Villains Archives - Roleplaying Tips

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Designing Your Villain’s Vault

Where does your villain stash their cash? That’s the topic of a brand new weekly mapping challenge starting today on the Roleplaying Tips Discord called 5 Minute Map Fridays. Because villains need money to support their operation, lifestyle, and goals. And many settings only operate with physical currency, be it coins, bank notes, or other […]

The Meta Characters Method: Factions With Brains, Brawn & Betrayal

ExileInParadise made a great comment to a series I’m writing about villains. The method he calls out creates immediate campaign drama with built-in adventure hooks and tactical inspiration for play. Each role can act independently or together, keeping your faction scenes spicy. Take it away Exile…. I really like Mike Pondsmith’s “Meta Characters” from Cyberpunk […]

Two Villains That Shape Your Campaign

I’m back. Thank you for the emails and well-wishes. I had some unscheduled downtime, but all is well. More news on that another time. Been thinking lately about villains. They’re actually the topic of a writing challenge I started a few days ago to get me back into rolling up some words. There are two […]

Roleplaying the Villain Xancrown

The grand finale of The Demonplague has the party facing off against the mighty demon, Xancrown, in his dungeon prison within the heart of Luna Valley. Today, I’d like to share a summary of his stats and then some tips on how to roleplay him. Before I dig into that, a reminder that the price […]

Mastering the Dark Side

Tonight, I’m engaging in a deeper level discussion about villains in my GM coaching program. All too often, villains become corny, one-dimensional NPCs. All we know is that they want to destroy the world and the PCs. However, this becomes repetitive over time. Players: What’s the villain doing now? Johnn: Trying to destroy the world. […]

An Essential Ingredient for EVERY Villain Encounter

A GM on Reddit the other day was lamenting about a classic villain disaster. They introduced the BBEG at the start of their campaign to sew hints, hooks, hatred, and all that. But then the players unexpectedly attacked. Crits were rolled. The villain died. The GM’s now prepping a new campaign. Before you put villains […]

A Game Of Clues

Clues My family LOVES hidden object games. We’ve got PC games and iPad games. I’ve got several cool hidden object books on my shelf. And for Christmas, my wife is getting a hidden object jigsaw puzzle. While I don’t use hidden object games as session props (though if I did, I’d make the PCs quest […]

Why Your Villains Should Be Making Moves

Why Your Villains Should Be Making Moves Today’s tip is inspired by a question about villains from RPT GM Gerald Lock. You can catch his full question, his one-shot Halloween adventure, and my video reply here. So, you’ve crafted an awesome villain, complete with a dark past and malevolent goals, but when game night comes […]

5 Tips To Creating A Truly Evil Villain

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1216 A Brief Word From Johnn Alas, the week got away from me, so this is a rare weekend edition of Roleplaying Tips. I’d like to give you one piece of advice and then move on to today’s villainous tips. The advice comes from a great Zoom consultation meeting I had last […]

Outsmart Your Players With 3-Step Villain Plans

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1167 How do we outsmart our players? It’s all their brains against ours. Surely the odds are against us. However, here’s a neat trick we can perform to make our villains smarter and our adventures more cunning. We look at the possible plots and actions our poor villain might take and group […]

Weaponize Your Villain’s Secret

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1152 RPT GM Dale S asked me for help with his adventure’s bad guy and plot: Hi Johnn, Would you mind wading in with any thoughts on my villain’s objective? The local gnoll clan and their unusual allies are attacking a small walled human frontier settlement. This is a nighttime ‘storming the […]

Villain Roleplay Tips – A Trio of Detestable Traits

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1142 Salaam Johnn, How can we get players to chase our villains like frothing lunatics brandishing cleavers overhead? It’s starts with someone they want to punch. Someone who isn’t normal but has turned their difference into something cringey. A monster on the inside, at the least. We can achieve all these things […]

Factions & Villains – 3 Reader GM Tips

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1143 Hitting too Close to Home Let’s dive in with this observation from RPT GM Maja who brings up an interesting point about favourite villain types that mirrors my own experience. Let’s call it the Seinfeld Effect. Johnn, If you ask me what villain type gets the most attention, it is the […]

Outsmart Your Players With 3-Step Villain Plans

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1140 How do we outsmart our players? It’s all their brains against ours. Surely the odds are against us. However, here’s a neat trick we can perform to make our villains smarter and our adventures more cunning. We look at the possible plots and actions our poor villain might take and group […]

Evil GM Tactic: Make PCs The Villains

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0951 Imagine you have a party of PCs who insult nice people with their insensitivity, who take actions without care for the consequences and effects it has on others, who murder hobo without remorse. I know. It’s a stretch. But just try imagining characters who are like that. Here’s how to turn […]

Quick Plot Design: How To Create A Villain Plan First Draft

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1115 Been working on my campaigns and thinking a lot about villain plans. I like to craft a roadmap for how the villain can win their goal. I call this Villain Win-State. And that road map becomes my adventure outline for villain type adventures. So what are the first couple of steps […]

My Top Monster Villains

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0752 My Top Monster Villains The other day I read a blog about the GM’s Top 10 mastermind monster villains. I love this idea! It’s great inspiration. So today for fun I’m sharing my favourite monster villains with you. The requirements for my list are I can only list monsters I have […]

Your Villain’s Missing Ingredient

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0749 Your Villain’s Missing Ingredient I loves me my villains. I believe every great campaign is powered by a strong villain the PCs hate. But something is often missing from the villains I read in adventure modules. Add this missing ingredient, and your campaign instantly improves. Hobos Reboot Before I get into […]

Villain Tip: Do Evil For Good

RPT GM Strider Starslayer gives us this quick tip on how to make bad guys your players will hate.

Run The Villain Sequence

Roleplaying Tips GM Strider Starslayer has a neat villainous idea for us today.

3 Step Villain Plot Seeds

Thanks to the horde who wrote in saying the mini-plot generator from last week was useful.

Writing the Effective Villain

by Ruth D. Kerce A lot has been written about how to develop the hero and heroine in a story. An often overlooked, but equally important character, is the villain. He/She must also be developed properly to make the plot believable. Many of the techniques used to develop other characters will also work in developing […]

How to Handle Pursuit Adventures

I received the following interesting request from a reader about how to handle a campaign where the PCs are the prey. Below is the reader’s request, and then after that I offer some tips. If you have any other tips to add, please add a comment! Hi Johnn, I really enjoy both Roleplaying Tips and […]

From One Tyrant To Another: Villainous Tips Inspired By A Real World Dictator

From John Dunkelberg Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0125 A Brief Word From Johnn Is The Hackmaster RPG For Real? Oh yeah, it’s real all right. I’ve been taking baby steps in the planning department recently to prepare for GMing a Hackmaster game, so I wandered over to the Kenzer Co. web site. There I saw a post […]

Exit Stage Left: How To Plot Your Villain’s Demise

Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #0028 A Brief Word From Johnn I would like to personally welcome all of the new subscribers to Roleplaying Tips Weekly over the past few days – we’re glad to have you as part of the newsletter. Please feel free to share your tips and tricks with us. Send your favourite villain […]