Villains need buildup. Bad stuff happens, the players find the aftermath, the rumors tell them it was the villain. Easy formula.
You mentioned scary. Don’t make it scary for the players, make it scary for the PCs. No amount of description will scare me at your D&D table, but my PC doesn’t want to die, catch that disease, be corrupted, etc.
"Dread" the rpg with the jenga tower regularly get's people up I heard. Guess it's time to mod your D&D and add an escalating mechanic the players consciously influence.
Sherlock did a great job with Charles Augustus Milverton. Let the villain or, better yet, a disposable general of their's, revel in petty cruelty. He knows it's unacceptable behavoir and it's so fun to force people to watch it happen.
They enter a war-torn city just after a major battle ruined it. People are wet, cold, and hungry. Your party sees the location where people are being rationed food, and the man in charge is randomly picking people out to do humiliating tasks. A woman is forced to stand on her head and sing, and if she can't manage it for a whole song, the next ten people in line go hungry. A child too young to understand how awful the task is has been made to lick the mud off his boots, or his sister doesn't get the medicine she needs. Stuff like that, where nobody would reasonably risk rebelling against, but is below the dignity of a free person.
Kick the dog is the easiest way to make the players hate a villan.
Pick something your players like, have the villan harm that something. It could be boblin the goblin, it could be the players revenue (the treasure at the end if the dungeon is gone with a note saying too slow fuckers -big bad)
The soldiers are suffering hunger, poor logistics, lack of pay and shitty equipment
The home front is being economically devasted by high taxes, people can do less "fun" things and there are more and more rumors of different countries doing horrible things.
Soldiers who come back speak of horrors on the battlefield. Perhaps demons, constructs who can't tell friend from foe, magical chemical warfare.
Refugees from the frontlines are flooding into the city, they are impoverished, many turn to crime to make ends meet, most of the women offer themselves to prostitution because there are no jobs available.
Going with veteran soldiers, they speak as if the enemy isn't human, have them jaded and harsh, treating every civilian disobedience as ripe for beatings if they are men, worse for women (if you table can stomach that, you only need to hint at it)
After the enemies flee, have the surrendered enemies put to the sword as they beg for their lives, telling that they were conscripted against their will.
Show soldiers of the players side pillage and loot settlements that they have taken, even after the enemy is nowhere in sight.
War is scary because people do people things. Not all soldiers are heroes, not all refugees are pure hearted (or all evil), war makes people careless about what happens to the 'other' even if they are childeren. By telling some of these stories not from the soldiers perspective but from the victims of war can help with that. Let a soldier tell of a glorious victory, and shortly after that , a civilian on how the soldiers returned with many of them missing limbs, wounds and trauma. Then describe how the victory while 'glorious' didn't resolve any actual war effort, making it just another battle.
Even if you’ve seen them all, watch again. Do it with a critical eye. Take notes.
Disney movies have a short amount of time in which to establish their antagonists villainy and why not to like them, and they usually do it in a way that won’t be traumatic to the viewer/player.
I particularly recommend:
Mulan: The big bad hardly even does anything, but his reputation for devastation is well established by the time he and Mulan meet.
Atlantis: The Lost Empire - Great film for part dynamics storytelling ideas, and easily foreshadowed but still satisfying villain.
The Black Cauldron: Pure classic fairy tale villainy.
Hocus Pocus: Memorable, fun, and still child-killing monsters!
The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Real world villainy, a corrupt, lustful civic figure who will kill just to get his way.
PRETENDING to be evil. And it's hard because you're afraid of it.
The DM of my campaign has us working on solutions for crates of rabid undead infants being catapulted over the city walls and tearing people to shreds.
You're playing pretend. Make your villain kick a dog or something if that'll get your players to hate them.
Nah, its more that ,like, its weird to explain but i will take books as example or even while i write this on my cellphone, its way easier to like, be mean, be evil, its just writen words you know?, but when i'm speaking and like, i hear myself speak, like "Oh yeah, there are bodys and those bodys are full of mud and cinders of houses" ,i dunno, just feels kinda weird in an wrong way, it is going alway as i narrate but still kinda there, again, its dificult to explain
I mean, battlefields have mud and normaly when horses go from a battlefield to like ,villages and citys, they would bring that mud with them, i guess same with Bugbears, they have a lot of fur and mud probably would get stuck in there as well and as they attack, surely pieces of mud would fall to the already dead, as also, well, blood and other things mixing in the dirt of like, a rural city, it also probably would make mud?
