(06-11-2014, 01:25 PM)Warren Castille Wrote: For my money, the best villain is the one that opposes your character specifically. Doesn't have to be world changing, but should make a personal impact. That's much, much harder to do though so I see why people don't go for that.
In my past roleplaying experiences, I have always found this approach to be much more successful. Stereotypical boss-style villains tend to get boring fairly quickly because the arcs can never be resolved if it is someone's main character - nobody is going to allow their character to be killed permanently, so it just turns into trading vigorous monologues. "You are evil!" "Yes, yes I am." "We shall stop you!" "Nay, I shall behead your stepmother!"
Having personal villains or antagonists always seem to allow for much more interesting storylines. Maybe a slew of other PC's do not view the person as a villain, but instead consider your character the antagonist. Manipulation, drawing lines in the sand, personal feuds - all of those things seem to have much more long lasting capabilities than traditional mustache twirling villains. The latter tend to work fine for a specific, partially pre-constructed storyline where they are not someone's main character - but tend to fizzle out after that.
Everything's gonna be okay, bb. ♥