Friday Forum Philosophy - Week 2

[Matt Larkin (author)]

Week 2 (August 7th, 2009)
Villains

What was the best villain you've ever created?
What was the best villain you've experienced while playing another GMs game or reading a book?

What makes a good villain in fantasy or science fiction? What kind of background can make a villain sympathetic and interesting, but still drive them to become the villain of a campaign/setting/story?

What about over-the-top villains like demons? How do you make someone wanting to destroy the world interesting? How do you reconcile such an idea with the villain having minions?


No discussion of villains is complete without a link to the evil overlord list.

Also relevant: Vreeg's discussion on if evil pays in games.


[ooc]Light Dragon suggested a different thread for each week's question. I will use this method unless anyone thinks it's a problem.[/ooc]

[Lmns Crn]

Interestingly enough, I think one of my better villains (maybe even the "best", though that's hard to say) was one of the simplest, for a very simple game. My group and I were test-driving 4th ed. D&D, so I went with a very action-heavy, plot-light adventure, complete with crashing trains, rampaging elementals, evil cultists, secret bodyguard duty at a fancy dress ball in a floating castle... I blew the special effects budget.

The villain in question had a name, but nobody remembers it. Fittingly, he remains etched in my memory and that of my players as the Man in the Grey Coat: anonymous and near-featureless. He was a cultist operative for the Bad Guys Behind It All (but wasn't the one in charge), and he and the PCs repeatedly clashed with each other, injured each other, escaped from each other, and stole the key MacGuffin back and forth from each other. They hated the Man in the Grey Coat, and it's really just because they kept running into each other, violently and at cross-purposes, and they could never finish him off.

I think games are sort of unique when it comes to villain writing: the villain's backstory almost never means very much. Players I've met don't seem to react any differently to a villain based on whether or not he's had a troubled childhood; they act on what he's doing now. The Man in the Grey Coat doesn't even have a backstory.

Two of my top literary picks for fantasy/sci-fi villains are in the books Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and The Satanic Verses. Both are excellent books, and you should read them anyway. I can't name either of the characters I have in mind, for spoiler reasons. However, one is a fantastic example of the over-the-top, completely unrelateable, perfectly terrifying "other" sort of villain, and the other is the complicated type of creature I could easily see myself (or anybody) in. Check it.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

What was the best villain you've experienced while playing another GMs game or reading a book?

In games they usually don't last long enough to get to a villain, and even if they do they're not a villain of note.
For books I find that the best villains are barely even in the story.  Or if they are they really aren't really what I'd call "villainous", just annoying bastards.  Terry Pratchett is really where I get this: if there's actually any person you can point out as the "villain" you usually don't get to know about it till near the end, and the other times they barely do anything when they do appear.

What makes a good villain in fantasy or science fiction? What kind of background can make a villain sympathetic and interesting, but still drive them to become the villain of a campaign/setting/story?

For me these two questions are mutually contradictory: good villains aren't sympathetic.  A good villain has no qualities that make you give a damn about them.  If you give a damn then they aren't villains, just misguided idiots who need to be set straight.  And since their motivation is basically that they don't like the world the way it is it's actually easier to kill them because then they don't have to put up with it any more.  And you don't have to put up with their whining.

What about over-the-top villains like demons? How do you make someone wanting to destroy the world interesting? How do you reconcile such an idea with the villain having minions?

Both this and my answer to the previous question point to one end: The Joker from Dark Knight.  Now here's a guy with no sympathetic qualities whatsoever.  He doesn't need some contrived reason to exist, he can just be.  This is how to you do "destroy everything" villains.  (Interestingly I find the Joker the most sympathetic villain I've ever seen because he has no sympathetic qualities.)

I agree with Luminous Crayon that there are situations in which it just doesn't matter why the villain is doing what they're doing.

No discussion of villains is complete without a link to the evil overlord list.

The thing is I really like it when villains don't follow this list.  I have this thing where I get so annoyed by people being idiots that I pretty much root for anyone who shows even a bit of smarts.  And like I said earlier you can't root for the villain.