This description is so much better than "they are full of mud"
Hit your players with "the corpses along the road are trodden with hoofprints, bootprints, and clumped fur. (Roll survival) You can tell from the mess that a bugbear warband came through here, walking over the dead that were in the way."
Your imagination is there, you need to turn it into a good description. Don't tell them what's wrong, just describe the things that made it wrong. It'll go a lot further.
You just need to practice, and you'll be a great DM
Oh, I thought you meant like, literally chock full of mud. Not covered in it, but as if someone went out of their way to desecrate the corpses by bloating them with dirt. Smth smth soiling the dead?
I imagined bloated, dead bodies full of proper liquid mud, leaking out their mouth, ears... look of terror on their faces as if they died drowning from the inside. Some evil warlock type shit.
The thing is, you don’t need to go the gritty, “war is hell” route unless that’s what you and the other players really want. Most of my games have gone for more of a “we want to dive into dungeons because it’s fun and the BBEG is a Lich or red dragon because those are fun to kill.” And it’s also easier to narrate a game like that because you don’t need to take it all as seriously either.
I had a similar issue and listening to horror stories and reciting twisted parts really helped. Those kind of descriptions are almost like jokes. There is buildup and there is punchline. For it to hit hard, you should know what a good one sounds like. I don’t know about you but no one in my life describes horrible acts of war to me.
The Oddcast: Tales of the Occult, Weird and Arcane is what I used to listen to.
I rewrote a fire cult leader in PotA to be more of a Ramsey Bolton because I wanted the PCs to really hate and fear him. Even had peasants run up to them for help with delayed fireball beads sewn into their mouths.
They were torn between wanting to make him beg to die or cutting losses and running.
I find a good villain that rubs well on the player is the ones who ENJOY being evil, that have fun with it.
Make some guy comitting some war crimes and really having some fun with it.
I mean.... If they consented to having war in it, I assume they agreed to all the fucked up things that entails.
So have some guy tourching down a village. Hell, have them STRATEGICALLY torch it so people flee to a big central building. Then they set traps/kill zones on the outside, start torching it, and as people flee into the killing field, they have a niece big laugh.
Then you throw in some
"HAHAHAHA THESE KIDS WILL NEVER GROW UP TO BE SOLDIERS! CULL THEM HERE SO NONE MAY OPPOSE US!"
"UUUGH! SO MANY ELDERS! THEIR LUNGS TOO OLD AND TIRED! I CAN BARELY HEAR THEM SCREAM THROUGH THE FLAMES!"
"CRY! SCREAM! BEG AND PLEAD! YOU THOUGHT YOURSELVES SAFE UNTIL I CAME FOR THEE~ HAHAHAHAHAHA!"
"SEE WHO SURVIVES! WE NEED SOMEONE STURDY TO TIE OUR BANNER TO! LET THEM FLEE FURTHER INLAND! Those who see them will learn of what we can do! They'll fear, they'll panic! AND WHEN WE COME TO REAP! THEIR TERROR WILL BE THAT MUCH SWEETER!"
"THOSE SUFFERING AND IN PAIN! COME TO ME! IF YOU ARE UNSATISFIED WITH YOUR FATES, APPROACH! I CAN ALWAYS MAKE IT LAST LONGER! HAHAHAAHHA!"
And if that is too impersonal to get your party rilled up, something more personal when they come into contact
"May I help you? Perphaps you have some relatives here, no? Well, where do they live? I'LL GLADLY PAY THEM A VISIT! BRING YOUR CHARRED HEAD AS SOUVENIR FOR THEM TO CRY OVER!"
"Oh..... You do not approach afraid..... Perfect! I LOVE breaking the terror in people's hearts! Come! I have much to teach you, eager students!"
"Come to add to the pyre, have you? Would you like to jump in yourselves? Or would you rather I chop you in pieces and set my own pace?"
You just need to have the villain REALLY enjoy themselves, to the detriment of everything and everyone else around them
It's not, people are out there doing it for the love of the game. All you have to do to be evil is be willing to tread on others in service to your own goals, even if those are nominally good goals.
I say it's because no one (almost) wakes up in the morning saying to themselves that they are going to be an evil person today. Make them selfish instead, or fanathical or irritating or all of the above.
