Antagonist Guide

[Resdayn]

Antagonist Guide

For Storytellers.

By Resdayn

 

Well greetings fellow storytellers, I thought I create a guide, more like advices how to create an antagonist/villain character and how get start write them

 

This is not a full-scale tutorial rather some helpful things wich helps you creating one, so still up to you to make it.

 

Yeah pics from my antagonist chars with lore cosplays from my blog.

 

 

I. What is the Antagonist itself:

 

Well obviously we need know some bits of the old role itself, in short something that stand in the way of your protag, it can be anything from dark lord to tree.

 

The antagonist role is to give your story drama, struggle for your characters, chance to develop both the antagonist and protagonist, someone who challenge your protag by life, fight or just simply being there.

 

Also anything can be antagonist really From the Great pure Evil Dark lord who want rape pillage kingdowns from a very basic primal thing like hunger or a rock, of course simpliest things like natural things not need writing for itself, but rather for the struggle what brings to your chars.

 

Understanding the concept helps you set up them, I think, yeah I'm into the literature.

 

 

II. Morality and Concepts

 

 

Aligment:

 

Now when you have your base of your antagonist, whatever or whoever is it.

 

Time to get back the other important part.

 

In the good old ages, where dnd rpgs walked the earth there was an aligment system, the basic like chaotic evil or lawful good.

 

Those ones or similar can help you to setup your antagonist main morals and concepts it understand.

 

Generally Lawful, Chaotic or simply netural can help base your antagonist views and rules.

 

Lawful one follows Its or group rules, Chaotic is very selfish, netural is kinda mixture of both.

 

This part generally covers the basics of morality and let you fill it.

 

 

 

Concept:

 

 

This part for me is the ability to understand by the human concepts of things like doing evil things we consider really serious crime.

 

For human or mortal beings this part is basic, unless they really has some issues in head, they understand or not care for their own reasons.

 

This can make an antagonist crime worse, if it does understand what it do and go for it.

 

However the pure evil or good aligment characters, the ones it was originally intended eldricht beings mavolent or benevolent, does not understad them and lack of the humanity as well, these kind of character may know it and understand it some levels, but never like a normal mortal things like humans or others.

 

Think characters like Sauron, Daedric Princes, Eothas, Malicia etc..

 

These two things can help setup your antagonist morals, things it understands and how react some stuff.

 

 

III. Goals and Reasons:

 

 

Its pretty obvious your antagonist need some reason at least, why it does things.

 

Having certain goals and reasons for your antagonist is helpful to make it more depth and give point for its action.

 

So generally this things can be revealed by backstories or other ways.

 

Its not bad thing if your one have these, it can be whatever you think fit your antagonist and your setting.

 

Just let not have your antagonist without unless its not sentient.

 

 

IV: Personality and Flaws:

 

 

This one is simple having personality is good thing for any character, so try develop your antagonist and give some trait to it, also flaws are great, I think weakness or some serious personality flaw is good to have for any characters.

 

The flaw itself can be anything, its up to you what you feel right.

 

If it has some similarities or foil stuff like that to your protag it works good too.

 

It can be sympathic, even make sense or even good person or worst person, its up to you, just lets not forget it still need stand in your protags way.

 

 

V: You should not hate your Antagonist:

 

 

No matter how horrible and hateable you wrote it, you should not hate it instead you should have fun, fun is very important. Its not your job to hate it, thats the Audience's job.

 

As they always say Good antagonist is the one your audience despise and hate.

 

Of course not every one is intended to hate, so thats up to the story and setting and you of course.

 

 

 

VI: Inspirations

 

Do not fear to take inspiration from other antagonist characters or even IRL historical figures for your antagonist.

Just let it remain inspiration as inspiration and let your antagonist became your own thing from your pencil, keyboard and mind, no matter how bad it is or generic you may find.

 

 

VII: Generally play some games with good writing or read books, history literature or watch movies/animes etc...

 

If you not into either of this you can ignore this advice.

 

But I think reading books or playing well written crgps or any rpg-s can help you character making and writing or watching some mediums are good thing.

 

It helped me, maybe can help you too not just with antagonists.

 

I hope this guide/advices are useful for any fellow storytellers, thanks for reading.

[worik]

Good stuff to consider ! ?

[Resdayn]

6 minutes ago, worik said:

Good stuff to consider ! ?

Thank you :) 

[donttouchmethere]

well put together, with harmonious pictures

 

thats a good one ^^

" Its not your job to hate it, thats the Audience's job. "

[The Gauntman]

Nicely done. 

[Tirloque]

Interesting points to consider indeed. and well illustrated. 

 

About the alignments, it was a good idea bring the subject on, I'd like to precise things a bit :

• Lawful : respects rules, such as laws, honor and being truthful to his/her word.
• Chaotic :
  • against rules : fights against those same rules (laws and society in particular), rebellious character that will believe more in anarchy/alternative societies, and generally fight against order.
  • impulsive/chaotic behavior : even their philosophy put aside, those characters will have an impulsive decision making, betting or deciding of their future actions in a heartbeat. That makes them kinda unpredictable.
• Neutral : somewhere in between the two (do not care about rules or anarchy, honor, being truthful or so on).

 

• Good : selfless characters, or at least wanting, trying to improve the fate of their sibling.
• Bad : cruel characters, enjoying in the suffering & misery of others.
• Neutral : somewhere in between the two. For example even a chaotic neutral character could enjoy watching his/her ennemy suffer, though he/her won't try to blindlessly destroy people being uninvolved with his affairs.

