Safe Tables, Dangerous Villains

Villains are one of the foundational elements of a heroic story. They are just as required for your heroic RPG as pistons are required for your car’s engine. It’s 6:44am as I write this, which as every creative type knows is when the most insightful, inconvenient truths strike.

In the modern RPG world, consent and accessibility is an important, if not hot, topic. Before you either A) click away or B) start foaming at the mouth, I might not be about to say what you think I’m about to say. We all want our tables to be welcoming and inclusive, and that’s a good thing.

If you do want that, the temptation to make every little thing in your safe and accessible in your campaign is real, and understandable to a degree. But if you look at this practice honestly, you will see it comes with a cost.

Your villain must have teeth.

In a hero’s journey, the villains have to be villains. File down every other sharp unsafe edge in your game that you want. Make the traps throw inflated balloons and confetti at the PC's. Make it snow cotton candy in what should be a harsh environment. Blissfully assume all food, water, and shelter needs are always met at all times with no snags or cares. Remove disease from your world. Remove every unpleasant thing you want.

But your villain must have teeth. You cannot do what you're trying to do without villainous villains. And that's not pleasant or fun. It's not supposed to be. It's supposed to be motivating. Nothing in the fantasy/sci fi/grimdark genre works without this element. Antagonists antagonize.

The Mechanics of Heroism

If the villain is not dangerous, a hero is not necessary. HEROES don’t go around fighting everyone they see that they deem to be bad guys because they look the part, nor do they go breaking into temples and ruins looking to extract all the loot because it sounds like a fun Sunday afternoon activity. Assuming we're looking for RPG heroics, as much fun as it is to gallavant about town crushing walnuts with your buttcheeks and slicing the heads off orc babies to play soccer─and make no mistake, I could do this for hours─but without a legitimate threat, it's ultimately pointless and in fact masturbatory.

In fact, this is about where that fine line between villain and hero lives. Put that idea in your pocket.

Not all RPG's are hero-driven, but they are more the exception than the rule. But I might be spared one or two tedious "ayckshually" comments if I bring them up: Call of Cthulhu, Cyberpunk, Mork Borg, Blades in the Dark, Vampire: The Masquerade, Paranoia, Delta Green. These games aren’t traditionally hero-driven per Joseph Campbell. But these counter-examples also aren't the "gotcha" you think they are. In those games, reality itself is the grim villain and it again cannot be sanitized. These systems provide no possibility, even remote or farfetched possibilities, of the heroes saving the day. All things will come to ruin, whether by the sword, by monsters, by insanity, or by the simple decay of time.

Yes, there are still more exceptions. MLP comes to mind. I play it with my daughter and her friends. Except, oh wait, that’s not an exception. The villains are in fact villains in MLP.

Maintain Accessibility by Weaponizing the Imagination

The tension between villains providing the necessary engine part for your game that they’re supposed to and being a yes GM that provides a safe experience for the players is real, but doable. And I mean without kowtowing or neutering your villain.

The key is to weaponize the players’ imagination. This is a game of imagination. What you leave implied is very often scarier than what is stated explicitly.

To give the villain teeth, here are some reasonably accessible villainous deeds they can perform: Steal something─the villain doesn't just want to rule the world and destroy the PC's, s/he wants to make it personal and take a family heirloom. Moral dilemmas force the PC's to make a choice─both choices can be a small victory for the villain regardless. For example, choose between putting out the fire he started to save the village from burning or pursuing and hopefully catching the escaping villain. A scar or permanent mark left on the world that will remain once the villain is (presumably) gone.

Those aren't bad, but ratcheting up the tension requires some chutzpah. That's just how it goes. Sorry. One big thing that can happen is a villain can villainize (is that a word?) across campaigns. Maybe the PC’s didn’t defeat the villain in the first campaign, maybe the victory is pyrrhic. Or maybe the PC’s were themselves defeated.

But the villain’s villainous villainy could also be more despicable. I am not gonna repeat every truly evil thing a villain could do, I'm going to leave it largely implied. If you don't want to be explicit, you can leave it implied and "fade to black," but excluding it altogether actually neuters your villain, making them less effective and therefore watering down the excitement of your adventure. The relationship is direct. Sorry. It's not pleasant to hear, but it's the truth. That's how this works.

There is of course a huge difference between celebrating behavior and utilizing it as a narrative engine. While these behaviors should be off the table for heroes, and can remain implied for villains, they should not be scrubbed and sanitized from a hero campaign, because this is basically a list of why heroes are necessary. It's basically just as simple as that.

Watch Firewall with Harrison Ford and note the narrative effect of a neutered villain. The film basically fails because at several major story beats the villains are putting on a show of, "well, you and your family are really gonna get it now!" and then they back down almost immediately. They’re full of piss and vinegar but do not actually bite. This is how your game fails.

Now compare a film like that to 13 Assassins (if you can stomach it). This villain is a man who is ready to recklessly start a war and is fully unconcerned with who he hurts or kills in the process. What's great about the impact of this film, other than what I've already mentioned above, is how at the very end the villain is so strongly humanized and shown as a vulnerable, possibly even sympathetic being in a way. I'm not suggesting that excuses what he did throughout the film of course, I'm suggesting that it adds dimension and texture. And in this particular case the way it's set up is very unexpected.

The key is to frame all this as the mechanics of villainy rather than real world commentary. In a game, these aren't "topics for debate," they are crimes committed by a force that must be stopped by the heroes. This again is WHY they are heroes, and WHY heroes are needed.

I promise I'm not part of the "Fuck your feelings" crowd, who so often miss the irony of what they themselves are saying. That's not me at all. I'm not ignoring your consent comments or advocating that anybody else does. A good GM should be able to role-play a villainous villain within a few safety parameters if necessary. And a good GM should be equipped to balance that out and give their villains teeth.