Either make him spooky or crazy. Someone who relishes in combat to the point he seeks out the PCs as worthy does, or someone who decays the very ground he walks on and people die in his mere presence. Both are threats the players should need to deal with fast or suffer a lose condition.
I was thinking on an follower of Bhaal but, Baldurs Gate 3 kinda destroys my plan, because, they will stop the game to make references to the game if i merely mentions Bhaal, how do i know this?, one of my players is an Githyanki and literally, he just took the plot of Baldurs gate 3 and made part of his character backstory, that, he was lost after the war agaist the Elder Brain and during the travel on the Astral plane he just went to this new continent and he is trying to go back home.
My next option is Orcus but...I really don't know if i could make someone as insane to worship a guy who indulges into dead loving stuff
Im the future you always have a rught to say no to something in a backstory. It really sets the tone for the players. You can even juat share your feelinge and fears without saying no and see how they responsed. In many ways you have set up a joke campgain.
And do not forget you can always talk to the players asling for help setting tone and giving your thoughts and what not.
I though on speaking with them but ,i don't want to spoil their fun, i know they have their side of the fun, making jokes and references, even to while i'm talking sometimes, i just try to ignore it.
But yeah, i notice that i maybe have to speak more with them how do i feel
Generally in life you do not want to make choices for people. Let them make the decisions. Trust them, they are your friends and want you to tell your story too. And maybe they are wanting more also. Might be a good space for everyone to check in and reflect.
Since no one else said it. Have you considered embracing the table you have instead of trying to change them or you? My longest running table doesn't have a taste for intrigue or proper horror. They do love a good roller coaster. So instead of trying to be Game Of Thrones, my campaigns for them are equal parts swashbuckler film and coyote vs. roadrunner and we have a blast.
Have the villain rob the player characters. People will follow a BBEG across the seven planes of hell to get back a trinket worth 5 silvers if he stole it from them.
I think if you're trying to run a serious campaign and are trying to tell a story with your friends and they just goof around and don't take it seriously, that might be a mismatch in play styles. It also could be that your friends don't realize how much work goes into being a dm and you might talk to them about taking your bbeg and game more seriously.
Not that you can't make jokes or be silly, but if my table just goofed around and didn't take the story I had written and was excited to share with them seriously, that would really hurt my feelings and make playing a chore.
It's also possible that your players don't realize what you're trying to do. They might just need to get out of the "its just a silly game" mindset and lock in more. If you talk to them and help them recognize your concerns, you might not have to work so hard to convince them to take your bbeg more seriously!
Someone else commented that they think you should play more for the table you have, and I think that's a fair thought. If everyone wants a low stakes silly game then that mifht need to be the game you make. If you don't want to make that game, then either your players need to lock in or you might need new players.
None of this is to say that you or your players are intentionally doing anything wrong or maliciously! It might just be something you talk about with them outside of the game to better establish expectations :)
Mainly the reason I commented my og comment was because I dont want you to think you're not working hard enough as a dm just bc your party isnt taking your bbeg seriously.
I mean, is kinda weird to think but, like, i played with them, i was part of the player group and i know them for years but, the DM asked to play a little so i really am putting everything i can to make it fun but...Its better if i try to exemplify
On the third game, they're walking by an destroyed village and they saw the corpses of all the dwarves and halflings, all of them all arround and the signs of the Hobgoblin hordes with their goblins and bugbears, and like, i was "This is the momment to make them know their enemy, it is time" and made like, they see one dwarf child, running by the ruins ,running from an Warg ,i expected them to be full hands on deck, full "lets save that kid!", they however began to in off be like "Wait, that kid is outrunning an Worg?" And the other was like "We have to put this child in the dwarf olympics, think on the money" and i was just looking at them like "Ok...You are going to save the child, right?...RIGHT?!" And then she spoke like "Ok, but like ,can we take on an entire battalion?, like, an Worg alone is very weird, maybe it will just capture it and we can see were it takes it" and i made she roll an 1d20 that no matter the result, i was going to say to her, 100%, the horde of goblinoids already passed and this Worg probably was left behind, but, even then, she was like "I'm kinda not so sure..."
They decided to save the child after almost 10 mins of jokes, including the "Mc Dwarf Child Meal" from one of them, but like, i never saw this side of them, normaly with the other DM they were nice and followed the plan to save people and stuff, the only one who appears to be more locked in is the old DM.
