World of Warcraft®

I've been catching up on a few of the LFRP podcasts while I grind out dailies the past few days and their podcast about antagonist characters really got me thinking about my own antagonist creation, Ravenblack.

I've been going back over some Gnome RP Guides and recapping what I've built with her so far. Where she's come from, where she's at currently, and where she might be headed. I'm having fun with her, so on the basic side of things (for me) she's solid. However, from a creative writing standpoint, I'm wondering if she might need a few more layers to make her more interesting.

I'm of a mind that input is always good, so I'm coming to you, the community, to see what people think.

Some specific questions:
I haven't been too terribly active with her in-game, but I've put up tons of story threads. If you've read them, do you think she needs a little "something else"?
What could that be?
I'm aware that gnomes are hard for (perhaps) most people to follow, so what could I do to make her more interesting as a character and antagonist?

Some general questions:
In your mind, what makes a good (or great) Antagonist? Be as specific as you like.
How deep (or relatable) should they be?
What techniques have you used (or do you use) when creating your character?

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[note:] If you please, lay off the gnome jabs...unless of course there is a valid point you're illustrating. I'd like to keep this thread rather constructive and enlightening. -Thank you

Well, from a general perspective, based mostly on my own experiences, a few things help for ideal bad guys: Having the power to back up what they're saying they can do, few (if any) moral scruples, a well-developed sense of vengeance, and being more than a little crazy. With some, it helps to give people a reason to hate and fear you; with others, talking sweetly and playing with their heads is better. With some villains, it works to write the character where - to take a line from Star Trek - you can admire them and be against them at the same time. Granted, the irredeemable evil is kinda cool at times, but the better way of doing it is to make the villain three-dimensional.

Rakeri, for example, has quite a few traits that are admirable: He's intelligent, inquisitive, usually well-spoken, a brilliant engineer and an expert scribe, something of a historian, a veteran fighter against the enemies of the Alliance, and not afraid to take a few risks. On the other hand, he's also arrogant, racist, sadistic, enjoys chaos and disorder (not just because it helps him professionally, it's also his hobby, to paraphrase George Carlin), has some spectacular rage issues, and of course he's a warlock, which turns off the puritans.

I don't remember the character name, which is a damned shame, but there used to be someone who RP-ed as a gnome warlock that was adorable, had a fun, in character obsession with collecting things, and was just straight out sadistic. She'd collect eyeballs from living people, things like that. It was horrifying stuff, but so well written, and totally believable from a gnome.

Antagonists are really hard to write. They need a sort of menace and danger, but you can usually tell when the writer is emphasizing "THIS CHARACTER IS FOR REAL EVIL, YOU GUYS", which undermines the entire process. I'm not an expert on it and I'll never claimed real success at accomplishing it, but my best advice is to write an antagonist like you would write any character - they need to have their own internal logic, so that they make sense as characters and not, "and now he did THIS, because he's EVIL!"

There's a place for a guy that is just evil personified, like a Sauron from Lord of the Rings. But the better character from that series is, for my money, Gollum. He's an antagonist, completely insane, but he has his own internal logic as a character. You can see the through line of what drives him, what he wants, what his goals are, and the choices that he makes are completely in line with that, even when it involves betraying hobbits to giant spiders.

I'll focus specifically on making an antagonist in a RP setting.

-You don't need to play that character regularly to make them have an impact. Simply the knowledge of them being active behind the scenes is enough. In fact I believe a villain fueled story arch should be used sparingly in RP so their machinations feel more important. If the heroes are regularly facing off against the villain every few weeks or even every other month then it becomes almost routine.

-They need to be powerful in some fashion (raw strength, position, intelligence ect...) so they seem like a threat but not to the point you God Mode with them. More importantly the real danger they pose is not that they can -insert OP ability here- but what their goal is. Furthermore this goal need not be to rule the world but it should be personal to another player character "hero" and, therefore, something they want to prevent. (protect a loved one, protect themselves ect...)

-As a general rule of thumb I find the "crazy" evil villain to be dreadfully boring and just flat out lazy. An antagonist should have their own method of thinking and morality, a way of seeing the world that makes sense to them. Outsiders might find such an outlook alluring (the villain with good intentions but wrong methods) to flat out horrifying (the villain completely detached from societal and cultural norms).

As an example Bragdus is a villain I created, a demon observer, and is the primary antagonist in The Dawn after Darkness Falls story arch. While he did have an ominous ultimate objective his immediate goal was simply to kidnap Kezrin and that made it very personal to all the players involved. He was not crazy but operated on a completely different level of morality and ethics than mortals. More importantly what made him truly dangerous was his cunning and intelligence. The players had to come up with a lot of clever ideas to outwit him. Most of them did not work but some did and were instrumental in finally defeating him at the end.

Anyway, I hope this helps.