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The Complete Book of Villains
A paranoid warlord, a bitter drow priestess, a power-mad archmage, a sly dwarven assassin - not all the characters in the AD&D game went the way of the heroes. Villains - being dedicated to committing evil - are the most dangerous of all foes, and thus the most useful of all tools that a DUNGEON MASTER has to create a memorable campaign. This book presents the most complete guidelines ever offered on creating villains for role-playing games.
128 pages, Paperback
First published May 3, 1994
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January 29, 2022The DMGR -- Dungeon Master's Guide Rules Supplements -- was a nine-book series all aimed at fleshing out some aspect of the game for the DM. Some of these I had/have and read back in the day, others are digital editions I’m first looking at now. And my judgment on them is pretty all over the place, from "essential and mind-opening" to "probably a big waste of everyone's time." The fact that the ones I consider good are mostly the ones I read as a child, while the ones I am shrugging at today are the ones I am just looking at for the first time -- that's probably just a big coincidence.
1) Campaign Sourcebook & Catacomb Guide:
A recent topic of the Vintage RPG podcast, a large part of this book was apparently material that was written for the Dungeon Master’s Guide but cut for space, which is a shame since it is almost 100 pages of solid, system-neutral advice on running a game.
Now, if you come to this book today, you will probably just nod along at the description of different player motives (the power gamer, the role-player, etc.) and advice on how to make description and NPCs come alive. That is, a lot of this stuff is baked in to RPGs today, but it seemed pretty big back in the day when I got it. (I still recall the example dialogue of a DM trying to get everyone together — “Nice, Mark, but I don’t want to see how close you can get to my nose with your roundhouse kick.”) Just about every topic I would want to touch on is covered: how to deal with players (and absenteeism), how to design adventures and a world, etc.
I’m not sure how necessary this book is now for someone joining the hobby, but it was necessary then. The catacomb/dungeon guide at the end seems pretty perfunctory, less than 30 pages, but I still like the single-page generic dungeons they include. I'd give this a strong maybe.
2) Castle Guide
Theoretically about castles, this actually has as its remit just sort of medieval/romantic life: there’s a chapter on feudalism and a chapter on knights — both given a fantasy gloss — before we get to rules about building a castle and sieges. (There’s also some unusual castles, like a druidic stronghold made out of the forest, and some generic — their word, not mine — castles with floorplans.)
You can kind of tell how I feel about books or a series by how many I buy after any particular book, and it’s clear that I liked this since I bought 5 more in the series after this. And I’ll be honest, though I will not need any castle-building rules for a game any time soon (“okay, so we’re in a swamp, so that’s a 4x multiplier, but there’s a quarry, so that’s a 1x multiplier, now roll for random events, oh no, bandits”), I’m still pretty fond of this book.
And I think a lot of that comes down to the interior art, particularly the black-and-white work that is almost medieval-esque in its strong lines and lack of shadows. It just gives the whole thing a serious feel, especially when so many of the illos are just of non-adventuring people: a guy facing the noose, the taxman and his soldiers visiting a farm, etc. A strong maybe, higher if you want to run a castle- or real feudal-based game.
3) Arms & Equipment
A big book of armor and weapon, with a little chapter about clothes and other adventuring equipment wedged in the back. This book is like the game equivalent of, say, that illustrated history of weapons I took out of the library every month.
In fact, considering how similar this book is to that sort of book, I wonder why I ever bought it, other than reflex. (Or residual good feeling from the first two books in the series?) But at the same time, reading up on different swords and armor types — how they are made, what they imply about society — made this book really open up my idea of what sort of world these adventurers could live in.
As a practical matter, though, the layout has all sorts of oddities, mostly of the “here’s text about an item and there’s a picture of that item on a different page, have fun finding it.” I mean, it’s mostly just a page before or a page after, but this could have done with another layout pass, I think. (Though I will also say, I would not like to have had that job in the early ‘90s, trying to work blocks of text in and around pages and pages of pole-arms, with rudimentary software or, probably, scissors and glue.) A soft maybe.
4) Monster Mythology
A guide to the gods of the nonhumans, all in one place. Whereas Legends and Lore (or Deities and Demigods if you’re older) did a bunch of D&D stats for mythological gods; and there are many campaign-specific deities in campaign-specific books; this was really the first encyclopedic view of nonhuman gods.
And that includes the playable PC races (gods of the elves, dwarves, etc.) and the monsters (gods of the orcs, sahuagin, etc.).
