It is said the worth of a hero is measured in the foes he must face. So, what is the measure of a villain? It's a question one is forced to ask themselves when trying to portray the bad guy. The answer is obvious for anyone who's ever watched the first five minutes of StarWars, the measure of a great villain is in how he walks. Of course, this is not going to be an article about a villains style, or attitude. After all it's the job of the players to portray that. No, this article is going to talk about trying to provide an equally awesome good guy.

If BBEG stands for Big Bad Evil Guy, then I propose that BAGG stands for Big Angelic Good Guy. At least for the purposes of this article, I'd never presume to invent gamer lingo. If you'd like to use pretentious sounding terms like antagonist then so be it. Personally, I find that if you're going to call something an evil game you might as well drop such terms and tell it how it is. The characters are bad guys; everyone else is either a good guy or a potential victim.

The Anti Villain

My favorite kind of BAGG is the one where everyone else admires them for their awesomeness and general goodness, but, the players can see right off the bat that their all too glaring character flaws make them no better than themselves. Yet, the townspeople end up picking up torches and pitchforks against them? The fools. Gaston from Disney’s Beauty and The Beast is a perfect example. He represents the classic fairy tale heroes skilled, handsome, a man among men. He's also arrogant, rude, pretentious, ignorant, misogynistic as hell, and willing to shoot any furry or feathery thing that moves on top of just generally being a bully. This is the anti-villain at work. He has the hearts of the minds of the people but it takes a different kind of person altogether to see the black demon in those sparkling eyes and the sharpened canines in that perfect smile.

I could write a whole separate article on anti-villains and perhaps one day I shall. For now, for the sake of getting on with it, I can only tell you that the simplest way of making such a character is taking some shining paragon of your morals and twist them in a subtle manner. A legendary hero with skeletons in the closet, a shining paladin that takes just a bit too much pleasure in smiting, a great hunter and adventurer who also uses his reputation to exploit and bully others, a magic or technological genius who would do anything, anything, for the sake of their cause. This archetype is the simplest to pull off and probably the most fun.

The disadvantage to such a character is that you run the risk of graying up the world. This in and of itself is not a problem but after a long period the characters might take this as a cue to start skewing from their dark path and now you are simply running a gray game in a gray world with gray characters.

The Villain Villain

The best rival for any villain is simply another villain. Nasty, bloodthirsty, and really terrible feuds can happen when both characters throw rulebooks out the window (or even better at each other) and go for the jugular. Sadly though, such a thing can seem a cop out unless the villain is something particularly special. It's not enough for the villain to threaten the world, hell; the characters are a threat to the world. No, the villain should be a personal threat to the characters. Make it ugly, make it grind into the very foundations of a characters personality, and most importantly, make it stick.

One idea I have for such a character is have some adventure or mission that has the characters worst parts of them copied or torn out of their minds and souls and combined into a single entity. This entity has all the memories and abilities of the characters but the worst traits of their personalities. It has all their dark desires, and none of the redeeming qualities. What's worse is that it feels it cannot truly exist; it cannot truly be alive, unless it has destroyed the characters in every way possibly imaginable. It's not enough to kill them, it has to break them spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and physically before it can truly take its place in the universe. With a villain like this you can get away with doing some rather terrible things to the characters and have something so personally tied to them that they are personally obligated to do the same to it. If you truly want to make it nasty, have it not only be a copy of the characters at the moment of creation but have it grow with the characters over time. This allows you to have a being that can constantly harass and pick fights with the characters but never be too weak or too powerful.

The bottom line is that a villain for the villains has to be close to the characters in an intimate way to make them care for him as anything other than a small time rival. Make them their mentor, their trainer, their father; make them close, but every bit as nasty and merciless as they are. In the end it'll be worth it.

So damn good it hurts

A bit of a campy but not altogether terrible route is simply the route of the really good, good guy. Where an evil overlord wears spiky armor and glares, the good guy is an angelic being of perfection and serenity. Complete with golden armor, a whole bible full of prayers, good guy speeches, and if you want to really torment the players a whole slew of action hero quips.

Like any good BAGG he has a number of fan girls, wannabes and fanatical worshipers to sacrifice to his glory. These mini...willing and helpful volunteers to the cause of light exist to be tortured, murdered, tortured, imprisoned, tortured, crushed, tortured, slaughtered, tortured and tortured. Did I mention that these people exist to be tortured? These things slip my mind. In any case your classic BAGG is generally just one of those characters that would otherwise be your boss if you were playing good characters. The players might even despise him just the same. He is a powerful character that exists almost entirely to wipe the shadow from the world. One really easy way to make such a character is to take every good ally you ever had for previous non evil games that ever hired out or gave jobs to the players (or were meant to) and use them for potential ideas. Maybe they can hire a whole counter group to deal with the dark threat of the characters? A neat twist of fate is to even use the players own characters against them from a previous game.

The Long Arm of the Law

Sometimes the best good guys are the underdogs. Well, at least if you don't set the game in Ankh-Morpork. I speak of course, of the fine men and women of the town guard, or city watch. The first thing to remember when making such characters is that they're far from stupid. Law enforcement even at its most basic level requires a mind capable of noticing patterns or out of place reactions. In short even if an officer of the law has not the greatest wit in the land they're going to catch the characters if they're being blatant. They don't have to be good nor evil but they must uphold the law.

So note the clues that the characters leave behind. How many victims have they killed without bothering to dispose of bodies? How many of them happened to leave their trusty guttin' dagger at the scene of the crime? Note every clue and when you finally have enough that even a completely stupid police officer can tell whodunit have them come knocking on the characters door with a fully equipped S.W.A.T. Team. You can have a lot of fun with this because you can bring all sorts of evidence at the characters trial and watch your players faces go pale as you read out every single mistake they made in committing acts of pure evil. It will make them better characters for it and a little prison time will give mad street cred.

Embrace the Light Side young Palpatine

Ultimately you need to think of a BAAG who fits your game. As always I'm only here to get thought cells sparking and hopefully give you foundation from which to build marvels from. Next month we'll have a shorter title and take a break from the running evil series to talk about mental illnesses and villainy.