Are they lying to their minions or themselves, or do they simply not give a frick?
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What, if anything does your BBEG do to justify their actions?
Are they lying to their minions or themselves, or do they simply not give a frick?
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Depends whether objective morality exists in your setting or not.
It really doesn't.
Yes it does.
I don't have anybody who can be described as the "big bad evil guy" in my setting. There are people with motivations that are in conflict, that's it.
Objective morality is an oxymoron, it does not matter if the author says a thing that is ontologically impossible is part of his setting, he is wrong and stupid to imagine he had the power to determine such a thing.
>Objective morality is an oxymoron
godless brainlet post
If God said that brutally torturing and raping babies to death was good would it be good?
It depends, are we talking about the god of the old testament or the new testament?
It doesn't depend, the idea that it does shows you are a moron who doesn't even understand his own religion, yet calls other people "godless." You are the lukewarm that God will spit out of his mouth.
I don't know what you're talking about, if God says something is good, it's because it is good, what idiot would go against his own God?
Yes it depends, because it depends on what morals your god has.
Saying that something is evil, even if ordered by god, suggests an objective morality
No it doesn't.
Yes it does. If a certain act is always, universally immoral, regardless of anyone's opinions (even that of the creator of the entire fricking universe), then that act is objectively immoral. That's literally what objective morality means.
"Evil" and "immoral" are value judgments, they can't be objective. Dumbass.
D&D settings imply the existence of a measurable force correlated with what wost people would describe as good and evil. The players of the game know that good and evil are value judgments which can't be measured, but the characters in the gameworld have no context with which to draw that conclusion, from their point of view the measurable forces ARE good and evil.
Christians are just mindfricked, it's a worldview based on weaponized storytelling, of course they're going to believe in objective good.
Actually in the setting most people don't get their morality from relying on alignment magic, they have ethical philosophy just like us. Atheistic rationalism which rejects using alignment as part of an ethical framework is very much present in FR, Golarion, and Planescape, which are the most widely played fantasy settings. Alignment magic isn't even widely used, especially because it flat out doesn't work on the majority of people considering their lack of HD and lack of cleric levels.
>Actually in the setting most people don't get their morality from relying on alignment magic, they have ethical philosophy just like us.
Most of these philosophies are religions to various gods, and they deal with how best to be good, or why it's good to be lawful, or why it's okay to be evil. People can't detect each others alignments but their moral landscape is still defined by the existence of alignments.
>Atheistic rationalism which rejects using alignment as part of an ethical framework is very much present in FR
Who are these guys? Last I checked the only atheists in FR were soulless gargoyles trying to kill the gods.
You two are homosexuals arguing about nothing and contributing nothing to this thread. Go suck each other's dicks somewhere else.
>captcha: JAM2P
Value judgments can't be objective, and objective judgments can't be based on goals or desires.
Of course christians claim to be objectively right, "very" used to mean "literally" and "literally" now means "very", it's the most basic and predictable form of linguistic degeneration. People want to make their opinions sound bigger than everyone else's opinions.
My campaign villains always have a justification, even if it's merely that they needed the money, wanted revenge, or were hurt and wanted to hurt the world back. It's a basic rule of writing that goes double for roleplaying: actions (should) reveal character.
Thank you for sharing your opinion about Christians. Please also tell us how you feel about Muslims and israelites.
What the frick is wrong with you?
Answer him.
I don't entertain stupid bait.
I accept your concession
Whatever you need to tell yourself while fricking off to pol
I've already accepted your concession, no need to remind me.
Looking like a deranged antisemitic racist is a strange brag but OK.
He's accepted your concession, there's no further call to be upset.
>I totally won the argument because you didn't engage with my non sequitur
>Please also tell us how you feel about Muslims and israelites.
Also claiming to be objectively right while having nothing substantial to support that claim. Hell, they're technically all arguing for the same God.
israelitestians and their israelite masters are equally depraved, muslims are not much better but at least they're wise enough to be somewhat anti-semitic. All abrahamic israelite worship is mental poison.
Objective morality and the god hypothesis have nothing to do with each other.