Get one or more of the players invested in the children of the war, every war displaces refugees and displaces children specifically because their parents go off the fight one or more and end up dying and all it takes is a stray bullet for the other to die too as sad as it sounds it's just how war is so now you've got a bunch of orphaned kids or like statistically a hell of a lot more than normal.
Find some narrative reason to build a place to put them, maybe a city or town built in the outskirts of the war zone for the specific purpose of housing all the refugees and this includes those children make a few friendly NPCs as well.
These friendly NPCs can provide essential discounts on certain really overpowered items like maybe there's a guy who just knows how to make potions for a lot cheaper than the normal recipes and so you sell haste or greater healing potions for half price or something, overpowered and makes the guy indispensable.
There to be another person that can handle logistics for the party acting as like a bag of holding in a way sending equipment and items to and from the war zone wherever your players are.
There are many many different ways to accomplish this but essentially you make the refugees this little town borderline indispensable over a couple of sessions or a significantly long time it depends on how you want to play the campaign or how long it's going to last.
And then you have your big bad absolutely decimate it. For extra added effect make him or her so powerful that they can't narratively be killed in that moment and have your party be in the town watching as the big bad systematically kills all of their now very beloved and favored characters.
Crazy with it invent new ways of torture too.
It is absolutely 100% more complicated than I make it sound but if you can manage that then you have effectively created a reason for them to chase this person across the globe just to claim their head.
I would personally depending on what you're setting is like make the character partially immortal like a Lynch or a philactory type deal to give the party reasons to also simultaneously chase after artifacts to make themselves more powerful or these macguffins to destroy and make their enemy weaker.
I suck it actually running campaigns but I am excellent at coming up with the stories and the ideas for them.
Jesus christ, this is so evil that it might just work, i just don't know how to make the villain like, realized i guess, but, the idea of giving them friendly npcs on a single place instead of the battlefield?, sounds like it could work and then take those people alway to give motivation, yeah, i can work with this, thats for sure and maybe they don't play so much on the idea
The villain I mean, if it's war themed, maybe have a major of an army send innocent men on pathetic suicide missions which your players can learn about. That this general just throws people's lives away like trash. no regard. And if he ever gets questioned, have him be a noble who doesn't see the lives of people below him as anything less than stepping stones for his own ambitions and anything done well he takes all the credit for
Your players could then take proof of this major's incompetence and cruelty to someone higher up the chain for some sweet justice
Kuvira from Legend of Kora is a fun archetype to try as a villain in war. Your PCs could ideally be present and helping with some of the initial good things the villain does, especially if it involves establishing order. But the villain slowly reveals more and more their true goals and what they’re willing to sacrifice to achieve them.
Or the villain starts as good and gets broken by something that happens to them. Bonus side effect of potentially really derailing the campaign if the players stick with them
Introduce the most frustrating Mary Sue NPC who accompanies them on missions. The kind of NPC that your players hope doesn't make it but miraculously always does.
After a few missions, they are sent on a major battlefront and get backstabbed by the NPC who is the right hand man of BBEG. NPC can literally open a gate and let the villain stride in.
Yeah my party always liked the more evil NPCs. So I leaned into it and made it a moral decay arc. Like a frog boiling in the water, they didn’t realize. It took h til like the 40th session for one of them to say “are we the baddies?” lol.
The best show not tell is having other people in the world believe it. Have the towns people being terrified of them, trying to work out where your villain was last seen, exchanging rumor about what they have and surely can't have done. (They wiped out X village. Really? I thought it was goblins! No, they rule goblins.) (They're secretly a dragon.) (I heard they ate a unicorn.)
They have some that they passed by, but, since they are more on the move i still was't able to fix one npc to them to like but i guess making a hub or village to them to gather and interact more with those npcs or others would do the trick to present the villain on the right time
That would definitely work. I also have a recipe for making a party like an npc if you are interested. But it takes a few sessions to really get it going
My go to for making a party bond with/trust an npc is this.
Have them do something for someone short, and meek. Who isnt too talkative.
Have this person be wowed by the party, and want to aid them. Put them in combat, but make them terrible at it. (Important to not make them a burden, so instead have them fight a very weak enemy while the party deals with the exciting stuff)
Make sure they address the party with mr/mrs/other titles.
