Forums » RP Discussion » How to make a good Evil Character?

Oi there. Now, I'm sure everyone on here has their fair share of good and neutral RP characters. But, it's not very often that you see a genuinely evil or vile minded character do ye? (well, at least not regularly) I've been thinking about making one for a while seeing as how most of mine are good or benevolently neutral to give a wider selection. So, if you don't mind me asking...

How do you make a good Evil Character and not just a generic "bad guy"? Basically, how can I make them more interesting?

Any advantages for having them be a specific gender? (I've been hearing that guy characters can be better at other things, while women can be more deceitful and other stuff, that true?)

What would you recommend and how would you build yours?

(and most importantly, this can also be used as a guide for other fellows wondering the same thing.)

Cartoonishly evil, insane evil, misled evil, ambitious evil, casually evil...? What sort are you going for?

Like any character, reason behind their actions is important. The generic ones are "because it's fun" or "to take over the world," but complex reasoning can make for a thing of beauty.

Maybe look through the evil alignment tropes, be it for ideas, to narrow things out, or for things to avoid.

So far, the most important thing I'd say is to have the character stick to their guns. I've seen character's labelled "evil" that were just whiny individuals with grudges. Sure, they might casually murder NPCs, but when faced with another PC, they kinda just get... pathetic.

This is very brief but.... If you don't want a generic generic villain, don't make them 'obviously bad'
Like, you don't want them to just walk past the cast and everyone and their grandparents are going to be able to tell that they're a bad guy from miles away without even meeting them

One thing you can do is give them a good or even a sympathetic reason for your character's behavior.

For example my evil phoenix character became a genocidal maniac because a human warlock not only stole, but also killed her unborn chick. Then to make it even worse, this same warlock then used his dying breath to curse her into a vampire to ensure she could never have children again.

I think it makes a very powerful motivator for her rampage against the human race. After all, love can turn you evil and what stronger love is there then a mother's for her children?

Another thing you can do is not make them completely amoral. Maybe they have a code of honor, or a soft spot for kids. Just something to help them stand out from the whole "I'm so evil, there this nothing I won't do. Muahahaha" sort of villains.

I've not made any purely evil characters before, and most villains aren't rotten to the core, at least at first. It makes them interesting that way. If you've got a few minutes, Extra Credits on YouTube covers the subject quite well. They cover villains in a video game setting, but a narrative is a narrative.

Building a villain(part 1 of 2):
https://youtu.be/n4L2vPVZFR8
(edit: the second part is more relevant to RP but some good points are brought up in this video as well.)

Force of nature villain:
https://youtu.be/TyyE8c27-9Y

Sometimes the camp of a traditional villain is a lot of fun but a good one should make the protagonists look at them and think "that could be me." Take a hero you like and twist their background into a 'what if', there's no shame in borrowing elements from movies or other stories. Make that villain relevant then have the protagonists face the same dilemma that caused the villain to fall. A dose of sympathy helps but also don't be afraid to have the villain truly be evil. A vampire necromancer who loves his dead daughter and wants nothing more than to bring her back to life... by being willing to offer sacrifices to the Dark Powers in exchange. So on and so forth. As someone else already said, love makes people do very odd things. Stick with a humanizing elements even if the villain isn't human.

Fair warning, I talk a lot in here about killing babies as an example, so uh, heads up

Good points from everyone else!

I think that a good villain is one who stands as their own character first, and as antagonist second. They should have their own aspirations, hopes, and dreams irrelevant to those of the protagonist.

If you do want to go with the super evil, baby murderer type villain, that can be handled a couple ways. You can make them cartoonish, where the reader laughs at them sometimes. That clash between "haha this guy is so silly" and "wow this guy is murdering babies" can work well sometimes. For all its faults, I like to point to the movie Avatar. There is the army-guy villain, who is pretty bland ... but then you have he CEO villain, who is a caricature of himself. I find him much more "evil" than the army guy. Kefka from FF6 falls into this role too. Neither are AMAZING villains, but they showcase what I'm talking about. Another way to create a solid babymurder villain is to be creative. Simply putting a babymurder villain in a different context can shake things up. What about a modern BMV who is a cutthroat businessman who will do anything to increase his profits, even dump toxic waste that causes birth defects? Look into real world BMVs like Hitler and Boko Haram and study the why and how.

Also, "evil" is relative. Is dismembering infants' genitalia an evil act, or a good one? You could have a "culture clash" type villain who kills the children of her opponents because of course she does, otherwise they'll rise up against her!

As for man vs. woman ... forget all that tropey nonsense. Figure out what works best for the gender roles within your own setting and go from there.

