Reasons are gamut: >Power >Vengeance >Desperation >Love >Hate >Fear >Boredom >Pragmatism the wrong way >Literally no other choices and alternatives left
>A strong belief in survival of the fittest plus intense self interest.
Ironically, most people who have dedicated themselves to evil causes in the last couple of centuries have been exactly the opposite of this. That kind of attitude might get you the petty evil of a drug dealer or salesman, but to be really dedicated to evil, you need a self-loathing coward who will do anything to avoid personal responsibility and who allows themselves to be shaped by social pressure.
>No it isn't.
Yes it is. >It is often pragmatic to do evil.
Yes, but that does not make pragmatism itself non-neutral. The actions you may take may in themselves be Evil or Good (or neither). Pragmatism is in itself amoral, not immoral.
So your argument is that just about every category of action and attitude is inherently neutral, because they *can* be done for/encompass good and evil?
That's such a nothing description that while true, also makes any commentary vapid and useless. >Is murder evil?
depends >Is theft evil?
depends
depends
depends
depends.
>that does not make pragmatism itself non-neutral
That's what the amorality is for. Without a sense of right and wrong, and a desire to do good or at least avoid evil, pragmatism becomes evil because it is easier to take than to earn.
how'd that work out for him?
isn't drow social hierarchy:
spiders > drow women > drow noble/aristocrat males > regular drow males > livestock > drow slave males > literal shit > any other race
She was exiled from drow society so she had no choice but to rely on me for protection but she enjoyed it when I did evil things so it was my way of endearing her to me. My DM described our relationship as "She absolutely hates you but she will turn her back to you".
Honestly i enjoyed it. For that character all the other women he fricked were sycophantic or just straight up prostitutes but she was a challenge. It made those rare tender moments all the sweeter. She also saved my PC's life occasionally so i think she was just tsundere or whatever the term for cold b***hy woman is. I wanted a traditional drow not some hippy Eilistraee drow.
It kind of depends on what tone you're going for. While total genocide, WORLD DOMINATION, or EVIIIIIL are fun motivations for the right game, they're not very realistic or involved. There's not much reason as to why Palpatine did the whole sith thing, but Star Wars is a series about space wizards fighting with laser swords. There's not a lot of depth to be found in anyone, so it's fine that the villains are sort of flat. They're more obstacles than actual characters, and they serve their function as a challenge.
In more realistic settings, the evil side cannot be stupid and shortsighted. If you go around kicking puppies and eating babies, you won't find support anywhere. Evil itself cannot be a goal, unless your villain is particularly deranged. Evil has to offer something valuable to the people it's trying to sway; It could be ideological, personal, or material.
The short of it is that no-one dedicates themselves to evil, that's just not how it works. People do cruel things because they want something and feel that cruelty is the best, fastest, or safest way to get it. Most of the time, they even convince themselves that they aren't doing evil things, that the evil they do is necessary, or that they didn't have a choice.
I could see even realistic villains devolving into stupid and short-sighted if things really don't go their way. Like a mob boss whose losing support all around and start acting with more brutality than sense. Or any arrogant character that lose face and just can't stand it. But I guess you usually want your big bad to remain in control until the end so that he remain threatening. Maybe for a minor villain then? I like the idea of a villain that just crash and burn past a certain point.
I would also add normalised evil to the kind of evil you can have in realistic settings. Evil things people will do because they even don't register it as evil as everyone in their in group have been doing it forever.
His ult was so fricking disgusting back when I played. It was basically a free kill button for AP characters or ADCs. Nothing like going from full health to dead with 1 click
It was different time, man. You were just a young man in his early 20s looking for a job. You walked into Evil&Evil office, gave the evil boss firm handshake, signed up contract in blood and you were hooked up for life.
What a cringe-worthy degree of moral cowardice. >There is evil among even the highest authorities in the world? >Well then it must be fine! As long as I'm just following an evil god I don't need to feel bad about my own choices.
yeah but what if you're some cruel, psycho, coward? are you gonna bank on a good god letting *that* into paradise or are gonna find an alternate solution?
serving an evil god is just a steping stone to something greater
If it gets a few degrees hotter I'm going to start harming people who annoy me.
Much hotter than that and I don't think I can prevent myself seeking out global warming denialists and oil execs and such and make it fricking slow.
