Proper Villainy Profiles: The Joker

I had the pleasure of seeing The Dark Knight over the weekend. I'd been looking forward to this one because I'd heard that Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker was completely amazing, and he didn't disappoint. TDK's Joker was a standout example of what a real villain ought to be -- and you can take some of his complete batshit insanity (no pun intended) and use it with some of your villains. Let's take a look:

***** POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT!!! IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE DARK KNIGHT, DON'T READ ANY FURTHER!!! *****

Chaotic Evil With A Side Order Of Insanity

If ever you were wondering what the difference between Lawful Evil and Chaotic Evil is, the Joker's your poster boy for Chaotic Evil. Whatever he does, it's to suit whatever plans he has. Granted, not all Chaotic Evil people have desires as sick and twisted as our purple-suited antagonist, but it does show that Chaotic Evil-aligned people don't so much care about how they accomplish their goals or who has to die.

Just being Chaotic Evil isn't what makes the Joker so frightening. Think about it for a second. Just because you're evil doesn't necessarily make you motivated. I'm sure most of us have known people over the years who really wanted to do some bad things to get their way, but they were too scared to. The Joker's got that motivation somehow. The scary part is what he's motivated to do. And most don't find out what that is until it's way too late.

Why So Serious?

Though the Joker has been portrayed in a variety of ways over the years, the main thing that separated him from most of the other Bat-villains (especially after the 80's, when they really started to turn up the homicidal cuckoo) is that he's not really after anything aside from chaos and mayhem. Yeah, he might rob a bank, but you can bet he's going to use all of that loot to fund some sort of scheme that will sow the seeds of terror in the streets of Gotham somehow. As Alfred says during the movie, "Some men just want to see the world burn."

That's scary stuff. That means that you can't reason with a person like this. You can't make them go away by giving them what they want. If you give them what they want, horrible things happen to you and your loved ones and their loved ones and your dog and their dogs and probably their dogs' friends and everyone's neighbors. People like this love to see others suffer, and probably the single scariest thing about TDK's Joker is that he lives to see people corrupted and to make themselves and their loved ones suffer. It's like he can make a Diplomacy check gone horribly, horribly wrong, and if he succeeds then you've crossed the line where you're not sure if you're a good person anymore.

This maniac was born to tear places and people down, and he's frighteningly good at it. Somehow he's charismatic (or frightening enough) enough to have a bunch of minions following him. He makes unbelievably effective plans to accomplish his insane goals, probably due in part to the fact that he doesn't need to have an exit strategy most of the time. Nobody's quite sure if he even cares if he lives or dies so long as the chaos continues to spread. As he put it himself in TDK, "It's like I'm a dog chasing cars. I don't even know what I'd do if I caught one."

Bringing Mr. J to Your Campaign

I've just detailed a lot of things that make the Joker a frightening and unique villain. You can use a lot of the things he does in TDK and weave them into your adventures in D&D.

Suppose you have a mad wizard laying waste everywhere he goes. Nobody knows why he's doing this. Guess what happens if the PC's try to talk him out of it! (Hint: it ends in "ireball".) Or worse, their conversation points out to the arcane psycho another abomination that needs to be.... corrected. At the root. In the PC's hometown.

Or, how about a fallen villain from earlier in your campaign who wants nothing more than to see the heroic party shamed before all who hold them up as a shining example to their people? This villain could set up a trap with a seeming no-win situation in which the PC's would have to look bad one way or the other. Or he could just plain try to tempt or goad them into doing something morally questionable and let the stone continue to roll down the hill of evil.

I could go on quite a bit more, but you get the idea. The Joker is, in my mind, the epitome of a Proper Villain. Use characters like him as a resource, and your own characters will get a lot more colorful and believable. And if any of your PC's hunt you down because your villain was just too damn evil to stop, then I apologize in advance for giving you just a little push in the right (wrong?) direction.

Proper Villainy Profiles: Beowulf

It's been awhile since we peered into the abyss to see what horrors lurked within, and I'm in an absolutely foul mood so this seemed like a great time!

I saw Beowulf over the weekend. While it diverged somewhat from the myth, it was still a good story. With good villains!

Let's examine these villains, shall we? (* WARNING LOTS AND LOTS OF SPOILERS AHEAD MATEY, YARR *)

• Grendel
  
  Poor Grendel. Born with exposed eardrums, the voice of Crispin Glover, and a bunch of loud drunken Scandinavian assholes nearby. It's not his fault the noise of their partying drives him insane. Maybe killing and eating half of them is a little overboard, but can you honestly say you haven't wanted to do that? I blame bad parenting.
  
  Grendel is a great example of a "villain" who doesn't want to be eeeeevil. He just has monstrous strength and no social skills whatsoever. His way of dealing with adversity is to tear it into tiny pieces, occasionally putting them in his mouth. It's hard not to feel bad for the guy even as he murders a room full of unsuspecting partiers.
  
  Although I was glad when he died because HOLY CRAP HIS VOICE WAS ANNOYING. Who says "heeearmed"?
  
  VILLAIN RATING: I HATE CRISPIN GLOVER'S VOICE
  



• Grendel's Mom
  
  Grendel's Mom has got it goin' on
  Grendel's Mom has got it goin' on
  
  OK, that had to be said.
  
  Anyway, Grendel's mom is another great example of a well-developed (no pun intended!) villain, but unlike Grendel she's got some good healthy evil going on. She doesn't like being bad for the sake of it, mind you. She just knows what she wants (demon babies of kings, apparently) and she'll do whatever she has to in order to get it.
  
  The part I didn't quite get is that she really didn't have to work very hard to get what she wanted.
  
  King (various): ZOMG! A water demon! With goldboobs!
  Grendel's Mom: Hi! Let's have sex and you give me a demon baby.
  King (various): OKAY!
  
  I mean, this worked for Hrothgar, Beowulf, and I assume Beowulf's buddy (and new king) at the end. And she didn't ask for anything else and even (for awhile) granted her baby daddy power and riches until demon baby grows up and goes all dragon on the kingdom. Maybe she's just bored. And I didn't get why it was always a king's demon baby. Maybe she's just got a royalty fetish.
  
  REGARDLESS! She's still a good example of a character doing bad things for their own purposes but not working for the Forces of Blackest Evil
  
  P.S. how in the HELL did this movie get a PG-13 rating????
  
  VILLAIN RATING: DD with gold sprinkles
  
  


• Beowulf's Demon/Dragon Baby
  
  The Darth Maul of the movie. AWESOME fight scenes, but he doesn't do anything else but speak some one-liner crap. I didn't understand why he was terrorizing everyone and demanding vengeance on dear old Dad. I hope my son doesn't do that when he grows up. Eeeeee.
  
  VILLAIN RATING: ZZZZZZZZZZZZ
  



• Beowulf and Hrothgar
  
  What's that? I'm listing the good guys as villains? "What the hell", you ask?
  
  They're the heroes, but they're doing stuff almost as bad as the "bad guys"! Cheating on your wife with a hot water demon, fathering demon babies who end up killing your countrymen, LYING ABOUT IT when you know damn good and well what the deal is?
  
  It's no gory mass murder, but it's certainly not Good behavior.
  
  And while they might not be completely Bad or Good, I say they're great characters.
  
  VILLAIN RATING: IDSPISPOPD
  

Until next time!

<evil laughter>

Proper Villainy, pt. 5 -- Let The PC's Win. (Wait, What?!!?)

Over the last couple of weeks of Proper Villainy, we've covered everything from how to create a villain to how to make him the worst he can be. All of these can be used to write a believable villain into your story. However, let us not forget we're playing D&D - and that as a Dungeon Master, you have certain responsibilities to your players that must be considered.

Your villain should not be invincible.

Anybody else ever watch a James Bond movie and cringe when the bad guy captures Bond and reveals his evil plot instead of just busting a cap right in his Secret Agent Dome? Then, naturally, the baddie leaves Bond alone in the deathtrap for a few minutes, which is ample enough time for him to escape and eventually bring the villain down. I know that if I was ever a supervillain, I wouldn't make that sort of mistake.

Well, here's the thing. You're leading a bunch of players through an adventure in which, more than likely, they are the heroes. If they're against an opponent they can't ever win against, that is not fun. I'm not saying let the PC's breeze through every battle. That would be silly, and also boring. But do let them win eventually.

I am reminded of when I was about 7 years old, and my older brother (who is one of the nicest people I know) was a total dick to me when we were playing with my He-Man action figures. The incident went something like this:

Him: Skeletor captures Teela and takes He-Man's power sword!
Me:: But He-Man hits Skeletor in the face and takes it back!
Him: Without the Power Sword, He-Man is powerless and it doesn't hurt at all! Skeletor then tosses the Power Sword into the Great Abyss, forever ridding the world of He-Man!!
Me: MOM!!!!!!!!

There is a little something to remember here when dealing with the PC's. You're omnipotent in their world. You make the rules. They can't beat you. It's like trying to rules lawyer God into making it rain tomorrow. (If any of you can do that, I have some requests.) If you're constantly never letting them win because "that's not how my villain would act", you're missing the point of why everybody is sitting around the table looking at you and rolling dice.

Make Your Villain Mortal Again In 30 Days Or Your Money Back

• Smoke And Mirrors
  
  You can just make him LOOK invincible until the PC's show up. However, you may run the risk of leaving your players feeling let down if they show up and find a 98 pound weakling instead of the Dark Warlord of Blood. Make him difficult -- just not insurmountable.
  


• Give him a weakness.
  
  If you really must make your villain invincible, provide some kryptonite that the PC's have to work for. And when it's time to use it, I personally prefer making that a challenge as well. After all, it'd be boring if the PC's walked in the front door, held aloft the Wand of Fraznozz, and a bolt of lightning struck the evil wizard down immediately before the PC's were awarded experience and bid good night.
  
  One way to do keep this exciting is to make the "kryptonite" difficult to use - like birds steal the artifact and you have to shoot them down to get it back while Big Bad's chopping the party up. Another is to have it be nonlethal - it just allows the party to hit him / not die instantly when he hits them. You still want the end battle to be an exciting climax.
  


• Friends Don't Let Friends Use Deus Ex Machina
  
  If your villain is way badder than the PC's could ever hope to be, don't have the solution to this be an external force, for instance - a equally superbad NPC on the side of Truth and Justice, showing up at the last minute. This takes the PC's completely out of the equation and turns what should have been a climactic battle into nothing more than a cutscene. And though you might be tempted to use said Super Awesome Good NPC to wear the villain down enough for the PC's to handle him, it still takes away from their sense of accomplishment in kicking his evil ass.
  
  Don't let anything bogart the PC's glory. That's why you're all there. Even you.
  

Remember, as DM, it's your job to run the show and thrill the people at your gaming table. It's OK to deviate from the plan a little bit -- and stack the deck slightly in favor of the PC's -- to make the story work out better in the end.

But if anyone finds our you're doing it, you kill them in their sleep.

Until next time....

<evil laughter>

Proper Villainy pt.4: Learn from the Master

I'm going to make a distinction here. There are bad guys, and there are villains. What's the difference? Well, let's go a little less fantasy and a little more sci-fi for a moment. Let's take everybody's favorite Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Vader. I don't think too many people are going to disagree with me when I call him a true villain. He's one of the classics, despite (IMHO) a somewhat poorly-executed backstory in the prequels. What makes him a true villain?

• Infamy
  
  Bad guys are bad. They can be heartless, cruel, sadistic, murderous, you name it. But one thing they're not is infamous. And that's one thing a real villain has going for him. The seasoned villain has spread fear throughout the land with an iron fist, people quail at the mention of his name. People might not want his name spoken aloud for fear he might hear them!
  
  You can get infamous fast or slow. You can get it fast by, say, murdering an entire village. Then sit back and watch as your name spreads fear across the land for awhile. But good, long-lasting infamy -- that needs slow-cooked in a giant black crock pot with a skull on it. Vader had a very nice crock pot, and he used it religiously. You have to cultivate this kind of infamy, and Vader waged a campaign of terror across the galaxy -- and to do that, sometimes you need theatrics. He makes examples of people at staff meetings by choking them with the Force. He blows up entire planets to make his point. But most of all, his official title has "DARK LORD" in it. Everybody everywhere knows you don't want Vader showing up on your front porch for any reason, and that's completely on purpose.
  


• Advanced FUD
  
  Not to say all your villains have to wear a black cape and look malevolent and shadowy, but keeping the FUD flowing by staying mysterious certainly isn't going to hurt. What I mean by this is, people are way scarier when you don't know how, when, or even if they're going to come at you. This could mean several things. People could just be ignorant or wildly misinformed about a villain's battle capabilities (like when Han Solo fires a blaster at Vader in ESB and Vader just stops it cold.... thats gotta demoralize a scoundrel). Or the villain could simply be known for being unpredictable - and frequently catastrophically violent. Think about it, if Darth Vader goes to the grocery store to buy a carton of milk, the dude working the counter is PRAYING LIKE CRAZY that there's nothing wrong with the credit card reader.
  
  Vader had FUD down to a science. It seemed like he was everywhere, in a TIE fighter, lightsaber duelling, pointing Death Stars at planets. You couldn't escape him, and you had no freaking idea what evil rabbit he was going to pull out of his hat next. His breathing made you wonder what the hell was really under that suit. And his Force powers made all of us go "he can do WHAT?" more than once. Come on, being able to sense Luke had a sister and gloating that he was going to turn her to the Dark Side? Guessing Luke wasn't expecting that. That's some evil genius right there. And the fact that he could pull stuff like that out of his ass just made him that much scarier.
  
  What's that you're saying? My villain isn't a Sith Lord, and doesn't have all those cool powers? No problem. The human mind has a tendency to blow things out of proportion, and that's what villains need. Your villain may simply be an ordinary S.O.B., but you want people to think of him as an unstoppable dark force who can destroy everything they hold dear with but a passing thought. Incite unrest in the people with tales of your dark army by raiding some villages -- but try not to let anyone see the whole thing. This way they think it's huge -- and panic -- regardless of whether it actually is. Save an evil twist for the end of an encounter. Do horrible things to people by proxy. Don't let them steal your villain's power away by letting them see the real him. When they know what they're facing, they can plan and move against it.
  


• Arrogance
  
  There's gotta be a little. It's just no fun to finally beat the giant emotionless killer robot at the end of the game. It's much more satisfying to finally put that smug son of a bitch in his place. Vader was right on here too. Not only is he sure he can crush the rebels, he's gonna turn his kids (and mortal enemies) to the Dark Side. Because he can. And it's so great seeing the villain's reaction to their world crumbling around their dark, evil ears when the heroes bring them down. Can any of you tell me you didn't feel just a little awesome at the end of Star Wars when Han Solo shot Vader just as he was about to blow Luke away? Vader's reaction was simple, but great - "WHAT???!"
  
  If you want a villain people love to hate, arrogance is a good place to start.
  

Now, for contrast, let's take Darth Maul from Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Evil? Sure! Hell, he even killed off a Jedi. But nobody has any idea who he is. About the only thing Darth Maul had going for him was some seriously amazing Jedi whoopass skills. But once he got chopped in half, nobody cared anymore. Even at 8 years old, I didn't want Vader to die. Maul was just a bad guy. Vader was the real deal. Vader even out-evilled the goddamned Emperor. What's that, you say he turned good at the end? Pardon me, but I think turning your back on goodness and justice and terrorizing an entire galaxy for 30 years and STILL getting into the shiny guys' club when you die is the best con job ever performed.

Darth Vader had Proper Villainy down to a science. Learn from the master.

P.S. Yeah, I know I was going to talk about the pitfalls of evil characters this time. In the heat of my sci-fi nerd-lust, I forgot. We will explore those depths next time. Until then.......

<evil laughter>

Proper Villainy, pt. 3 -- Fear and Loathing in Lothlorien

Greetings, evildoers! In the last two installments of Proper Villainy, we discussed what makes a villain tick. Now it's time to talk about some good practical evil you can even do in your own backyard.

Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD)

More than any battleaxe marinated in the blood of the innocent could ever be, FUD is the true weapon of the villain. Villains need to keep people afraid to have power over them. This goes for villagers, kingdoms, kings, soldiers -- and even heroes.

• Fear
  
  A gang of criminals could terrorize a village demanding protection money. Together, maybe the villagers could defeat them. But they burn down one guy's house to make an example of him. The others, fearing they are next, capitulate and give them the money every time they come by. This is how terrorism works. The goal is not to destroy a building or assassinate someone -- that could be handled discreetly, perhaps with a surgical strike. The goal is to freak people the hell out. Make them worry they're next, make them paranoid, make them wall themselves in. And when you've scared them that badly, then you can do two things. You can make them dance to try to avoid whatever they're scared of, and since all their attention is focused on that, you can do something else now that they're not looking anymore.
  
  Now, granted, it might not be so Machiavellian as that. That gang terrorizing the village probably doesn't know any of this. They just know how to scare people to get their money. Different villains use this in different ways - some might be much more subtle than others.
  


• Uncertainty and Doubt
  
  Fear's best buddies, and they dovetail very nicely with each other. Part of the reason the gang could terrorize the village is because they've managed to convince them somehow that they can't fight back. They can't prepare, they don't know when the next attack is coming, and for that matter what the next attack will be. They don't have weapons, they're just farmers, stuff like that. When you've destroyed someone's confidence in themselves and their allies and friends, then you can control them.
  
  It's absolutely critical that villains facing heroes do this job very well. They must either shake the heroes' confidence in their ability to win. This can be as simple as deliberately killing off the healer first and letting them know he did that on purpose. Alternatively, they can get the heroes by the balls somehow to prevent them from acting. For instance, casually mentioning that the place wired is to explode if they kill the villain. It doesn't matter if it's real or not, they'll wonder if it's such a good idea to be here instead of swinging swords. Either way, the heroes are (hopefully) left shaken and unable to do their jobs -- giving the villain power over them and possibly the advantage that spells doom for the pesky do-gooders.
  

Make Them Love To Hate You

As a DM, you should use FUD in two primary ways:

• To advance the plot.
  Kick things off with a little evildoing. Let the bandits raid the village. Kidnap the princess and use the ensuing FUD clutch the entire nation in your taloned grasp. Scare the hell out of everyone, and give the PC's no choice but to come try and stop you.
  


• To engage the players.
  

You need to instill fear in the players (notice I didn't say player characters) to make them do something to stop this madness. Get them involved by doing something nasty to someone they know - or one of them. You can do this while advancing the plot, or seperately -- just do it. And while you're at it, make them afraid enough of you that they're worried about facing you because then the real horror will begin. Nothing brings excitement to a battle like a sense of danger and desperation. If you can make the players a little scared, for them there will be no quarry more satisfying than your villain.

Next Time

We'll continue our journey into the depths of evil by discussing some of the problems you may face (both players and DM's alike) when playing evil characters. Until next time!

<evil laughter>

Proper Villainy pt. 2: Time To Kill The Donuts

Your villain probably won't see burning, raping, and pillaging as acts of blackest evil. They'll see it as "Things To Do Wednesday Afternoon". Nobody wants to think of themselves as a bad person. The human mind has a lot of powerful emotional defenses against this. My favorite of these is called cognitive dissonance, in which a person's mind basically believes what it wants to believe and perceives reality in a way that supports these beliefs. Any ideas presented that challenge these beliefs are almost always discarded (and in many cases, violently attacked). Through this, our villain can justify what he's doing in a variety of ways that relieve him of the responsibility of his actions:

• It's YOUR fault!
  The reason I'm burning down your house? You didn't pay the protection money that you clearly owe.