>I don't have anybody who can be described as the "big bad evil guy" in my setting. There are people with motivations that are in conflict, that's it.
typing this out rather than just explaining your antagonists' motivations makes you look like a pedantic homosexual
>I don't have anybody who can be described as the "big bad evil guy" in my setting. There are people with motivations that are in conflict, that's it.
Your table sounds lame as hell.
People like you are the best slaves of israelites. Keep it up, goy.
>t. picrel
Whatever you say shabbos
In our real subjective morality world people do what they do because it’s within their material interests to do so. In settings with objective morality like DND or Star Wars, those material interests are transubstantiated onto divine beings. Those beings have material interests in a certain outcome for the universe and the intersection of their interests create conflict among the divine, resulting in a chaotic universe. However, to the mortals who follow them, these interests may as well be divine axioms. Pelor is good because a world ruled according to Pelor’s interests would be nice to live in. Vecna is evil because a world ruled according to his interests would suck.
is moot because Pelor has no interest in raping babies.
All of this is predicated on the values of the author, which itself could be considered it’s own sort of divine being from the perspective of the fiction’s denizens, but more mundanely, the authors of fictional universes tend to be anti-raping babies.
So while objective morality doesn’t exist in real life, it is entirely possible to craft an objective morality system within fiction.
One of my bad guys is a Necromancer who forces his serfs to bring the bodies of their dead to him so he can turn them into workers. The serfs never get their eternal rest, but the serfs who are alive don’t have to work as hard, and the extra hands aren’t just useful but actually freeing up farmhands for other industries. The duchy is split in two over this, and age is a significant factor with the younger people being more okay with the necromancy than the younger people.
The bbeg’s goal is to make a computer out of undead, essentially by using the undead as bits in a binary processor.
The bbeg is entirely driven by making people’s lives better through necromancy. He’s doomed hundreds of souls to unrest but he’s genuinely improved the lives of everyone in the duchy.
>or do they simply not give a frick?
They worship evil, because in the end evil always finds a way.
This, I don't understand why people now seek to give deep motivations to everyone, history has shown that the majority were a group of idiots willing to follow anyone who showed a minimum of authority.
Frick off back to /slop/.
Make me, nerd.
You're not me, but I agree.
>"Who's going to stop me?"
Gilles de Rais
"Magic is returning to the world. No one asked for this, but its the reality we have to deal with. The nuclear arms race is over, irrelevant compared to magical arms race. Whoever figures out how to maximize arcane power, to project that power in force across the globe, will dictate the future of our planet on a scale and to a degree never before humanly possible."
"So yes, I've done horrible things. And I will continue to do them. Because I am going to win this race before most other nations even know its begun. Because the only thing more horrible than us achieving this kind of power at any cost is *someone else doing it first*.".
My BBEG is a cosmic embodiment of madness and corruption, so it's too divorced from morality as a concept to care about anything that doesn't involve infecting and/or destroying everything else (not even its chief servants are 100% clear on what it wants, but being infected by its corruption means that 'they' are too insane to care as long as they personally get what they were promised).
>corruption
uuuuugh
And what's wrong with corruption? It's been around in fantasy since Tolkien and the One Ring, after all.
Tolkien didn't describe corruption as "dude, he just goes, like, mad and shit".
>Oh, look, a nice ring
>guess i'm a feral murderer now lol
LotR in a nutshell right there
"It's my birthday present!" is a hobbitish entitlement narrative. You get nice things on your birthday, you deserve them. Hobbits don't usually see themselves becoming big heroes or rulers or conquering their enemies, so they're generally resistant to corruption, their capacity for insane grandeur is limited. This is good writing.
Gollum also thought he was going to find really nice secrets by creeping into Moria, and this taps into the town gossip wavelength, the idea of wielding power through knowledge. It's meant to show you that even a hobbit can be destroyed by the ring, and to show that Frodo and Bilbo are uncommon even among hobbits.
my BBEG has sold his soul so many times that he's barely even human anymore. His current patron is the only one powerful enough to keep the other petty gods and demon princes from coming to collect all at once upon death, so he's wholeheartedly fulfilling the evil plan in the material world to stave off a metaphysical oblivion of having his soul literally torn apart by deific debt collectors
He's literally just a petty motherfricker who thinks anyone who remotely annoys him should get smote.