So to actually answer the question? dave syndrome
Most psychopaths work on that reasoning, so it is realistic at least. Of course, many of them have a hugely exaggerated sense of grievance and don't realise that many of the ways 'the world has fricked them' are just consequences of their own actions (inability to connect actions and consequences, especially negative ones, is a major factor is psychopathic psychology).
> Most psychopaths work on that reasoning
Actually most ‘True Believers’ of extremist groups/cults also have this reasoning too, the difference is that the true believer won’t admit that this is their reasoning, not to the world, nor to themselves.
Skeletor is the good guy though.
Dude is the actual heir of Greyskull disfigured and outcast from the realm.
Who bands together the misfits and other outcasts, and even the beasts of the wilds together to survive and flourish.
Some people n Mexico were recently asked, "Why do you worship Santa Morte?" (She is a recently revered goddess of death a destruction that's found popularity.)
Their answer? "Other faiths work well, but ours works the fastest. You can pray all day for something good to happen and it never comes, but if you anticipate evil, it you will find it in no short supply."
Appeasing a higher power that thrives off of evil deeds, suffering, etc.
Power, money, and/or fame.
The blind devotion to a cause the person doesn't see as evil, or sees as a necessary evil for improving the region/world.
Vengeance.
Watching more movies/reading more books and studying the motivations of the villains therein, instead of being an uncultured homosexual who needs to be spoonfed basic information.
>It offers what “good” can not
Good is not always best, as even a good kingdom will have black markets , crime, and a whole underworld that will likely go unaddressed or under-resolved and that’s without even delving into the roots of it like oppressive laws, corrupt nobility, or starvation/people falling through the cracks of society. To these people a life of crime or evil deeds can save them from being damned to starvation into having a whole life. Friends, family, commitments, respect, money, power. Doing the right thing is most noble, but nobility and honor don’t matter much to a starving or desperate man. >you’re in too deep
You could have already made decisions or mistakes that have condemned you to a path of evil. To fess up, come clean, or attempt to atone for your sins would lead to your legacy and family being destroyed and you being hanged. (Or your soul stolen by demons and tortured for all eternity) >The ends justify the means
History is written by the winners and should you have been able to ask the losing faction of major wars if they were being attacked by bad and evil men they’d most certainly say yes. Sometimes you’re making the mother of all omelettes, and you can’t fret over every egg.
>Be Roman Empire >Greatest Empire Earth has ever seen >Their people revel in death at the games and the glory of their conquests >Even slaves and convicts can die a glorious death
I think I found the solution to "good" not being good enough.
You know how your boss will never respect you, people who disagree with your politics will never bother to listen to you, religion will never help you, and the world will laugh at you after it's done spitting on you and kicking you in the gutter?
Wouldn't it feel nice, really really nice, if, instead of just having to take that, you could just brutally murder them?
> The greater good. The end justifies the means. > Desperation. The good won't / can't get you what you want. > Desire for power. Once you'll be in control, you'll be able to solve things. > Pact with the devil. Considering what you've been promised, this is the lesser evil.
A misanthrope is born when they have allowed another person to get extremely close to them, and then that person lets them down in an extremely hard way.
1)As is often the case in table top as well as IRL evil gets shit done.
2)A god could be testing you like Job and instead of taking the shit test you snap.
3)Dealing with chaotic stupid CG/CN characters drives one to become the most LE butthole that ever walked the planes. (Because if the bard and thief are going to burn down an orphanage anyway why not get something out of it by dedicating their souls to Asmodeus?)
A set of ideal.
Just look at people's motives today. Some people think they are making the world better by trying to force their belief structure on others.
Wealth and power. Not the pursuit of those things, the possession of those things. My theory is that it's a rationalisation, the just world fallacy. When you realise that your life is inconceivably better, easier and seemingly more important than that of billions of other people, and for no good reason, you have two choices.
Accept that this is injustice, and use whatever wealth or power you have trying to overturn it, even knowing that it will make you poorer in the end. Or... convince yourself that actually this is just, that you're better than the rest of the world, you deserve your comfort and more importantly they deserve their suffering. You're chosen by god, or the universe, or you're simply superior by your nature, hence your reward. And they are forsaken, unloved by the world, and their existences are warranted punishment.
