This could even be a general topic for writing, but what is a good way to make a villain or even just a general antagonist with actual depth? I mean, its easy to make a 2 dimensional BBEG that wants to destroy or rule the world for no reason or because they're completely insane, but making an antagonist that has purpose and a deeper background of their own that maybe the PCs/main characters can even relate to or empathize with? That's trickier. In the case that they're a more shadowy looming threat, that could be even harder. Does anyone have suggestions on how to really make an antagonist come to life in the eyes of the PCs/main characters? Maybe some kind of trait to include when creating them? Any help or thoughts are appreciated!
idk but guess you just need some redeeming qualities, or points where players understand motivation eg
1. BBG isn't actually evil just he have more insight that common folks, while respected by those folk figure is not what it seems at first look. or bbg wasn't bad at first there was some unreasonable prejudice towards character for a long time which slowly turned character in what npc considered him - bbg
2. Revenge, sometimes very valid and personal. Eg fright in Tristor - family of travellers arrived in village and sold medicine to local villagers, few people died from poisoning. Angered Mob linched whole family, and left alive only teenager who was forced to see process. After execution of his family teenager get chased out of village. 20 years later after whole village forget about event and move on while having other issues, boy who already a man with bunch of obtained skills return to revenge for his parents
3. bbg is actually turned to evil side because it was the only way to save something important to him eg Ketheric Thorm
4. bbg is actually good at least in eyes of his people, eg kardassians from star trek - they was poor starving people until military coup didn't changed government on military and started wars which obtained resources enough for them for existence. They are conquerors but at same time they don't want their kids live in misery as they did
5. bbg was corrupted accidentaly or magically, bbg himself wasn't bad and didn't plan to turn into bbg, and his current status as bbg could be played like tragedy for everyone who knew him (eg wow arthas)
I find going over the Villans section of the DMG to be a good idea starter.
Knowing their Scheme, Methods, and Secret Weakness tend to start my brain ticking. If it doesn't give me good ideas I bring in the Personality, Ideas, Bonds, and Flaws from the PHB to go even deeper. If that's not enough, or I need even more fuel for the ideas fire I roll on This is Your Life from Xanathar's.
By then, I know so much about this proverbial villain that I'm ready to go, or they don't work, and I do something else.
As an example of it all, I'm going to make a villain now, with the roll always being '3' or the third entry on the table.
The Villain Bad Guy Person
DMG - Scheme: Magic - Carry out a deity's wishes
DMG - Method: Bounty Hunting or assassination
DMG - Secret Weakness - Weakened in the presence of a particular artifact
Okay, so the villain is on a mission from God, and I'm choosing assassination because it's clear and final and just feels better. They are weak to the presence of an artifact, and that has me thinking about vampires and holy symbols, so let's go with that. The villain is a vampire whose faith demands the assassination of some foe (a high priest of the sun?). Let's hit the PHB for a proper and holy background to make this a war between faiths.
The Acolyte background feels like the fit; let's learn more!
PHB - Personality - I see omens in every event and action
PHB - Ideal: Change - We must help bring about the changes the gods are working on
PHB - Bond: I owe my life to the priest who took me in
PHB - Flaw: My piety leads me to trust those of my faith.
Vampire assassin on a holy mission. Everything about this villain is about faith. Hostile faith. It's not enough to be faithful, and deeds must be done. Change must be made. The only thing to trust are others who share the faith. So I'm feeling a very Lawful Evil vampire here. Where Strahd sits back and plays with people for entertainment, this villain takes action. Very direct action. Their existence is to bring down the head of the Sun God's faith. They will do it directly.
Now, we need to humanize them so they aren't a blunt-force maniac. Xanathar's can help!
XGtE: Parents - Unknown, that priest adopted the villain (evil priest clearly)
XGtE: Birthplace: Home of some healer (...of the Sun God?)
XGtE: Siblings: Unknown, skipping
XGtE: Family: Temple - excellent!
XGtE: Lifestyle - Poor
XGtE: Childhood Home - None, moved a lot (traveling faith, or on the run?)
