In one of my first campaigns, I did the bad thing of trying damn hard to force a charismatic, awesome, vengeful, powerful recurring villain to the player group. (Multiple times actually.) My three attempted recurring villains were (1) stabbed & locked in a closet, (2) tossed into space, and (3) exploded in their debut episodes. The guy from #1 came back, and just barely had time to say "yes, it's me!" before he got cut into several pieces.

So, yeah, my players were just not gonna have it. They weren't interested, and I at least I didn't give my villains Random Survivability points - they stayed dead.

In your experiences, do recurring villains add much to your groups' experiences? How do you make one that the players will actually want to see come back (even if their characters are shaking their fists in frustration)?

There's some interesting ideas in this thread:

http://www.therpgsite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2274&highlight=villains

As for me, I don't announce the BigBad's arrival. In my most successful campaigns, the pcs slowly discovered his/her identity and even then, there are a lot of complex issues involved that would make killing these npcs....impractical/difficult . The key, I think like most any other memorable npc is to make the recurring villain part of the pcs lives, and life as we know (even an imaginary one) is extremely messy

Regards,
David R

The real trick is this: Make the recurring "villain" your player's supposed ally.

Not as in "he looked so good and kind and secretly betrayed us"; but as in "we know that Senator Demetrius/Cao Cao/Braniac 5/etc is a ruthless, self-interested, megalomaniacly arrogant son of a bitch who thinks of us as nothing but political playing chips/canon fodder/primitive life forms, and who can't fully be trusted because at any moment he can betray us to serve his own ends/switch sides/go insane and construct an army of human-killing robots; but the motherfucker is just too well connected/efficient and useful/intelligent/respected for us to get rid of him".

Make the "villain" into someone who fucks over the pcs 1/3 of the time, helps them 1/3 of the time, and looks like he MIGHT help them 1/3 of the time and bingo; you've got a recurring villain that everyone loves to hate.
One thing though, make sure your characters don't feel completely impotent before him. Its better if he's got a very specific area of focus that he's insanely brilliant at, but enough blind spots and personal foibles that the PCs can screw him over every once in a while, without having to kill him either. Otherwise, the players could eventually become very frustrated with him, instead of entertained.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPunditThe real trick is this: Make the recurring "villain" your player's supposed ally...

Excellent advice!!!!

I don't intentionally build recurring villains.  In the kind of game I run a recurring villain is a sign the PCs screwed up the first time.

Sometimes they just pop up, like others have said. The minor bad guy from session 1 turns up again when the PCs visit the town again in session 4, then they start to think he's more than he appear to be, so that inspires you to actually build a backstory round him and make him into somkething bigger. I find it all just feeds of the little comments from the players "Surely we've seen him too many times? And what about thos strange things have been happening to us suince we last bumped ito this guy? I wonder if he's..."

Thanks
Frank

I have only ever had one recurring villain (and he was more of an accident than intentional), a death knight that stalked the party's cavalier and caused quite a bit of collateral damage to the rest of the group, the typical response was "Oh shit not this bastard again." There were multiple attempts by the party to finish him off and the only thing that saved his life was a few more levels than the PCs and a teleport ring.

Hmm...this is just an idea, but maybe, if you have some kind of hero point system, then instead of giving points to villains (as I think is done in the James Bond 007 game and probably others), you could bribe the players not to kill him/her. Effectively just say, "Look, folks, here's 4 hero points if you choose a non-lethal method of dealing with this dude/dudette."

Quote from: Elliot WilenHmm...this is just an idea, but maybe, if you have some kind of hero point system, then instead of giving points to villains (as I think is done in the James Bond 007 game and probably others), you could bribe the players not to kill him/her. Effectively just say, "Look, folks, here's 4 hero points if you choose a non-lethal method of dealing with this dude/dudette."

I prefer that a recurring villain stay around for reasons other than bribe points. IME their value to a campaign is measured in terms other than mechanical benefits to the pcs....if you get what I mean.

Regards,
David R

Okay, though thinking about this...didn't Champions or some other superhero game have a rule that you'd lose XP for killing? It's hard to know exactly how things went down in Dev's campaigns.

I mean, depending on the context and campaign ethos, players might or might not feel justified in killing enemies off. I'm not saying they should deliberately let villains go in exchange for bribes. But from a metagame perspective, players may reason, "If I don't kill him, he'll escape from prison and kill again"--and that will be absolutely true if you're playing a variety of gritty superhero game. So, armed with this metagame knowledge, the players may decide to go ahead and kill villains. But the other half of the metagame genre convention is: heroes don't coldbloodedly kill villains, they hand them over to the police. So in this case some form of compensation could reinforce the "logic" of the genre.

That said, it definitely depends on what the players want.

And I also appreciate the views on this of Jeff (all your NPCs suck and are going to die) & Pundit (don't make villains, make ambiguously antagonistic characters).

Quote from: RPGPunditThe real trick is this: Make the recurring "villain" your player's supposed ally.

Which is why PCs make incredibily potent recurring villians. Well that and there is one person dedicated fulltime to running just that one character.

A recurring villain usually means that the players fucked up, because when the players get it right they'll whack the bitch every fucking time.  It's the smart thing to do.

Quote from: Bradford C. WalkerA recurring villain usually means that the players fucked up, because when the players get it right they'll whack the bitch every fucking time.  It's the smart thing to do.

Of course, sometimes it means that the GM is driving a train.

Yes, absolutely. That's the perspective that works from the idea of games as a critique (or relief) from the conventions of other fictional forms. You know, the oft-parodied Dr. Evil who explains his plan and refuses to just put a bullet in the hero's brain, insisting on some extravagant form of death; or the revolving-door justice system that can't keep The Joker locked up. OTOH if you want to reproduce these sorts of genre conventions, I think some method of tying PC behavior to point rewards might be a good way to go. (Or in the case of Dr. Evil, let the PCs spend points to have the bad guys do dumb things.)

In real life are there ever recurring, deadly antagonists? Offhand I can't think of many. Those that fit the mold best are the terrorist masterminds, like bin Laden, who usually work from protected hideouts rather than the front lines--meaning that the PCs aren't like to confront them face-to-face without somebody dying. Another kind is the antagonist who simply falls into a protected social class. E.g., warfare in the middle ages was rarely decisive, so a troublesome duke or baron could be a pain in the ass, repeatedly causing trouble over many years. Close relatives would fight (e.g. Richard I and Henry II) but basically risk no more than being locked up unless someone made a mistake. Essentially violence was often used to (temporarily) resolve conflicts, but it was limited in application, meaning that conflicts could easily flare up again and again.

Interesting. I've always had recurring villains in my campaigns and my players have loved them (killed them most times...but loved them). It could be, because in my campaigns their villainy is never really cartoony. And of course, the recurring villain does not necessarily mean, said villain is the camapign's BigBad.

I mean in my Hunter campaign, one of the lesser villains is this former museum curator who stole a religious artifact to exchange for his daughter who was being held ransom. The pcs discovered this, followed him to the exchange point, tried to save his daughter but failed, recovered the religious artifact and let him go.

A year (game time) later they discover that he is behind a plot to assasinate a local community leader. Seems that after his daughter died, his marriage broke up, he got fired and hooked up with the only folks who would use his services (his knowledge of antiquities) a particularly nasty urban cult. And yeah, they taught him a few esp nasty tricks.

The run in this time was esp dramatic since the pcs were directly involved with the death of his daughter. So of course they clashed, but he managed to escape -  with a hostage. They discovered the hostage unharmed but he was long gone by then.

They have no doubt, he will appear again. He will.

Regards,
David R