Needless to say the latter of the two options is much easier.
Hedonism and the desire to simply have fun. Not every villain needs a twelve step plan for world domination, some just want to rape and kill for the thrills. One of my favorite villains was something akin to a monk, who loved three things, gold, fighting and carnal pleasures. He would wonder from town to town in search of those three things and would snap and kill everything with his bare hands, at the slightest offence. My players were tasked with hunting him down, following a trail of burned down villages, corpses, violated maiden's and children.
Had one group go evil over the consequences of helping one PC get revenge over the murder of their wife after the killer got off because of their nobility status and court manipulation.
To be fair, the GM didn't expect the wronged player to publicly outright kill the murderer, the judge, and the murderer's father (who was the string puller in getting his son free) right in the middle of the court room. But, Ride or Die. The fallout went from bounty hunters (killed), to soldiers (killed), and so on until our group was eventually putting down straight up heroes who were trying to stop us from 'destabilizing' kingdoms because the fallout kept chasing us around.
Another one during the God awful Tyranny of Dragons campaign straight up freed Tiamat from Hell himself after striking a deal that she had to be a devoted and loving spouse to him and not giving a shit about what she did outside of that. She accepted and honored the agreement, so while she was indeed doing world conquering stuff, she also was being a very good wife to that butthole at the same time and he spent the apocalypse happy as a clam.
Generally it's just individualism or tribalism. "I know this is a bad thing to do, but it benefits me (or us), so I don't care". The only other explanation is the person believing they're actually doing good "even though it's bad, it'll be better for everyone if i do that".
To challenge God. That's one of the potential motivations for Judas in some versions. Judas believed totally that Jesus was God, and that by delivering him to the Romans God would be forced to reveal himself to the world and bring about Kingdom of Heaven on earth. More generally, "I will make myself so abhorrent to God that I must be destroyed; though my fate be hell, my death will lead the world to paradise." It's an extreme version of the greater good motivation.
Bonus points if the villain is confronted by an unexpected hero who survives through some impossible coincidences and when they realize this has a breakdown realizing that God did show themselves, but only to them, and in a way that no-one will believe.
That's the thing about God.
Your aunt in Alaska could drink a glass of water, you didn't see or hear about it, but that's proof of God and now you know it and He has shown no one else. It doesn't make sense, that's omnipotence, we cannot grasp it at all.
It's why I don't like challenging God very much. If you know the dictionary definition of "omnipotence" then there's no reason for you to try.
But, honestly a mix of entitlement and narcissism is going to be the most common drives. Entitlement can even be the drive to do not just blatantly evil, but also stupid and shortsighted acts. And real life studies have shown this, an ample sense of entitlement can drive a person to steal candy from children and even destroy their own environment so long as they get their immediate needs met.
Frustration can come from a lot of places but it’s quite normal for people who are frustrated because they feel that their life didn’t go the way they wanted it to either adopt extremist attitudes or join extremist groups because it 1) gives them an alternate identity to adopt (the group’s identity replaces any personal identity) and 2) it gives them an excuse to “burn the world down” because they feel that their life sucks and everyone else needs to suffer for that.
A few bad life decisions resulting in association with other evils who (surprisse) coerce more bad decisions that further distance you from a positive self-image.
In short: sometimes you can be a victim or a villain and being a victim is exhausting
> being a victim is exhausting
But it’s such an easy way to excuse morally bankrupt behavior.
Ironically Star Trek really did a good job of demonstrating this with the Dominion. Brutal tyrants who still believed that they were the victims and never wavered in this mindset.
I like how it's done in Tales of Phantasia.
The evil wizard is just trying to save his own planet as your 2 planets are linked together with their mana trees. As one dies, the other revives and his is dying so he's on your planet doing all sorts of magic shit trying to drain your mana tree by having an enormous mana war.
It D&D where gods are real. Simply following someone who is evil leads to a afterlife of eternal reward.
Not someone like Amsmudesa, he isn't a standard god-god and has ulterior motives, but someone like Hextor, Pyremius, kinda Wee-Jas, that one Greyhawk god of murder that google can't find me.
Gods that actually reward you for being an butthole.