This is also smack-dab in the 2e tradition of having gods manifest as avatars, so there’s stats for gods, avatars, priests, etc.
Would you ever use all of these gods in a campaign or even series of campaigns? Does putting all of these in one book make the world seem richer and more fantastical? Or more like one of those Marvel books that tried to quantify how strong every superhero is and ends up making it all seem bland by mixing all the colors together? A soft no.
5) Creative Campaigning
Sick of D&D-style fantasy but still want to play in D&D? To my young self, this book was a revelation in 1993, offering as it did little essays on playing alternate campaigns:
- different historical eras (with in-depth discussions of Celtic Ireland, Africa (eh, the whole continent?), and Mesopotamia)
- single-class and -race campaigns,
- lost worlds,
- playing as animals, kids, etc.
Then there’s a discussion of adventure design (with a few samples), and some notes on how to rethink some old rules and refresh some old ideas. How can you make proficiencies more interesting? Shipwreck the PCs and make them survive on their skills, not their combat abilities. How can you make treasure more interesting? Make those gold pieces specific rather than generic — give the coins the face of a hated emperor and make them difficult to spend. (Now instead of just gold, you have — a story!)
There’s also chapters on the published campaign worlds and how to get the most out of them; and on the “medieval mindset”, but for me the real gold here is the earlier chapters on how to make things new for your players. (There is also a little section on how to deal now that more women are getting into gaming, and I don’t know what else to say about that.) A strong yes on this.
6) The Complete Book of Villains
One of my favorite books of the series: an in-depth guide to making memorable villains. As a long-time RPG reader who didn’t play a lot — and as someone who loved to write fiction — this sort of book was catnip for me, what with lists of possible motives and discussion of using contrasts to make your villain come alive.
Also discussion of henchmen and villainous organizations, as well as alternate ways to develop an adventure (linear vs. matrix? plot- vs. map-based?), how to turn monsters into villains (give them personality and desires), rivals, mythic villains, sympathetic anti-heroes, etc. And of course, a lot of examples.
In other words, except for the stats of some of the example villains, this is almost a system-neutral book entirely focused on creating a good story around the table. The strongest possible yes.
7) The Complete Book of Necromancers
A little disappointment after the Book of Villains, this clearly started with a good idea: a lot of pulp fantasy has crazy necromancer villains, magicians and priests to dark gods with dark powers — how can we make that part of D&D? So there’s some work here about expanding on the necromancer, making it a special, NPC-only class with extra powers and deformities (true to the literature).
But it never really congeals around an idea of why this might be more interesting than any other villain or cult.
I’m also a little put off by the re-use of art — and characters? — from the Al-Qadim Cities of Bone, also written by Steve Kurtz. In particular, the last chapter is supposed to show a necromancer campaign: an island of dark magic where several necromancers compete, which feels like… it doesn’t quite match the rest of the book: if necromancers are supposed to be giant evils, why does this island come off like any other place full of villains? I’d rather see a “how a necromancer can ruin a nice village” setup. But even then, please come up with new villains. A soft no for me.
8) Sages and Specialists
A book of specialist classes that are meant for NPCs, things like apothecary, appraiser, blacksmith, cartographer, engineer, guide, healer, historian, scribe, and seer.
But why make all these rules for whether or not an NPC succeeds at, say, brewing a concoction? That shouldn’t really be a roll, that should be a DM decisions about what sort of story they want. What this really should be is a set of NPCs with these skills and some plot hooks. Why do we need these rules?
Honestly, this book makes me mad. Hard no.
9) Of Ships and the Sea
A thing that D&D always seems to flirt with: how can you run a pirate game? There’s some sea rules in one of the Al-Qadim books, and elsewhere too. (Oh, the Forgotten Realms book, “Pirates of the Fallen Stars” has some.)
Here’s a bunch of info on ships, encounters at sea, ship-to-ship combat, ramming, boarding, etc. And the back half — as the book description promises — is all about underwater adventures. Which is to say, it’s all sorts of rules and discussions about how spells might act underwater. So yeah: if you want to run a water-based campaign and need the rules to do so, here they are. (I do have to wonder how much play testing this all went through, or if this was like a Joy of Cooking situation where they just put together a bunch of rules and hoped it worked.) A soft no, unless you really need sea rules.
1) Campaign Sourcebook & Catacomb Guide:
A recent topic of the Vintage RPG podcast, a large part of this book was apparently material that was written for the Dungeon Master’s Guide but cut for space, which is a shame since it is almost 100 pages of solid, system-neutral advice on running a game.
