Let's talk about Villains (Off-Topic)

by EffortlessFury , Sunday, November 20, 2016, 20:07 (3091 days ago) @ Ragashingo

Something that kind of riffs off of the "I helped make this mess" is the Dark Brotherhood arc from Oblivion. Spoilers ahead, of course.

In it, you're given orders to kill via dead drops left by your handler Lucien. It turns out, however, that the dead drops were compromised by some third party and you were killing the wrong people.

One interesting narrative mechanic, if you wanted a more classically evil villain, could be to omit the middle man and have your villain direct the players to do what appear to be beneficial actions that later turn out to be just the opposite. You'd need to give them avenues the uncover the truth but they'd need to be paying closer attention.