Thread by @StefanHuddlest1

Worldbuilding tip: let's talk about the banality of evil. The term comes from political theorist Hannah Arendt who after watching the trial of Nazi SS officer Adolf Eichmann in 1961 noted that sometimes vile things are the result 1/. #ttrpg #ttrpgfamily #dnd

of bureaucrats dutifully obeying orders. Scene chewing unabashedly "evil" antagonists and "relatable" "sympathetic" villains can be fun, but allow me to offer some alternatives. The trope that evil needs to be on the extremes has many problematic aspects, from indicating that 2/

Those with facial differences like scarring must be evil, to simply attaching "good" and "evil" to appreance. These tropes that play to binary thinking suck, IMO. In my history MA thesis on race and gender in early TTRPGS I pointed out that early female characters could be 3/

"beautiful" or "ugly" fitting a hag archtype, replacing Charisma with Comeliness. Early editions of the Arduin Gimroire TTRPG noted evil should always be exceedingly beautiful or horribly ugly, the Pit Fiend or the Succubus, those are your choices. In our entertainment we see 4/

These tropes often, one extreme or the other. But what about banal evil, which IMO is far scarier than the extremes thecan be those just "doing their jobs." Granted this type of "evil" might hit too close to home for some, 5/

believe me I get it, and it won't suit all play styles. If you are one of the above, as with all UmbralKnight advice, ignore and carry on. Anyway, extending the banality of evil, consider average looking BBEGs who wouldn't stand out in a crowd. 6/

Think about disinterested antagonists who do things because that's what the bureaucrats, the lawmakers, or the priests tell them to do. Protagonists can still be interesting without being at the extremes of appreance or behaviors and that alone can make them 7/

More compelling and often more chilling and real. Yes, Truely vile people exist but the people who just go along because they are fed, warm, entertained, and don't want to make trouble for themselves or who just do what they're told are historically far more common. 8/

People can and have justified the most awful things because someone else told them it was "right," or the the very least OK to do. Remember play safe and skip anything that doesn't feel right for life or your table/9