My current character is a deific hellfire wyrm/archdevil and was hatched evil. He never had a choice. Fortunately for the world his adoptive mother (a literal angel) has mitigated his worst behaviour and raised him to be the diet coke of evil. He goes around studying and eating hags and evil witches. Cannibalism and torture are still evil, but he remains absolutely loyal (lawful) to his adoptive mother and tries in his own twisted way to "do good" for her sake. Naturally, he fails in catastrophic ways from time to time.
In real life there are rich people who are literally doing satanic rituals just to go to cool secret elite parties and rape kids. In a magic fantasy world you have lots of things you might want to turn evil for. >magic item >magic esoteric knowledge >immortality >working for a demon or evil god who can literally talk to you to confirm his existence and reward you for evil
Laziness. I want a fast solution to my problems, and I’m tired of people taking the time to examine the consequences of their actions before doing what they must do.
Are there any stories where someone becomes evil so they can revive their loved one... and succeeds? Like maybe the spell takes thousands of lives or something.
No, not Berserk.
Its kind of like a self-inflicted snowball effect. You start out strangling cats and then in a few years, if you become powerful and lucky enough, you might suddenly come to and find yourself doing the evil cosmic wizard equivalent of autoerotic asphyxiation. Whoopsie
Most fiction presents the villains as being evil because they are a threat to the status quo. If you think the status quo sucks and those in authority are lying to you to preserve their own power, its not a big leap to imagine that maybe the 'irredeemable monsters that you should never, ever interact with because they will instantly kill you just shoot them first please I promise' have been painted as being comically baby-eating because those in power don't want you listening to what this group has to say. Which can be a good angle, if done well. If Demons are not actually evil, just extremely powerful and open to deals from anyone, everyone in power has a vested interest in making sure that the common folk don't know that and don't find out, because a single angry commoner making a deal with a demon can wipe your big fancy castle off the map.
Always been a fan of doing horrific acts to save a loved one. To have a deep and true love and go to extremes to preserve it. Only to lose it when the acts you have done destroy it.
I'm glad real life doesn't have evil like that.
Nobody IRL cares about ruining your love life. Not like that anyway, not when there's massive profit to be made. And there's no profit in killing someone's wife.
Sure they might get murdered but you can just murder them back. It won't bring her back but you rid the world of an evil.
>the very first paladin of a benevolent god >went into the void to battle untold evils for the sake of the world and shut the gateway from the other side >came back some thousand years later >finds the lands he once left are now a prosperous utopia >things are that way because said god was sealed and serves as a mana battery for everything
Flexible hours
Benefits
Good 401k matching
A Pension plan
Paid Vacations
as someone who works for the oil industry, this unironically
Thanks for helping pump and refine dead dinosaurs so I can confortably, reliably and expediently go to my job.
Reasons are gamut:
>Power
>Vengeance
>Desperation
>Love
>Hate
>Fear
>Boredom
>Pragmatism the wrong way
>Literally no other choices and alternatives left
Also this.
REVENGE!
A strong belief in survival of the fittest plus intense self interest. Also wanting that sick evil couture
>A strong belief in survival of the fittest plus intense self interest.
Ironically, most people who have dedicated themselves to evil causes in the last couple of centuries have been exactly the opposite of this. That kind of attitude might get you the petty evil of a drug dealer or salesman, but to be really dedicated to evil, you need a self-loathing coward who will do anything to avoid personal responsibility and who allows themselves to be shaped by social pressure.
Pragmatism+amorality
>amorality
You're confusing amorality with immorality, and pragmatism is fundamentally neutral.
>You're confusing amorality with immorality, and pragmatism is fundamentally neutral.
No, it isn't. It is often pragmatic to do evil.
>No it isn't.
Yes it is.
>It is often pragmatic to do evil.
Yes, but that does not make pragmatism itself non-neutral. The actions you may take may in themselves be Evil or Good (or neither). Pragmatism is in itself amoral, not immoral.
So your argument is that just about every category of action and attitude is inherently neutral, because they *can* be done for/encompass good and evil?
That's such a nothing description that while true, also makes any commentary vapid and useless.
>Is murder evil?
depends
>Is theft evil?
depends
depends
depends
depends.
>that does not make pragmatism itself non-neutral
That's what the amorality is for. Without a sense of right and wrong, and a desire to do good or at least avoid evil, pragmatism becomes evil because it is easier to take than to earn.
