Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 253 - Recurring Villains

Episode Date: May 11, 2025

Have you ever wanted to craft unforgettable recurring villains that will haunt your players' dreams? In this episode I’ll give you some secrets to making your big bads more than just one-dimensional threats and learn how to weave them seamlessly into your campaign for maximum impact.   #pf2e #Pathfinder #gmtips #dmtips #dnd #rpg #villains Resources: PF2e Core pg 66

This week on the Taking20 Podcast. Giving your big bad a believable motivation makes baddies feel more real and less like a contrived plot device. Plus if they're going to be popping up repeatedly in your game, their motivations, attitudes and role play become so much more important to the Taking 20 podcast, episode 253, talking about how DM should handle recurring villains. I want to thank this week's sponsor, Coats. Never ever, ever get into a fight with a raincoat.

They tend to have a good punch. Oh yeah. Welcome back to the podcast and if you're new, I am so glad you found it. Hey, we have a coffee. KO-FI.com slash taking 20 podcast. This podcast survives thanks to donations from listeners like you. So even if you can give as little as $5, if you halfway enjoy the podcast, I would greatly appreciate any donations that you could make.

Think about your favorite stories. Nearly every great story has a compelling and recurring villain. Star Wars has Darth Vader, Batman has the Joker, Harry Potter has Voldemort. What makes these villains stick out in your mind? Why do we remember them? Is it their presence or lack thereof? Their motivation? Their gravitas? Similarly, in a well-written campaign, the Big Bad or the Big Bad's organization is, I think, one of the key things that we need to get

right behind the screen. Big Bads need to feel like a pervasive threat that has the will and the capability to make their fearsome plan a reality. So today we're going to talk about bringing that same level of persistent threat and narrative weight to your game table with recurring villains. But Jeremy, you may be saying, I already know all about recurring villains and they are a lot of work. There's so much to do already. Can't I just slap together a wants to rule the world, generic evil gnome or wizard or lich or gnome wizard lich?

Sure. You can also just throw pepperoni and a slice of American cheese on a piece of white bread and call it pizza. Someone out there just recoiled at the thought of that and I'm with you, my friend. Just because you can do the lazy way doesn't mean that you automatically should. Recurring villains bring so many benefits to your campaign and I think it's worth spending some time on them. Strong recurring villains with strong believable motivations will naturally lead to a more cohesive narrative for your campaign. Having a

strong, well-defined recurring baddie means you can actually save time with other parts of the campaign. You can take completely unrelated and disparate adventures and stitch them together using only a strong overarching baddie. Long ago I was putting together a homebrew campaign built around seven artifacts of power that had been scattered to the ends of the universe by the gods. They did so after one mortal, Harwin von Muir, became corrupted and too powerful by having all seven of them. However, in modern times, a big bad named Zalder the Destroyer, a mind player of considerable power who had broken loose from his elder brain, was determined

to collect that regalia for herself and use their power to bring back an elder god. Is that story unique? Not even in the slightest. Is it creative? Debatable, because I leaned hard on nearly every cliche I could think of. By having that big bad defined, I could make small modifications to various pre-built adventures such as Crypt of the Everflame, The Isle of Terror, Daughters of Fury, Echoes of the Everwar, and others to craft a cohesive

campaign out of these very different adventures. Yes, it takes effort to craft a recurring villain and organization, but it pays dividends down the road as your campaign evolves. Jeremy, you're being vague. What small modifications are you talking about to those adventures you made? Well, I'm not going to get too specific in the off chance that someone listening plays one of these adventures. But the boss fights and some of the lieutenant fights in those adventures would have gear, communications, treasures, or keepsakes that tied back to Xaldor, the ultimate big bad. Long before the PCs ever knew what Xaldder was, what she looked like, or anything

about her. They heard her name, saw the tough leader they just defeated paying deferential reverence towards this powerful creature named Zalder, whatever or whoever Zalder is. They knew someone was pulling the strings in the background, but they were determined to figure out who that was. Plus, there were times when the PCs lost when going after a piece of the regalia. Zalder had a plan and multiple groups who bowed to her whim, so if the PCs went after the angel fall bow, they might lose out on the gauntlets of glory.

Tempus fugit, time always flies and there's always an opportunity cost to every choice the PCs make. Zalder had a plan and was executing it. It was up to the PCs to make the right choices to stop her. Sometimes they saw her minions, sometimes they saw the aftermath when they were too late. Every one of those moments where they secured the Temporal Boots from a long-lost crypt as an alien seed fought to maintain it, having corrupted the creatures around the tomb. Every one of those moments became memorable and tied back to Zalder. Fuck, I'm getting excited about this campaign again. I miss this

campaign. Don't get me wrong, I'm running Abomination Vaults and not that that's not fun, but man I want to stitch this together again. Anyway, good recurring villains also lead to better engagement with your players. Done right, hinted at correctly, this gives the players someone specific to focus their hate, anger, and fear on. There were times when my players were cursing Xalder's name, celebrating the victories they had over Xalder, even though they had never met her. I think the players had bought in. Those memorable moments still stick with me and in talking to some of my players, they stick with them too, which is what we're going for from behind the screen.