[Acrimone]

In my experience the best villains from my campaigns all share six qualities:

1) They relate to the PCs as people: there are conversations, discussions, negotiations, etc. that occur over the course of the campaign.

2) They are WAY more powerful than the PCs, at least to start, and this is frighteningly obvious to the players.  This prevents any disastrous early violence.

3) Most of their dastardly deeds come to the PCs through word of mouth -- rumors, songs, etc. about all the horrible things they do.

4) At some point, the villain must do something VERY nasty to someone the PC's care about.  It need not be anyone particularly close, but it can't be a totally minor character.  The something nasty can't be gratuitous, either... it needs to be done by the villain solely in order to accomplish his goal.  The best villains can't be needlessly cruel; they must be pragmatic and relentless.

5) The villain must have something to offer the PCs, so that working with the villain is a serious option that the PCs have to consider.

6) The villain should be working for someone else, at least nominally.  The guy in charge can be a faceless lunatic who wants to take over the world.  The *villain* should have an agenda of his own, whether it be ambitions, duty, or something sinister or noble, and should be working with the "bad guy" for his own purposes.

[Ishmayl-Retired]

Long before I had ever heard of the Order of the Stick and their opposing Linear Guild, I ran a campaign that had "matching enemies" for each of the guys in the party.  The party went under the name "Jaken's Crowd," and they were mostly mercenaries who followed the lead fighter, Jaken.  They were in one of the Southern Kingdoms (I don't remember the names, this is before Shadowfell/Memory Fading), trying to free some gnomish slaves, and ran into their doppelgangers (not really, but the term works well enough for discussion) as they were trying to escape from the wizard who had enslaved the gnomes.  Battle ensued, and everyone escaped, and then the 'gangers chased down the PCs to confront them again, and again, and again.  I think before the campaign ended, the PCs finally beat the 'gangers, but I honestly don't remember.  I just remember the group really, really hated their respective opposites, and loved bashing them and brawling with them.

[Polycarp]

The best villain I've ever created was never intended to be a villain.

The PCs were shipwrecked near a rather isolated coastal city ruled by a supremely paranoid warlord.  Originally, I had just intended his actions to be a quirk that would make life in the city more difficult for the PCs until they escape - keeping constant tabs on them, intimidating merchants who sold them potentially dangerous supplies, and using guards to limit their movements in the city.  The PCs, however, interpreted this as a kind of tyranny, and assumed that the warlord's rule was equally onerous to all his subjects.  Very quickly they placed the situation into the dynamic of "heroes vs. evil tyrant" when in reality it was "foreigners vs. frightened xenophobe."  I decided not to dispel their illusions - everything they did to undermine his authority was - rightly - taken by the warlord as proof they were hostile and subversive elements, and soon both sides escalated until the PCs killed him in his seaside fortress.

They were expecting to be hailed as liberators.  They were rather surprised when the people, who perceived the warlord as a great hero who secured independence for their city, held a day of mourning and chased the PCs from their city (nearly killing them).  A month later, the "evil empire" whose ruler actually was intended to be a villain was able to easily conquer the city thanks to the work the PCs had done.

As "best villains" go, maybe not the deepest or most challenging or most interesting.  In my game, however, he proved to be the most memorable, because the repercussions of his death totally derailed the black and white "heroes vs. villains" theme that had gone pretty much unchallenged so far in that campaign.

I like the example because I think it can really pay sometimes to have "subjective villains" - objective villains are those who everyone knows is bad, but a subjective villain is just your enemy.  He has his own reasons for hating you, most of them personal, and it's a lot easier to make a credible villain if he's out to get the PCs personally.  After all, one can always ask "if this evil overlord is so evil, how come nobody else has taken him out yet?"  Subjective villains almost by definition entail a backstory that actually includes the characters and make things more murky for the PCs (the resources of the law and kingdom, for instance, are unlikely to be arrayed against their personal enemies, while they would be against the orc warlord or vile necromancer who is a threat to everyone).  They also provide a better chance to include recurring characters without resorting to the "he's escaped again" cliche, because defeating a personal enemy may not necessarily entail killing him (or if you do kill him, the law might be after you as murderers).

