Summary
How good a story truly is without its villain? A powerful villain can make many movies, series, books, and games a lot better than they already are or even be the one reason the story is memorable in the first place. And when it comes toDungeons & Dragons,creating a villain is a lot of hard work, one you’ll ultimately lose whenever your bad guy dies. But what if you didn’t lose that?
Suppose you play with the same group of people through many campaigns. In that case, it’s always fun to connect stories with references here and there, which can culminate in characters or even a villain who just won’t quit and appears in multiple stories.
9Pick A Character They Love To Hate
Or At Least Be Sure They’ll Like The Character
Creating the character is likely the most complicated part. If the character appears often and in multiple stories, the players need to like the character - or get angry at them because they’re the villain, but in a good way. They can’t be the lame villain that the players don’t like interacting with and don’t take seriously.
If you know your friends well, you may already know which type of character appeals to them, but you can also have multiple villains see which one they like more and promote the character to BBEG status.
8Create A Way To Cheat Death
Not Without Consequences, Though
Recurring villains always need an escape route to make sure they’ll avoid a deadly encounter with the players. And while they’ll likely be too strong for the party at first, eventually, the players will be extremely powerful, and avoiding death altogether becomes a big challenge, though you can still make fights where the goalisn’t to kill them.
Thus, it’s important to create a way that the villain can come back even if they’re utterly destroyed. you’re able to use something like the Liches' phylactery, for instance. However, it’s also important to ensure that death will still be a big deal. They can take a lot of time to return, or they get weaker every time they die.
It’s okay if the players are aware of that early on; you’ll set expectations that even if they kill the villain, this problem may return in the future.
7Give Them An Absurd Goal
This Villain Has To Think Big
A villain that appears in multiple stories can’t be a simple guy who just wants to get rid of one person or a town. If they’re all mighty beings capable of immense power, their goal needs to be something bigger than their power. That’s when you have characters like Vecna that ‘simply’ want to reshapethe multiverse.
A complex goal like that is the type of goal that will take centuries and multiple stories to even become a possibility. Alternatively, you can give them a different and unrelated goal in every story, as long as the new goal doesn’t feel forced and unlike them.
6Create Huge Consequences for Their Actions
The More People Who Hate Them, The Better
Think of Curse of Strahd here - he may not be a villain for multiple stories, but he’s recurring in his campaign. One of the things that makes him a big deal is the influence he has on everyone. He’s the reason Barovia is miserable; he’s the reason people are angry and suffering.
A character that leaves their mark on the universe for multiple stories is a character that has affected a lot of people. Maybe an emperor who conquered most of the world, or the leader of a cult that makes everyone miserable, or even an evil deity who destroys everything. Either way, they need to cause serious consequences for the people who stood in their way, and wherever you go, their name is a forbidden word.
5Put Their Influence On Other Villains
Between level one and whatever level your party needs to fight the BBEG, they need something to kill. That’s where other villains step in. And while each campaign you make will have multiple minor villains for your party to fight against, you’re able to continue to spread the BBEG’s influence through them.
While the first campaign involves killing the BBEG, the second can be a group of villains who wish to resurrect them, while the third they instead find a new host for the villain’s soul to inhabit, and the fourth is about the villain trying their original plan or something else, and so on.
The point is that your BBEG will need a power base just as much as raw power, and making all key enemies related to their schemes throughout adventures is a good way to show their might. Evil gods need their cults, after all.
4Take Your Time
You’ll Have Plenty Of Adventures To Develop Them
This tip will feel contradictory compared to others, but one key problem every story can have when it comes to using the same thing over and over is saturation. If absolutely everything is your villain’s fault, things can start to feel forced, and the party can get a bit sick of it.
Thus, even if they’re responsible for 90 percent of the problems in your world, it’s okayto have side questswhere the villain and their influence are not relevant. You don’t need to worry about making everything about them all the time; they’ll appear again and again, after all.
3Have Moments To Just Interact With The Villain
From Conversations To Their Backstory
Speaking of taking your time, your villain doesn’t need to come for blood every time they show up. They’re still a character with a personality and backstory, so you can have situations where they just talk to the party, for instance.
Along with that, their influence throughout the world may also tell the players more about their backstory. Maybe there’s a session that takes place in the villain’s first home, and the party learns about their past. Or they find other key characters who knew the villain before they became a monster. Each campaign can give the players a backstory of how the villain influenced the place and time the players are currently in.
2Show Progress Against Them
Even If The Villain Returns, The Party’s Actions Need To Affect Their Plans
Even if this is an unkillable monster that will take multiple stories and parties to kill them for good, it’s important to show that the players are at least thwarting their plans. If all their actions from a whole campaign just proved to be meaningless, then that will feel very disappointing for them.
That’s why we mentioned before that even if the villain can come back from death, they should at least have a consequence for that. The following campaign can also be an attempt for the villain to undo the consequences of their previous defeat, and so on. Throughout each adventure, the players need to see that they’re doing something against this villain, even if they can’t end them.
1Honorable Mention: Use Their Legacy
Sometimes It Doesn’t Make Sense To Return
Not everything goes as planned in D&D, and that’s okay. If the players destroy all the methods you had for the villain to return, and if it just doesn’t make sense to bring them back, it’s okay to give them the ultimate victory. Besides, death is not the end of an influential person.
The villain’s child, or someone who served them, can easily grow into their mentor’s position and continue their mission, making your former villain literally larger than life with others carrying their legacy forward. They’ll be dead, sure, but what they stood for remains.
