Villains

Diseased or cursed friends inspire quests for the cure. Of particular power is the relative or loved one who turns out to be the villain, either due to possession, lycanthropy, seduction, or simply temperament. Can the heroes bring themselves to kill their friend to save others—especially if she’s really not responsible for her own actions? Even in a fantasy story, however, the bounds of coincidence can be stretched only so far. If a PC’s friend or loved one happens to be the random victim of some horror, that’s believable. The third or fourth time it happens, suspension of disbelief fades. If the result of friendships with NPCs is always tragedy, the players will start creating loner characters who never form social ties. So victimize their friends and family sparingly—save it for when you’re really trying to make an impact. Whenever possible, give your villains a reason for selecting a particular victim, rather than explaining it away as random chance. Villains the heroes have faced before, or their allies or surviving minions, might target the PCs’ relations as vengeance or as a means to defl ect attention from their iniquitous schemes. Not everyone who suffers need be innocent. The horror genre is replete with tales of those whose torment is poetic justice for past sins, those who make foolish wishes or bargains and suffer the consequences. The PCs can see evil befall those who have themselves been evil, and take from it a warning that their own behavior must remain beyond reproach.

While Chapter 2: Dread Adventures discusses the various types of villains you might use in a horror-based game, you have additional details to consider in a full-length horror campaign. Although not every villain should be a fi xture of the entire campaign, you don’t want the PCs mowing through them the same way they might slash through goblins in a traditional dungeon crawl. In addition to what they do, and how and why they do it, part of what makes villains truly horrifi c is how often they engage in their nefarious activities.

FREQUENCY OF APPEARANCE

When constructing a villain for a horror game, you should decide whether you intend the character to appear for only a single game or story, to pop up now and again throughout the campaign, or to be a continual and perhaps overwhelming presence in the setting. A one-shot villain is substantially easier to create, although it can still be challenging. You need not develop long-running plots or layers of motives; knowing why he’s engaged in this particular activity at this particular time is suffi cient. A one-shot villain is often less powerful or resourceful than a recurring villain, since it’s expected that the PCs will be able to defeat him soundly, killing him or otherwise ensuring that he will not return. In a horror campaign, even a one-shot villain should have deeper motives than the average random encounter. You want the PCs to fi nd him interesting and challenging, so he should be more than a collection of numbers. Why is he killing these people, or raising the dead, or attempting to charm the mayor, or summoning a demon? The plot need not be complex, but it should be credible. Nothing breaks the mood or suspension of disbelief in a horror campaign like a villain with a silly motive, and the trap of silly motives yawns widest with one-shot villains. Having a believable motivation and goals also helps you adjust when your supposedly one-shot villain lives to fi ght another day. The second tier of villains is made up of opponents destined to appear multiple times but not meant to provide an ongoing threat. In a campaign mostly centered on a single story that includes sporadic side quests not related to the main plot, a recurring villain might show up in half of the side quests. She is the moving factor behind a subplot with which the PCs deal only when they have a few moments of respite from the main story. Alternatively, a recurring villain might be part of the main story but not play the primary mover and shaker; she might represent an interested third party or be a powerful but untrustworthy henchman of the main villain. It can be more diffi cult to develop believable motivation for recurring villains than long-term villains. You must create not one set of motives, but one for each story in which the recurring villain appears. If the evil wizard had been raising an army of zombies when the PCs fi rst encountered him, why is he working with a cabal of dark druids the second time? If he has a single compelling goal, it must be wide enough to accommodate all manner of storylines. A recurring villain should be either more powerful or trickier than a one-shot villain, because you’re expecting him to survive the PCs’ fi rst attempts to stop him and return to trouble them again. Do not make him too powerful, though, or the PCs might begin to wonder why he isn’t the driving force of the campaign. It is the long-term, story-shaping villain who has the greatest impact on a horror campaign. This is the entity that drives long-running plots that span years of game time and many levels of character advancement. Think of the fantasy and horror series you know, be they novels, television, or movie serials. The single villain who persevered through them all, who was always the main foil for the heroes—that’s the long-term villain. A long-term villain must be gripping in a way others need not be. Her motives must be deep, her history detailed. Every one of her schemes throughout a campaign should be devoted to a single goal, although that goal need not be obvious until well into the campaign. She must keep the players intrigued during her numerous appearances and machinations. A long-term villain should be exceptionally powerful and/or resourceful, so much so that the PCs would be foolish to try to take her on directly—at least in the early stages of the campaign. Just as important, she must have an excellent reason not to simply exterminate the meddlesome PCs the fi rst time she realizes they’re a threat to her plan—perhaps none of her lieutenants proves up to the task and she simply does not want to run the risk of a battle to the death with them herself, or perhaps they have a role to play in her schemes of which they are themselves unaware. By the same token, long-term villains tend to inspire emotions that other villains do not. Your players might be angry at the one-shot villain who caused them trouble, or frustrated at the one who keeps escaping only to pop up again later. But the villain pulling the strings throughout the entire campaign, who has deceived, defeated, or escaped them time and time again . . . your players are likely to grow to hate him. Given enough of that hatred, the mere presence of the villain can be suffi cient to drive the campaign, as the PCs refuse to give up until they have brought him down. The culmination of