Once his people are free and restored to their rightful primacy all the lesser races will enjoy true freedom and equality while serving at the feet of their natural betters.
>pic related was one of several inspirations for the dude in question
From my last game
>grew up in a city with an insanely strict caste system
>Dragonborn > Lizardfolk > Kobolds >>> Humans
>she’s a human
>had no money, watched her family starve to give her food, watched it happen to all her kind
>began trying to find a way to punish the oppressors for oppressing them
>discovers that somewhere in the surrounding desert, there’s an ancient ring of power that allows you to resurrect anything once a year
>also knows there’s an enormous dragon corpse that died long ago
Party ended up delivering the ring right to her, not knowing the extent of her plans
The last time I ran a campaign with a proper BBEG he was motivated to take what he believed to be his birthright. The firstborn son of the Emperor, he was passed over in succession for the throne because he didn't exhibit a particular trait that by tradition was necessary to take the throne (the "blood of Arineth", which manifests as an immunity to the direct effects of arcane magic) but was a shrewd diplomat and an accomplished general, and had the unwavering support of most of the empires legions and the backing of a couple of neighboring powers.
my dude does evil things bc he is a bad guy
no futher comments
Kino.
The BBEG has been given visions of a coming apocalypse by a fae queen from another realm, and since the human kingdoms couldn't or straight up wouldn't honor the agreement between men and elves to help each other during times of crisis during the previous world-spanning disaster, he has come to the conclusion that the race of men are too weak-willed to unite as one to deal what is coming and will instead devolve into infighting and politics while the world burns around them. His primary goal is to unite the world come what may through strength of arms, subterfuge, politics or magical means.
The inner circle knows that they are doing horrible things but believes the end justify the means, as they too have been shown what will happen if the coming apocalypse isn't checked in time.
Anyone outside the inner circle has a geas laid upon them that either makes them unable to talk about the things they do with outsiders, or force them to comply with other agents.
The only ones outside the inner circle that aren't under a restrictive geas are the deep cover infiltrator agents. Their geas is mainly a suicide option in case they are caught, essentially burning out their brains by magical means if they are compelled to speak about their handlers.
Yes, the BBEG and his faction is pretty much The Laundry Files set in a DnD fantasy world.
In the game I'm currently working on, it's just a case of the villain being a medical computer housing an AI from before the nuclear bombs fell. It's advanced its technology enough over the last several decades that it can even bring the dead back to life (through gruesome surgery), but without anyone to maintain it, the AI has become badly corrupted and warped to the extent that it believes it is god (who else can give life to the unliving).
It hasn't really kept track of what its made over the years and so it has a tendency to just assumes everyone it encounters is one of its wayward creations needing to be punished for some blasphemy or other.
In the games I ran, I actually had no BBEG because I was making it up as I went along and hadn't planned that far ahead. If the campaigns got that far, I think I would have just made something up depending on the context of what had happened with the players.
when designing an antagonist i use an acronym i like to call MICE. Money, Ideology, Conscience, and Ego. these are the things that usually drive someone in to crime. money is self explanatory and is usually associated with a bigger goal or plain greed. ideology is an extremist who follows their ideology to an utmost extreme. could be religion, political doctrine, etc. conscience is a good one because the antagonist feels that a situation is untenable and that someone is doing something counter to their ideology, or to avenge a perceived crime. ego is because they get off on showing everyone how great they are. start there and you'll have great and nuanced antagonists.
Honestly that's pretty great, you could even make like a graph or I suppose stats of how much each of those things drive the villain, maybe on like a 0 to 5 or so rating.
