Fanatics: Making a Compelling Villain

In lieu of the recent death of Osama bin Laden, I thought it might be appropriate to take a look at fanatics in role-playing games. Fanatical evil guys are a staple of almost any role-playing game. Whether it's the dark wizard bent on world conquest or the evil scientist with a diabolical vision of grandeur, it's hard to avoid this trope. Nor should it be avoided entirely. But in the tradition of writing good fiction, fanatics are much more disturbing and memorable if you allow the players to partially enter their world, learn about their twisted logic, and see them as complex characters who aren't necessarily insane or evil to the core.

Fanatics believe they are the good guys.

It's easy to think of a fanatical leader as utterly selfish or even gleefully pursuing evil like the Wicked Witch of the West. But real-world villains are more dangerous because they usually honestly believe they are serving the greater good, a greater good no one else seems to see or is too afraid to embrace. It's often easy to give the sense of this by taking some cause of good and pushing it beyond the boundaries of reason.

For example, "Dragons maraud villages and kill hundreds. Therefore, dragons should be slain in the name of justice." Very laudable, right? But what happens when the dragon-slaying champion starts torturing young dragons to learn the whereabouts of their elders? Or starts destroying nests of dragon eggs? What about sacrificing an entire village of innocents in order to lure a single elder dragon into a deadly trap? Or killing all his dragons by means of unwilling, massively poisoned sacrificial virgins?

Fanatics firmly believe the ends justify the means, and believe in their goal so strongly that nearly anything becomes justifiable for the sake of the cause.

Fanatics back up their claims with compelling arguments.

Part of the reason that fanatics attract a following is because they sound so convincing. Most fanatical villains don't work alone, and it's impossible to convince others to work for you if you don't tell them something they want to hear or promise them something they can't resist. Fanatics don't coerce through fear. They seduce. They beguile. They awe. Above all, they persuade. Some do it through sheer passion. Others by sounding totally reasonable.

Just think of all the pseudo-science that white supremacist groups sometimes employ to back up their claims of being a 'master race.' There's no need for a fanatic to overtly lie when they can simply whip up the latent fears and grudges in a given population, focus them on specific targets, and give otherwise ordinary people a seemingly factual basis upon which to justify their hate.

The followers of fanatics honestly believe in the mission, even if their leader does not.

What this means is that fanatical followers will NOT betray their leader. They will fight to the death for their leader. They will resist and even welcome all sorts of coercion and torture and will martyr themselves for the love of the cause. Even if a fanatical leader is killed, her death may spur her followers to even greater devotion to the cause. Now, instead of one archenemy, the players are faced with dozens or a whole mob all intent on avenging the death of their beloved leader.

The more you try to reason with a fanatic, the tighter they cling to their convictions. 

Fanatics and especially fanatical followers are extremely paranoid. Any hint of wavering loyalty or contradictory information is responded to rapidly and dramatically. Usually, the response follows one of these patterns:

• Encouraged strongly to return to the status quo, but done so in a positive way, "as a concerned friend," for instance.
• Suppressed. The information is deleted or destroyed. The disloyal person is forced to keep quiet or is ostracised.
• Discredited. The information is a lie. The disloyal person is a liar or, worse, a planted spy of the enemy.
• Chastised. The information is placed on a 'banned' list or is called malicious and evil. The disloyal persion is sanctioned on an institutional level, perhaps arrested or fired from a job, exiled, forced to apologize on pain of worse punishment. 
• Silenced. Fanatics destroy sources of dissent with quiet violence, not overt slaughter. In order to maintain their pristine image, they usually resort to conspiracies of murder or assassins to deal with 'enemies from within.' It is rare that they whip up a mob to kill an individual or order a mass slaughter in broad daylight. 

At the very least, a fanatic will rationalize away any counter-arguments made to convince them they are in the wrong. People do this all the time in real life: they ignore it, they laugh at it, they pounce on any small weakness in the argument, they question the validity of any references or sources of supporting information that are mentioned. Any of these reactions, magnified dramatically, can make for an appropriate fanatical response.
 
If you follow these guidelines when creating a fanatical following, organization or villain, you will find it makes for a far more sinister challenge for players to overcome.