This past Sunday my players managed to kill off a recurring NPC villain in our game session.  I wasn't expecting that . Thought he was going to slip away this time - like he has twice before .

 For all you GMs:

 What is a good number of times for a recurring villain, nemesis or adversary to show up before they should take big dirt nap?? (big Major BAM! /SPLAT!! death)

 For players : How often do you tolerate a recurring adversary showing up in a campaign before you just want to smash the annoying piece of sliume?


- Ed C.

If the players want him dead then it's probably time for him to die (okay, maybe one more escape to really infuriate the hell out of them, then he dies ... but not one-more-once-more or any of that nonsense).

If the characters want him dead in the worst possible way, and the players want to keep having this feeling of their characters wanting him dead in the worst possible way then the sunuvabitch has carte blanche, as far as I'm concerned.  He's an invaluable asset to the game, and no matter how many times he "dies" it's all just robot doubles and mistaken identity.

Quote from: KoltarFor all you GMs:
What is a good number of times for a recurring villain, nemesis or adversary to show up before they should take big dirt nap?? (big Major BAM! /SPLAT!! death)

Recurring villains are a little bit more than just the guy you have to/can whack in my campaigns.

For example in my current CP2020 campaign the recurring villain is this freelance holy slayer (solo ?) who the first time he encountered the pcs managed to escape - blast he way out of the firefight -, the second time they spared his life because they realized (by his actions) that he was an honorable chap...the third time they met, he spared their lives (for sparing his life)...and in the last game they discovered he had whacked a close associate who was in fact double crossing them but because said associate was part of the "tribe" they have to "cancel" out the person who killed him.

And the funny thing is, in all their encounters with him (and they have been  others) they have not said one word to each other...total silence.

So it really gets complicated Koltar in my camapigns

I guess to answer your question it's entirely up to the pcs, my job I think is to provide reasons to either keep the villain alive or kill him (some times both at once) for as long as possible by this I mean for as long as it is interesting.

Regards,
David R

I hate to say this Koltar but somewhere (I think) the Pundit himself gave some good advice regarding this.  The best recurring villains are the ones the players somehow need.  All Cassanova Frankenstein like.  A great villain somehow defines your heroes.  Having the ability to conquer your villain should be secondary to whether the heroes should.  Life and death is a pretty trivial moral concern in RPGs.  Let it be know through your setting, which the villains are a part of, what the repercussions of the characters actions are.

It's not an issue for me. If the PCs kill the guy, he dies and that's that. If they don't kill him, he lives on. If they defeat the guy, he may or may not come back depending on the nature of their defeat of him.

I don't fudge things to kill him off or save him. If I find the players are getting bored with the villain, then I try to make him more interesting in some way - not simply by ramping up the danger level, but rather giving the PCs extra reason to hate or value him.

So for example one villain turned out to be the murderer of a PC's mother. Another bunch of villains offered themselves as allies to the PCs on the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" basis. This made things more interesting without any change in the power level of the NPC, or having to fudge the results of combats.

Complications rather than obstacles.

Hell - I got one villain they don't even know the name of yet - who has been working on a long-range plan against them. Especially since the players have been intewrfering with his business ventures.

 Think of the TRAVELLER universe version of Keyser Soze as described by Kobayasi during his exposition monologue  in the middle of the movie - kind of like that.


- Ed C.

The Big Bad Evil Guy in my long-term games typically has a number of Lieutenants that usually survive for a game or three, then get killed before the players get anywhere near the BBEG. I like doing the game villains in this fashion because otherwise the BBEG gets seen too often and loses effect as a credible threat.

I'll admit, I've got some NPCs that are solely designed to just be a recurring annoyance, not a villain at all. Although I've got nothing against the PCs doing something to piss off the annoyances right back.