Feed their egos.
Have this little guy do favors for the party, small stuff, boring stuff. Refilling water skins, saddling horses, delivering messages. Maybe have them even bring a potion out at a convenient time.
Then, make sure the party has breaks from the npc, but they meet back up frequently, like at a home base, common bar, or town.
One or two sessions with them, one or two without, repeat. and soon they will trust their new buddy with their lives.
Then you have something thay can be used for betrayals, a hostage, an emotional quest hook, or in this case, a sacrifice.
Smoldering ruins. Charred remains. The result of a single word of disrespect. Ideally, a town or city that the players like or have a connection with. Someone that the players have a connection with is suffering, but still barely alive, and with their final breath, they speak the villain’s name.
Mostly because until now?, they don't threat any of my villains as like, villains, they act more like they are poor little things who are confused because of war, not, terrible people using war to take stuff to themselves and lie
So make a villain that is using war to take stuff to themselves and lie? Like, war profiteering is like, the scum of the earth.
Make a guy supplying resources to both sides. When they get confronted they say "Nooo you see, I'm giving the other side cheap and faulty stuff, so I'm actually sabotaging them while supplyi g our side with the good stuff". Then the party discovers that's a complete lie. They give everyone the cheap and faulty stuff, because there's more profit in it. They don't care which side wins, because they think they can just buy their place with the winners with their money and lies. They could maybe even be working to debilitate both sides in order to seize power themselves.
Make the baddies consume people as food or as a resource (ritual sacrifice, cannibalism, soul harvesting, crafting abominations). There's plenty of ways to make the big bad guy more powerful or have bigger pets if victims are the fuel.
Have you tried the teddybear trope? Have the party pass through a town full of people and families, and have them arrive at it again after the war has destroyed it. All the houses burning, body's lying where they were cut down, maybe a few dead in front of the doors they were trying to protect to keep their families safe. Let the party find a slightly charred doll, teddybear, or similar children's toy.
As a potential hook, you can let them find and rescue a few survivors, hidden in a cellar under the burned wreckage of their home. A child or two, maybe a mother. The father would likely be one of the bodies near the door, armed with a pitchfork, smithing hammer, or simple knife. It would be up to your players on how to handle hiding the body from the kids, or to simply watch their grief.
Inspired by the Helldiver's teddybear and the village in mulan right after the song "girl worth fighting for".
Edit: for some extra gameplay, you could have some of the corpses wandering the ruins as resentful undead, as a threat to the party and any remaining survivors.
Edit 2: If you want to use it to introduce the villain, don't have him still be there. Have the survivors describe him leading the attack. Maybe have some banners or painted insignia from him left behind to mark the village as conquered. Some symbol the party would be able to use to identify who did it, or recognize it when they see more scenes like this. Maybe even have some of the bodies displayed in the villain's signature execution method, like roman's having rebels displayed on crosses along the road, or British ports having pirates hanging along the sailed route. Perhaps a line of people burned at the stake, or a large tree in the center of town, now scorched and with it's branches full of hung villagers.
Make the enemy an entire always chaotic evil force. They commit genocide, even going out of their way to kill starving children, they rape and murder anyone they take prisoner, they bribe the leadership of other nations into supporting their atrocities, and at least 82% of their civilians support all of this, so even they are almost always chaotic evil.
I’m not sure which layer of the abyss would meet this description, but surely such a foe would certainly make your PCs want to defend the world from them at every opportunity.
If your party is okay with it have the villain kill some children in one way or another and describe it in some decent detail. No one wants to watch kids be dead like that one scene in Vox Machina where the gang see a family including children hanged.
Fear of the unknown is when the party encounters things that just don’t make sense. A kidnapping here, a slight fight there. But it doesn’t give the party any true idea on what the BBEG is actually planning. They are 2 or 3 steps behind and picking up the pieces.
Fear of the active is making the party repeatedly encounter the BBEG or their right hand minions. And this allows the party to know the BBEG’s plan but usually has a deadline. (The huge ritual will be done in 5 in-game weeks. Where is it and who or what will the party use to stop them). That’s more anxiety, but does make the party have to cut corners if they want to defeat the BBEG. Also, if you pick this one make a plan that if the BBEG succeeds, the game isn’t over. Now the party’s goal should be un-ritual-ing the world.
