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

Five Useful Villian Archtypes

2/10/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
I am a firm believer in dynamic villains that “take your game to the next level”™. These are five villain archetypes that I use in most of my games and work the best for me. I will give examples of each and hope that you can find use of this. Now lets destroy some lives together!

1) Classic Evil
The Classic Evil archetype. All this character wants is to destroy and conquer for power alone. It can take any form, from a god to a simple politician. If you're crafty enough, even a farmer can fit the mold. This archetype will often use other types of evil to get what they want, only to dispose of them when their use has run out. This archetype will typically end up with no allies in the end and everyone against them, sometimes even making a lesser villain turned anti-hero. For example: think of Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader from Star Wars. Palpatine wanted to conquer the galaxy, and he used Darth Vader to do it. Slowly corrupting his mind, he turned Anakin to evil and granted him the title of Darth. He executed “Order 66” to form the Galactic Empire, which ruled the galaxy with an iron fist. In the end, Darth Vader turned against him with the help of Luke. The Pure Evil villain isn't as fun as others in my personal opinion. However, it’s always a good one to fall back on when searching for the right villain for your game. It can fit in every game. The players are going to enjoy kicking their butt in the end, I can guarantee you that much.

2) The Fallen Hero
The Fallen Hero is an interesting archetype because you have a character that people loved, perhaps even worshiped, fall to the dark side. This is a common trope in most of media. WWE calls this a heel turn, where you have a character that is a hero in the eyes of the people and some event causes them to turn bad. Typically you will see this as the loss of a loved one, betrayals, or even when all the good they do amounts to nothing. These villains will almost always argue they are doing it for good reasons, but it’s often an excuse for them to bear the weight of what they are doing. The fallen hero usually becomes the evil they were fighting, due to losing faith in the good. Harvey Dent from Batman is a great example of a fallen hero.

“You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”
-Harvey Dent, The Dark knight

Harvey Dent wanted to save the people of Gotham from The Joker; he teamed up with Gordon and Batman to stop him, but ended up getting outplayed by his enemy. All of it left him horrifically scarred and his girlfriend dead. This is that heel turn moment I was talking about: the loss of a loved one made him snap and forced him to give into despair, becoming Two Face. The Joker uses this moment to convince him into taking revenge on those who he thought responsible for his wife's death. Harvey Dent started at the top and fell so far down he couldn't see the justification of doing things the right way anymore. That's what makes a great fallen hero.

3) The Anti-Villain
The anti-villain is someone who has a positive goal, though their means of doing such is evil. These types of villains are really good for testing the morals of the surrounding characters. Let's look at Max Payne from the good old Playstation era. To summarize his story: Max was a cop and his family was murdered by junkies high on a new drug called valkyr. He moved to the DEA to find where this drug came from, ultimately seeking revenge. One side says he's doing the city a favor by getting rid of crime, but Max doesn't follow the law and straight up murders people in cold blood. At one point in the game, he gets framed for the murder of his partner. This is where he starts doing the evil stuff to get good deeds done.

“Home, sweet home. Something in the night felt like a door had been opened, an echo of the past, an old monster snapping its eyes open in the depths of my brain. Closing your eyes forces you to look at the darkness inside.” – Max Payne 2

I picked Max Payne as an example because he knows what he's become. When they stop caring about the morality of the decisions they make, it can make for a very intimidating villain. They have nothing holding them back.

4) The Jester
Before I even go into this one: yes, it’s the Joker Archetype. The Jester is the insane mastermind; “Chaos” is their middle name. These villains like to play with their food, and as such they find ways to torture the hero and have fun doing it. They may be crazy, but the jester is dangerously cunning and always has a plan. A key feature of the Jester is that they usually don’t immediately have a hero in their way, allowing them to enact whatever madness they want. When the heroes start messing with their plans, you will see them progressively slip deeper into insanity as the hero continues to thwart them. They will start to do more insane and elaborate plans like destroying a whole city or worse. Ego destroys these characters. The more intricate the plan, there’s a larger chance of error. When an error happens they beat themselves up for the mistakes allowing the hero to slip in and do their work. Sometimes they get beaten so bad that impulse for insanity causes them to come out in the open. Now, I would talk about the Joker but I feel that the character is too obvious when talking about this type of villain. I’d rather talk about Handsome Jack from Borderlands 2.

"You see, this is what I don't get about you bad guys: You know the hero's gonna win, but you don't just die quickly. Example: This one guy in New Haven, right? City's burning, people are dying left and right, yadda, yadda, yadda... This jackhole rushes me with a spoon, A FRICKIN' SPOON! And I'm dying laughing, right? So I scoop out his stupid little eyeballs with it and his kids are all, 'WAAAAAAH!' And-ahahaha... I can't even... ahahahahah! He can't see where he's going, he's bumping into stuff and... I dunno, maybe you had to be there. The moral is: you're a total bitch." - Handsome Jack

The fun dynamic to Jack is that he sees himself as the hero that is going to save Pandora, the planet they are on. He wants to revive an ancient alien called the Warrior to restore peace and get rid of all the “bandits”. Jack is just an annoyance until about three quarters through the game, then he becomes the actual villain. He progressively becomes a dick throughout the game. He harasses you and tries to slow you down with random obstacles here and there. Jack would always make you laugh and feel like crap at the same time, he is really good at talking down to people and not caring at all. He loves torturing the heroes (Vault Hunters) until it got to the point of him trying to stop them. Handsome Jack is great. If you're a video game junky and have yet to play Borderlands 2, I suggest doing so. It's fantastic.

5) The Tragic Villain
I will admit, this is my favorite type of villain. If you're trying to get a lot of emotion out of your players at the end game, I would suggest trying this one. The Tragic Villain is aware of their evil deeds, though they don’t take pleasure in it most of the time. They are typically doing evil because of something that's either forcing their hand or another circumstance beyond their control. These villains correlate with the anti-hero and anti-villain archetype because they both are thematically evil and have some traumatic event happen to them. For example: Frankenstein’s Monster is a tragic villain from the original book. He wanted nothing more than to be accepted, but because of his appearance, all he got was rejection. Over time, he eventually finds out he was created. That was his turning point; he started killing those who rejected him, burned a cottage, strangled the brother of Dr. Frankenstein, and hanged his servant. The monster eventually asks Dr. Frankenstein for a mate, saying that humanity would never see him again if the doctor created one for him. Frankenstein agrees but right before giving life to his monster’s partner, he kills her. The monster kills Frankenstein's best friend and wife out of rage. The doctor swears vengeance against the monster and heads north, but dies of exhaustion. The monster shows up, and even though he has all this built up anger, feels nothing but remorse for his fallen father.  Finally travelling all the way to the North Pole, he builds a pyre and then ends his own life upon it.

“No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

It can be tough to place the right villain in your stories or games. These are the five I usually rely on because of how many examples there are of each archetype. Hopefully the examples and explanations help you form some ideas when writing up your next villain. If there is one piece of advice I can give you, it’s to use references.

Stay Nerdy!


Benjamin Witunsky, artist, writer and nerd savant. Cofounder of the NerdMantle Podcast available on Soundcloud, Itunes and Google Play Music.

Photo Credit: https://chroniccomplainerreviews.com/category/borderlands-series/

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