Villains - a taxonomy

Image from Fainting Goat's Deluxe Super Villain Handbook

Right now I'm thinking about villains.

Coming up with an adventure means (for me) coming up with villains. And a villain group is more likely to give a player group a decent run for its money than a single big bad. (Not always true, but mostly.) So while a single big bad is easier for me to conceptualize, it's also easier for the players to win because of a lucky shot.

That is not necessarily a bad thing, but you don't want that all the time.

Wait, let's back up a minute.

Let's make up some terminology. For bad folk facing a group of heroes, you have:

• Big Bad is a single monolithic force who just overwhelms the heroes. Your Galactus, your Kang, your Dr. Doom, your Dormammu, your Amazo, your Starro, your Prometheus, and so on. The intent is that taking on this force directly is going to be tough. Sometimes the Big Bad can be defeated by a trick (“simple garden lime!”) and sometimes you gotta think outside the box. Sometimes it's just overwhelming force (I'm thinking Doomsday here, who defeated the whole Justice League to show how tough he was), but that concentration of force will come at a cost. Depending on the story, the Big Bad might have other resources, which could include any of the other types of bad folk.
• Puppeteer is a weird hybrid: a single opponent but usually a set of punchables in front of the heroes. He can be treated as one of the other groups; we say no more about him today.
• Villain Group is a group of opponents. Usually they have better teamwork than your heroes, at least in the beginning. This is your Masters of Evil, your Hyperclan, your Injustice League, your Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. I feel like there are more memorable Big Bads than Villain Groups, but comics have been around a long time, so I'm probably wrong. If the evil cult has a small group of super-powered leaders (vampires, demons, aliens, whatever) then it's an Agency headed by Villain Group.
• Horde is a special category I made up for “overwhelming numbers but no individual distinction” such as the Brood. They have a goal, but you're not working against an individual, you're working against all of them. A sudden uprising of zombies, for instance, might be a horde. Hordes are often subservient to a big bad (because it's more satisfying to cut off the head of something) but they don't have to be. (If they're not subservient, then all of them have to be exterminated, which might not be what you want for your campaign.) A Horde feels to me like it often engenders horror, whether it's aliens taking over bodies or the dead rising.
• Agency is a group of non-powered opponents, probably with some kind of tech support (really good weapons, for instance). Like a Horde, they have to be disabled in some way, usually by getting the government to pull their funding. Examples might be AIM or Hydra or SHIELD or maybe the Church of Blood.

(Individual heroes can also have equal antagonists, but that also is outside my remit today.)

You can mix and match: perhaps the Agency hires or creates a Villain Group. Perhaps the Puppeteer tries to make use of a Horde. Maybe the Villain Group hires the Big Bad, and then there's a personality conflict that involves violence and property damage.

Now, it's fun once in a while to have the Big Bad show up, trash everything, and then be vulnerable to one of the heroes' attacks. Can't be the point of the session, it seems to me (having run more than my share of pointless sessions). You want some kind of equivalence.

I don't have a deeper thought at this point. My tentative conclusions are:

• Memorable characters of any kind usually repeat.
• A Big Bad who is simply defeated by a trick is usually not memorable.
• A Horde can be frightening but usually isn't particularly noteworthy.