XGtE: Childhood Memories - Seen as different or strange, few companions
XGtE: Acolyte - Why did the villain become one? It felt natural. The faith surrounded them
XGtE: Class Training - Cleric. Their god gave them a sign
XGtE: Life Events (1): Fell in love
XGtE: Life Events (2): Worked as a cleric first, before this mission
XGtE: Life events (3): Supernatural Experience: Tempted by a devil
So now I see a turn with that last roll. The character was raised in the faith of the Sun God but turned by a Devil. Turned not only into a vampire but an agent of that devil. Their cleric levels become the base of how they operate, with a switched deity, and the mission to take out the head of their former faith is the completion of that path. As they hold the ideal of Change, they are actively assassinating various Sun God priests as they work their way to the final target.
Which gives me a story for adventure. The characters know priests are being assinated, but not by who or why. The church wants them to investigate and stop this before it gets worse.
That concludes too much story time with Agile_DM. Thank you for your time and attention. I hope this helped.
Just start by not making then EVIL, perhaps only evil. Then think about why they are doing this.
Forget about the big evil speech, instead make it an "I am so sorry but I have to do this. If you surrender, I will let you go."
Perhaps have them meet the BBEG before the battle begins and have him be NICE.
Example, you come across a wonderful nice Half Orc that saves you when you are falsely accused by the people, testifying to save you from arrest. Can't trust the Guard, they are corrupt, he tells you. The nobles are no better. You go on a short adventure or two, but then he has to leave, his father has died.
You go on another adventure, to find out what is going on, but eventually you discover than an Orc army is invading, They are planning on conquering your city - of corrupt nobles.
Guess who is leading the army? Yup. Apparently his father, the Orc King wanted to make a treaty with the nobles, but they had him arrested by the guard, took his Crown, the magical artifact that confirmed the new King and gave him massive powers, executed the King and melted down the artifact. He demands all the heads of the Nobles and to take the Holy Artifact of the city, an item that lets you cast Mass Heal once a day as compensation. The nobles refuse of course so he has declared war.
Unfortunately the Orc army is not very good at mercy, so if they invade they will kill all males and **** all the woman, before they get to the nobles and the artifact.
Evil, subtle, and oh yeah, he's on the side of Justice! - just with a massive side of murder and ****.
What gives your villain depth is where they live. That is, The Dungeon. Your villain could be as simple as "a dude that did something....IDK he bad" but as long as there is an awesome dungeon around him then he is a great villain. Halaster Blackcloak would be nothing without Undermountain, Strahd von Zarovich would be nothing without Castle Ravenloft, and Acererak would be nothing without The Tomb of Horrors.
The easy thing to say, but not to do, is: Every villain should be the hero of their own story. They should have a reason for why they are doing what they do and think what they are doing is for the general benefit, or at least not their own personal benefit, but then take that reason to an unacceptable extreme. MCU Thanos is a simple if effective example. Overpopulation was the problem, the solution, kill half of the population. Another classic example is the dictator who bring law and order at the expense of freedom (murder=death penalty, jaywalking=death penalty, complaining about the death penalty=death penalty). Like the Emperor in Star Wars who just wanted to bring order to a troubled galaxy and get some revenge against the jedi along the way. Another could be the researcher who wants to cure a disease, but needs to cross a lot of lines to be able to do it (Dr. Freeze in Batman is a pretty good example here). The kind of thing where you can look at it and say to yourself -- You know, they maybe have a point, and with a push I could maybe have gone that way myself.
Perspective also matters -- the difference between a freedom fighter and a terrorist is often what side you're on. Again, Star Wars gives a good example, there were plenty of imperial citizens who thought the rebellion were the evil ones. A good campaign can be had by the PCs realizing they've been on the wrong side and turning on their former mentor or leader.
The other thing is, power or riches (which is in many ways a form of power) should never be the end goal. They want power so they can do something with it (nothing selfish mind you. They are trying to help people). They want to wield the power. Power for its own sake is what makes a villain a mustache-twirling kind of boring. In D&D terms, you don't become a lich just for the sake of becoming a lich. You have something you want to do, and one lifetime simply isn't enough to do it, so you take things too far. You become a lich, and now you can hatch your plan over centuries, until a bunch of 13th level 20-year-olds come along and ruin it.
