BellaOnline Forums Hobbies and Crafts Role Playing Games Who is your favourite in-game villain

Villains make the story work. If the villain is lame then the plot is and ...so on. I am interested in both the given villains of a world - and i don't mean Darth Vader, although he is awesome - but the rpg villains. From the silliest, pointless ones, to the real tormentors, to the ultimate ones such as gods and demons. So i will wait for a reply and i hope that this time there will be more enthusiasm .

sorry, didn't see where this was, through you were talking about video games.

We've been doing mostly one-shots with me running them lately, but the last campaign I was in was a Deliria campaign (modern faery tales).

The villain was an uber-powerful sorceror who stole children out of the real world and transported them to faery. One of the character's sister was stolen, and so the group had to travel to faery to discover his weakness.

Turns out the sorceror was a nine or ten year old boy who'd been transported into faery himself several hundred years ago, discovered he could channel the magic there, and never aged. Picture a spoiled brat with the power to shape reality.

We had great fun trying to finally remove his powers.

Well i suppose that since the villain is the driving force of an adventure, i could name no other than Bayushi Shoju. He is actually my greatest hero but that is for another thread. Shoju can be described as the guy with the worst fate in the l5r setting : He is butt ugly, he is the leader of the most reviled group in the empire -the Scorpion clan-, he has the most beautiful woman in the empire -who is in love with another man- and everybody envies and hates him.

The guy on the other hand is the most feared individual in the empire in general. He has a way to "stick it" to anyone who messes with him and do it in a way that qualifies to the best traits of his adversary : If his enemy is a general he will annihilate his army in the field of combat and then kill him. If he is an accomplished warrior - like a duelist - he will kill him in personal combat, if he is a politician he will destroy his political standing and then destroy his family....

The best part is he never, ever needs to show up. The fact alone that the guy you face is his agent is enough to chill your blood, because now you have to be extra smart and not get mesmerized by the cunning of the plan you got involved into. The Scorpion are not a forgiving lot,but if you impress their leader you might, might,get a better treatment -in the form of being left alone or even becoming an ally- in the future.

There aren't many artworks of Shoju. The best one is in an inner page in the "Unexpected Allies" source book which depicts him sitting on the Scorpion throne, his expression and bearing giving away the impression of boredom. The first reaction of my players when they see that is " oh [censored], some poor fellow is gonna get it.."

The fact that he is not villainous in nature makes him all the better. When people "get off the hook" because he doesn't want to be extreme, they get the dumbfounded look on their face...

Well that is my favorite villain : super cool, extremely dangerous to mess with and he still helps the old lady get across the street...

Which is more than i can say about ...( see next reply )

So that was a guy that destroy 's with style. But if you want to petrify someone then one is the name : MOTO TSUME . The guy is l5r 's buggy man and for good reason. His story is simple : overconfident lord gets involved in things he knows nothing about. He swears to help protect the empire from the evils of the shadowlands. He ends up losing his soul and his family 's honor to darkness. To give the magnitude of his failure the moto family in general changed their crest and altered their uniforms to white - the colour of death. They all pledged themselves to find him and those who follow him, and destroy them. Well they have been unsuccessful for more than 200 years... It finally took a Thunder ( the bigshot hero's of l5r ) an oni lord ( demon lord ) a Kami ( one of the gods ) and an army to get him.. And he still returned...
The best part about him is not his power but what he represents : An honorable samurai, someone who cared for his family and clan s much as everyone else who ends up betrayed and totally corrupt. To give the buggy man element on his character there are but 2 disadvantages : onikage stink ( animals avoid him by instinct ) and as it is written in the book "and bad reputation is an understatement". In a pre-created pc the story begins : " when you were little your mother told you not to stray far from home or Moto Tsume would get you and take you to the shadowlands with him. You thought they were tales to frighten you. You were wrong."
The reason Tsume is so evil is because he realizes that his present condition derives from his failure so if he cracked then everybody must so that he might have an excuse for himself.

That is Moto Tsume. Polite when he forces you to skin yourself, blaming you when he kills villagers and scouts but still a leader and a constant reminder of a whole family's shame caused by pride and failure.

Hummm...family that comes close to...

Well we talked of people that will oppose pcs because their agenda contradicts that of your pcs, we also talked about the threat that you go and face because it reminds you that you too may fall...
But we have yet to talk about The Villain.

"His name ?" you might ask. He doesn't have one. But He has been named for reference.The Ninth Kami.The Dark Brother.The Fallen One.He Who Must Not Be Named. Fu Leng. L5r's evil Kami.

OK so a god , let alone the only evil god in a setting, is not the villain per-see, his minions are. The thing here is that his minions are not part of the settings society. More over the big picture of the setting resolves around his return and the players are part of the world that is threatened. It is not just a warlock nor a demon but the source of evil that they are up against and anything that has to do with him is of great importance for their survival. A large part of the map is his territory and the energies that pertain it are all foul and evil.

His story is simple : fallen from grace along with his siblings he falls on earth and then falls victim of his own fears-desires-regrets and his hatred for his brother Hantei. Driven mad he is "consumed" by jigoku ( hell but also the intelligence of that place ). He becomes the embodiment of hell/evil and returns to earth to extract his revenge.

Only through the wisdom of Shinsei (which means saint/holy person) and the sacrifice of the settings greatest heroes, the Seven Thunders, the Empire survived. Fu Leng was defeated but not destroyed. The world has forgotten that he would return, to finish his destruction of the empire, and thus gain his revenge. He blames his brothers and sisters for his fall into the abyss and he will destroy the Empire they had created just to make the people forget they ever existed.

The paranoia of this particular villain is in his chase of his siblings offspring. He also attacks his younger sister,the one that he was closest to.

At this point i will cut this sort. Fu Leng is a very big issue but just to say it simple :
"The empire has experienced a thousand years of peace. Of course anyone with a passing knowlege of Rokugan's history knows that the empire has never "seen" true peace. The term 1000 years of peace is not mistaken. War has been part of the empire's being from its begging. But the empire has only had one true enemy and while he slumbers ..the empire knows peace."