If the players don't like somebody, or have gotten a grudge somehow, I always at least consider encouraging it.  "Found villains" are, in my experience, a lot easier to turn into real villains because you don't have to contrive some event to convince the PCs of their villainy.

Over-the-top, objective villains (as mentioned, demons are a good example) certainly have their place too.  What is appropriate often depends on what kinds of players you have, what kind of story they are interested in being part of, and their style of play.  I think a good setting has potential for both, including both dubious characters who could be villains and real bad guys/malign forces who certainly are.

[Steerpike]

I think my favorite villain I every created was for my post-apocalyptic game, in which Biblical Revelation and Fallout got smushed together.  The villain in question was one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, the Pale Horseman, a vampiric biker who rode around the wasteland with his gang of "brides."  The party only encountered him once but they kept finding examples of his handiwork along the road, ghost-towns whose inhabitants had been sucked dry.  They followed the trail of atrocities and finally confronted him and his henchwomen in a Mad Max style car chase/gunfight.  I think he's my favorite because of the sense of real menace I'd built around him; he'd leave signatures, written blood on buildings, and heaps of bodies, and the ghost-towns were always quite tense, so when I finally got to reveal him it was quite satisfying.  ther are some things I would have done difefrently wsith him if I could re-do the whole thing, though.

I'm planning to eventually unveil a major villain or two in my current single-player Goblin Campaign.

My fvaorite villain from literature is my namesake from Gormenghast, a real hero-villain, who Tv-Tropes describes as a "Magnificent Bastard Nietzsche Wannabe Antihero (or Anti Villain) terrorist."

[Jharviss]

Kudos to Acrimone - that list is pretty accurate.

I've had several villains, specifically in my most recent campaign, that really showed what rivaling villains can do.  My players hated them, and sometimes even they didn't know why.

Ravok
My all-time favorite villain, this guy was infinitely more powerful than them.  He was the leader of the opposite side (leading a mage rebellion, wherein the players were mage hunters).  But I loved him for a couple reasons:

1. He was almost god-like.  He had instant teleportation powers, and - if things got ugly - simply escaped.  He appeared to them first when they were second level and he was at least 20+ (in D&D 3.5 terms).  The teleportation ability made him the instant reoccuring villain.  He could always get away.

2. He pissed them off.  He was THE enemy, but he rarely engaged them, never really tried to kill them, and was much more powerful than them.  

3. He was quite friendly.  He understood them, bought them drinks, and then sabotaged all of their greatest plans.  

4. Yet when things got out of control, he would help them (another thing that drove them crazy).  

One of the other villains in the campaign became a lich and went wild.  Ravok gave them the lich's phylactery so that the players could kill him, and he did so because Ravok and the lich were old-time friends, and Ravok couldn't bring himself to do it himself.

The players respected Ravok, but they hated him so much.

When they ended up killing him, the party almost imploded. They fought against each other.  Nobody could decide if he was a good guy or a bad guy.  It was great.

[Matt Larkin (author)]

In my experience the best villains from my campaigns all share six qualities:

1) They relate to the PCs as people: there are conversations, discussions, negotiations, etc. that occur over the course of the campaign.

2) They are WAY more powerful than the PCs, at least to start, and this is frighteningly obvious to the players.  This prevents any disastrous early violence.

3) Most of their dastardly deeds come to the PCs through word of mouth -- rumors, songs, etc. about all the horrible things they do.

4) At some point, the villain must do something VERY nasty to someone the PC's care about.  It need not be anyone particularly close, but it can't be a totally minor character.  The something nasty can't be gratuitous, either... it needs to be done by the villain solely in order to accomplish his goal.  The best villains can't be needlessly cruel; they must be pragmatic and relentless.

5) The villain must have something to offer the PCs, so that working with the villain is a serious option that the PCs have to consider.