Use the Three Whys tactic. Ask why is the villain a villain? Pick one answer, and ask why about that, Repeat as many times as needed.
For example, a chancellor wants to overthrow the empress. Why? Because they despise the empress as a weak ruler. Why? Because the empress won't make a hard call that the chancellor asked for. Why? Because the empress is scarred by a previous experience with a similar decision.
Now we have a chancellor who wants to overthrow the ruler, but they have some legitimancy because they think a weak ruler is bad for the empire. However the empress is weak, but because she's been hurt in the past.
There are lots of opportunities for the characters. Support the chancellor, because he's technically right? Propose a different claimant to the throne? Support the empress in making the hard call? Find an alternative to the hard call? Something else?
The rule of thumb is that the villain is the hero of their own story. They're not doing it just to be "evil" or because the plot requires it. Give them a reason to be doing what they're doing.
A lot of this stuff is for good characters in general but it can all apply to villains too.
If you want your villain to be a likable character, check out the following list. They can still be evil and be likable. This list is for if you want to have a villain who is intriguing as a character and if you want your readers/players to be excited whenever they see them. A character must have at least five of these nine traits to be likable:
Courage
Unfair injury
Skill
Funny
Just plain nice
In danger
Loved by Friends and Family
Hardworking
Obsessed
You could also look at the different levels of the character. Look at:
Who they are on the outside. Their physical appearance, their outward attitude, how people who have barely met him see him.
Who they are to those who know him. Once someone becomes familiar with this character, what do they realize about him?
Who they really are. Stuff that only the villain actually knows or realizes. Sometimes these might be traits that the villain doesn't even actually realize about themself.
Contradictions can also make a better character. A highly trained soldier who has a pacifistic code or a doctor or healer that looks on the helpless and needy with disdain. Pick an aspect of their character and then add some sort of unexpected, unusual twist.
Good goals are important too. Power is usually not a legitimate goal on its own. Most of the time you want a reason why they desire this power so much.
Fear. Some villains are so well written you honestly fear for the characters whenever they meet. There are a lot of different techniques to make a terrifying villain. I'll use an example Queen Nimiane. She isn't really well known but N. D. Wilson is a great writer and is terribly underrated. You see the Queen show up in several books and sometimes only as a secondary threat. You see grown soldiers wither to dust at her feet. You see the soldiers she employs, Witchblades who are forced to serve her because if they put down their swords they instantly die, Fungal zombie monsters that can kill you with a single touch, shape shifting witch hounds that cause residual hauntings just by entering a building, finger men who are incredibly powerful multiplanal hunters who are controlled by a finger planted in the back of their heads. You learn that her magic's source is all the people and demigods of her dimension, yrggdrasil, and the souls of daemons and jinns she ate. The characters travel to her dimension and you see how it is an empty wasteland of stone and dust, completely devoid of any life. She isn't actually ever given real backstory motives, she is just a terrifying force of nature that wants to decimate all life because doing so feels good. Yet with all her power she has a strange fragility to her. The beautiful queen you see is actually just disguise self. She is an ugly, blind crone beneath the illusion. The characters knock her out with a baseball bat and she is so full of magic that she might actually explode if she is not careful. This just adds to the tension though because you can see how the characters could beat her but if they make one wrong move everything could come crashing down.
All characters need to think that they are the hero of their story. The cashier, the robber, the soldier, everyone the character meets should have their own goals, desires, and dreams. This applies to the villain as well. Most villains don't believe themselves to be villains, and if they are they should still believe that they are the protagonist of the story.
I think an often overlooked aspect to writing rich villains is that you actually have to tell your players things about them.
Now, you might think "well that's fine, during the battle at Frost Castle, the party will come face to face with the dreaded Ice Lord and he can tell them all about his tragic backstory as an orphan in the south pole in a classic, badass villain monolog!"
