Pointy Hat

How to Make a Villain

Introduction
Welcome! This guide is designed to help you create a villain for your TTRPG campaigns. This
method is system agnostic, which means it can be used for any game, including 5e. This guide
won’t go into detail about the villain’s abilities, or how to make a stat block for your villain, but
will cover how to come up with a concept for a villain that suits your campaign.

This guide assumes that you have a clear idea of the setting and general plot of your campaign.
Since this method is meant to help you create a villain based on the needs of your campaign,
you won’t be able to follow it if you don’t have a solid understanding of that campaign.

You can save this document to your own Google Drive for ease of use. You do not need to ask
for permission to edit this document to do so, simply make a copy and save it to your own Drive.

I: The villain must be Active

In order for you to reap all the benefits of having a villain in your campaign, that villain must be
active. The villain must have needs and wants that propel them to make decisions that impact
the plot, and therefore the players. Likewise, they must be reactive, able to respond to the
advances made by the players with advances of their own. If the players thwart the villain’s
goals, the villain must be able to respond to the actions of the players with actions of their own.
The goal of this is for you to be able to keep the campaign dynamic by changing the status quo
of your campaign.

In order to make an active villain, give your villain a goal. This goal must be both obtainable, but
also hard enough to occupy your entire campaign. This goal must have clear actionable steps
that the villain can take to accomplish it and that the players can interrupt.

Questions to make an active villain:

● What does the villain want?
● How will the villain go about accomplishing their goal?
● How can the players take action to stop the villain from accomplishing their goal?
● How can the villain react to the players’ actions to stop them?
Example:
● What does the villain want?
○ The villain wants to resurrect their dead lover.
● How will the villain go about accomplishing their goal?
○ The villain must sacrifice four of their dead lover’s descendants to resurrect them.
● How can the players take action to stop the villain from accomplishing their goal?
○ The players can try to find a place where the descendants cannot be accessed
by the villain. The players can fake the death of one of those descendants. The
players can bring one of those descendants with them in their travels to ensure
they are there to protect them. (etc.)
● How can the villain react to the players’ actions to stop them?
○ The villain can find a way to enter the place where the descendant is kept. The
villain can fool the players into trying to protect the wrong person. The villain can
fool the players into killing one of the descendants themselves. The villain can
convince one of the descendants that by giving their life to the villain’s cause they
will help countless other lives. (etc).

II: The villain must be Present

In order for you to reap all the benefits of having a villain in your campaign, that villain must be
present. The villain must be able to interact with the players semi-regularly. The number of times
that the players and the villain converse is up to you, but they must feel like a presence in the
campaign rather than an unseen goal post that only gets visited at the very end of the
campaign. By interacting with the villain, the players will have a clearer idea of who they are and
what their motivation is, and will form an emotional bond with the villain (most likely a negative
one). It’s your goal for the villain to elicit strong feelings from the heroes.
A present villain also allows for combat encounters and possible ways in which the party can
work against the villain’s plans. Think of ways in which your villain can meet the party without
resulting in the immediate death of the player characters.

Examples of Ways to Make a Villain Present:

● The players somehow have an item that lets them speak with the villain.
● The villain is trapped somewhere, only able to interact with the world through their
minions. They can, however, appear as an illusion to the players and converse with
them.
● The villain’s plans involve a lot of political intrigue, which places them at many galas and
other events where the villain could not openly attack the players without putting the
villain’s own plans in jeopardy.
● The villain does not wish to kill the players, merely to stop them. They see the heroes as
misguided, not as true enemies, and hope to convince them to join forces.
● The villain can manifest anywhere, but only for a set amount of time or under very
specific conditions.
 ● The villain hopes to use the players towards their goal, and is not interested in killing
them, but rather subtly guide them to accomplish the villain’s goal for them.

III: The villain must be Personal

In order for you to reap all the benefits of having a villain in your campaign, that villain must be
personal. The characters must have a personal involvement with the villain. The goal of this is to
get the players emotionally invested in stopping the villain’s plans. They are not just working
against the villain because it’s the moral thing to do, but also because they have a personal
reason for doing so.
There are many ways to create this personal connection. I personally advocate for letting your
players know the setting and the villain’s involvement in the plot when they create their
characters, and let them decide how they are involved. You can also let them create their
characters without any knowledge of the plot and villain and then see how their backstories and
character arcs can be tied to the villain.
If you cannot find a way to tie your players’ backstories to the villain, consider giving your villain
a second-in-command that is connected to a player’s backstory or motivation.

Examples of Ways to Make a Villain Personal:

● The villain and the PC are related and have a shared history.
● The villain usurped the throne that one of the PCs was set to inherit.
● The PC once trained under the villain, and they formed a close master and pupil bond.
● The villain’s very existence threatens the PC’s way of life.
● The PC has information that could threaten the villain’s goals or status.
● The villain has tricked or otherwise convinced someone close to the PC to work for them.

Any of these and more can be applied to a villain’s second-in-command or minion.