Sometimes, the most sinister sort of evil comes from someone who is absolutely sure that what they are doing is the right thing.

There's a certain prosecutor, for example, who's absolutely convinced that the best way to handle juvenile murderers - no matter whether they were born in terrible situations, had awful home lives, were abused, maybe had developmental difficulties, or all of the above - is to charge them as adults (even when they're as young as 12) and seek sentences of life in prison, no parole. Because they're charged as adults, they'd be put into the adult prison system, but because they can't defend themselves, they're put in isolation. As children, they're essentially given the harshest punishment that a prison has for adults. For years.

All because "we have to protect the community from [them]".

That's a very real example, but I think you can easily adapt the example of it, terrible as it is, to fiction. Someone's convictions can easily carry them to commit terrible acts, and if they think they're doing it to protect or better others, why should they stop?

That actually gives me an idea that would change up my character quite a bit. Maybe like, they kill people because they want to protect them and not let them suffer through the harsh times of life. Mostly because, if you kill something, there's nothing to harm it anymore, hence it being forever protected. Or something like that... Might be too stereotypical though.

I'ed have to completely rewrite the character though. (right now it's basically a "innocent"-looking farmer girl murdering people in the night to keep everything she has, or it'll burn up in the morning of a new moon. basically, she's cursed, she gotta kill people to keep her stuff) I'll have to think about which would be better.

The best bad guys are the ones who think they're the good guys. They're people who think the world is broken, so the only way to fix it is to force it to get fixed.

These sorts of characters lend themselves to interesting moral questions, and they're typically much easier to empathize with, as opposed to the 'I'm evil because I want to be evil and I know that I'm evil' type. I'm actually currently working on a character like this.

In summary, ask yourself why your character is doing what s/he is doing. What do they want? Intentions are everything when creating evil characters.

Just make a good character. Then have them do shit things. I personally have trouble writing evil characters because I get lost in the ~personality~ or whatever--and most of my focus is on internal conflict. So "evil" is difficult for me. But, in my opinion, what makes them evil is what they do. Kinda like in real life: Hitler was a charismatic, artistic, and intelligent person, but he was behind the loss of millions of lives.

That being said, defining evil is difficult so I'm not entirely sure how to fully answer? I don't call any of my characters as "evil," honestly. But they definitely do evil things, I guess?

Edit: Idk, to elaborate: two of the four characters I have on my profile do terrible, evil things to innocent people. But...you could sit down and have a conversation with either and not realize they were bad people. And--even though as their writer, I probably should--I don't define them by these actions. But I'd still say that they both can make antagonistic, dark villains in the right story (even within their own story).

PLUS I think it's more difficult to write ~evil~ in RPs, since it's such a...grey term. Usually, you have a single author defining Evil through their writing. Evil Character does an Evil Thing and the Good Character is appalled at the injustice! And thus, conflict because Evil is defined and appropriately reacted to within the story. But in RPs, you can have any number of people with all sorts of different ideas of evil. And that Evil Thing you want someone's Good Character to be absolutely disgusted by, they might just not care because the other writer doesn't see the Evil you're writing. Idk if this makes sense, I guess I'm rambling a bit.

I think a good evil character pokes that part of a reader that makes them feel terrible inside, for any number of reasons. They etch themselves into the audience and tell them, "I'm here. I'm in you. What you're seeing is a part of you, too." They don't let you cut yourself away cleanly from their actions, and nothing will be resolved just by killing them. They are capable of anything, good or bad, and what your characters think of them isn't as important as what your target audience thinks of them.

They can be ruthless, comical, calm, reasonable, even honorable to a fault. But that doesn't change what they'll do. What they've done. What they need. And worse yet, they sometimes can't tell the difference between a want and a need to begin with.

They force everyone around them into a reactionary state of being. They are dangerous, however they need to be dangerous, and understanding them - or allowing them to understand themselves - is part of that danger. Everything they do, for right or wrong, supports a greater darkness that they are just as much a victim of as those they inflict that darkness upon. Whether they know they are wicked or not makes them no less daunting; they can make you think you're more evil, and that everything you do is a lie. I don't mean your character. I mean you, reader and/or writer alike.

We see evil everyday. When your villain comes from a place anchored in reality, from a real feeling of negativity... they will make themselves.

...

Either that, or read the youtube comment section for about three hours. Then take the insanity and feelings you're left with and combine them like the rings used to summon Captain Planet. An evil, dirty Captain Planet....

