman, you want to distinguish them. You want them to be different from that group. Make them colorful or mysterious or noteworthy. Give them a special gadget or a weird tick.
00:19:42
Speaker
make their personality or their appearance or something about them stand out. Because if all you do with your goons is you make that you know third guy taller or stronger or have 10 more hit points, that's not going to do the trick. Players should be hating your henchmen too. they I mean, treat them with some love. Henchmen, interestingly, insofar as they're not part of that faceless mass of goons, they might not share the villain's motives. And that might give you a really interesting story opportunity to cause them to leave the villain's service or maybe even turn to the player's cause. They have their own path and journey they are on too. um We got to treat them like that. But speaking of a path and a journey, I want to move us over to the machine. We're talking about the Terminator, Ultron, Ava from Ex Machina. Do you think she's a villain? Man, I don't know. Maybe.
00:20:29
Speaker
No, actually, he's probably the hero of that story, to be honest. Yeah, we also talked about Roy Batty. yeah Although, from Blade Runner. Let's face it, the whole point of that movie maybe maybe was to showcase it that the replicants are more human than human, you know? So maybe that doesn't fit either. Let's maybe focus a little bit more on like Ultron or or Terminator. what What is it about them that excites people? One thing to think about here is that they're a little bit like the monster and that they are kind of operating without agency. Part of the thing about the Terminator, he is just relentless and he's scary because he cannot be reasoned with. He's relentless. This is like the Kyle Reese speech to Sarah Connor. He's never going to stop hunting you. And so those kind of non-human traits, I think that's a big thing.
00:21:13
Speaker
Machines are are interesting too because they they reflect the hubris and the ego of the creator's men. You think about Frankenstein or even Eva from Ex Machina. The hubris was just a big part of that egomaniac character in Ex Machina. He just couldn't see her humanity because ah because of his ego.
00:21:31
Speaker
Yeah. You know, what's interesting is that both those examples you mentioned, they both are created in response to, or they become what they're going to be in response to the weaknesses and the failings of those creative originators. And you you kind of answered your question earlier. I think, didn't you not say like, can a monster be something else? They, they can be a machine. They can also be a henchman. I mean, you could have a, a robot monster henchman. Yeah. So. Oh.
00:21:57
Speaker
I suppose masterminds have in their employ shark tanks, right? and Other monsters that they could use. Yeah. Let's talk now about the next category. And Mark, I think this is one of your favorite types.
Memorable Villains and Their Traits
00:22:08
Speaker
Let's talk about the fanatics.
00:22:10
Speaker
ah fanatics are fun. I mean, I look at the operator in Serenity or the Joker in Batman, who might actually fall under mastermind as well. These are people who have these ideologies, whether they're just extreme or not, but they just drive them. And that makes for an interesting villain, particularly if those ideologies conflict with your players.
00:22:34
Speaker
Yeah, I think in some sense, the fanatic is most interesting when they've got either a very opposite ideology to the players. You can imagine that like in terms of like Captain America and Red Skull. Yeah. Or also super interesting when their ideology is parallel to maybe an extreme version.
00:22:51
Speaker
of an ideology that maybe your players have. 100%. And that's actually, I think, even is even a stronger storytelling trick because it's those little differences that that the players have to think about and get frustrated by. Yeah. Now, phonetics are really extreme in this one dimension, but they might be really ordinary folks in other dimensions.
00:23:10
Speaker
a fanatic could be somebody who pays his taxes somebody who goes to church on Sunday a fanatic could be somebody who is ordinary in many moments in life and you can do a lot of really interesting things to conceal the fanatic yeah and in one of the interesting things is that when the players are fighting a fanatic they're really just fighting an idea.
00:23:28
Speaker
you can stop the fanatic. but Do you really stop his movement? you know So oftentimes to defeat a fanatic, you also have to defeat the whole movement and his ideas before you can even confront them. And even then, they might be broken at that point. Because when you've crushed that idea, what is the fanatic? If you manage to defeat the ideology somehow, then you might defeat the fanatic.
00:23:52
Speaker
So that's just a lot of us talking about villain types. Now we we talked earlier about how you can combine them and really I strongly suggest you do because combinations of these types of villainy create some really unique and memorable villains for your table. So like are you saying like when I go to villain college I want to make sure I major in say mastermind and minor in phonetic or something? You haven't picked your major yet?
00:24:17
Speaker
The idea of combining those categories are really great. Yeah. Um, and I think what, so you said Joffrey's probably a bully and an authority. Yeah, I would definitely put him as both of those. That's what makes him so, you know, delicious to say, so, so good because he, you know, has all this authority behind him and he's just a snot and he can say whatever he wants and he does.
