A good villain doesn’t twirl a mustache and cackle about world domination. They wake up in the morning and believe they’re right. Maybe even righteous. How many people watching the MCU though Thanos had a point? I know my wife went around snapping her fingers trying to just get rid of bad traffic.
That’s what makes them compelling. Evil for evil’s sake gets stale fast—there’s no tension, no conflict beyond “kill the bad guy.” But when your villain thinks they’re saving the world, protecting their people, or correcting a wrong, they become someone players can understand, even empathize with.
The best villains see themselves as the hero of their own story. They make choices—terrible ones, maybe—but they come from recognizable emotions: fear, pride, grief, devotion. Their logic doesn’t have to be sound, just sincere. A tyrant who enslaves in the name of peace is more interesting than a demon who destroys for fun.
And here’s the trick: when your players realize the villain has a point, the story deepens. Maybe they agree, just not with the method. Maybe they start to doubt themselves.
That moral friction is where memorable campaigns live.
So don’t make your villain a monster—make them a mirror. Let the players see what they might become if they took one more step down the same road.
Use the handy dandy villain motivation generator as a starting point if you ever get stuck.
Using the Table
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Roll 2d6 four times—once for each column.
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Combine the results:
“Driven by fear, the general seeks to protect their people, convinced only isolation and control can keep them safe.” -
Tilt it to your genre:
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Fantasy: A zealot queen sealing borders with divine magic.
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Sci-Fi: A planetary governor locking down a colony under alien threat.
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Noir: A crime boss crushing rivals “for the good of the city.”
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Post-Apoc: A bunker leader rationing oxygen “to save humanity.”
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