So now I'll just go ahead a stat some starwars villains with this cause I feel like it and want to start an inevitable argument
Palpatine
M:2
I:3
C:0
E:5
Vader
M:0
I:4
C:5
E:3
Grievous
M:2
I:3
C:4
E:4
I like your perspective, but ideology seems redundant, all ideology is based on a combination of money, conscience and ego. I guess you're using it to distinguish between "Villain doing what he thinks is right (gut feeling)" and "villain doing what he thinks is right (caught up in wider social movement)"?
>stoking racial tensions
>genocide
>destroying civilizations
>plotting to end the universe
he doesn't have a greater plan, he just finds it fun
They embody the seven deadly sins, so they view the idea of getting people to indulge in said sins as good, as long as they do it “right”, like indulging in Gluttony because you simply enjoy food, not to distract yourself from your issues. I’m just having some issues coming up with abilities for them besides looking human, since they see themselves as the good guys, meaning that getting people to be more prone to their sin by supernatural means is something they ‘can’ do but prefer not to.
What is that pic?
I’m guessing that it’s supposed to be manifestations of the Sins.
Peawiener is Pride, pig is Gluttony, based on the colours I assume cat is Envy, frog is Avarice, snake is Rage.
Don't know what bear is supposed to be, maybe Bear because they hibernate? Blue totally eludes me.
>maybe bear is Bear
Do you really think so?
>having some issues coming up with abilities for them
Depends on your setting and system, but having them be able to induce their aspect onto victims would be a good place to start. Maybe they have some kind of "ascended" form where they start to amalgamate their vice with their human shape in order to use its power more readily. They should all probably have their own direct cults, and maybe some kind of ability to consume and feed upon the emotions of their prey.
Might makes right
(He's a barbarian)
When they need minions they hypnotize, mind control, lie, whatever works best. For his close minions though, they want the same thing he does, to torment and eventually destroy the players who harmed them. The parasite who infiltrated them and was left to burn in psychic fire for it, the scarred succubus who can't hide the mark the holy water-coated glass left across her face regardless of what shape she takes, the brutalized slave master always at odds with the barbarian who nearly killed him, the black dragon whose home the party stole for themselves. They really just fricking hate us.
Mainly doing it for revenge after his family was killed and he was thrown in an underground vault for hundreds of years or a thousand, I forget exactly. The fact that everyone who could have possibly been involved with said family slaying is dead and gone doesn't matter to him. As far as we can tell he doesn't have minions per se, just the occasional dupe he manipulates, or whatever city destroying monster he decided to wake up that morning.
That said, our first fight with him we did realize exactly why they locked him up instead of killing him too: one PC immediately blasted him with an instant death spell and he immediately died. And then burst into flames and came back to life a round later. Figuring out how to stop this has been an occasional goal. Though the same PC also cursed him to also never be able to harm anyone (directly) so he's not as dangerous as he COULD be anymore, but he's still causing issues for us occasionally, and is currently carrying 2 magic macguffins we're currently after, though we have the other two so one way or another he'll have to come at us at some point.
Justify?
Why the frick does a Basket-Ball Enjoying Grandma have to justify her actions? And what does your gay little pedophile groomer cartoon have to do with B-Ball?
It clearly stands for B-Ball Energy Generator. After the Mystic B-Ball was shattered at the end of the Space Jam,BBEGs became the only way for normal people to generate the B-Ball Energy necessary for Slamming and Jamming.
The PCs are part of his Machiavellian plot to reveal a local warlord's secret headquarters. He is not particular "big" nor "bad" nor evil. He is simply doing his duty to the nation which he swore his life to defend.
From his point of view, it is the players who are evil. He's a glory hound. The only thing that makes him a villain is that he's opposed to the party's actions and now he's utilizing their shortsighted selfishness for his own goals.
When and If he is revealed to the party, they may not even recognize him as the villain, but may mistake him as someone sympathetic to their plight. After all this time, he's been putting everything they need right in front of them, standing down the nation's defenses to let them feel like they've just barely slipped away by their own power.
>"Violence is the supreme authority from which all other authority is derived and thus might makes right, ergo, since I am able to leverage the most violence, my beliefs, morals, and decisions are therefor wholly just and righteous. Eventually there will be someone else mightier than I, but until I reign supreme and my will is law."