So what does a great recurring villain look like in an adventure or campaign? One of the most important features of a recurring villain is that they must have a compelling motivation. Longtime listeners of me have probably heard this before and I apologize but you're gonna hear it again because it's critically important. There are even online let's play streams by some of the most amazing groups that I've watched whose big bad motivation sounds so one-dimensional. They want to act evil because they're evil. Make your big bads compelling. Go beyond evil for evil's sake. Can you do that? Absolutely. But think about what does the big bad

really want? Power? Revenge? Ideology? Love? Survival? Did they start with good intentions that have been corrupted and are now misguided? Don't make your villains simply want to rule the world. It's generic. Why do they want to rule the world? What's their philosophy? What are they trying to accomplish? Make it understandable, maybe even sympathetic. They want to rule the world to rid the world of disease.

Well, okay, it sounds like a noble cause, but they're going about it the worst possible way. What specific outcome are they trying to achieve? Giving your big bad a believable motivation makes baddies feel more real and less like a contrived plot device. Plus, if they're going to be popping up repeatedly in your game, their motivations, attitudes, and role play become so much more important to the success of the game. Okay, back to the topic of the episode. The villain doesn't always have to be present to be recurring.

There can be hints as to the Big Bad's past presence in that area, for example. It could be the after effects of some of the Big Bad's actions. They attacked Town X or retrieved Item Y. They can leave symbols and calling cards behind as a marker that they or their minions were there before the PCs were. Having the PCs learn about the Big Bad indirectly or through actions of its underlings will serve to reinforce the presence and the pervasive actions of the Big Bad to the PCs, and it will help make them recurring and memorable in your campaign. In sci-fi games another things you could do is that the big bad could be your present in recordings, holograms, images, videos or other technology without actually being present. In fantasy games they could use a mirror to communicate with the PCs without being there or an illusion left

behind to taunt them. Another way Big Bads can be present without actually being there is that they have minions, lieutenants, underlings, worshipers, sycophants, smartish creatures willing to do the Big Bad's bidding and they can be foils to the PCs on the Big Bad's behalf. The Big Bad can make an appearance via the presence of these groups that swear fealty to them. They certainly could be combatants that the PCs have to best to get closer to the Big Bad, but they could also be more distant. They could be discovered corpses at the scene of an attack, with the Big Bad's logo, or brand, or identifying mark that the PCs could

discover. The PCs don't know what the wolf's head in the triangle means yet, but maybe they're given more clues in the future to connect the dots to the Big Bad. The party could show up after the Big Bad has already accomplished a goal and left, and deal with the aftermath. Survivors tell the story of the tentacled monster showing up and controlling large groups of people at will, casting spells with abandon and overpowering the strongest of the town's defenders with ease, with a wave of their hand. Similarly, the PCs could encounter the Big Bad in a place where fighting just isn't possible. One of my favorite roleplay moments that I use is once the PCs know who the Big Bad is, they meet the Big Bad, but it's at a large social event where if the PCs start a fight, they're gonna be

swarmed by guards and personal retinues of various leaders and nobles there to protect their legions. The Big Bad knows they can't start anything, so the Big Bad antagonizes, teases, mocks the PCs for not being smarter or more capable. They gloat in the things that they've done, daring the PCs to start a fight, knowing that if they do, they'll be hauled off to prison. Now to make recurring villains really stand out, sometimes the Big Bad has to win, or at the very least escape. The PCs arrive at the forgotten temple just as the Big Bad flies off with the artifact, or the Big Bad discovers something important about the PCs and uses it against them. If the party comes out on top of the Big

Bad in the race for the MacGuffin or fight for the thing or to keep the Big Bad from kidnapping someone, if they repeatedly win they don't feel like the Big Bad is a challenge at all. After all, they've bested the villain over and over and over again so they think they'll probably do so over and over and over again. At a minimum, smart big bads will have escape routes planned in advance, whether that's teleportation, flying, invisibility, a planer gate, a ready mount ready to take them far away, whatever it is. Big bads tend to be smart and they use their intelligence to make contingencies and plans.

They could have body doubles or operate through mind-controlled thralls or any of a hundred other ways that they can be present without being present or be present without the threat of actually being killed. Now one thing I want to clarify when I say sometimes let the big bad win that doesn't mean you should let your big bad t TPK your party just wipe the party kill all of them over and over and over again those are special moments keep those in your pocket for when you really really need them and even then you may want to spare the party and have them be captured instead of killed that way the campaign can continue another thing about recurring villains is that they should evolve and change as they learn

about the PCs. The PCs are getting stronger, more powerful, more capable. Your villains should do the same even if it's at a slower rate than the PCs are so the PCs can catch up to them. Most big bad villains are almost guaranteed to be at least as smart as the PCs. Smart people adjust their plans to meet their goals. Maybe when the Big Bad started their plot to get revenge on the guild that left their father die, the PCs weren't in the picture or they were of no threat to the Big Bad at all. As the PCs grow and gain power and gain levels and develop the potential

to wreak havoc on the Big Bad's plans, the Big Bad should adjust their thinking, change their plans to accommodate the potential interference by this irksome, troublesome party. Maybe they try to kill the PCs, maybe they make it harder on the PCs to thwart what they're trying to do, which would make that section of the adventure harder as you'd expect with higher level PCs. In short, the Big Bad should be able to think and react between appearances to improve their chances of success. To dovetail off the villain should change point have your villains bear the scars and marks of previous defeats. Maybe the PCs blew up the lab where they were fighting if so

give the Big Bad a burn scar or a limp from the previous encounter. This can be a core reason by the way why they want the previous encounter. This can be a core reason, by the way, why they want the PCs dead. In comic books, Dr. Doom's face is horribly scarred from the machine he was building. Reed Richards tried to warn him, but the machine's failure caused the scarring of Dr. Doom's face, forcing him to wear a mask. By the way, a later storyline revealed that in a different reality, there was an incident for Dr. Doom that created a very small scar on his face, but since Dr. Doom was a perfectionist, he couldn't stand to have that scar showing, so he chose to wear a mask instead. Villains can change through interactions with the PCs or through the choices that they make,

and these changes improve the experience of a recurring villain. One tactic to consider is that the Big Bad could temporarily even ally with the PCs to accomplish part of their goal. This works best, by the way, when the PCs don't know who the Big Bad is yet, or they're working with an entity that the PCs don't know is associated with the Big Bad. A different group, a different corporation, or an NPC who secretly follows the will of whoever the Big Bad happens to be. The Big Bad enlists the PCs, entrusts them, maybe even hires them to take something out that makes the Big Bad's plan easier to accomplish.

Another trick I tend to use is to give the Big Bad connections to one or more PC backstories. Sure, you could make the Big Bad a transformed version of the monk who taught one of the PCs how to fight, but imagine if the tragedy of the PCs back story is that their parents died in an industrial accident and the Big Bad or one of their lieutenants is the one who ordered their parents into the mine in the first place. Ordered them to use dangerous equipment or otherwise directly or indirectly led to their death. Or the parents died because one of the PCs cousins or siblings betrayed the family. A childhood friend who experienced similar events to one of the PCs, but took

the tragedy as a reason to become evil rather than good. Great villains could easily have been heroes had they chose to learn a different lesson in pivotal moments of their life. Vader could have learned compassion when his mother died instead of destruction. The bear in Toy Story 3, lots of hugging bear I think, took being lost and left behind as an affront rather than a call to care for other discarded toys. Magneto experienced persecution of the worst kind early in his life, and instead of taking compassion on those who were persecuted, he chose to want to destroy those who could persecute mutants. You could argue that Magneto's compassion does exist, but it's limited to fellow mutants. Wow, I probably should have selected another

example because Magneto or Eric Lynch is a brilliantly written and complicated character. Sorry, I got lost in the thinking moment. Should have planned that better ahead of time. The ways you could do this are as varied as the type of backstories that you can think of. Find a way to connect your villains backstory to those of one or more of the PCs if the villain is going to regularly appear in your game. Last tip, unless you are running a very tightly limited and fast-paced campaign, you can go a session or two without the big bad of their minions showing up. They easily could be putting forth efforts somewhere else,

away from the PC's ability to meddle in their plans. Then, as the adventure reaches a completion point for this little foray into that dungeon or solving this problem, something about the Big Bad of their organization rears its head again and voila, the villain has made a recurrence. If anything, giving some distance between appearances improves the pace of your game and gives the big bad's reappearance more impact. If they show up every single episode, every single session, then their appearance will naturally mean less over time.

To create memorable recurring villains, focus on compelling motivations. Have them appear indirectly through minions or after effects of their actions, and allow them to evolve and learn from encounters with the PCs. Don't be afraid to let villains sometimes win or escape, and consider connecting their backstories to the PCs to deepen engagement and impact. Ultimately, giving the villain space and time between appearances can enhance their return and overall effect on your game. Spend some time planning your recurring villains and I'd be willing to

bet that you and your players would have fun doing it. Hey, do you have any topic ideas for me? If so, please send them to me directly on social media or to feedback at taking20podcast.com. In two weeks we're gonna have a Back to Basics episode talking about some written and unwritten rules for DMs and players we all need to keep in mind behind the screen and in front of it. But before I go, I want to thank this week's sponsor, Coats. My wife bought a fabric coat, but it didn't last. I guess when it comes to that coat, things have only cottoned worse.

This has been episode 253, Tips for Recurring Villains. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking20 podcast is copyright 2025 by Jeremy Shelley. The opinions or views expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the host. References to game system content are copyrighted by their respective publishers.