High Level Games
High Level Games
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Store
    • Storytellers Vault Products
    • Fantasy One-Page Adventures
    • DMs Guild Products
  • Podcasts
  • Video
  • Trusted Resources
  • Join The Team
  • About
  • Contact
    • Star Trek Adventures
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Store
    • Storytellers Vault Products
    • Fantasy One-Page Adventures
    • DMs Guild Products
  • Podcasts
  • Video
  • Trusted Resources
  • Join The Team
  • About
  • Contact
    • Star Trek Adventures

Welcome to the High Level Games Blog, News, and other stuff to take your games to the next level!

Best Selling RPGs - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com

5 Inspirational Monster Villains

17/4/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
All right, tabletop roleplaying gamers. It’s time to talk about a real problem for your long-term roleplaying happiness: enemy NPC fatigue (ENPCF), or “boredom,” for short. We’ve all been there: you’re on a dungeon crawl, twelve levels down the tower, and the monsters are starting to blend together. What was that last one? Tarrak, tarrasque, tourrette… it doesn’t really matter, actually. The slavering mandibles, grating claws, and magical damage resistance all look the same at that point. Granted, it’s been fun to collect loot and advance your character, but if you wanted to go grinding or farm resources, you might as well be playing Skyrim. It’s time for a serious villain overhaul.

The following are a few memorable monster villains from my own playing history. Let these creatures and people be an inspiration to your own memorable villain repertoire and take your games to the next level.

1) Rifts - The Evil Blob
A telepathic alien entity had taken control of a supercomputer. The supercomputer/monster then embraced (enslaved?) a race of cave-dwelling creatures. It taught them to read, write, and manufacture; it trained them to build and use amazing technology, established a social structure and government, and it even served as a quasi-religion. All it demanded was food in return, and it received enough that it grew into an enormous, fleshy blob. Our party came at this creature sideways. We were being attacked by bands of these small, hairy, Gollum-like cave-dwellers. We didn’t think much of it, random encounters being what they are, but we started to wonder when we accidentally captured one of them. The creature told us that we had to leave, that we were invading the territory of their tribe, and that their great leader would destroy us. Intrigued, we did a bit of reconnaissance, and discovered “the blob”. In the end, however, our group determined that this blob-like creature had in fact improved the quality of life for these cave-dwellers immensely. Rather than invade and fight the blob, we decided to establish a bi-lateral trade agreement with it. Whaddya know? This was memorable because we didn’t have to fight it at all. There was enough grey area to decided that killing it would probably be worse for the hairy creatures in the end. To keep things interesting, create villains that the characters don’t need to fight, but can be overcome in other ways.

2) D&D 3.5 - The Vampire Lord With The Crazy Castle
This villain is both a creature and an environment. At the beginning of this encounter, our party was warmly welcomed into a castle. The castle was well appointed, tastefully decorated, and we were fed a luxurious meal. We were waited on by a group of lovely ladies, the daughters of the lord, who later surprised various members of our party by arriving in their bedrooms. That’s where the red flags went up. They were, of course, vampire spawn who were working for the vampire lord of the castle. As the illusions faded, our characters began to see that the tapestries in this castle were rotting, there was black mold and cobwebs everywhere, and our hostesses were, in fact, undead abominations. The castle then became a magical labyrinth of bloodstained dungeons, torture chambers, decaying dining halls, and all-round horror. The castle itself eventually herded us into the great hall for a final showdown with the vampire lord. While I don’t remember the name of this creep, I will surely never forget the feeling of sick dread I had while moving inevitably through his castle of horrors to meet him. Environment can make the villain!

3) Shadowrun - Bug Spirits
What is big, horrifically alien, deadly… oh, and can’t be harmed by ordinary weapons? Shadowrun Bug Spirits. Denizens of a poorly understood nether dimension, these spiritual creatures have manifested on Shadowrun’s parallel earth to… well, nobody really understands why they’re here, which is part of what makes them so scary. To destroy the living? To consume everything? To reproduce? Also, if they get ahold of you, they will either eat you (which would be a mercy) or they will take you back to their nest, where a gentle, well-meaning madman plants a spirit larva inside you. It takes possession of your body, and you will become either a true believing member of a bug spirit cult, a hybrid bug-human drone, or the shell of an egg that will hatch into a spiritual insect. I still shudder. During an extended Shadowrun game, Bug Spirits were just one element in probably the most convincingly storied game world I have played in; they were nevertheless one of the most memorable creature villains I have ever encountered. Better than Ridley Scott’s Alien, it makes the so-called ‘mindless’ monster deeply personal on both a physical and a spiritual level. Did I mention that ordinary weapons don’t hurt them?