But here's the thing: players never. Let. The villain. Talk.
They get caught up in the moment, feeling the righteous fury and genre savviness coursing through them that leaves them all taking turns verbally dogpiling the baddy's dialogue with foolproof moral arguments and sick burns, so basically you'll get 3 sentences into your planned exposition before combat begins, and afterwards the biggest impression you've left on the players is "suck it Ice Boy!"
And the thing is I get it. Everyone wishes the hero of the movie had said That One Thing that would've undone the villain's entire worldview-- straightened out that one plot hole or flown the eagles to Mordor or what have you, to the point where its become part of the power fantasy of the game. People want to be so overwhelming good that evil is steamrolled under them.
To be clear, I'm not mocking this tendency! I've been there. I've been that player. I still am that player half the time. It's fun! It feels good! Why else do we play this game?
But if you want to tell a deeper story with your villain, this is a really long-winded way to say you need to convey the information about that story to the players in another way, without putting all the content in dialogue. Think about environmental storytelling: what do players find when infiltrating the villain's base? What letters and notes can they intercept? What orders can they find? What conversation between lieutenants might they overhear? I always think about in the Fallout games all the audio recordings you find telling stories about how X went horribly wrong in Vault YZ and yes its a little unrealistic that people were that dedicated to journaling, but it gets the point across and is discovered through exploration! That makes for excellent storytelling in game.
Another thing to consider so the story does feel more alive and allowing for some more character interaction is secondary sources. Maybe the players don't meet the Ice Lord right away, but they will meet people who have met him, fought him, served him, betrayed him, betrayed you FOR him, feared him, etc. The NPC's your players interact with on their road to confronting the bad guy should tell the story you want the players to hear. They can tell multiple stories even! Maybe each of those et ceteras I listed above have their own take on who this guy is, why he's like this, what he means to them, and how they feel about it. They can even all be true. Or mostly true-- people are multi-faceted. Let your players pick apart what's true from what's become mythologized as they go, chipping away layers as they discover who this villain really is. Then, maybe when they do confront the Ice Lord, they'll be invested to the point where they don't just see him as a figure to be mocked and dismissed. Maybe.
A good way to show a different light on a villain is to give the players another perspective. For example, maybe a warmongering king's people are all for this war, or the people on the other side that your party works for aren't as guilt-free as they said they were. It's all about showing the players that their idea of the villain isn't always correct. You could show these npcs before or after meeting the villain, either to give them second thoughts about confronting them in the first place, or to have them question their past actions. It's up you which one you think would be better.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Forever DM and perpetually online
Second-In-Command and Acting Master of the Underground
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
This could even be a general topic for writing, but what is a good way to make a villain or even just a general antagonist with actual depth? I mean, its easy to make a 2 dimensional BBEG that wants to destroy or rule the world for no reason or because they're completely insane, but making an antagonist that has purpose and a deeper background of their own that maybe the PCs/main characters can even relate to or empathize with? That's trickier. In the case that they're a more shadowy looming threat, that could be even harder. Does anyone have suggestions on how to really make an antagonist come to life in the eyes of the PCs/main characters? Maybe some kind of trait to include when creating them? Any help or thoughts are appreciated!
idk but guess you just need some redeeming qualities, or points where players understand motivation eg
1. BBG isn't actually evil just he have more insight that common folks, while respected by those folk figure is not what it seems at first look. or bbg wasn't bad at first there was some unreasonable prejudice towards character for a long time which slowly turned character in what npc considered him - bbg
2. Revenge, sometimes very valid and personal. Eg fright in Tristor - family of travellers arrived in village and sold medicine to local villagers, few people died from poisoning. Angered Mob linched whole family, and left alive only teenager who was forced to see process. After execution of his family teenager get chased out of village. 20 years later after whole village forget about event and move on while having other issues, boy who already a man with bunch of obtained skills return to revenge for his parents
3. bbg is actually turned to evil side because it was the only way to save something important to him eg Ketheric Thorm
4. bbg is actually good at least in eyes of his people, eg kardassians from star trek - they was poor starving people until military coup didn't changed government on military and started wars which obtained resources enough for them for existence. They are conquerors but at same time they don't want their kids live in misery as they did
5. bbg was corrupted accidentaly or magically, bbg himself wasn't bad and didn't plan to turn into bbg, and his current status as bbg could be played like tragedy for everyone who knew him (eg wow arthas)
I find going over the Villans section of the DMG to be a good idea starter.
Knowing their Scheme, Methods, and Secret Weakness tend to start my brain ticking. If it doesn't give me good ideas I bring in the Personality, Ideas, Bonds, and Flaws from the PHB to go even deeper. If that's not enough, or I need even more fuel for the ideas fire I roll on This is Your Life from Xanathar's.
By then, I know so much about this proverbial villain that I'm ready to go, or they don't work, and I do something else.
As an example of it all, I'm going to make a villain now, with the roll always being '3' or the third entry on the table.
The Villain Bad Guy Person
Okay, so the villain is on a mission from God, and I'm choosing assassination because it's clear and final and just feels better. They are weak to the presence of an artifact, and that has me thinking about vampires and holy symbols, so let's go with that. The villain is a vampire whose faith demands the assassination of some foe (a high priest of the sun?). Let's hit the PHB for a proper and holy background to make this a war between faiths.
The Acolyte background feels like the fit; let's learn more!
Vampire assassin on a holy mission. Everything about this villain is about faith. Hostile faith. It's not enough to be faithful, and deeds must be done. Change must be made. The only thing to trust are others who share the faith. So I'm feeling a very Lawful Evil vampire here. Where Strahd sits back and plays with people for entertainment, this villain takes action. Very direct action. Their existence is to bring down the head of the Sun God's faith. They will do it directly.
Now, we need to humanize them so they aren't a blunt-force maniac. Xanathar's can help!
So now I see a turn with that last roll. The character was raised in the faith of the Sun God but turned by a Devil. Turned not only into a vampire but an agent of that devil. Their cleric levels become the base of how they operate, with a switched deity, and the mission to take out the head of their former faith is the completion of that path. As they hold the ideal of Change, they are actively assassinating various Sun God priests as they work their way to the final target.
Which gives me a story for adventure. The characters know priests are being assinated, but not by who or why. The church wants them to investigate and stop this before it gets worse.
That concludes too much story time with Agile_DM. Thank you for your time and attention. I hope this helped.
Here are some options:
Example, you come across a wonderful nice Half Orc that saves you when you are falsely accused by the people, testifying to save you from arrest. Can't trust the Guard, they are corrupt, he tells you. The nobles are no better. You go on a short adventure or two, but then he has to leave, his father has died.
You go on another adventure, to find out what is going on, but eventually you discover than an Orc army is invading, They are planning on conquering your city - of corrupt nobles.
Guess who is leading the army? Yup. Apparently his father, the Orc King wanted to make a treaty with the nobles, but they had him arrested by the guard, took his Crown, the magical artifact that confirmed the new King and gave him massive powers, executed the King and melted down the artifact. He demands all the heads of the Nobles and to take the Holy Artifact of the city, an item that lets you cast Mass Heal once a day as compensation. The nobles refuse of course so he has declared war.
Unfortunately the Orc army is not very good at mercy, so if they invade they will kill all males and **** all the woman, before they get to the nobles and the artifact.
Evil, subtle, and oh yeah, he's on the side of Justice! - just with a massive side of murder and ****.
What gives your villain depth is where they live. That is, The Dungeon. Your villain could be as simple as "a dude that did something....IDK he bad" but as long as there is an awesome dungeon around him then he is a great villain. Halaster Blackcloak would be nothing without Undermountain, Strahd von Zarovich would be nothing without Castle Ravenloft, and Acererak would be nothing without The Tomb of Horrors.