6) The villain should be working for someone else, at least nominally.  The guy in charge can be a faceless lunatic who wants to take over the world.  The *villain* should have an agenda of his own, whether it be ambitions, duty, or something sinister or noble, and should be working with the "bad guy" for his own purposes.

Excellent list.

I've used most of these in my best villain, except 4 and 6 not so much.

About 4, I'd say it's important if you want the players to hate the villain (which maybe is the norm). If you want the villain to be someone they truly want to redeem, or for it be more tragic if they have to fight him, then less so. However, you write "The something nasty can't be gratuitous, either... it needs to be done by the villain solely in order to accomplish his goal." and I think this is a key to making a villain sympathetic in whatever his so-called villainy. He has to be doing what he's doing for a reason better than trying to be wicked.

[sparkletwist]

I definitely agree with #1 and #2. #3 is important to keep the aura of mystery about the villain, and I'd also agree with it for the most part.

#5 is in itself not as important to me, but only because it seems to be a subset of #1. That said, #1 itself is quite important: there should be something the PCs and the villain have to talk to about, rather than it simply being a fight to the death on sight-- that's just hack-and-slash tedium.

#4 and #6 are the ones I'm not so sure about. For #4, while I agree with the part about the villain's nastiness needing to hit home, I think needlessly sadistic villains can make the PCs hate them in new, interesting ways.

I also enjoy raising the interesting dilemma of how much like the villain the PCs are willing to become. This can work with what things the PCs need to do in order to accomplish their goals (will they kill 10 people to save 1000?) but this can also work on a more personal level with a sadistic villain and a PC who wants revenge.

As for #6, it seems a bit JRPGish to always do it this way. I do like the idea of the villain having a "higher calling," but it could be something more internal.

[LordVreeg]

I think it will take me a long time to answer this.  I have some that have been truly memorable, at least in terms of the players reactions.  And some of them break a lot of villain rules.  This gives a good listing of some of the large-scale ones.

  Overwhelming Bad guys.
 The first BB My earliest Celtrician PC's tangled with is still (25 years later) a pain in the ass for the players.  Heliopolis Von Arbor had been around historically for years, and was consolidating the rule of the underworld of Coom Isle just as the PC group got there.  He also had many minions that became lesser, but still aggravating recurring villains.  Morator and Yero, his magi, Falathar, the Head of the Blackstripe Knives (the Assassin branch of the Blackstripes), Phaldren Phineus, his Druid-magi (who later pretended to be a PC patron for almost 6 months of gametime under the assumed name of Timili the Wise, until they rescued a powerful staff from the Herb Lands for him.  Major PC rage once they found out who he really was), and Kulrak the Displaced, a Klaxik ex-noble KNight of the Red Circle.  
Two major PC allies also were leftovers of Heliopolis' gang.  The Thief in SHadows (Owner of the Bow Of Shade) had narrowly escaped death decades before and had been left for dead by Heliopolis and Falathar, and was running another rapidly shrinking theiving Guild on Coom ISle, who did actually perish saving the PC's from falathar one game, and Shambar Eltrinio, Shrum Hobyt apprentice to Yero who bailed on the bad guys to join the PC's.
Heliopolis was powerful when the PC's first ran into his gang, but they were running into his minions at first, without meaning to.  They decided to start a thieves/smuggling group in the capital after running from the mainland...without doing any research on the situation on Coom Isle.  Duh.  But they did catch on quick, allied with the Thief In Shadows and just mangled two major enclaves of the Blackstripes...while Heliopolis and his were busy, but after that they came under his scrutiny.  He almost killed them twice, and twice later they almost killed his powerful underlings in ambushes.  
Sadly for the players, one of the reasons they had been able to bother him so much becasme clear after that as Falathar became Lord of Coom ISle in a coup destroying the Devenshold family, which made it paramount for the group to get off the island.  They got chased out of the Capital (Devens), losing a party member in the process, and later, as they were about to finally escape, Yero's dragon found them, when the group sacrificed Trallis of Argus (a Goodly Knight) to escape (and Yero made a revanant out of Trallis).  As the PC's left, Coom ISle joined Argus in attacking Togford and the Gynmarchy of Zent, as that alliance started to turn northward, forcing the northener Stenronian Alliance to face southward.
So that was a 3 year story arc at that point, much of which was played in college.  That group was sent North by the mute general Nighttimer of the Grey March,to investigate the base of the Gianttclan Silverworth after that tribe suddenly [note=on transport]Heliopolis found the Maze of Arbor (as had the players) on Coom ISle, and there found much a transport netwrok made by the Archlich Arbor back in the Age of Heroes.  This caused much grief to the PC's in a world where teleport is very rare and the players rarely think of it.  Silverworth's Stockade was built on the old Hobyt Underearth complex.[/note] started to take territory from the empty Igboniat plain area in the Grey March, whilst her armies were marching south.  The group discovered Heliopolis somehow had a direct transport into the caverns below the Giant's stockade, and Yero was aiding a ShadowDemonGiant from the House of Shade to consolidate rule there, and his payment was the attack on Miston [note=Miston]This was long before the Miston campaign started[/note].  
They found this out as Pious Pilfer and his dog Jared were captured by the Giants, their henchmen killed, and Bart barely escaped.  Bart came back with a group of old friends and hired hands, and pushed through the increased defenses...with losses and difficulty, found Pious, then found that Yero and his friends had mutilated and tortured Pious' dog.  They freed Pious and prepared to fight their way out, only to find out on of the new hirelings was actually Morator (Heliopolis' magi) in disguise, and barely escaped. (Pious' sigil became a three legged dog after that).

Obviously, the whole 'enemy of the age' thing, with Anthraxus>Arbor>Dreadwing>Antroo Vampyre has been a huge overarching part of the campaign, so my second BB is the Dreadwing and his minion the Antroo Vampyre (not to mention HIS minion, Vigor Sheering).  The Antroo Vampyre was actually released by the Grey Legion, who were slain almost to a man within a few Hawaak, and which brought rise to the New Legion in the first place.  While the characters are fully occupied with Vigor, the players are very aware about their final date with destiny, with Kexiol Antroo the Vampyre.
The Miston Group was the one who took the already weakened prison of the Dreadwing and further decreased it's efficiacy.
[spoiler=Dreadwing]
 Both the Igabrian and Mistonian groups are grappling with a powerful undead lord are actually part of a connected storeyline, which in turn is actually the unfortunate mirroring of an even older rivalry.

Back in the Age of Heroes, when the Celestial Planars used men as their proxies, The Arch-Lich Arbor corrupted Pino Palladino, companion to the great Bard Numansongs, into turning traitor. I won't get into the whole tale of Woe how Palladinio allowed the Oix Qumoimidi (New Police, Silverwood Omwo~) to overrun the secret fastness of the Great Bard, but after Labernium Fireheart slew Pino Palladino, the Arch-liched picked over the wreckage of the battlefield, found the traitor, and used awful magic to raise that ruined man into a potent Vampyre. This happenned around -2700 Reckonning of Nebler. Millenia later, in around -370,the rumors of the Dreadwing, a suprememly powerful Vampyre, began floating through the north countries. The rival city states of the north, Igboniat and Winter, came together to end this threat, but this horrible threat went on for almost 4 centuries, remembered in songs and fireside stories today. The Igboniats were crippled after ending this threat, and were swallowed by the State of Winter. They used Ward's of Law to bind the Dreadwing, ancient Palladino, to a toprous prison slumber. The Igboniats and the Wintered took their dead and built them into a series of barrows, complete with three totems, three 'locks', and three 'key' items. The totems actually are magically connected to the door of his barrow; for the Dreadwing was never destroyed. Then, about 400 years later, the Venolvian SeaFolk had spread onto the Western Coast of the Marcher area, over the old Ambretton, Underearth, and Igboniat areas. Their primary base was the Underthrone of the Mad Archevault Wizern, Voice of the Entropic Overlords. The Venolvians almost released the Dreadwing in 418 R.O.N. taking a key and a totem that are now buried in the ruins of Wizern's Underthrone. The Venolvians used their Entropic power to reseal the barrows, actually placing anotehr ring of Barrows around the old ones, sealed by Chaos magic to make up for the weakenning they created in the original binding. many priests and mages died in the sealing, and some were taken by the Dreadwing before he was placed back into slumber. By 494, the State of Winter, now called the Grey March, destroys the Venolvian settlements on the mainland in the War of the Shield, and the second sealing drops into the almost-unknown.