Now, if you come to this book today, you will probably just nod along at the description of different player motives (the power gamer, the role-player, etc.) and advice on how to make description and NPCs come alive. That is, a lot of this stuff is baked in to RPGs today, but it seemed pretty big back in the day when I got it. (I still recall the example dialogue of a DM trying to get everyone together — “Nice, Mark, but I don’t want to see how close you can get to my nose with your roundhouse kick.”) Just about every topic I would want to touch on is covered: how to deal with players (and absenteeism), how to design adventures and a world, etc.
I’m not sure how necessary this book is now for someone joining the hobby, but it was necessary then. The catacomb/dungeon guide at the end seems pretty perfunctory, less than 30 pages, but I still like the single-page generic dungeons they include. I'd give this a strong maybe.
2) Castle Guide
Theoretically about castles, this actually has as its remit just sort of medieval/romantic life: there’s a chapter on feudalism and a chapter on knights — both given a fantasy gloss — before we get to rules about building a castle and sieges. (There’s also some unusual castles, like a druidic stronghold made out of the forest, and some generic — their word, not mine — castles with floorplans.)
You can kind of tell how I feel about books or a series by how many I buy after any particular book, and it’s clear that I liked this since I bought 5 more in the series after this. And I’ll be honest, though I will not need any castle-building rules for a game any time soon (“okay, so we’re in a swamp, so that’s a 4x multiplier, but there’s a quarry, so that’s a 1x multiplier, now roll for random events, oh no, bandits”), I’m still pretty fond of this book.
And I think a lot of that comes down to the interior art, particularly the black-and-white work that is almost medieval-esque in its strong lines and lack of shadows. It just gives the whole thing a serious feel, especially when so many of the illos are just of non-adventuring people: a guy facing the noose, the taxman and his soldiers visiting a farm, etc. A strong maybe, higher if you want to run a castle- or real feudal-based game.
3) Arms & Equipment
A big book of armor and weapon, with a little chapter about clothes and other adventuring equipment wedged in the back. This book is like the game equivalent of, say, that illustrated history of weapons I took out of the library every month.
In fact, considering how similar this book is to that sort of book, I wonder why I ever bought it, other than reflex. (Or residual good feeling from the first two books in the series?) But at the same time, reading up on different swords and armor types — how they are made, what they imply about society — made this book really open up my idea of what sort of world these adventurers could live in.
As a practical matter, though, the layout has all sorts of oddities, mostly of the “here’s text about an item and there’s a picture of that item on a different page, have fun finding it.” I mean, it’s mostly just a page before or a page after, but this could have done with another layout pass, I think. (Though I will also say, I would not like to have had that job in the early ‘90s, trying to work blocks of text in and around pages and pages of pole-arms, with rudimentary software or, probably, scissors and glue.) A soft maybe.
4) Monster Mythology
A guide to the gods of the nonhumans, all in one place. Whereas Legends and Lore (or Deities and Demigods if you’re older) did a bunch of D&D stats for mythological gods; and there are many campaign-specific deities in campaign-specific books; this was really the first encyclopedic view of nonhuman gods.
And that includes the playable PC races (gods of the elves, dwarves, etc.) and the monsters (gods of the orcs, sahuagin, etc.).
This is also smack-dab in the 2e tradition of having gods manifest as avatars, so there’s stats for gods, avatars, priests, etc.
Would you ever use all of these gods in a campaign or even series of campaigns? Does putting all of these in one book make the world seem richer and more fantastical? Or more like one of those Marvel books that tried to quantify how strong every superhero is and ends up making it all seem bland by mixing all the colors together? A soft no.
5) Creative Campaigning
Sick of D&D-style fantasy but still want to play in D&D? To my young self, this book was a revelation in 1993, offering as it did little essays on playing alternate campaigns:
- different historical eras (with in-depth discussions of Celtic Ireland, Africa (eh, the whole continent?), and Mesopotamia)
- single-class and -race campaigns,
- lost worlds,
- playing as animals, kids, etc.
Then there’s a discussion of adventure design (with a few samples), and some notes on how to rethink some old rules and refresh some old ideas. How can you make proficiencies more interesting? Shipwreck the PCs and make them survive on their skills, not their combat abilities. How can you make treasure more interesting? Make those gold pieces specific rather than generic — give the coins the face of a hated emperor and make them difficult to spend. (Now instead of just gold, you have — a story!)
There’s also chapters on the published campaign worlds and how to get the most out of them; and on the “medieval mindset”, but for me the real gold here is the earlier chapters on how to make things new for your players. (There is also a little section on how to deal now that more women are getting into gaming, and I don’t know what else to say about that.) A strong yes on this.
