Last month, I talked about giving your character some goals and motivations to support those goals. During a social media conversation about that article, a friend of mine dropped the idea of writing up an article about villain or antagonist goals and their motivations. Matt Dukes (also a fellow author) is the fellow that gave me the idea for this article, so here we go!

When you’re the GM and you have a BBEG (Big Bad Evil Guy/Gal) opposing the actions of the party, you really need to get into the villain’s head to understand what they are trying to accomplish (goals) and why they are trying to do this (motivations). This will allow you to pivot and change the villain’s approaches when the party partially impedes or fully thwarts the villain’s goals.

Goals

Reference last month’s article for details on short, medium, and long-term goals. My advice there stands for villains as well as PCs. There are some subtle differences, though. Where each party member has the other PCs to lean on while trying to accomplish their personal goals, the villain usually does not. Instead, they’ll have some flavor or organization to support them in their efforts. The villain is typically the leader or a higher-up in the organization, so they can issue orders and commands to further their goals. Make sure to leverage this additional power from the villain’s perspective to hinder the party, make life rougher on them, or to prevent the PCs from getting directly to the BBEG.

Here are some sample organizations that come to mind when building a support structure for the villain:

• Religious cult
• Political party
• Megacorp
• Law enforcement
• Military or mercenary group
• Thieves’ guild
• Mercantile conglomerate
• Craft guild
• Monstrous followers
• Spy organization

Motivations

Considering the motivations behind the villain’s goals will go a long way to structuring your plot points, story arcs, and reactions the villain will have when the party encounters either the villain themselves or the villain’s support structure. Knowing the why behind the need is critical here.

When generating motivations, you can be flexible and more verbose than declaring the goals. You can even apply multiple motivations to a single goal. This will add depth to the character of the BBEG and give you varied approaches at accomplishing the villain’s goal. Don’t get overly complex or clever, though. Also, listen to your players. They’ll postulate and propose amongst themselves about why things are happening. Sometimes, they’ll come up with a better idea than what you had in the first place. You can easily swap in their idea(s) without them knowing. Then, when the villain’s goals and motivations are revealed, the players will feel really smart for having “known it all along.”

Avoid Mustache Twirling

When coming up with antagonist motivations, avoid “mustache twirling.” This is a case of where the BBEG is doing things simply “because they are evil” or “because they are mean” or “because they are cruel” or some such like that. These motivations are entirely unfulfilling for you as the GM and for the players that are trying to oppose the antagonist. Sure, part of the motivation can be evil causes, but typically evil for the sake of evil is very boring. You can do better. I know you can!

Head Fakes

There may be times when the villain sets up a scenario or chain of actions that is a distraction from their true goals. This is kind of a red herring, but can be fun to play through. Don’t do this more than once during a story arc. Also, at the end of the fakery, let the players discover clues or notes or missives that let them in on the fact that the villain (not you as the GM) was faking out the players to delay them or cause them harm. This can set up some real tension and hatred of the villain because the villain “tricked the party” and no one likes being tricked.

Pivoting Actions

The famous quote of, “No plan survives first contact with the enemy,” is so very true in RPGs. No GM plan survives contact with the players. Likewise, no villain’s plan will survive interactions with the party. The villain should be ready for this (if they’re an intelligent antagonist). By delving into the BBEG’s motivations, you can tap them for new ideas for new goals or new approaching at accomplishing the current set of goals. By pivoting the goals, you can keep things fresh and interesting for yourself and the players at your table.

Opposing Goals

If you don’t have goals and motivations for your antagonist before you sit down for session zero, you can leverage the goals that the party gives you as part of their character creation and setting generation process. This is perfectly fine, and probably preferred for building out strong story arcs that will interest your players. If they have their goals, but the antagonist doesn’t care about (or directly oppose), this will lead to many “side quests” as the PCs do their own thing while the antagonist does his thing. Don’t let the party and the BBEG accidentally bump into each other during the course of the story. Put them at odds with one another and amp up the tension and excitement!

Conclusion

I hope this duo of articles has helped you out in firming up how to approach near and distant goals. I also hope that you can see the value of motivations that back and support wanting to accomplish something. These add depth and realism to the goals at hand for both players and the forces that oppose them.