4) Rifts - The Coalition
The Coalition forces from Kevin Siembada’s Rifts are a great, multi-layered enemy. Xenophobic, merciless, and dressed up in black skulls, they make perfect cannon fodder for gamers just out to bash some bad guys. It’s like being Indiana Jones and punching Nazis. In one game, however, we players got a closer look at them and the Nazis began to look more like the Germans from Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. Some prisoners we had captured seemed a little too human, a little too close to home. Think about it: these people are the last major human power in the game world, the descendants of those who survived the coming of the rifts. Why do they fight against DeeBees? Because this is their earth. Why are they xenophobic? Because many, many of the things that have come through the rifts have been incredibly dangerous, or utterly evil. What made these villains most memorable was being able to stand in their shoes. We realised that, if the world really did erupt with magic and extra-dimensional beings, humans would likely only survive if they banded together - and it becomes easy to see yourself joining up with the Coalition just to survive. Have some sympathy for the devil; there is a lot of power in having sympathetic villains with their own agenda.

5) D&D 3.5 - The Desolator
The Desolator was an evil half-orc, half-ogre chieftain who allied to dark powers that planned to unite the orcish hordes to annihilate the world. Sounds like a fairly straightforward Dungeons & Dragons character at first glance, but I could have kissed the Dungeonmaster. Maybe I did, I don’t remember. This villain was capital ‘A’ awesome for me because he was a direct response to the character I was playing. My character was a half-orc barbarian (classic!) who had become the king of a tribe of orcs who were trying somehow to be good. Yes, we took some liberties with the canon, it’s a part of the hobby. I made a long write-up trying to reconcile this bizarre situation, but the short version is this:

My character, whose leadership was in dispute, had used a once-in-a-generation war cry to call all the orcish tribes to war against the Desolator and his buddies. The Desolator, on the other hand, had used the same war cry to call the orcs to fight against my character and the forces of good. Part of the final battle involved an argument between him and I to persuade the orcish onlookers whom they should follow The physical victory over the villain was that much sweeter because of the moral/political victory of winning the hordes over to my side. The best villains have a personal connection to the players’ characters and the characters’ players!

Create villains who have a rational agenda to create interesting grey moral areas. Allow more than one way to overcome villains in order to keep things interesting. Add an environment that matches your villain to create a more memorable experience. Use monsters that can do worse than just killing a character. Finally, make villains personal by connecting them with characters in important ways. These are just a few suggestions; hopefully these experiences will help you to change things up and keep your games fresh!


Landrew is a full-time educator, part-time art enthusiast. He applies his background in literature and fine arts to his favourite hobby (role-playing games) because the market for a background in the Fine Arts is very limited.  He writes this blog on company time under a pseudonym. Long live the Corporation!

Image source: Art of the Genre’s article on Shadowrun’s Bug City


Picture
Savage Worlds: Fast, Furious, and Fun! - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    All blog materials created and developed by the staff here at High Level Games 

    ​

    Picture
    Click here to support our community for as a little as $1.00 for exclusive content, free downloadable stuff, and even discounts on role-playing game items.

    Archives

    February 2021
    November 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016

