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.
- Temptation
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>
Good stuff!
I don’t know how to make proper trackbacks but I posted a companion post here: http://chattydm.blogspot.com/2007/09/exploring-evil-in-rpgs.html
“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?”
As far as I understand the idea of alignment, it would only threaten to alter his alignment if he felt no remorse for his deed (which would be a player and DM decision). If he remained Lawful Good, it would mean that the character would feel guilty for the theft, knowing that it was wrong, and would seek to make amends somehow.
He remains Lawful Good because that is his belief system, even when he acts in violation of it. Everyone makes mistakes and gives in to temptation at least occasionally. People don’t usually abandon their philosophy of life when this happens…though sometimes they do, and that’s when you consider an alignment change.
Thus, it makes more sense to me when it’s a premeditated decision on the part of the player than when it’s some sort of device imposed by a DM. I think it’s meant to be a descriptive aspect of the game, not a mechanic, per se.
“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?”
Again, I’d go with the latter statement – he’d probably suffer extreme guilt and seek to make amends. In the case of a Lawful Good character, I would think this meant he’d turn himself in; at the very least, he knows he should turn himself in and may suffer from depression or worse if he doesn’t follow through with it. A Chaotic Good character might evade the law without remorse (probably thinking it’s a corrupt system anyway and that his incarceration doesn’t really help the situation), but would probably try to make up for it by helping the guy’s widow, family, or whatever in some way, or if he couldn’t do that, take to the open road with the intent of helping people in general (the old “wandering hero in search of redemption” trope). If the player/DM wanted to, it would be easy enough to justify a slide into another alignment by deciding that the PC who murdered the guy decides, upon reflection, that he was justified in what he did, that the victim deserved to be killed, or the PC can’t escape the feeling that he enjoyed taking out his rage on the guy…
“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.”
Which is what I think the alignment system is meant to portray. I don’t know that the books claim anywhere that evil people aren’t people. While I think the alignment system can become more troublesome when one attempts to perform a mechanistic “ethical calculus” with it to determine where a character falls at any given moment, I still think it’s a good way to describe a character’s moral beliefs and thus his motivations.
The one place where I think this understanding of the alignment system can become muddied is when it comes to those of Evil alignment. Like you’ve said, evil people don’t think of themselves as evil. Yet, that’s self-delusion. Just because they’re Good in their own eyes doesn’t mean they’re actually Good. The alignment system assumes a universal standard of morality, so people’s beliefs about their own morality (read: alignment) may not reflect the truth of things. For example, a priest may think of himself as an upstanding Lawful Good individual, but if he’s consistently and by nature a hypocrite, abusing his office for the power it gives him, even if he doesn’t perceive that he’s doing so, he may in actuality be Lawful Evil…
Man, I really went on about this. Sorry. Maybe I’ll just start my own blog on your comments page. 😉
I think a big one you missed is a lack or diminished sense of morality. In this way, I think somebody can be born evil…or at least raised that way without any major cause for his evilness. Consider someone who doesn’t feel guilty for insulting another person, or for hurting them, because they never learned to feel this way. They’re not really motivated by anything to do what they do, and their parents didn’t raise them to be mean, but they somehow don’t have the knee-jerk reactions most people do to more questionable actions. I think it’s this sort of person who would not kill a litter of puppies for kicks, but might kill a dog if it was annoying him, or something to that effect.