EDIT: And remember, some people don't want what you call evil to be evil, and they might do what they can to shift that perspective against the betterment of maturing the plot forward. You've a right to your ideas, and it's okay to share them with a new partner if you feel that ideologies conflict beyond the core concepts of what you set out to be involved in. If your partner can't see or be inspired to respect the nature of your characters or the circumstances around them, likely you'll wind up with a migraine before you reach a conclusion. The unified front should be about having fun, not debating frivolously for its own sake. Evil has its place, and it should stay in your rp.

Everyone has a good point here.

I think, to create a truly believable evil character, you have to tap into the meanest part of yourself. For my character, Natalie Blanco, she had everything taken from her. Family, safety, love. Your character must have a drive. Something that pushes them to be who they are.

Most evil characters are personified as lone baddies with a stuffed crow in tow. While this can be true, most of them have friends, acquaintances, people who know them. That's what makes them truly scary. The fact that they can blend in.

Have your character be able to do that and you're set. Good luck, yeah

I don't think there's one catch all way of creating the perfect 'evil' character. As it's been noted previously, the concept of evil is a man-made product, and the ideals of it are vastly different from person to person, and culture to culture. So I think the best way to start with creating an 'evil' character is to understand what sort of background, culture, and society they come from. For example, they could be an alien from another planet where murder is okay. But when/if they come to our planet, people would be horrified that this alien would just kill and think it's okay. It would be considered as an evil act to most people.

The route that I see most people take when attempting an 'evil' character is by labeling them psychopathic, without realizing what the terminology actually means. Most people associated a psychopath as being insane or off the wall crazy, when that's far from the truth. Most of the time you wouldn't even realize if you spoke to a psychopath out in public in real life. The difference between a psychopath and someone who is legitimately, clinically insane is that a psychopath understands and accepts that what they do is morally wrong and still choose to do it, while someone who is insane does not. But then if you wish to take the insanity route there's always that line between writing actual insanity and playing them as 'Stupid Evil'.

The next big thing I've come to recognize through my time playing villainous characters is understanding that not every option they make is going to be based on whether or not its considered good or evil. While the world would be a much more simple place if everything was in black and white, or inherently 'good' or 'evil', it's not how real, complex people work. Not every character is going to take the opportunity to do evil if it arises. For example, just because a character is considered evil doesn't mean they're going to kick every dog they see on the street, or always try to steal, harass or even initiate violence if given the option. They'll all have their own basis and morals, regardless of how deprived or lacking they might be, and kicking dogs might be fun for one evil character but to another it could be boring.

Which leads me onto my next point. Understanding that while there's a sliding scale of evil, that there's also different kinds of evil. When most people hear the terms villain or evil, they think of over the top comic book villains who're looking to take over/destroy the world for some reason or another. While that might be fun in an over the top style movie, it can be difficult and even boring to play, both as the character's player and as someone roleplaying with that specific character. This is just my personal opinion, but I believe characters that are more personable, more relatable as real human beings tend to seem more evil and scary than characters that are the literal devil, or a ten thousand year old entity that's malicious just because. Themes such as domestic abuse, murder and smaller scale stuff tend to be more impacting to a reader. They could be an evil alien war lord and kill a hundred million different races across the universe, but to the average person that's just a number. It has no meaning, no value to them. My point being is that finding something a little more low-key and personable, that has the opportunity to make the reader/your roleplay partner empathetic to the character and often has more impact. Which is not to say wider scale events wouldn't, there have been plenty of real life examples of how it changed millions of people, but when it comes to roleplaying it's much harder to do, and less likely to make the same impression.

I think, in the end, if you're respectful and understanding of the source, and understand why you want this character to be evil - E.G, what happened to them that made them evil? Is it intentional/Are they aware that they're evil? If they weren't evil before, what occurred that made them change? - it should be just as easy as making a 'good' character. there's so many different starting points that you could really come up with some unique ideas. Not to say the old classics aren't worth anything, but paying homage to a classical origin story and being a straight up cliche is a hard line to walk. Sorry for the rambling!

There is one thing I'd stress about making any kind of character; good, evil, whatever.

Don't try to shove the idea down your writing partners' throats, let them come to their own conclusions through your characters' actions and behavior. Constant usage of the words like 'evil' makes it seem like you're almost desperate to have your character perceived in such a way without other characters garnering their own opinions.

I'll use my Drug Lord character, Campy, for example. I never state that he's evil, but you certainly get that impression from him. People who have roleplayed with him know that he's wicked because of the things he's done on an In Character level, not simply because I have - as the player - been pushing the idea through excessive description. I personally think that's the best way to make a character; if you don't have to tell people what your character is (for this example, an evil character) and they know exactly what they're supposed to be, then I think it's a pretty successful one.