“I am a victim of your carnivorous lunar activities.”
Gerald Bringsley, An American Werewolf in London
As I mentioned in my first Preparation article, I design my own campaign world and like to throw my players into it with very light direction. That means I need lots of potential villains. I create my villains by making up lots of NPCs and giving them odd quirks and – in the beginning of the game – a brief tie into one of the PCs. The ones that are fun to play and survive get to become villains. In my current campaign the party returned to the home town of one player character, and I decided to drop a character based on Gaston from Disney’s version of Beauty and the Beast. Why Gaston? Because it is a complete character I can drop in, see if the players bite, and either toss away or incorporate into future plotting if the NPC is fun at the table. I named him Gregor.
Gregor was the local bully growing up. His father was wealthy. Gregor was handsome and inherited his father’s wealth. Naturally he rose to a position in leadership – becoming the mayor of a small rural town with – to quote my notes – “typical superstition tropes re: outsiders.”
Gregor thus had a personality and a little dominion to terrorize. I needed a twist on the character to make him credible villain material, rather than just a low-level thug. So I made him a werewolf.