>You're confusing amorality with immorality,
No its amoral, he is answering the question "why?".
Shut the frick up nerd. You don't have to correct every fricking thing. What he said was just fine.
I had a PC turn evil explicitly for drow pussy.
how'd that work out for him?
isn't drow social hierarchy:
spiders > drow women > drow noble/aristocrat males > regular drow males > livestock > drow slave males > literal shit > any other race
She was exiled from drow society so she had no choice but to rely on me for protection but she enjoyed it when I did evil things so it was my way of endearing her to me. My DM described our relationship as "She absolutely hates you but she will turn her back to you".
that's pretty sad senpai
Honestly i enjoyed it. For that character all the other women he fricked were sycophantic or just straight up prostitutes but she was a challenge. It made those rare tender moments all the sweeter. She also saved my PC's life occasionally so i think she was just tsundere or whatever the term for cold b***hy woman is. I wanted a traditional drow not some hippy Eilistraee drow.
I suppose there's a certain level of classic tragedy to it. At the end of the day your character debased himself to get a girl to like him.
It's more like you realize being good doesn't cut it.
To force the hero you dreamed of since you were a kid to appear.
>main villain is just Flay from Mana Khemia
Even fatnastytrash weebshit does something right once a blue moon.
s tier choice anon
It kind of depends on what tone you're going for. While total genocide, WORLD DOMINATION, or EVIIIIIL are fun motivations for the right game, they're not very realistic or involved. There's not much reason as to why Palpatine did the whole sith thing, but Star Wars is a series about space wizards fighting with laser swords. There's not a lot of depth to be found in anyone, so it's fine that the villains are sort of flat. They're more obstacles than actual characters, and they serve their function as a challenge.
In more realistic settings, the evil side cannot be stupid and shortsighted. If you go around kicking puppies and eating babies, you won't find support anywhere. Evil itself cannot be a goal, unless your villain is particularly deranged. Evil has to offer something valuable to the people it's trying to sway; It could be ideological, personal, or material.
The short of it is that no-one dedicates themselves to evil, that's just not how it works. People do cruel things because they want something and feel that cruelty is the best, fastest, or safest way to get it. Most of the time, they even convince themselves that they aren't doing evil things, that the evil they do is necessary, or that they didn't have a choice.
I could see even realistic villains devolving into stupid and short-sighted if things really don't go their way. Like a mob boss whose losing support all around and start acting with more brutality than sense. Or any arrogant character that lose face and just can't stand it. But I guess you usually want your big bad to remain in control until the end so that he remain threatening. Maybe for a minor villain then? I like the idea of a villain that just crash and burn past a certain point.
I would also add normalised evil to the kind of evil you can have in realistic settings. Evil things people will do because they even don't register it as evil as everyone in their in group have been doing it forever.
The real world is full of people who are cartoonishly evil with no obvious motivation, but fiction should indeed make more sense than reality.
Maybe everyone is evil so he wants to go even further and just end them all
Women.
To preserve the balance between Good and Evil, of course.
Power over everyone else
His ult was so fricking disgusting back when I played. It was basically a free kill button for AP characters or ADCs. Nothing like going from full health to dead with 1 click
It still does that. If Veigar gets to stack he gets to play with a big button saying "delete target below 2000 HP"
It was different time, man. You were just a young man in his early 20s looking for a job. You walked into Evil&Evil office, gave the evil boss firm handshake, signed up contract in blood and you were hooked up for life.
If the setting as evil gods, that alone validates evil.
What a cringe-worthy degree of moral cowardice.
>There is evil among even the highest authorities in the world?
>Well then it must be fine! As long as I'm just following an evil god I don't need to feel bad about my own choices.
yeah but what if you're some cruel, psycho, coward? are you gonna bank on a good god letting *that* into paradise or are gonna find an alternate solution?
serving an evil god is just a steping stone to something greater
Ganker
Ganker is a platform, not a source.
If it gets a few degrees hotter I'm going to start harming people who annoy me.
Much hotter than that and I don't think I can prevent myself seeking out global warming denialists and oil execs and such and make it fricking slow.
So to actually answer the question?
dave syndrome
Go for a walk fattycakes.
>My autism would motivate me to dedicate myself to Evil
You're underestimating the importance ,of your NPCness.