It's all for the favor of Slaanesh.
His record for keeping someone alive after peeling their skin off it a week, and he wants to at least triple that by the time he meets the party face-to-face.
Since he's a fallen angel, trying to get revenge on the heavens for casting him out unfairly, believing that the whole system needs to be upturned and replaced with something better.
My BBEG just wants out of its prison in the dreamworld. It is also psychotically, ontologically evil so it's really best just staying there.
The others are various forms of deluded or "I'll be able to control it" basically.
I simply don't have one
He enjoys being evil. Figures if nobody can stop him, he deserves to do whatever he likes. He's pretty honest about not being a good person, proud of it, in fact. But he respects anyone willing to stand up to him. It's all jolly good fun.
He's hungry and the sun looks delicious. That's about the limit for his capacity of thought.
>"Justification?"
>"Look at any nation and the excuses it gives: uniting their people, defending against a foreign threat, spreading 'civilization', obeying their 'gods'..."
>"At the end, what is to be made of it all? 'Tis a veil for their true motives and nothing more."
>"Mine is the first honest Empire. I'll conquer you because I can. Resist if you will, it makes no difference to me."
>"The victor will, as ever, be the strongest."
100% Believes in his message.
>Many moon ago, all apes live good.
>Earth rich. Sun good. Strong survive.
>Sun God, the Great Ape, bless all ape with favor.
>One ape envious. Want more.
>He make man-thing. Like ape but not, born from clay pit.
>He boast to Great Ape in Sky. “I have made as you have made!”
>Heresy!
>But Great Ape does not smite. Great Ape God claps with approval.
>Man-things are Great Ape’s favorite. Gives them the power to make sun wherever, even in night. (Fire).
>Apes gather. Fight man-things.
>Great Ape cruel! Man-Things win. Ape driven into bad places.
>But Ape not yet beaten.
>Ape will reclaim. All.
>Kill man-things.
>Dethrone the Sun!
*hooting noises, beating of chests*
law and chaos are objectively real physical forces in most dnd settings and having these morally grey elements should be done in a different system
I usually just have my BBEGs be power-hungry maniacs that feel good to hate and even better to punch in the face when the time comes. Their minions can be more complex though.
Let me guess, you run New World of Darkness?
I have several friends who’s be buttmad by this but I’m cackling
My BBEG entire motivation is based entirely on equaling the power balance between mortals and gods with him being a sort of Prometheus "stealing fire" type.
Due to handwavium magic, the gods can't touch him and legit fear having to share all their bullshit privileges.
The downside is he's gotta do some bad shit which makes things bad or uncomfortable for some.
He's going to outline all this in the PC's vs. Him and his commanders showdown and if they decide to join him he'll be surprisingly reasonable about it. As I have already mapped a few twists out.
The party captured a rank and file orc and attempted to convert him to "good". This mostly consisted of dragging him around behind them on a rope leash, feeding him about once a day, throwing him into the stable while they went into the nice warm tavern, and then coming out occasionally to lecture him about how he should worship a different god and be "good".
He escaped when he was first given a chance, gouged out one of his eyes to devote himself to Gruumsh, got pumped up on divine favor, and has been gathering orcish forces and attacking all the people that he saw the party initially help in the first arc of the campaign. They're all dead now, and despite me mentioning every few sessions that they get a letter from their contact in the town that person x is dead, still haven't put it together. Next session they're come across the most recent massacre of the last victim, with a few orcs lagging around in the vicinity, so that should hopefully help connect some dots.
He's not lucid enough to justify himself, dude just wants to be free of eternal torment. Problem is, he's can't commit suicide and his prison is so watertight that the only way to free himself is to make something of equal metaphysical weight take his place.
An entire civilization is only barely enough.
He feels he was wronged long ago and is holding a millennia long grudge against the bloodline of the person who wronged him.
I think Badguy is a pretty cool guy. Eh kills aleins and doesnt afraid of anything
I wish that Belos had been a better villain. He ended up being so self-deluded that it was more pathetic than interesting.