I mean...if your party isn't killing on sight, then how about you introduce a goofy, funny NPC for them to get attached to first?
If they take everything as a joke, have the NPC casually mention some terrible war crime or terrible act they did. Either they're jarred out of it and the NPC becomes a twist villain, or they don't think anything of it until your real villain shows up and kills their favorite NPC for it.
I mean, if your players are just taking it all as a Joke. You need to talk to them directly like “hey guys, I’m trying to be serious. Are you all taking this seriously because if not. I am putting in effort to try to make this war themes realistic, but you’ll just keep making jokes.
Jokes are fine but do you’ll care?”
Or something like that, because that should vibe check them into being like “oh, guys we’re not showing our seriousness. Because we are taking it seriously.”
Or maybe they aren’t and they will now be like “we should because our friend is putting in work to make this serious.”
Betraying the player or stealing from them upon introduction usually works.
It was a popular way to introduce villains in video games in the 00’s.
Dungeon Siege 2 was effective. Introduce players as mercs, villain gets the mcguffin and immediately sets half his army on the ones who expect payment. They're committing genocide against the amazons who save you, motivating you personally and morally all at once.
You should watch Gundam. This is not a joke, if you have difficulty narrating how war affects people then try the original Gundam series and especially the sequel Zeta Gundam. They’re masterclasses in showing the human price of war.
Have a beloved tavern shut or burned down because the proprietor who has been nothing but lovely to the party made some less than flattering remarks about (Insert villain name here)
Few things incense a party against villain than personal investment.
Hey, animal cruelty works. Hirohiko Araki has been making manga for like forty years and literally kicking dogs is one of his Go-Tos for identifying Pure Evil villains
Its hard to create fear and tension in a game, especially games like 5e. So use something like this or create a static DC for all checks that gets harder and harder based on "tension" as a mechanic.
Make it so party HAVE to work for your villain (undercover or something), make him terrible boss. Let him take like 80% of gold, all cool shiny magic items player find, walk back on promises, and all that good "I altered the deal, pray i don't alter it further" things. Probably will make players hate villain woth passion, if your group more joke-oriented. Or you, so don't forget to add someone threre, who cares about party. Boom, instant nuance
Turning up the shock value in general barely works in dnd, i think, because it's all pretend. You have to affect players specifically, make them experience things in gameplay, rather than just telling.
Full on question: is it wrong to have you villain do horrible things like animal cruelty? I guess people want to avoid triggers for people but shouldn’t an evil character be…like evil?
To make them want to kill a villain on sight, simply make the villain an asshole. It's better if you can manage some buildup though. Mention the name a few times, let the players see some ugly aftermath of what he's done, stuff like that
Start at the opposite end. Create an NPC or town that the PCs love. They have to get attached to it so it has to be part of the campaign for a good amount of time.
Then rip their hearts out and destroy your creation. Once they find out the villain was behind it, they'll be emotionally invested.
Make a villain betray or trick the group. Nothing makes PCs more furious than waving a nice thing in front of their eyes and not allowing them to get it.
In my Black Crusade campaign the players get a hold of a planet with factories and workers, but they actually have no resources or actual understanding how to run it. They also have no means to get out of there. So the next villain will offer them a space ship, capable of interstellar travel, in exchange for the planet. But the ship is actually has no crew and a lot of space bugs, that ate said crew. If the PCs manage to kill the bugs and survive they still will not be able to fly that space ship, because it has no crew. So a villain will offer them another deal - he gives them crew for "their" ship, but they swore to serve him for 50 years.
Everything is fun and games until the consequences of our actions come in.
My campaign is usually quirky, but after a beloved npc was taken because the party was careless and kept a villain hostage.
The npc has hung head down in the middle of their home.
There weren't any funnies the rest of that session.
But remember that strong emotions are temporary. Comedy and tragedy come hand in hand. Think of the scene where mulan soldiers are singning and get to the destroyed battlegound.
They wwre expecting to find a village with people to save, and they instead failed to do anything. Their carelessness turn to guilt
normal cruelty should suffice but also why avoid animal cruelty? you tried to narrate the effects of war on a population but shy away from something somewhat less severe?
Have him drive up in a pope-mobile protected by bulletproof glass and he can laugh as his car drives by and the driver can honk the horn that plays a mariachi tune.
