The first step to a great tabletop RPG adventure is to flesh out who your villain is going to be. One of the easiest methods to determining this is to start with their motivation.
Roll a three-sided die (or, more feasibly, a six-sided die where 1-2 = 1, 3-4 = 2, and 5-6 = 3) and find the corresponding result:
- Greed (Wanting something like: to be lazy, to feast, gold, or power)
- Wrath (Wanting: vengeance, destruction, or chaos)
- Love (Wanting to mantain a relationship built upon love/worship in a: deity, self, partner, child, parent, place)
- An entity
- Many entities
- One or more places (A library, house, office, city, kingdom, country)
- One or more ideas (Wealth, power, love, darkness, light)
- An object (A jewel, )
- Many objects
After generating a basic idea, we then need to narrow down the scope of a villain’s motivation to a basic goal. This goal will run counter to those of the players, thus creating conflict.
Starting on the second part of the process, we now need to determine the exact nature of the villain. There are too many possibilities to be constrained to a single roll table, but here are some things to think about:
- Are they a deity, human, monster, or other entity?
- What powers do they possess? These could be physical abilities, wealth, influence, or magickal sorcery!
- Does the villain work alone, or with a group?
The last step to creating a villain is to devise what they are doing to reach their goal. Like the previous level, this particular idea has too many possible permutations to be contained in a roll table.
In conclusion, the three major steps to creating a villain is to:
- Determine their goal
- Determine the nature of the villain
- Determine what they are doing to reach their goal
If all of these necessities are reached, the conflict between the villain and players should present itself.
I hope this guide has helped provide inspiration! Next up, we’ll tackle constructing a 3-act structure to help deliver an excellent adventure!