Alignment is the mix between the character's attitude in those two domains (for example, lawful good, chaotic neutral, neutral bad etc.). It will determine how a character will react in given situations.

So depending on the situations, there can be antagonists even with lawful good alignment, if for example the law or what their believe in would force them to act. For example a paladin being in service of a king could be ordered to kill an unarmed/defenseless enemy (during a failed negotiation for example)... and may reluctantly be forced by his/her oath to execute that order. Whereas a lawful neutral soldier would do it without even blinking, and a lawful bad mercenary will even enjoy doing so. 

 

16 hours ago, Resdayn said:

Think characters like Sauron, Daedric Princes, Eothas, Malicia etc..

Malicia : « You're being very cheeky. You forgot about « Resdayn the Saucy ». Only thing he's not powerful like Malicia, 'cause he's not the strongest girl of her time, yes. »

[Resdayn]

3 hours ago, Tirloque said:

Interesting points to consider indeed. and well illustrated. 

 

About the alignments, it was a good idea bring the subject on, I'd like to precise things a bit :

• Lawful : respects rules, such as laws, honor and being truthful to his/her word.
• Chaotic :
  • against rules : fights against those same rules (laws and society in particular), rebellious character that will believe more in anarchy/alternative societies, and generally fight against order.
  • impulsive/chaotic behavior : even their philosophy put aside, those characters will have an impulsive decision making, betting or deciding of their future actions in a heartbeat. That makes them kinda unpredictable.
• Neutral : somewhere in between the two (do not care about rules or anarchy, honor, being truthful or so on).

 

• Good : selfless characters, or at least wanting, trying to improve the fate of their sibling.
• Bad : cruel characters, enjoying in the suffering & misery of others.
• Neutral : somewhere in between the two. For example even a chaotic neutral character could enjoy watching his/her ennemy suffer, though he/her won't try to blindlessly destroy people being uninvolved with his affairs.

Alignment is the mix between the character's attitude in those two domains (for example, lawful good, chaotic neutral, neutral bad etc.). It will determine how a character will react in given situations.

So depending on the situations, there can be antagonists even with lawful good alignment, if for example the law or what their believe in would force them to act. For example a paladin being in service of a king could be ordered to kill an unarmed/defenseless enemy (during a failed negotiation for example)... and may reluctantly be forced by his/her oath to execute that order. Whereas a lawful neutral soldier would do it without even blinking, and a lawful bad mercenary will even enjoy doing so. 

 

Aligment is a helping piece, something that stick and reimained after many rpg-s.

 

It is helpful to set morals and stuff for characters then expand it.

 

Nice expansion btw.

[Kuroyami]

It isn't fully thought out yet, but one of the characters for the Shark Race mod, is Soran - an Imperial Necromancer who had a past experience with another character, Fume, a Selachii Mercenary who is one of the followers added by the mod. However, in spite of being a Necromancer, his motivations are not meant to exactly change the world, as he has seen countless other Necromancers fail at such endeavors, even the few who do succeed, end up failing just the same. In truth, his motivations are to increase his power, his knowledge, and in the process hopefully find a goal to accomplish, that does not have the same pitfalls as others have faced. 

 

As this is likely to be story important within the mod...

Spoiler

 

However, he may have already made a mistake, and might face a similar fate as his would be peers. What is this? Some years ago, he found a young woman, Renee, in the Imperial City, poor, begging, but possessing some small skill with magic. Already being disdainful of the groups of magical authority in the Empire, he took it upon himself to teach the girl in the use of magic, taking her back to his family home, a castle west of the Imperial City. Beyond the roles of teacher and student, they had no other relationship, and while they were cordial and friendly towards each other, they could not connect otherwise, as Soran was mostly keeping his necromantic activities from her. However, as might be expected, someone became worried enough about what could be a Necromancer or some other type of evil living at this castle, and hired a mercenary to snuff it out - Fume.

 

By coincidence, it was around this time where Soran had accomplished something which was not entirely unique, but his method of doing so, certainly was. The knowledge of becoming a Lich, was nothing new, but it seemed to him that the form came with a limitation, which he was keen to try and overcome. However, by this time, while his studies and experiments had granted him the ability to become a lich, he had yet to perfect it. Keeping himself locked in the castle's basement, where he had given Renee explicit instructions to never enter, he toiled away, trying to find some solution to the problem. But Fume's arrival was an interruption, which he did not react to lightly - especially not when he revealed himself to Fume and Renee, his usually vibrant blue eyes having been stricken black with his experiments, and Fume raised a blade in his direction. 

 

It was trivial for him to immobilize her, and in a spit of anger, used his magic to critically shatter the bones in her right arm - which he found far easier than with most, due to her bones being less dense than that of any other races, even if it was, perhaps, stronger. He was going to perhaps kill her, but it was Renee who stopped him, which left her injured as well. Confused by this, he left, and Renee spent the next few days looking after both Fume, and herself. But that was not the end of it, as a week later, Soran returned, with the intent to kill both of them, not stating his reasons. However, when Fume stood before him again, this time she seemed defenseless, but with a flick of her hand, conjured a blade, pointing it at him once again. The fight that ensued was quick, but changed things. Fume managed to wound Soran, slicing him around the eyes, and seemingly stabbing him through the stomach after. He only smiled at this, and with a movement of his hands, Renee was picked up, and thrown against a nearby wall, and one she hit the floor, she lay motionless.

 

"You have impressed me, but I have no use for you. However, I will give you the chance to run - nothing that she managed to teach you, will help you against me, and you shall only die needlessly if you try."

 

 

His role in the mod will be as an antagonist for Fume's quest, but I don't intend it to be a "Go here and kill this" quest.