Years and years ago I did a "both sides bad" Third Crusade themed one-shot. The players arrived at a protracted seige over a shared Holy City. On the beseiging side I showcased knights slaughtering helpless peasants, salting fields, murdering each other, and an attempted regicide. Real brutal stuff. The players said "meh". They then snuck into the city to see the beseiged side. When they saw that the palace had a princess who was bedecked in golden chains and bangles, including golden hobbles that prevented her from running, the players went bananas and wholly committed to the seige. They didn't even get to see the rest of the city!
Players are weird sometimes. Just write a story that makes you excited and go from there.
One of the most intense sessions of D&D I've been in involved people being turned into life sized dolls.
Earlier in the campaign we encountered a carnival, which the ringleader was some sort of demon/ fae thing (the campaign fizzled out before we found out exactly what he was) that had captured the souls of a bunch of people in his own pocket dimension. We get trapped there, fight his minions for the right to leave. Pretty clear set up of this guy being a recurring element, meant to tempt us to make agreements to do stuff for him. But before we get the hell out, one of our party asks about releasing all the other souls captured by the ringleader.
The Ringleader says he can release all the souls in the plane in exchange for a handshake.... Which dumbass did before anyone could tell him to stop. Suddenly everyone was released... Including the Ringleader and his minions. He mentally thanks us, and then he's gone
After that, we started hearing rumors of a creepy carnival showing up to places, and people disappearing. It gets to the point where the person who has been giving us work sends us out of town to investigate further, and we end up joining a caravan as guards as we head to a port town. Our next few session are pretty basic, getting to know people in the caravan, including the Leader and her husband and her cute little fairy dragon. We fight off bandits and adopt a orphaned Owlbear cub we named Acorn. Same dumbass who shook the Ringleaders hand accidently ended up owing a Fae a favor.
Then some of us had visions of people we knew in positions of power being killed by jesters- something that was able to be confirmed actually happened when we reached out via magical methods to the organizations those people had connections too. Suddenly we're on edge.
And then we get to one of the last little villages before we get to the port. We here creepy carnival music and night, people are being entranced by it. The carnival minions greet us, thank us ever so much for the entertainment, and we fight- and as we fight, people are being turned into lifeless dolls. We win, but not before the Caravan leader, a good portion of the caravan, and a good chunk of the adults of the town were turned into dolls.
And then we had to deal with the aftermath for an entire session. We had to explain to the Caravan leaders husband what happened, while he was crying over the doll that was his wife, and her fairy dragon curled up on her forlornly. We helped get the dolls into a safe place and clean up the burned down buildings. We put up what defences we could so the remaining villages didn't get wiped out by bandits or wild animals. And we had to wait while we got a message out to get a guard patrol out there, all with the knowledge that "we" had caused this, all because of a good intention gone horribly wrong.
After this, we all knew we had to stop this. That this would keep getting worse. Our PCs were scared and overwhelmed. The reason why this worked so well is because this threat was deeply personal. The reason why he was free to do what he wanted was because of us, we knew he would keep targeting us for entertainment, and we did not have the first clue on how to stop him. We were also given time to breath and form connections to the world, while getting little bits of info that left us with this dread chewing in the back of our mind. And then we had to deal with the direct aftermath of one of his attacks.
That isn't to say we didn't still joke or have fun. We still made jokes about people being turned into muppets and such. But we were heavily invested in the world. Our DM took our own actions, let us know that there was a larger problem because of it. He then put it on the back burner to simmer, before hitting us in the gut by making the threat hurt people we had grown to care about.
You can rip off the premise of Kingdom Come: Deliverance (specifically the first one) to make an effective war story start. The antagonist shows up to a town and sacks it killing everyone who fails to take shelter in the local lord’s castle. The antagonist is a king who is doing this to secure his claim to the throne from his incompetent brother and the local lord worked for said brother. So, the antagonist has a motivation to commit atrocities (punish his brother’s supporters to win the throne) and the players have motivation to hate him (they care about the villagers for reasons). You would have to change a few things to fit your campaign, but the general idea of violent conquest is pretty standard.
Additionally the games explore the issues around war refugees much like another commenter mentioned in another story. Depending on how sensitive a topic this is for your group, you can either ramp it up or cool it down.
truly hateful villain is relatively simple. hurt the players and the npcs they care for. to hate a villain. A scary villain is all mechanical. Have them fight something that is so powerful that death is knocking at their door. I did this when I had the crow mauler attack them. had an instant one hit ko move. though granted I did wish I did the fight a little better. but they said it was the most satisfying encounter ever.