NOTE:
Yes, my playes up in the Grey March are always going through layers of Ambretton, Underearth, Igboniat, Old Winter and Venolvian ruins up in the North. Often, they find them as in Troy, where one built on the ruins of the last.One of those priests that was turned was Grahaem Kexiol, actually a devilkin priest of the Church of Mammon from Hopiton. The Dreadwing took the priest and made him into a Vampyre in 418 R.O.N., and he went on to Hagenos, in Orbi, joining House Antroo of the Devterian Corporatus. Grahaem was part of the orbian exiles that stole away to the Northern Argussina Marches past the Astrikon trading region, that founded a small community of 3 keeps, an underground town, and 2 monastaries in and near the Wibble hills, in the mid fifth century. He made a bid for power, and his Vampyricy was discovered, and he was imprisoned, like his master, in the back of his secret temple of Mammon the Redeemer in 446, R.O.N. Grahaem Kexio Antroo is who the Grey Legion let loose. He has the Anginarian Necromancy (origally called Y'Gorl's curse back in the Age of Legends) that his master taught to the Venolvian Entropics, so he can create an area, based on his age, that is charged with his Necromantic power. He creates talismans that literally charge an area with necromancy. Also, all of his direct agents have it in a lesser fashion. It makes him and his hard to affect with the priest skills, and makes servants much more likely to animate. This is one thing the players have somehow stayed unaware of, in both groups.

NOTE:
and yes, my Old Miston Group has actually stomped around the Barowfield of the Dreadwing far to the north, further weakenning it. They are currently battling the Entropic Undead of Wizern, trying to find the Totem and the Key the Venolvian's removed.He's old, and has been defeated before. He is also aware that his master is slowly rousing to wakeness in the north, that the Dreadwing's bounds are loosening. So he has already cowed the Firehazer humanoids and taken the Blue Turtle stronghold in the Wibble hills. His goal is to slowly and carefully create the third ~Ohiu Deoso, (Night of the Cairn, White Omwo~), to replicate what the Dreadwing created in the North for 4 long centuries, an undead empire of night. NOTE:
The first ~ohiu Deoso actually goes back to the Age of Legends, when Anthraxus retreated back to his Cairnhold after he broke the Accords of Presence.But he and his master are old, and wise, and slow. They have already, through unwitting intermediaries, recruited the hierarchy of the Church of the Green Mother, Vernidale. The Anginarean Ghasts that are slinking around the mausoleums on the Outskirts of Igbar are not trying to overwhelm the town, they are actually sending a large portion of the raised/animated back to ther master...for leter use. As long as they can pin the Igbarians to their homes at night with Terror, they are doing their job.LordVreeg 10:43, 29 April 2008 (EDT)
Wow, this is more than I was expecting. I'm going to have to think on this and absorb it a bit, but I really like the story of the Palladino becoming a powerful servant of darkness - many of my favorite stories focus on corruption of the soul, and this is a good example of what I like to see. It has a very Tolkienesque flavor (the good kind, not the bad, plagiaristic kind!) to it. Anyway, more later, when I can get all this in my head better[/spoiler]

Not really an individual villain, but still a midnight fear for my PC's, the Machmen scare my players to their core.  I've seen players jump up into their chairs at times, as well as scream like i'd snuck up on them and scared them, on the rare occasions when the PC's have ever run into these shade-golemoids.  Man sized, slender, Dark metal constructs clad in long leather coats and wearing matching leather caps, they hjave 4' long scythes where their hands should be.  Created by Arbor to be the assassins of the Oix Quomedai back in the Age of Heroes, a few of these constructs still exist in the hidden places.  The PC's have a perfect track record of losing members when wever they run into one of these.  
 

[Drizztrocks]

I had a few that I loved setting up against my PCs. Ironically, they all took place in the same campaign, a desperate search around the world to unearth artifacts of amazing power before anyone else found out about them. Sadly, though, these artifacts were hidden so well by those who didn't want them to fall into the wrong hands.

   Grazzekk
 During the Campaign, the PCs had to retrieve a magical rod from the center of a tomb deep in the middle of a huge rocky desert. It had once belonged to a great king of the area, thousands of years ago. When he had realized the amazing power of his rod, he buried it away inside a deep place, never wanting it to reach the surface again. However, when King Grazzek died, his people buried him in this deep resting place. That was when the rods other power was made apparent. It killed everyone in the place, and harvested their minds, their personalities, their knowledge. Then the rod rose King Grazzekk from the dead. The rod, although it had no such powers to give it complete control over Grazzekk, it could send thoughts into his head telepathically. Whenever Grazzek, risen as a Lich like creature (the husk of a body brought back to life that is still consious, but not a Lich by any other means) would do something the rod didn't favor, it would send the cries of his people dying and begging for mercy into the King. This would overwhelm him, because he did not know that the rod was sentient, and beleived that those were his own thoughts. In this way, the rod could make him do anything.


   Janark
 The premise of the campaign was to collect the artifacts before somebody else figured out they existed. Well, of course, somebody else did find out. And he sent an experienced, skilled and deadly team of mercenaries in to kill the PCs and collect the artifacts. I decided on an interesting twist. In a game I ran a few months before this one, with the same players and characters, they had encountered a group of theives trying to rob an armory with deadly force.

  The theives were smart. They had lit fires on the other side of the city a half hour before starting the robbery. This drew all the attention in the town to the fires, and drew all the guards there. Then, in the district that the armory was in, they had an archer on (almost) every rooftop. The PCs happened to be in the armory/store when the robbery commenced, so when the theives came in crossbows raised and loaded, and with dangerous explosive alchemy at their disposal, it seemed like nothing would stop them. But the PCs did something I didn't even expect them to do. They took all the crossbows, bottles of alchemists fire, magic swords, and etc. off the walls of the armory and kicked some theif  :censored:. I allowed the wizard to use Ghost sound instead of his daily power. He sent a call to every commoner in the city, saying that their city was in trouble and they needed to defend it. Soon enough, an army of commeners showed up and sent the theives running and hiding.
  One theif, however, was caught inbetween all the PCs with no way out. After taking a small beating he was knocked prone, and just when the fighter was about to perform a coup de grace, he rolled over and kicked a crate full of alchemists acid. The box shattered and burned a hole in the floor. Steam (or smoke, or whatever comes off of acid) filled the room, and blinded the PCs. They all said they wanted to jump in the hole. So they did. It was just a small, bare basement with a few boxes and crates here and there. After searching the entire basement, they realized he used the acid and the hole as a distraction and ran from the scene. Although it meant nothing to them, and me, then, it would.

 
   So I gave this former theif turned mercenary a name. Janark. And a skill with repeating crossbows, hand crossbows, heavy crossbows, he was one hell of a gunslinger. When the PCs encountered the entire group of mercenaries when trying to raid an ancient pyramid in the jungle, Janark was with them. Although a landslide killed most of the group, and the leader was killed by a sneak attack from the rogue of the group, Janark survived, and they recognized him. But he got really pissed when the PCs killed his new group to. He gathered up the rest of the mercenaries and hunted the PCs wherever they went, and things got really personal, especially when they looked into Janark and discovered that he was the bastard child of a King, and was tried to be killed when he was only eight. He had been poor and running ever since. So eventually, when the PCs were trying to help him in the climactic battle of the campaign, in a huge ice fortress, all of them standing on an bridge made of ice. He "turned" to good, then when half the PCs were on one side of the bridge fighting ice archons and half were on the other, Janark destroyed the center of the bridge with an exploding arrow from his crossbow. He slaughtered the two PCs on his side of the bridge with the same means, then escaped using a teleporting artifact he looted from one of the players dead bodies. The PCs decided to scram to, using a teleporting power. I just made it be that the use of powerful magic so close together destroyed the entire ice fortress and everything inside, thus ending the campaign.