• I was just following orders.
  What better way to relieve yourself of guilt than to have it not be your decision? Blame the Dark Lord!


• Cold, Emotionless Logic.
  It's a whole lot easier to do bad things if you just view it as a bunch of stats and abstract concepts. For instance, deaths turn into "acceptable losses".


• It's always been this way.
  My family has been enslaving the dwarves for 87 generations, there's nothing wrong with it, and I don't see any reason why it should change now.


• A sense of entitlement.
  You can do whatever you want because you DESERVE IT. Whoever invented prima noctis was totally into this. The right to deflower all virgins in the land because you're the lord of the place goddammit -- that's some USDA A-1 prime grain-fed angus entitlement right there.


• You fools have no idea of the power you are dealing with.
  A massively inflated ego is a wonderful tool for dismissing naysayers. And when you cultivate it long enough to get dreams of world domination, you say cool things like the previus statement! You can't believe you're doing anything wrong when you won't listen to anybody. Yours is the only opinion worth listening to, and who cares that it stopped being grounded in reality decades ago?

Once again, evil people are still people. They still have to live with themselves somehow -- even if that means descending into a big pit filled with neuroses. The really scary part is that it probably isn't even a conscious decision. The easiest way to live the lie is to believe it yourself.

Now take these twisted ways of viewing the world, and try to see the world through your baddie's eyes. You can use this to help create the foundation for a believable villain's behavior. Later this week, we'll get into some specifics on how to play as one. Until next time!

<evil laughter>

Proper Villainy, pt. 1 -- Evil 101

As recently discussed on dungeonmastering.com, villains add a great element to a campaign: an opposing force that the players can invest themselves in fighting against.

But what makes a really good villain? Let's start with some basic concepts:

• What The Hell is "Evil", Anyway?
  
  I've never been real crazy about declaring alignment for characters. If you have a Lawful Good character and he's homeless and penniless and he steals some bread to survive, does that make him not Lawful Good anymore? What about a man who kills someone in a jealous rage but is otherwise good? Is he now "evil" or is he still a good guy who made a horrible mistake?
  
  People are more complicated than that. "Evil" people are still people -- it's just that the way they view the world is a bit more twisted than most everybody else.


• Nobody Is Born Evil
  
  Bad guys act the way they do because they're EVIL, right? Well, sometimes. In a cartoon or a crappy movie, yeah. The bad guys are just bad and that's the way it is. But a good villain probably didn't start that way. Very few individuals would kill an entire litter of puppies and then go, "Man, that was great -- I sure do love being evil!". They had to start somewhere. And there's a lot of ways to get evil, including:
  
  
  
  • Temptation
    
    It's said that every man has his price. Somebody found this character's price. They might have been offered money, or power, or anything -- but whatever it was, the character wants it enough that he'll do morally questionable things to get it.
    
  
  
  • Fear and Anger
    
    You get enough fear and anger together, and you don't know what the hell you're doing anymore. And in your head, committing horrible acts upon whatever you're afraid of/angry with seems perfectly justified!
  
  
  • Sense of Duty
    
    This one may contain elements of the previous two. A character works for someone who asks him to do something reprehensible. He knows damn good and well it's not right. So he's "just following orders". Not to say that a mistake flips the switch and makes a character evil all of a sudden, but if this character continues to do this sort of thing and starts thinking of this as "normal" behavior.... who's to say?
  
  
  
  Note that in all three cases, the common theme of a desire and the willingness to do whatever is necessary to get it exists. It's in the continued willingness to do evil that lies the heart of a true villain.

Next time, I'll show you why it's easier than you might think for a villain to do bad things. Until next time......

<evil laughter>