A DM’s First Evil Scheme: How to Plan Your D&D Villains

“A Hero is a Hero, but everyone loves a good Villain” — Ferb, Phineas and Ferb

“You lack aesthetic. You don’t understand the value of a villain or what it means to be evil… THIS is what a REAL world class villain looks like!” — Accelerator, A Certain Magical Index.

Ah, villains. It probably isn’t too much of an exaggeration to say that villains are the lifeblood of countless stories. Indeed, a villain can easily make or break any story, and your roleplaying campaign is no different.

The player party needs some form of adversity to overcome during the campaign. Adversity can be generated by a natural situation, like catastrophic weather or unfamiliar new lands, and there’s certainly merit to running a game where these are the main obstacles to overcome. But unless you have a truly outside-the-box idea for a campaign (and if you do, go for it! Creativity is always encouraged), you will be making a villain or villains that are tied to the game’s plot.

As I mentioned before, though, a villain can make or break your story. This is true at all levels of villainy, whether you have a new villain for each module, new villains for each story arc, one major villain whose presence is felt throughout the campaign, or a combination of the bunch. As such, you’re going to want to really spend some time brainstorming your villain plan when doing the initial planning for your campaign.

Of course, this begs the question: how should I plan out my villains? And how do I make sure that they’re helping my game instead of hurting it?

The answer is the same for each of those questions: it depends on the kind of game that you’re running. Certain types of villains will be more effective for certain types of settings, though a touch of creativity can make an odd choice of villain effective as well. In general, though, it helps to have at least a surface awareness of some of the different types of villains that you can have in your game. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll break them down by story impact: minor villains, arc villains, and main villains. This one will be a tad long, so make sure you’re prepared!

Minor Villains

Minor villains are exactly what their title implies: villains that present only a minor inconvenience to the party. These are typically your starter villains, the first threats that your party encounters. They may be independent villains working towards their own minor goals, such as revenge, acquiring power, or merely surviving, or they may be working for a higher-ranking villain and attempting to further their master’s goals. These villains will generally only be a threat for a short time, either because they are dispatched quickly (D&D parties, in my experience, aren’t so apt to let these guys live) or because they simply don’t escalate in power with the party and lose relevance by virtue of not being able to affect the party in a reasonable manner.

That said, while these villains are minor, they have the potential to add a great deal to your story. The individual goals of minor villains can go a long way towards showing the state of your world and its people to your players. They serve as excellent means of introducing new concepts, bits of lore, and information concerning the larger themes of the story. They also serve as good sources of roleplay for your players. If the players enjoy these villains or find them interesting, it may be worth keeping them around and having them show up periodically. If they’re able to accomplish their goals or are persuaded to pursue them in a different, less villainous manner, they may even become useful allies for your players as they progress through the game.

When designing these types of villains, you generally want to aim for simplicity and flexibility. They should have a good, believable reason for doing the things that they do, but they don’t need deep lore. Some small backstory elements and campaign-relevant traits are all they really need. That said, it’s a good idea to leave them a little open-ended in case the party ends up liking them or they become an ally. It may not have been what you planned for the characters, but if it makes the game experience more enjoyable, then there’s nothing wrong with changing your plan.

Arc Villains

Arc villains are your more controlling, influential, and powerful villains — think of these as the bosses you fight at the end of a chapter in a video game, with the aforementioned minor villains serving as the preceding minibosses or named henchmen. What defines the “arc” of the arc villain is entirely up to how you design your game: you may have each module set up as its own story arc, or you may have bundles of modules that work in tandem to form your arc. Either way, these villains are a much bigger threat than your minor villains, and they need to feel like it. Usually, this entails them already being known as a threat. Perhaps the local law enforcement or the citizens know about and fear this person. Maybe they’re a destructive creature that can’t be reasoned with but the people haven’t been able to handle, or they could be a mastermind attempting to manipulate other forces to accomplish some goal. To add a mystery spin, it’s possible that nobody knows the exact identity of this villain, but a number of malicious events have occurred that are just too coincidental to be isolated incidents, creating the suspicion that somebody is orchestrating them.

Wherever these villains might come into play, they’re liable to be at both the center and the end of their own smaller story. Like minor villains, they may be working for someone else — generally the main villain — but unlike minor villains, they carry with them a narrative weight that allows them to be the sole focus of their own subplots within the greater story of the campaign. Accordingly, you’ll want the subject of their appearance to provide some narrative significance. Naturally, you can achieve this by making them important to the main story, but you can also make them relevant to one or more of the player characters. Sometimes players will provide ideas for these types of villains in their backstories. If they do (and neither the backstory nor the villain is in major conflict with the rest of the party or the rest of the game), use them! It behooves you to tie these character-specific subplots to the core narrative, but even if you just use them as side stories and diversions, providing opportunities for your players to explore, develop, and roleplay their characters is generally a good idea.

When designing these types of villains, you generally want to aim for impact and personality. Unless you’re intentionally going for a comedic effect, these guys shouldn’t be disappointing — they’ll be the main source of the threats that your party has been facing for a decent length of time. That doesn’t mean that they have to be imposing or otherwise menacing, though. A villain who’s uncharacteristically weak but smart enough to be capable of manipulating multiple groups can be as big of a threat to the party as the massive bruiser who’s been tearing apart the area and needs some specific difficult-to-acquire means to overcome. However you decide to go about it, this villain has to be fitting for their arc. Your party will be dealing with the consequences of their involvement for a while, after all.