    Categories

    All
    13th Age
    2d20
    2nd Edition
    3.5 Edition
    3Deep
    4th Edition
    5th Edition
    7th Sea
    Acquisitions Inc
    Actual Play
    AD&D
    AdventureLookUp.com
    Adventurers!
    Aether Sea
    A+ Fantasy
    After Collapse
    Alignment
    Amazing Tales
    Amazon
    Anima: Beyond Fantasy
    Anime
    Apocalypse World
    Atomic Robo
    Australian
    Award Winning
    Basic Fantasy
    Belly Of The Beast
    Big Eyes Small Mouth
    Black Lives Matter
    Black Void
    Blades In The Dark
    Blood Pangea
    Board Games
    Book Of Exalted Darkness
    BrigadeCon
    Burning Wheel RPG
    Call Of Cthulhu
    Capers RPG
    Casual Roleplaying
    Changeling: The Dreaming
    Chaosium
    Character Arcs
    Character Creation
    Chris Spivey
    Cinematic RP
    Classics
    Comic-books
    Conventions
    Corvus Belli: Infinity
    Crawl
    Creators
    Critical Role
    Cthulhutech
    D100 Dungeon
    D20
    D&D
    D&D Beyond
    Deadlands
    Defenders Of Tokyo
    Degenesis
    Detako Saga
    Discord
    DMsGuild.com
    Dnd
    Dndbeyond
    Doctor-who
    Double-cross
    Dread
    Dresden-files
    DriveThruRPG.com
    Dr. Who
    Dungeon Crawl Classics
    Dungeons
    Dungeons And Dragons
    Dungeon Slayers
    Dungeon World
    Dystopia Rising
    Encounters
    Era: The Consortium
    Era: The Empowered
    Esper Genesis
    Evil Hat
    Exalted
    Faith RPG
    Fandom
    Fantasy-age
    Fantasy-flight
    Fantasy Grounds
    FATE
    Fate Accelerated Edition
    Fate Core
    Fate Rpg
    Fate-rpg
    Final Fantasy
    Forgotten Realms
    Fragged Empire
    Free League Publishing
    Furries
    Game Design
    Game Lore
    Gencon
    Ghosts Of NPCs Past
    GMTips
    Golden-sky-stories
    GoodmanGames.com
    Grognards
    GUMSHOE
    GURPS
    GURPS Lite
    Halloween
    Harlem Unbound
    Harry-potter
    Hero Builder
    Heroes Against Darkness
    Heroes-unlimited
    HERO System
    High Level Games
    Historical Fantasy
    HLG Con 2018
    HLG Reviews
    Homebrew
    Humble Bundle
    Indie
    Interface Zero 2.0
    Interview
    Invisible Suns
    Japanese RPGs
    JRR Tolkien
    Kickstarter
    KoboldPress.com
    KULT
    L5R
    Lankhmar
    LARP
    Lasers And Feelings
    Legendlore
    Legend Of The Five Rings
    LexOccultum
    LOTR
    Low Magic
    Mage
    Mage: The Awakening
    Magic And Steel
    MAID
    Mayhem
    Mazes And Minotaurs
    Meikyuu Kingdom
    Mekton Zero
    Mental Health
    Middle Earth
    Mighty Narwhal
    Mini Six
    Modern Adventures RPG
    Modiphius
    Monarchies Of Mau
    Monsterhearts
    Monte Cook Games
    Morra
    Mummy: The Curse
    Mutants And Masterminds
    Mythender
    Narrative Games
    Nechronica
    Night's Black Agents
    Novel
    NPC
    Numenara
    Odyssey Of The Dragonlords
    One Shot
    Online Gaming
    Orun
    OSCRIC
    Osr
    OVA
    Palladium
    Pathfinder
    Pathfinder 2.0
    PbtA
    PDQ
    Pire: The Masquerade 5th Edition
    Play By Post
    Player Tips
    Podcast
    Powered By Apocalypse
    Power Outage RPG
    Preview
    Promethean: The Created
    Pugmire
    Pulp
    Puzzles
    Questlings
    Ravenloft
    Ravnica
    Red Markets: A Game Of Economic Horror
    Research
    Review
    Review Article
    Rifts
    Risus
    Role Play
    Roll20
    Romance Of The Perilous Land
    Ryuutama
    Satanic Panic
    Savage Rifts
    Savage Tokusatsu
    Savage Worlds
    Seeds Of Wars
    Setting
    Settings
    Settlement Building
    Shadowrun
    SIGMATA
    Snowhaven
    Social Combat
    Social Systems
    Solo Play
    Standard Roleplay System
    Star Trek Adventures
    Star Wars
    Storytellers Vault
    Suited RPG
    Summerland
    Supplements
    System Design
    Table Top
    Tabletop Simulator
    Tales From The Loop
    Tales Of Equestria
    Talislanta
    Tariffs
    Teenagers From Outerspace
    Ten Candles
    Tenra Bansho Zero
    The Dark Eye
    The End Of The World RPG
    The Great Long Dark
    The One Ring
    The Very Important Task
    Titan Effect
    To The Temple Of Doom
    Trial Of Cthulhu
    Trinity Continuum
    TSR Marvel Super Heroes
    Ttrpg
    Twitch
    USTR
    Va
    Valiant Rpg
    Vampire: The Masquerade
    Video Games
    Villian
    Volo
    Vs Ghosts
    Warhammer
    Warhammer 40K
    Werewolf: The Apocalypse
    Westbound RPG
    Wild West
    World Building
    World Of Darkness
    Writing Tips
    Year Zero
    Zweihander

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly