Playing Against Type - Evil NPCs and Dungeons and Dragons


I've noted a tendency in both fantasy literature and in published settings to treat the "bad guys" as moustache twirling villains who eat babies and kick dogs. I get the tendency, there's a lot to like about hating your opponent, and one easy way to get your players to hate an opponent is to make them EEEVVVIIILLLL. However..., that gets tired after a while, as really evil opponents can come across as caricatures. And in some ways it can drain the immersion right out of the game, making it rather mechanical, and in a weird way draining agency out of the player's actions.


Of COURSE they are going to oppose a villain who burns villages and skins dolphins alive. What else can you do really? I would like to suggest an alternative and some game mechanics to help you get there, using an example from my home game.


Every summer we run a 1 week D&D camp for my son and his friends, that gives us 5 consecutive days to deep dive into an adventure.


A few summers ago we ran Dwellers of the Forbidden City, one of my all time favorite 1e adventures. The "big bad" in this module is Horan, a high level magic-user who is up to no good. I factionalized the setting, there were different groups vying for power in the Forbidden city, and Horan was holding it all together.


When the party arrived, they poked around for a while and were ambushed by Horan's assistant and a group of Yuan-ti. A stinking cloud and web spell later and the party was captured. This was the first decision point. I could have killed them all off right there and then, Horan is listed as Lawful Evil, so it would have fit the bill.


However, I decided that Horan would talk to the party instead, find out why they were there, who sent them, if others were coming, that sort of thing. So they talked. Now, in 1e, when two opposing groups parley that triggers and encounter reaction mechanic, you roll on a table modified by charisma to see how the parties react to each other. As it happens the group had a paladin in it, and a paladin has high charisma, which carries a decent roll modifier.


So the party and Horan talked, they told him they were there to plunder, slay evil monsters, that sort of thing, and I rolled to see how Horan would react. This was my second decision point, I could have just decided how he would react, but I let the dice decide.


The result was "enthusiastically friendly". Now, I have spoken here before about how I practice RRTEI, "Roll Randomly and Then Explain it", when the dice produce a result it's my job to interpret that result in a plausible, game compatible way. On the spot (because I had to react to the roll in the moment) I decided that Horan was lonely, he was sequestered in this hidden jungle city retrieving old magical tomes, surrounded by only his assistant and hordes of Yuan-ti. Horan sought conversation, news of the outside world, that sort of thing.


So he made the party an offer, cease any hostilities against him, and in exchange they could slaughter all the evil monsters in the city that they wanted, except those who served him. The party agreed, figuring they would bide their time, do what they were going to do anyway for a while, and turn on him at the appropriate moment.


Then I had fun. One of the party members was a MU who was transformed by a curse into a lizard man, he couldn't cast spells as a result of the curse, Horan took him aside and helped him to regain his spell casting ability. He freely gave spells ("duplicates I cannot use...") to the party magic-users
And gave clerical scrolls he had found and couldn't use to the party cleric. He also gave some magic weapons that were useless to him to the party fighters. He let them keep any magic items or loot they found when they killed the monsters that opposed him. In short, he treated them like allies and they helped him out by eliminating his opposition.


Over the course of a few days of gaming I had them sit to dinner with him and socialize as well, he was genuinely interested in the characters, he praised their fighting ability, made helpful suggestions, and slowly won them over. By day 3 of 5 they were on board with working with Horan to clean out the Forbidden City.


Then, on day 4, Horan left the city on an errand, and the party did some exploring, and found a building full of humans who were being kept to be combined with lizards and amphibians to form yuan-ti, Horan was using old magical texts to hybridize them. That was a bridge too far.


The party had also discovered a pan lung dragon, enslaved by Horan (Horan held the pan lung's egg hostage), the party offered to free the dragon's egg if it would help them against Horan, then recruited some of the factions who were aligned against him, and stormed his compound. Horan arrived back in the middle of all of this with a Marlith demon in tow (he had the demon's amulet and she was bound to him), he freaked, and a gigantic battle ensued.


I cannot stress enough how amazing this fight was, Horan was genuinely betrayed by the party's actions, and they were genuinely incensed by what they had discovered about him. They LIKED the guy, he was personable, helpful and funny. But he was also EVIL, and if I had played him the way many DM's play evil wizards, there would have been a TPK on day 1 and that would have been that. Instead we had a fantastic role-playing experience, the players were genuinely conflicted.


And when they fought, it had meaning. Horan had betrayed THEM by doing this evil stuff behind their backs after befriending them, the party had betrayed HIM by turning on him after he helped them. It was role-playing gold.


The moral of the story here is simple, don't run 2-dimensional opponents all the time. Sometimes that can be fun, but there are rich role-playing rewards for the DM who treats their NPCs like fully fleshed out characters.


Also, mechanics can matter here too. The "enthusiastically friendly" response I diced forced me to come up with some reason for the result, and that drove the role-play for the rest of the game. As it happens, Horan escaped while the Marilith battled the party, and the next summer they chased him and found him in my city setting.


They waited an ENTIRE REAL TIME YEAR for the chance to get justice on this villain, and it was sweet revenge when they did. None of this would have been possible with a stereotypical "evil" villain.


So my suggestion for all of those DM's out there trying to motivate their players with cardboard cut out villains who are out to destroy the world (TM), try some nuance, you might find the role-playing rewards are greater, and the fun is greater too.