Main Villains

Now your main villains are your main influencers. These are the baddies that drive the whole plot. Their influence may or may not be directly felt at all times — the party may not even know that they’re the ones pulling the strings at first — but they’re still as integral to facilitating the plot as the player characters are to resolving it. Perhaps the most well-known example of this type of villain in recent media is Thanos: most of the heroes don’t even know who he is until more than halfway through, but once he’s established, his active and retroactive influences are clear throughout the greater narrative. The MCU is actually a good demonstrative example of the interplay between your arc and main villains: each individual film has a main antagonist that drives that story, but everything ends up being tied back to Thanos, who serves as the greater mastermind and the final confrontation.

Now, I’ll concede that Thanos makes for an effective and enticing style of main villain — he’s intelligent, strong-willed, motivated, frighteningly powerful, and clearly has goals that put him at odds with the heroes, but he doesn’t see himself as the villain and he exhibits both a sense of (twisted) morality and emotional turmoil. His willingness to talk to the heroes as well as his attempts to have them understand his side of the issue and the greater problems that drive him give him a level of complexity that makes him so compelling.

That said, not every story needs that type of villain. Certainly, with a game like D&D, you want your villain to have some level of formidable strength associated with them — there is the expectation that the players will be fighting this guy at some point, likely at the end of the game — but it doesn’t always have to be so clear-cut. Your main villain may be getting their strength from a demon or a god, who serves as the final confrontation at the behest of the main villain. Perhaps they use magic or some form of technology to make themselves a worthy final opponent, which can manifest itself in interesting, unique gameplay mechanics.

Your villain needn’t necessarily be absurdly strong at the beginning of the story, either. In fact, their attempt to attain that level of power could very well be the reason why they’ve created the conflicts that the party faces throughout the campaign. Similarly, while a complex or sympathetic villain may be interesting, not every main villain has to be made in that image. Individuals with strange or alien moralities, gods who are simply acting within their own domains, even cosmic horrors who can’t be understood but who must be stopped all make for excellent, compelling forces that drive a campaign. A villain who used to be sympathetic but has since turned completely evil, like Strahd, can give players a good reason to be involved while provoking some emotional connections that make the villain more memorable.

Image from Wizards of the Coast

Even a moustache-twirlingly evil villain can be effective if they’re entertaining, suitably horrifying, or have a direct tie/relationship to the party. The main concern with picking from these archetypes is the same concern that you run into when writing your campaign opening: you’re picking from clichés, and that can make for a less satisfying or unique experience. And just as with the opening clichés, the best way to approach this is to make changes and twists to those clichés. Create real motivations for your villains, believable reasons as to why they act that way or why they’re pursuing these clearly evil goals. Unless you’re going for a sillier comedy game, you don’t want your villains, especially your main villain, to be “cartoonish, one-dimensional, and evil for the sake of being evil.” Maybe that moustache-twirling villain was cursed by a trickster god, and is attempting to have the heroes break their curse by drawing them into their “dastardly” plots, since the curse prevents them from ending things themselves. Or maybe they’re actually a bard who’s been forced to act the part as the front for the true main villain (why would they use an obvious caricature? Well, that’s for you to decide!). If you truly want your game to feel unique, then you don’t want a main villain that follows the expectations of the players.

When designing these types of villains, you want to aim for… well, everything. This is your main villain, the looming threat, the cause of most, if not all, of the conflicts present in the game. You want to spend time developing this villain, from believable motivation, to the reach of their influence, to their growing relationship with the party, to their abilities and capabilities. Essentially, you’re taking the design of the arc villain and boosting it a few notches, and adding some additional details to flesh them out further. This character may grow more powerful over the course of the game, but they should at least start out as a competent threat. As for specific personalities or abilities, as before, that all depends on the type of game that you’ve made. My best advice beyond that is to make a villain that you’re going to enjoy playing. After all, chances are that you’ll be playing this guy for a long while; you probably don’t want to invest time into developing a villain that you hate having to play.

That’s A Lot!

It sure is! But keep in mind that the way that you use these villains need not be as structured as I present them. You’re the one who knows your personal game best, after all. I present them this way because it’s a proven format, but feel free to be creative! Putting little twists on your villains can be an excellent way of making the game more exciting and engaging. Have the overarching villain just be a front, while a seemingly minor character actually pulls the strings. Or have a minor villain that the players beat early on, but don’t kill, grow alongside them, eventually exerting greater influence on the story and maybe even coming into conflict with the other villains. You needn’t be subversive for the sake of subversion — a well-executed standard plot can make for a more enjoyable experience than a poorly-executed twist — but if messing with the structure serves the story and provides a positive experience for your players, then you shouldn’t feel pressured to stick to the tried-and-true methods. Certainly, you risk things not working out as intended, but that experimentation can help you provide a truly unique experience.

Now, some of you may be wondering, “But what about rivals? Or truly heroic characters that conflict with the party’s ideals?” Absolutely, those are excellent tools to use when creating your story. But I wouldn’t consider them “villains” so much as I would consider them “antagonists.” The design philosophy for a heroic antagonist or a rival may be similar to a villain, but there are notable differences — and concerns — that need to be taken into account when creating them. And what about recurring villains? What if I want my villain to show up and confront the party multiple times across the arc/campaign? Those are all excellent questions, but they’re topics for another session. Until then, do you agree or disagree with this advice? Are there any villains that you’ve made or had to deal with that stuck with you? Or are there any villains that you’re considering for your campaign that you want feedback on? Whatever you might like to share, don’t be afraid to do so in the comments! I’d love to hear your input and I’m always open to questions or critiques! After all, we’re here to learn together!

See you next session!

-Joseph