And They Have a Plan: Creating Memorable Antagonists

Antagonists are a useful part of many types of storytelling.  While not every type of game requires antagonists, many games do and in my experience, nothing is quite so great as having a memorable antagonist.  But making an antagonist memorable is a very complicated process.  Antagonists are balancing acts, trying to have them be interesting enough to justify the story while not so dominant as to overshadow the actions of the protagonists of the story. I have a number of tips to creating interesting antagonists.

1. Plans
Antagonists need momentum the way that all characters need momentum.  And part of this comes with having plans.  Any antagonist should have an agenda, something that they are trying to get done.  And in some way, that agenda needs to run counter to the interests of the protagonists.  But agendas are more than just a general list of wants, memorable antagonists have ideas about how to achieve things, they have methods of gathering information, they have patterns of action.

One thing that I find makes for better antagonists is to make sure those plans do not include omniscience or immutability.  Memorable antagonists make plans based on information available to them, and that can mean they are unprepared.  This can be addressed by adding complicated redundancies to antagonists plans.  And plans need to be mutable, a plan shouldn't hinge on a single event occurring in a specific fashion, because if the protagonists attempt to change that event, then as a Storyteller you have to either completely rethink things or tell them they can't and either way can be highly problematic.

So what I suggest is this, don't think of antagonist plots as a series of specific actions so much as a series of sequential goals, and have them move on their own, adapting based on an idea of how the antagonist reacts to setbacks and opportunities.  Everyone has a way of reacting to changes in their plans, there's no reason the antagonist shouldn't have the same.

This brings me to the most important part of any antagonist's planning.  The escape plan.  It's no good trying to craft a memorable recurring villain if they have no way of outrunning the protagonists.  Escape plans should be in effect from the moment an antagonist enters the room, whether it's the use of proxy communication, the possession of a contingent teleportation effect or a bargaining chip of information that dies with them.  Memorable antagonists shouldn't resolve easily.

2. From Justification to Culture
One of the aspects of having a plan is having a justification.  Memorable antagonists are those who do what they do for a reason.  This reason can be flimsy or incorrect, but they need to have some justification for actions that they take.  One of the key reasons for this is that their justification should affect other aspects of the antagonist. On a personal level, it should affect their decision making.  Someone who is attempting to overthrow a kingdom out of lust for power will make different choices than someone who is attempting to overthrow a kingdom out of misguided patriotism, the former would have no qualms allying with the kingdom's traditional enemies, while the latter would never do so.

This justification also goes beyond just the central antagonist of the story as well.  Justification defines the culture of an antagonistic organization.  It defines who an antagonist is able to recruit and what participation in such an organization means.  Is an antagonistic organization a band of cut-throats, who will turn on each other for the narrowest advantage?  Are they a knightly order, with their own strictly defined rules of conduct?  Are they organized in loose cells, so they don't even know anyone outside their own small circle?  Importantly, do they even know the antagonist's endgame?  Justifications can help define the ways in which an organizational culture develops.

3. Minions and Pacing
This brings me to the concept of minions.  Memorable antagonists rarely work alone, and the idea of having an organization is very useful for conceptualization, but having minions is more than just creating a context, minions allow for more interesting antagonist plans.  First, complex plans require multiple participants and the more participants(up to a point), the more complex a plan can be.  An antagonistic plan as big as overthrowing a country or stealing the most important Macguffin in the world can't be done without people in multiple roles.

Second, minions can provide a very good way of pacing the defeat of an antagonist.  Minions are effectively character based story structure, as their defeat can represent milestones in the defeat of an antagonist's plot without forcing multiple direct confrontations.  At the same time, they offer the potential for the hand of the antagonist to reach further than direct presence allows without making everyone a teleporter.

4. Setbacks and Choices
And when the hand of the antagonist reaches out, it should in some way motivate action.  What really defines an antagonist is that their actions affect the lives of the protagonists in a negative way.  This can be the creation or maintaining of a lack, the commission or sustaining of a villainy, or simply pursuing plans that oppose those of the protagonists.  And a big part of this is maintaining that sense of loss or potential loss at the heart of the antagonist's plan.

And part of this is making every victory a little bit pyrrhic.  In a game especially, where the action should be defined by the choices of the protagonists, antagonists exist to force the protagonists to make choices.  Some of the most memorable choices that protagonists make in games are when they are forced into difficult situations by the actions of an antagonist.  On the flipside, nothing makes for a more frustrating antagonist than being put in situations where there are no choices to make, no ways to change the outcome of situations.  At that point, an antagonist just becomes a bully holding down the protagonists and asking them why they're hitting themselves.

5. Resonance
Of course, this gets further into what the point of an antagonist is, in some ways.  A memorable antagonist should resonate in some way with the protagonists.  What do I mean by that?  There should be some recognizable connection between them, some way of highlighting some aspect of the antagonist and protagonists.  This can be a personal connection over villainy(Thulsa Doom burned down my village and all I got was this weird Austrian accent), a shared past that now divides(Cosmo and Bishop in Sneakers), a contrasting theme(an all powerful, all moral Superman juxtaposed against an all too mortal, all too immoral Lex Luthor).  In some way, the antagonist should highlight characteristics of the protagonist(s).

Of course, a lot of this is dependent on genre.  When designing antagonists, what works in one genre as a contrast doesn't necessarily work in others.  Don't be afraid to embrace Genre.  It can be your best friend.  And while I'm on genre, have you thought about a good antagonist monologue?  They can be excellent tools.

6. Presence vs. Absence and Resolution
Of course, as we get to this, there are a few important things to note about the role of antagonists in stories.  Mainly, the story is not about the antagonist.  And that should be clear within the story structure.  One of the key ways this falls apart is that antagonists are best represented by infrequent presence.  An antagonist who shows up too often gets real old, real quick.  And ultimately, the antagonist should not overshadow the protagonists in the story.  This can be a major problem in a game with multiple competing antagonists.

This can be solved with having an antagonist who uses minions well and only communicates through mysterious letters.  Or an antagonist who is not seen until the final act.  But ultimately, an antagonist exists to be on screen at the climax of things and to be defeated.  And this leads me to my final point.  An antagonist is there to be confronted/defeated/redeemed, etc.  The whole point of a story with an antagonist is that it should in some way come to a head. Memorable antagonists don't just fade away.

Final Thoughts

A few last thoughts.  You can't always plan a memorable antagonist.  Sometimes some event will resonate in a way that cements a character in the minds of the players.  In these cases, it's best to see if you can just go with it.
One example that springs to mind comes from a fantasy game run by a friend.  In one encounter, our druid[more or less] tried to exercise mental control over a mouse that was being used to surreptitiously deliver a message.  Despite having an epic sized dice pool, the druid dramatically failed.  Thus was born the legend of Messenger Mouse, the true villain of the tale and one who would keep appearing.  The storyteller didn't quite rewrite things so Messenger Mouse was the true antagonist, but they became a presence in the story.  My memory of the adventure is a bit incomplete, but Messenger Mouse will survive in the legends of the game.