00:24:40
Speaker
This is great. You can combine categories. One thing I would say, though, is be careful you don't combine too many categories. Otherwise, what that character is can kind of get muddled. You want them to be clearly defined at the table, don't you? I mean, it's just it's hard for the players week after week if you're playing to remember all the details. So the the more clarity you can have about your villain, sometimes the better.
00:25:01
Speaker
we need to make our villains memorable by giving them other traits and characteristics that make them really distinct. Tell us about the zany villain. I really kind of enjoy zany villains. Somebody told me, I can't remember who it was, and it was something that really dawned on me is like to make every villain is ridiculous as a WWF character, you know, or WWE. That's great advice. They're over the top, you know, they're just overcranked, ridiculous characters. And once I heard that,
00:25:28
Speaker
I started really thinking about that and using that ah to to extent. So give you a couple examples. We had these players who were running around the universe leaving a trail of these god-awful penny dreadful novels that everybody had been in the galaxy somehow had been reading. The Bard had been writing them and people had been reading them and trading them. And this one villain had been reading them and he enjoyed them. And he was in love with one of the characters in those books.
00:25:56
Speaker
And I just thought it was so funny when he met her how he would just profess his love toward her. And he had a bouquet of severed limbs to which he wanted to got to woo her with. Obviously the character, the player was not intrigued.
00:26:11
Speaker
lets Let's be clear, this was not a romantic subject. No, but it was ah it was a funny little twist to what would have been just kind of like a a henchman or something. I've had games where I've incorporated this HGTV couple. They go into houses and they renovate them. And I thought, what if these villains just wanted to renovate the West and they wanted to renovate all these old you know places that had importance to the players?
00:26:35
Speaker
And they were just sweet to each other, but just rotten to everybody else around them. Yeah, we hated those guys. So we we just make them kind of memorable. Give them something that that stands out. Make them kind of little zany sometimes. Don't be afraid of being a little overcrank. This is a game. Have fun. Great advice. Another kind of thing you can do to make your villains memorable is maybe make them a little bit reluctant to be villains.
00:26:59
Speaker
You can imagine all kinds of villains feeling conflicted about the choices they're making, but they feel like they have to either because they feel trapped by the system. Maybe they're not authority figures, but they're part of the bureaucracy, or maybe they're being blackmailed by somebody who's also a villain, or maybe just maybe you see this a lot in kind of like Frank Miller comics. There's people who are subborn by human. They needed that one substance. And in order to get it, they had to sell out your party, whatever it might be.
00:27:26
Speaker
Think through what you can do to make villains who you don't necessarily feel are evil, but maybe they're just weak or maybe they're just out of option. and Maybe they were options that were presented to the players and the players chose a different path. So it really gives that kind of like, hey, you know, that could have been you. There's a great villains in there and they really can be long term villains.
Redemption Arcs and Player Character Villains
00:27:46
Speaker
Another category here would be like the redeemed villain. So you could have villains who have arcs where they stop being villains. We just talked about that a moment ago as a possibility for a henchman. That could be really interesting and then maybe they become allies or maybe they even just sort of go off and find their own path and start new stories for you later.
00:28:05
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, Darth Vader at the very end, you know, turned on the Emperor. And what a great twist in that story. I can tell you, I never imagined that would have happened after sitting through the first two movies. Yeah, he seemed so unredeemable. But there you go, right at the end. Something else you can do too, right, is think about your players. Maybe your player characters are former villains, or one of them is. Yeah. Maybe they still are. A small-time car thief could make a good player character.
00:28:35
Speaker
Yeah, I had a, I was playing in the game with Randy once and one of the players was just being a tool at the table, just being obnoxious and starting to get into player fights, you know, play in within character to character kind of arguments. And at one point I just remember Randy reaching across the table and snatching up that character sheet and he goes, this is mine now. You need to make a new character.
00:29:01
Speaker
And he just basically compensated that character. And it became a villain. And we all loved to hate that villain. That's fantastic. That's a villain as a former player. Yeah. I just sort of look at that player's face. Must have come as a shock. A little bit, but you should have seen it coming. I like the initiative. And friends, if you've got to take that kind of initiative at your table to keep everything moving and smooth, then ah you know what? Do what you got to do.
00:29:27
Speaker
Well, hey, Mark, I think um we're going to get ready to do shift
Conclusion and Teasers
00:29:32
Speaker
gears here. We've been talking about our taxonomy of villains. Oh, man, we got so much to talk about with, you know, bringing this all together. Ben, why don't you queue us up? I don't think we can do that this week. I think this is the first of a two parter and our listeners are going to come back next week to see how we conclude our episode on villainy.
00:29:54
Speaker
So that's going to wrap it up for this week. ah Let's reconvene next week. This has been a great time. We're looking forward to more villain talk next week. And until then, keep this dice rolling.
00:30:50
Speaker
We'll show you how it's done