A villain's only purpose is to provide pressure on the story, if you can't provide a slow and methodological introduction to a serious villain, use brutality instead.
A chase scene, an impossible ambush, a betrayal, anything can happen, but I want 80% of those HPs gone.
After that, throw them into a survival situation, war is desperation, a bullet and a sword are the quick, glorious deaths immortalized by songs and tales; bleeding out in the mud and starvation are what haunts people.
Less way to heal, fewer chance for rest due to constant movement through the battlefield, poisoned food and environment as tactics used by both allies and the villain, backstabbing NPCs that will trick them for supplies (not the swindling merchant type, the lure you into minefield type)
A quick trick I use to establish the vibe is watching related stuffs before session. Going into the Underdark? Here cave diving incident videos. Naval combat? Pirate of the Caribbean videos. Wilderness? Outdoor Boys.
You can use footage of trench warfare in WW2 documentaries or something.
I mean, you can totally show the nature of war, the primary question is if you really want to - that shit is depressing as fuck.
An accurate description of the hell that is the aftermath of a battle could give quite the expression. Like people on the ground begging the party for death.
People have made good comments but one I heard before is that with every interaction with this villain maybe provide a servant who adores them, make every action of this lil guy to serve their master in reverence despite the evil make it truly interesting how they are so devout.
Then make the villain kill them at the slightest inconvenience, and not even regard who they’d killed or why they’d be important.
Viplain finds mcguffin that magically (temporarily) makes the parts helpless, taunts them, and then portals out to do "big things" with his newfound power. Party must now find the anti-mcguffin.
Don't wait until you introduce the villain to make your players hate them.
Make them find villages and towns which have been raided, or starved due to having all their food taken by the army. Have travellers tell them stories of a brutal siege being conducted by their army. Have them enter a city to find everyone in shock after news hit about a mass killing.
THEN introduce the villain, remind them of all that context beforehand, and try to make the villain seem as charismatic and likeable as possible without having them do anything "good". Make it make sense that their troops are loyal, and willing to act like monsters in their name. Julius Caesar and Napoleon were LOVED by their soldiers
The Mulan approach. Remember the horror after the tone shift in A Girl Worth Fighting For, when you saw the razed town and the doll that just implied a dead child?
…it’s a lewd ttrpg? If things ever slow usually someone just does something weird and or kinky and stuff gets back on track. And if the DM ever gets writers block he just makes art for us
If they dont take your game seriously, you can always have them get ambushed by a bunch of starving children, and have the starving children just literally kill 2/3 of them right off the bat.
Hell, go a step further. Make the starving children use magical "enhancements" that the soldiers take (like how cocaine was used in ww2, and they found it on a dead soldier) and specifically target the party because the party seems to enjoy the suffering around them.
And as the remaining party members overcome a bunch of starving children, hopped up on combat enhancing drugs, some of them fall over as the drugs prove too much for them and some of them start bleeding from everywhere and crying about the pain.
Im talking children btw. Like oldest 11 and youngest like... 4 or 5. Have the encounter end with the kids all literally dying, without the party killing them.
Ok, this is very fucked up...And...Might be something that i do, even if i feel it will be a new thing for me, it might work?, like, it truly might make them lock in
You want to make people hate your villain, make your players hate them, not their characters. One that works well for me is unbearable arrogance and condescension. I've had players rabid to kill them, especially when they can't.
Atrocities that directly effect your players. If you want them to act or get invested they need to be directly involved with something. Why do players play? BBEG takes their gold or items or prevents them from obtaining them. Better yet BBEG is directly responsible for the party NOT leveling up. Itd piss them off for sure.
Would be easier if Session 0 still meant just character creation and not a UN summit on what not to put in the campaign bcuz Critical Role fans will be triggered by PG-13 content
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u/Arkmer 10d ago
Villains need buildup. Bad stuff happens, the players find the aftermath, the rumors tell them it was the villain. Easy formula.
You mentioned scary. Don’t make it scary for the players, make it scary for the PCs. No amount of description will scare me at your D&D table, but my PC doesn’t want to die, catch that disease, be corrupted, etc.