26 - Nemesis
I’ve written before about how to make a good recurring villain, including the time I made a pretty good nemesis for the central hero of The Watch House.
Face time. Power and weaknesses. Betrayal and otherwise making it personal. Metaphor. Neat gimmicks. Bigness.
I find it helps to have them annoy one or more PCs beyond the plot specific. And it’s pretty much essential to have them appear somewhere the PCs can’t just kill them.
Take a look at Indiana Jones’s assorted enemies and how Belloq in Raiders is the one that feels like a nemesis. An old rival with the same quest and a history of stealing Indy’s victories, happy to have a chat (when surrounded by armed thugs) and showing some human feeling at least involving Marion. He’s the one who talks Indy down from destroying the Ark. And his fatal flaw is that he did what he warned Indy about at the start - he chose the wrong friends.
But with the word Nemesis in particular I want to talk about Nemesis The Warlock.
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| If you met me aged about 15 to 18 there's around a 20% chance I was wearing this T-shirt. |
Nemesis is a long-running 2000 A.D. comic strip about an anarchistic alien wizard fighting a human supremacist theocracy called Termight with its army of Terminators. The setting has never had its own tabletop game unlike some of its fellow series, although we did get some Dice Man comic gamebook strips and a HeroClix figure, but it may have ever so slightly influenced Warhammer 40,000.
But it’s a more hopeful take where revolt can work, and good beings (and sometimes chaotic evil beings willing to work with them) can oppose and defeat oppressors.
26a - 5, 3, 3
Why, Proud, Genre
Your nemesis showing up to spoil your party (in a social situation where you can’t attack them) is one thing. How about a chance to do it to them in turn?
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