6) The Complete Book of Villains
One of my favorite books of the series: an in-depth guide to making memorable villains. As a long-time RPG reader who didn’t play a lot — and as someone who loved to write fiction — this sort of book was catnip for me, what with lists of possible motives and discussion of using contrasts to make your villain come alive.
Also discussion of henchmen and villainous organizations, as well as alternate ways to develop an adventure (linear vs. matrix? plot- vs. map-based?), how to turn monsters into villains (give them personality and desires), rivals, mythic villains, sympathetic anti-heroes, etc. And of course, a lot of examples.
In other words, except for the stats of some of the example villains, this is almost a system-neutral book entirely focused on creating a good story around the table. The strongest possible yes.
7) The Complete Book of Necromancers
A little disappointment after the Book of Villains, this clearly started with a good idea: a lot of pulp fantasy has crazy necromancer villains, magicians and priests to dark gods with dark powers — how can we make that part of D&D? So there’s some work here about expanding on the necromancer, making it a special, NPC-only class with extra powers and deformities (true to the literature).
But it never really congeals around an idea of why this might be more interesting than any other villain or cult.
I’m also a little put off by the re-use of art — and characters? — from the Al-Qadim Cities of Bone, also written by Steve Kurtz. In particular, the last chapter is supposed to show a necromancer campaign: an island of dark magic where several necromancers compete, which feels like… it doesn’t quite match the rest of the book: if necromancers are supposed to be giant evils, why does this island come off like any other place full of villains? I’d rather see a “how a necromancer can ruin a nice village” setup. But even then, please come up with new villains. A soft no for me.
8) Sages and Specialists
A book of specialist classes that are meant for NPCs, things like apothecary, appraiser, blacksmith, cartographer, engineer, guide, healer, historian, scribe, and seer.
But why make all these rules for whether or not an NPC succeeds at, say, brewing a concoction? That shouldn’t really be a roll, that should be a DM decisions about what sort of story they want. What this really should be is a set of NPCs with these skills and some plot hooks. Why do we need these rules?
Honestly, this book makes me mad. Hard no.
9) Of Ships and the Sea
A thing that D&D always seems to flirt with: how can you run a pirate game? There’s some sea rules in one of the Al-Qadim books, and elsewhere too. (Oh, the Forgotten Realms book, “Pirates of the Fallen Stars” has some.)
Here’s a bunch of info on ships, encounters at sea, ship-to-ship combat, ramming, boarding, etc. And the back half — as the book description promises — is all about underwater adventures. Which is to say, it’s all sorts of rules and discussions about how spells might act underwater. So yeah: if you want to run a water-based campaign and need the rules to do so, here they are. (I do have to wonder how much play testing this all went through, or if this was like a Joy of Cooking situation where they just put together a bunch of rules and hoped it worked.) A soft no, unless you really need sea rules.
September 21, 2016
Don't let the fact this is a gaming book fool you. This is actually a great little tool for anybody writing a fantasy story for building awesome antagonists. Each chapter delivers excellent advice for creating a character that is both realistic, ambitious, and frightening for your heroes to have to face off against.
January 24, 2024
I really liked this book. The advice is 99% system agnostic. There's copious examples both written for this book, and references to popular media. Although the references are now a bit dated, they come with enough explanation that you can get the gist anyway.
There's a lot of good advice on making a memorable, sensible villain, as well as their henchmen and power networks. I say sensible because the book encourages villains that are internally consistent, but not morally relative 'well he was just misunderstood!' Villains your players can feel good about trouncing, but that aren't cartoon cutouts. Definitely recommend if you can snag a copy, or a pdf.
There's a lot of good advice on making a memorable, sensible villain, as well as their henchmen and power networks. I say sensible because the book encourages villains that are internally consistent, but not morally relative 'well he was just misunderstood!' Villains your players can feel good about trouncing, but that aren't cartoon cutouts. Definitely recommend if you can snag a copy, or a pdf.
November 27, 2022
A book-length study of NPC design - focused, as the title implies, on adversaries, but some concepts can be applied to other major campaign NPCs as well. Might constitute the best no-system-all-advice book TSR ever produced. Full review: https://refereeingandreflection.wordp...
March 8, 2020
Muchas opciones interesantes e icónicas de los escenarios y de su literatura derivada. Útil recurso.
December 17, 2015
This book gave me awesome ideas to add into my campaign.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews