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Old 10-10-2013, 12:13 PM   #31
jason taylor
 
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Default Re: What makes a good villain?

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Originally Posted by Asta Kask View Post
I've just finished watching two movies with excellent villains - Die Hard and Wrath of Khan. In fact, both movies (especially Wrath of Khan) are made by their villains. And the same holds true of many roleplaying campaigns. But what makes a good villain? What makes a villain memorable? What makes him or her someone your players come back to the table to defeat, time and time again?
The Khan in TOS was actually a better villain. He had style, and was less strawmanish. He could actually make one of the Enterprise crew fall in love with him.

What makes a good villain is often the same as what makes a good hero however with different goals and means. For instance the Yakusa crimelord who studies martial arts, Samurai philosophy, fancies himself a Daimyo, and really can fight a duel, and really does have a SoD toward his family and his mooks, maybe even a CoH; but at the same time engages in drug-dealing, gunrunning, and slave prostitution might be a good villain. He has heroic qualities but he puts them at the service of evil.
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Old 10-10-2013, 12:41 PM   #32
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Default Re: What makes a good villain?

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Incidentally I don't really accept that a good villain has to think he's a hero. Hans Gruber doesn't think he's a hero. He's a guy who used to think that way, but is now cynical and has concluded that it's time to forget about changing the world and just get rich. Still a pretty good villain. It is true that people who theatrically announce that they are evil can't be taken seriously. But then neither can people who theatrically announce that they are good. Those are assessments which are only not laughable when they are made by everyone other than the one being evaluated.
But Gruber didn't think of himself as a "villain" either. As far as he was concerned, he was just trying to get what he believed he had coming to him, by the most expeditious means available.

It's a long-standing truism that "everyone is the hero of their own story," and this applies at least as well to the bad guys as the good guys. Emperor Palapatine didn't subvert the Republic and found the Galactic Empire so he could lord it over everyone - he did it so he could bring order to the galaxy. Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader while seeking the power to help people - whether they wanted his help or not. The Angels of the Lord, in the novel Lucifer's Hammer, had fallen under the sway of an insane preacher while trying to find a way to forgive themselves for some horrible things they had done in order to survive after Hammerfall (especially the cannibalism). And so forth.

A good, memorable villain will always act as if he's right and it's the heroes who are at best naive, and at worst working against the interests of the world at large.

Also, if you can figure out ways to make the heroes doubt themselves in conversations, that can help a lot. A good Not So Different speech can do wonders there, or one that just recasts the villain's past actions in a different light. (For example, and dipping into Star Wars again, the conversation between Anakin and Senator Palpatine during the Gungan opera in, IIRC, Revenge of the Sith, in which the actions of one Sith Lord are said to be due to his seeking the power to heal disease, and to have been actively discredited by the Jedi because they feared anyone with that much power. It played on Anakin's existing distrust of the senior Jedi, planting a seed of doubt that Palpatine could later nurture into a full-blown tree of betrayal.)
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Old 10-10-2013, 12:56 PM   #33
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Default Re: What makes a good villain?

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Originally Posted by jason taylor View Post
The Khan in TOS was actually a better villain. He had style, and was less strawmanish. He could actually make one of the Enterprise crew fall in love with him.
The TOS Khan hadn't seen his friends and family die because Captain Kirk was an arrogant ass-hole. That kind of thing can warp a man.
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Old 10-10-2013, 05:52 PM   #34
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Default Re: What makes a good villain?

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The TOS Khan hadn't seen his friends and family die because Captain Kirk was an arrogant ass-hole. That kind of thing can warp a man.
But I think the non-warped Khan was more interesting.

For an example of a bad villain, look at the Archimandrite in M. Banks' "The Algebraist". It's a fairly good (non-Culture) science fiction novel in genreal, but he's completely over the top in terms of sadism.
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Old 10-11-2013, 02:25 AM   #35
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Default Re: What makes a good villain?