   

   As to making a demon villian interesting...perhaps one with an interesting quirk that makes it deadly. It can't stand anything more powerful then it, and seeks to destroy everything that is more powerful. So once the PCs gain in level, they will be hunted by this demon simply because of the fact that they are becoming powerful.

  Or maybe the demon was "cursed" by other demons. While in the goodly races this curse would make you evil, for the foul demons this made that cursed demon good, but not completely. Simply, the demon can't survive without doing good, or he will die. So while he destroys the farmland, eats villagers and burn towns, he must also rescure the mayors daughter from the troll slavers that kidnapped her. Whatever he does evil, it must be countered by something equally good.

[Steerpike]

Just had a great goblin session that cemented the major villains as the BBEGs.  Kraashgar and the rest of the dungeon denizens were looting the human town (Gloamwood) when the adventurers that killed the player's entire clan show up to defend the place.  A showdown ensued in which one of the player's companions on several adventures (Wrask the gnoll) got blasted to pieces by magic missiles.  It was great to watch the abstract, artificial hatred of the player for the adventurers (i.e. they killed my family in my backstory, therefore I hate them) turn to genuine hatred (they took something real from me) in an eyeblink.

The Gray Elf Wizard who slew Wrask and knocked K unconscious prior to the first session is working out particularly well.  He dimension-doored away with the rest of the party before Obraxus and the rest of the minions could wipe the floor with them.

[LordVreeg]

Just had a great goblin session that cemented the major villains as the BBEGs.  Kraashgar and the rest of the dungeon denizens were looting the human town (Gloamwood) when the adventurers that killed the player's entire clan show up to defend the place.  A showdown ensued in which one of the player's companions on several adventures (Wrask the gnoll) got blasted to pieces by magic missiles.  It was great to watch the abstract, artificial hatred of the player for the adventurers (i.e. they killed my family in my backstory, therefore I hate them) turn to genuine hatred (they took something real from me) in an eyeblink.

The Gray Elf Wizard who slew Wrask and knocked K unconscious prior to the first session is working out particularly well.  He dimension-doored away with the rest of the party before Obraxus and the rest of the minions could wipe the floor with them.

Nicely done, as well as a timely post.
does K know the name of teh wizard or the adventuring crew?

[Matt Larkin (author)]

The most memorable villain I had wasn't quite a villain, though the PCs did eventually realize he intended to destroy the world (yeah, he was complex).

The game ran for (I think) 49 sessions (weekly for almost exactly 1 year), and this guy first appeared in session 3, I believe. When they first met him, he helped them out a bit, while clearly pursuing some kind of research on his own. They eventually realized that he was tied to some of their pasts lives (once they realized that was going on), and later that in the visions they were seeing the same person from 80 years before, not his past life like the rest of them. In various past lives he had been their friend or more, in some cases. Too late, they saw he was manipulating the party hot head into unlocking a seal only he could break.

This got them in a lot of trouble, but they soon learned he was seeking the Star of Life, which controlled all life on Kishar. He was vastly more powerful than anything anyone could stop, so they tried to find him and reason with him. He wouldn't hurt them because in his mind, they were his closest friends (and one PC was his soul mate); he even protected them from some of their other enemies. Most of the rest of the game consisted of them following after him, looking into his past, and trying to unravel the secrets of their own past lives.

For his own reasons, they were unable to convince him to stop and resolved to fight him. The first time was only a few rounds before he accomplished his current goal and fled. The second time he had the Star so they fought to the death, even though one PC proclaimed she loved him, and he admitted the same. Appropriately, the PC that killed him was his best friend, so he told him he forgave him before he died.