You've never heard of Dave Syndrome?
Not him but i am also ignorant of dave syndrome
Yes, but have you considered just going all out with the relentless hedonism and self-inflicted misery?
The good side shitting on them
Being really bored
For me: pure fricking spite.
I guess "the world fricked me, so frick the world" can work, even if it's pretty basic.
Most psychopaths work on that reasoning, so it is realistic at least. Of course, many of them have a hugely exaggerated sense of grievance and don't realise that many of the ways 'the world has fricked them' are just consequences of their own actions (inability to connect actions and consequences, especially negative ones, is a major factor is psychopathic psychology).
> Most psychopaths work on that reasoning
Actually most ‘True Believers’ of extremist groups/cults also have this reasoning too, the difference is that the true believer won’t admit that this is their reasoning, not to the world, nor to themselves.
Shits and giggles.
Skeletor is the good guy though.
Dude is the actual heir of Greyskull disfigured and outcast from the realm.
Who bands together the misfits and other outcasts, and even the beasts of the wilds together to survive and flourish.
Some people n Mexico were recently asked, "Why do you worship Santa Morte?" (She is a recently revered goddess of death a destruction that's found popularity.)
Their answer? "Other faiths work well, but ours works the fastest. You can pray all day for something good to happen and it never comes, but if you anticipate evil, it you will find it in no short supply."
Appeasing a higher power that thrives off of evil deeds, suffering, etc.
Power, money, and/or fame.
The blind devotion to a cause the person doesn't see as evil, or sees as a necessary evil for improving the region/world.
Vengeance.
Watching more movies/reading more books and studying the motivations of the villains therein, instead of being an uncultured homosexual who needs to be spoonfed basic information.
>It offers what “good” can not
Good is not always best, as even a good kingdom will have black markets , crime, and a whole underworld that will likely go unaddressed or under-resolved and that’s without even delving into the roots of it like oppressive laws, corrupt nobility, or starvation/people falling through the cracks of society. To these people a life of crime or evil deeds can save them from being damned to starvation into having a whole life. Friends, family, commitments, respect, money, power. Doing the right thing is most noble, but nobility and honor don’t matter much to a starving or desperate man.
>you’re in too deep
You could have already made decisions or mistakes that have condemned you to a path of evil. To fess up, come clean, or attempt to atone for your sins would lead to your legacy and family being destroyed and you being hanged. (Or your soul stolen by demons and tortured for all eternity)
>The ends justify the means
History is written by the winners and should you have been able to ask the losing faction of major wars if they were being attacked by bad and evil men they’d most certainly say yes. Sometimes you’re making the mother of all omelettes, and you can’t fret over every egg.
>Be Roman Empire
>Greatest Empire Earth has ever seen
>Their people revel in death at the games and the glory of their conquests
>Even slaves and convicts can die a glorious death
I think I found the solution to "good" not being good enough.
You know how your boss will never respect you, people who disagree with your politics will never bother to listen to you, religion will never help you, and the world will laugh at you after it's done spitting on you and kicking you in the gutter?
Wouldn't it feel nice, really really nice, if, instead of just having to take that, you could just brutally murder them?
> The greater good. The end justifies the means.
> Desperation. The good won't / can't get you what you want.
> Desire for power. Once you'll be in control, you'll be able to solve things.
> Pact with the devil. Considering what you've been promised, this is the lesser evil.
A misanthrope is born when they have allowed another person to get extremely close to them, and then that person lets them down in an extremely hard way.
no what you're describing is an incel
Revenge, Power, Money. Especially Money.
a sense of moral superiority
a skewed quest for justice
1)As is often the case in table top as well as IRL evil gets shit done.
2)A god could be testing you like Job and instead of taking the shit test you snap.
3)Dealing with chaotic stupid CG/CN characters drives one to become the most LE butthole that ever walked the planes. (Because if the bard and thief are going to burn down an orphanage anyway why not get something out of it by dedicating their souls to Asmodeus?)
A set of ideal.
Just look at people's motives today. Some people think they are making the world better by trying to force their belief structure on others.
Wealth and power. Not the pursuit of those things, the possession of those things. My theory is that it's a rationalisation, the just world fallacy. When you realise that your life is inconceivably better, easier and seemingly more important than that of billions of other people, and for no good reason, you have two choices.