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For an example of a bad villain, look at the Archimandrite in M. Banks' "The Algebraist". It's a fairly good (non-Culture) science fiction novel in genreal, but he's completely over the top in terms of sadism.
He also seems to be 'on-screen' for almost no reason whatsoever - he could as well be the nameless all-seeing council behind the curtain.
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Old 10-11-2013, 02:55 AM   #36
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He also seems to be 'on-screen' for almost no reason whatsoever - he could as well be the nameless all-seeing council behind the curtain.
I've only read that one twice, and don't recall all of the plot clearly, but IIRC he could have been omitted completley from the novel. Without reducing page count much.
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Old 10-11-2013, 03:32 AM   #37
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Default Re: What makes a good villain?

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I've only read that one twice, and don't recall all of the plot clearly, but IIRC he could have been omitted completley from the novel. Without reducing page count much.
As far as I can see all the Archimandrite adds is gratuitous sex and violence - his intended function may be to add moral ambiguity to the Beyonder Alliance: We're shown the oppressive side of the Mercatoria but the Beyonders seem fairly innocuous until you add in their alliance with the Starveling theocracy.
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Old 10-11-2013, 05:51 AM   #38
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Default Re: What makes a good villain?

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As far as I can see all the Archimandrite adds is gratuitous sex and violence - his intended function may be to add moral ambiguity to the Beyonder Alliance: We're shown the oppressive side of the Mercatoria but the Beyonders seem fairly innocuous until you add in their alliance with the Starveling theocracy.
I didn't notice that alliance much. Maybe the Beyonders are desperate? They are, after all, being hunted down by The Man.
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Old 10-13-2013, 08:18 PM   #39
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Default Re: What makes a good villain?

Villains come in various flavors, and they don't necessarily mix and match well.

For example, consider Tolkien's use of Feanor. He wasn't initially a villain, and later he becomes a class 'tragic villain', brought low by the interaction of the actions of other villains, mistakes and misjudgements by other non-villains, and his own innate character flaws.

In one sense, the villainous state of Feanor was a case of a certain sort of madness, brought on by the loss of the Silmarils, the death of the Two Trees, centuries of built-up resentment over various slights real and imagined, and above all else the murder of his father.

Yet he almost certainly still knew right from wrong, he had just ceased to care about them beyond his own personal 'rights and wrongs', leading to his self-daming Oath, murderous assault on Alqualonde, his betrayal of the other Noldor, his rashness in running ahead of his armies enabling his own capture and murder. Before his death, though, he manages to pull down the majority of his entire people with him.

Feanor was unquestionablly a 'good villain'. Complex, sympathetic, a victim in a very real way, yet unquestionably a villain.

Contrast Feanor with a character who shares certain traits with him: Victor Frankenstein, as handled by two different authors, his original creator Mary Shelley, and the modern writer Dean Koontz.

Both versions of Victor share with Feanor the trait of tremendous gifts of intellect, beyond the measure of other members of their races. Both versions of Victor are also aware of their gifts, relative to their fellows. Mary Shelley's version is more complex, his villainy more nuanced, than Koontz's. Yet interestingly, both are villains in their own way, and Shelley's verison knows that he has been the villain of the story to some degree, yet not entirely so. This is also true of the Creature, who is both protagonist and villain of the story, just as Victor is.

(The actual hero of the novel Frankenstein is hardly in it, i.e. Captain Walton.)

Last edited by Johnny1A.2; 10-13-2013 at 08:24 PM.
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Old 10-21-2013, 08:31 PM   #40
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Default Re: What makes a good villain?

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The TOS Khan hadn't seen his friends and family die because Captain Kirk was an arrogant ass-hole. That kind of thing can warp a man.
Captain Kirk could have taken him back to headquarters where they would have to spend the rest of their lives in prison. Instead he offered them a chance to try out their own worldview by building a civilization on their own. If Khan meant what he said, then any risks he took were part and parcel of that and Kirk was being a magnanimous and chivalrous opponent.
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