Following Matt Mercer: How to be a Better Dungeon Master

Anatomy of a Bad Guy (how to tailor a villain for D&D)

Last week we talked about consequences, and how to make them not suck for your players. Building on not sucking (I know, I’m not great at segues) let’s talk about bad guys, and how to build them for Dungeons and Dragons.

On paper, designing a villain seems pretty simple. They are a bad person doing a bad thing that your players have to stop. Even for evil campaigns, it’s not hard to flip the formula. And yeah, that works. But stop for a minute. Think. As a Dungeon Master, a villain is a pretty invaluable tool in your arsenal; they’re an active, antagonistic force trying to stop the heroes that *you control*. You want to get your players invested? “Jesus Christ this guy keeps trying to kill us Whyyyyyyyyy” usually works pretty well! And even if you want to go with something a little more nuanced, a figure who is doing things and threatening people still makes for a good plot hook.

But if we’re treating the villain as the ultimate tool for player engagement, then let’s engage our players. Let’s tailor him to them. The obvious answer is embedding him in their backgrounds; if someone’s family was violently murdered (and they almost always are), then make your villain the murderer, or connected to the murderer, for example. It’s a quick, easy way to get them more involved in the game. What more could a dungeon master ask for?

Maybe you’d rather something a little more subtle, though; after all, try that trick one time too many and your players are just going to start scouring their backstories every time the villain shows up because someone has to know him. In that case, it’s still not that hard to make him fit the characters. Dungeons and Dragons boasts a wide and varied field of monsters, so you aren’t short of options. Are your players escaped slaves? A callous bounty hunter looking to sell them back to their masters would be great. Even if there’s nothing as clear cut as that, it’s not impossible to find running themes in PCs. A collection of orphans and exiles can be thrown against an aristocrat from an extended family – but while he has the connections your PCs crave, he ignores them to focus on the search for evil power. All you have to do is play up the players’ loneliness and their memories of what they’ve lost, then show him ignoring what he has. They’ll hate him in seconds.

As always, this comes back to the core ethos of Dungeons and Dragons; this game is a collaboration. All you have to do is look at what your players give you, and use it to give back to them.

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