Accept that this is injustice, and use whatever wealth or power you have trying to overturn it, even knowing that it will make you poorer in the end. Or... convince yourself that actually this is just, that you're better than the rest of the world, you deserve your comfort and more importantly they deserve their suffering. You're chosen by god, or the universe, or you're simply superior by your nature, hence your reward. And they are forsaken, unloved by the world, and their existences are warranted punishment.
Needless to say the latter of the two options is much easier.
Hedonism and the desire to simply have fun. Not every villain needs a twelve step plan for world domination, some just want to rape and kill for the thrills. One of my favorite villains was something akin to a monk, who loved three things, gold, fighting and carnal pleasures. He would wonder from town to town in search of those three things and would snap and kill everything with his bare hands, at the slightest offence. My players were tasked with hunting him down, following a trail of burned down villages, corpses, violated maiden's and children.
Spite
An unjust world and no just means to change it.
Had one group go evil over the consequences of helping one PC get revenge over the murder of their wife after the killer got off because of their nobility status and court manipulation.
To be fair, the GM didn't expect the wronged player to publicly outright kill the murderer, the judge, and the murderer's father (who was the string puller in getting his son free) right in the middle of the court room. But, Ride or Die. The fallout went from bounty hunters (killed), to soldiers (killed), and so on until our group was eventually putting down straight up heroes who were trying to stop us from 'destabilizing' kingdoms because the fallout kept chasing us around.
Another one during the God awful Tyranny of Dragons campaign straight up freed Tiamat from Hell himself after striking a deal that she had to be a devoted and loving spouse to him and not giving a shit about what she did outside of that. She accepted and honored the agreement, so while she was indeed doing world conquering stuff, she also was being a very good wife to that butthole at the same time and he spent the apocalypse happy as a clam.
Ah yes, the classic "kill everything" solution having consequences.
Personal gain (money/power)
Help with revenge on somebody they feel they got wronged by.
Morbid curiosity, to see just how far you can go.
Generally it's just individualism or tribalism. "I know this is a bad thing to do, but it benefits me (or us), so I don't care". The only other explanation is the person believing they're actually doing good "even though it's bad, it'll be better for everyone if i do that".
To challenge God. That's one of the potential motivations for Judas in some versions. Judas believed totally that Jesus was God, and that by delivering him to the Romans God would be forced to reveal himself to the world and bring about Kingdom of Heaven on earth. More generally, "I will make myself so abhorrent to God that I must be destroyed; though my fate be hell, my death will lead the world to paradise." It's an extreme version of the greater good motivation.
Bonus points if the villain is confronted by an unexpected hero who survives through some impossible coincidences and when they realize this has a breakdown realizing that God did show themselves, but only to them, and in a way that no-one will believe.
That's the thing about God.
Your aunt in Alaska could drink a glass of water, you didn't see or hear about it, but that's proof of God and now you know it and He has shown no one else. It doesn't make sense, that's omnipotence, we cannot grasp it at all.
It's why I don't like challenging God very much. If you know the dictionary definition of "omnipotence" then there's no reason for you to try.
my life
having a serious grudge against the gods or powers of light, in other words revenge against the gods who wronged or lied to the character
Pathfinder Asuras in a nutshell.
Frustration,
Entitlement
Narcissism
Psychopathy
Delusion
Revenge
Victim complex
But, honestly a mix of entitlement and narcissism is going to be the most common drives. Entitlement can even be the drive to do not just blatantly evil, but also stupid and shortsighted acts. And real life studies have shown this, an ample sense of entitlement can drive a person to steal candy from children and even destroy their own environment so long as they get their immediate needs met.
Frustration can come from a lot of places but it’s quite normal for people who are frustrated because they feel that their life didn’t go the way they wanted it to either adopt extremist attitudes or join extremist groups because it 1) gives them an alternate identity to adopt (the group’s identity replaces any personal identity) and 2) it gives them an excuse to “burn the world down” because they feel that their life sucks and everyone else needs to suffer for that.
Oh! I forgot to add that rampant cynicism can also be a vector for a character becoming evil.
Because it's cool.
A deep disappointment in good.
To do good, like Darth Vader.
A few bad life decisions resulting in association with other evils who (surprisse) coerce more bad decisions that further distance you from a positive self-image.
In short: sometimes you can be a victim or a villain and being a victim is exhausting
> being a victim is exhausting
But it’s such an easy way to excuse morally bankrupt behavior.
Ironically Star Trek really did a good job of demonstrating this with the Dominion. Brutal tyrants who still believed that they were the victims and never wavered in this mindset.
an inborn inescapable affinity for death
also sex
I like how it's done in Tales of Phantasia.
The evil wizard is just trying to save his own planet as your 2 planets are linked together with their mana trees. As one dies, the other revives and his is dying so he's on your planet doing all sorts of magic shit trying to drain your mana tree by having an enormous mana war.
Good fringe benefits.
I'm not the one defining "evil".
Evil is when someone disagrees with me, but if they have a reason I find somewhat justifiable then that's neutral.
Believing that it's not evil.
Seeing how society is running I sure as frick feel like dedicating myself to evil.
That and probably mental illness.
It D&D where gods are real. Simply following someone who is evil leads to a afterlife of eternal reward.
Not someone like Amsmudesa, he isn't a standard god-god and has ulterior motives, but someone like Hextor, Pyremius, kinda Wee-Jas, that one Greyhawk god of murder that google can't find me.
Gods that actually reward you for being an butthole.
Outside of D&D. Iunno.
My current character is a deific hellfire wyrm/archdevil and was hatched evil. He never had a choice. Fortunately for the world his adoptive mother (a literal angel) has mitigated his worst behaviour and raised him to be the diet coke of evil. He goes around studying and eating hags and evil witches. Cannibalism and torture are still evil, but he remains absolutely loyal (lawful) to his adoptive mother and tries in his own twisted way to "do good" for her sake. Naturally, he fails in catastrophic ways from time to time.
Cute
In real life there are rich people who are literally doing satanic rituals just to go to cool secret elite parties and rape kids. In a magic fantasy world you have lots of things you might want to turn evil for.
>magic item
>magic esoteric knowledge
>immortality
>working for a demon or evil god who can literally talk to you to confirm his existence and reward you for evil
Cooler aesthetic.
A desire to hoard and rent single family homes as a source of passive income.
Laziness. I want a fast solution to my problems, and I’m tired of people taking the time to examine the consequences of their actions before doing what they must do.
Its sorta family tradition
It would be hard to take seriously, but a guy obsessed with beauty who just really digs the evil aesthetic.
Are there any stories where someone becomes evil so they can revive their loved one... and succeeds? Like maybe the spell takes thousands of lives or something.
No, not Berserk.
Its kind of like a self-inflicted snowball effect. You start out strangling cats and then in a few years, if you become powerful and lucky enough, you might suddenly come to and find yourself doing the evil cosmic wizard equivalent of autoerotic asphyxiation. Whoopsie
Most fiction presents the villains as being evil because they are a threat to the status quo. If you think the status quo sucks and those in authority are lying to you to preserve their own power, its not a big leap to imagine that maybe the 'irredeemable monsters that you should never, ever interact with because they will instantly kill you just shoot them first please I promise' have been painted as being comically baby-eating because those in power don't want you listening to what this group has to say. Which can be a good angle, if done well. If Demons are not actually evil, just extremely powerful and open to deals from anyone, everyone in power has a vested interest in making sure that the common folk don't know that and don't find out, because a single angry commoner making a deal with a demon can wipe your big fancy castle off the map.
Always been a fan of doing horrific acts to save a loved one. To have a deep and true love and go to extremes to preserve it. Only to lose it when the acts you have done destroy it.
I'm glad real life doesn't have evil like that.
Nobody IRL cares about ruining your love life. Not like that anyway, not when there's massive profit to be made. And there's no profit in killing someone's wife.
Sure they might get murdered but you can just murder them back. It won't bring her back but you rid the world of an evil.
Your relogious texts tell you you're protagonist of the world and anyone who slights you must be in the wrong no matter what you did.
The ardent conviction that you are doing the right thing.
>the very first paladin of a benevolent god
>went into the void to battle untold evils for the sake of the world and shut the gateway from the other side
>came back some thousand years later
>finds the lands he once left are now a prosperous utopia
>things are that way because said god was sealed and serves as a mana battery for everything
Did the god volunteer?
does it matter? or.. should it?