The easy thing to say, but not to do, is: Every villain should be the hero of their own story. They should have a reason for why they are doing what they do and think what they are doing is for the general benefit, or at least not their own personal benefit, but then take that reason to an unacceptable extreme. MCU Thanos is a simple if effective example. Overpopulation was the problem, the solution, kill half of the population. Another classic example is the dictator who bring law and order at the expense of freedom (murder=death penalty, jaywalking=death penalty, complaining about the death penalty=death penalty). Like the Emperor in Star Wars who just wanted to bring order to a troubled galaxy and get some revenge against the jedi along the way. Another could be the researcher who wants to cure a disease, but needs to cross a lot of lines to be able to do it (Dr. Freeze in Batman is a pretty good example here). The kind of thing where you can look at it and say to yourself -- You know, they maybe have a point, and with a push I could maybe have gone that way myself.
Perspective also matters -- the difference between a freedom fighter and a terrorist is often what side you're on. Again, Star Wars gives a good example, there were plenty of imperial citizens who thought the rebellion were the evil ones. A good campaign can be had by the PCs realizing they've been on the wrong side and turning on their former mentor or leader.
The other thing is, power or riches (which is in many ways a form of power) should never be the end goal. They want power so they can do something with it (nothing selfish mind you. They are trying to help people). They want to wield the power. Power for its own sake is what makes a villain a mustache-twirling kind of boring. In D&D terms, you don't become a lich just for the sake of becoming a lich. You have something you want to do, and one lifetime simply isn't enough to do it, so you take things too far. You become a lich, and now you can hatch your plan over centuries, until a bunch of 13th level 20-year-olds come along and ruin it.
Use the Three Whys tactic. Ask why is the villain a villain? Pick one answer, and ask why about that, Repeat as many times as needed.
For example, a chancellor wants to overthrow the empress.
Why? Because they despise the empress as a weak ruler.
Why? Because the empress won't make a hard call that the chancellor asked for.
Why? Because the empress is scarred by a previous experience with a similar decision.
Now we have a chancellor who wants to overthrow the ruler, but they have some legitimancy because they think a weak ruler is bad for the empire. However the empress is weak, but because she's been hurt in the past.
There are lots of opportunities for the characters. Support the chancellor, because he's technically right? Propose a different claimant to the throne? Support the empress in making the hard call? Find an alternative to the hard call? Something else?
The rule of thumb is that the villain is the hero of their own story. They're not doing it just to be "evil" or because the plot requires it. Give them a reason to be doing what they're doing.
A lot of this stuff is for good characters in general but it can all apply to villains too.
If you want your villain to be a likable character, check out the following list. They can still be evil and be likable. This list is for if you want to have a villain who is intriguing as a character and if you want your readers/players to be excited whenever they see them. A character must have at least five of these nine traits to be likable:
You could also look at the different levels of the character. Look at:
Contradictions can also make a better character. A highly trained soldier who has a pacifistic code or a doctor or healer that looks on the helpless and needy with disdain. Pick an aspect of their character and then add some sort of unexpected, unusual twist.
Good goals are important too. Power is usually not a legitimate goal on its own. Most of the time you want a reason why they desire this power so much.
Fear. Some villains are so well written you honestly fear for the characters whenever they meet. There are a lot of different techniques to make a terrifying villain. I'll use an example Queen Nimiane. She isn't really well known but N. D. Wilson is a great writer and is terribly underrated. You see the Queen show up in several books and sometimes only as a secondary threat. You see grown soldiers wither to dust at her feet. You see the soldiers she employs, Witchblades who are forced to serve her because if they put down their swords they instantly die, Fungal zombie monsters that can kill you with a single touch, shape shifting witch hounds that cause residual hauntings just by entering a building, finger men who are incredibly powerful multiplanal hunters who are controlled by a finger planted in the back of their heads. You learn that her magic's source is all the people and demigods of her dimension, yrggdrasil, and the souls of daemons and jinns she ate. The characters travel to her dimension and you see how it is an empty wasteland of stone and dust, completely devoid of any life. She isn't actually ever given real backstory motives, she is just a terrifying force of nature that wants to decimate all life because doing so feels good. Yet with all her power she has a strange fragility to her. The beautiful queen you see is actually just disguise self. She is an ugly, blind crone beneath the illusion. The characters knock her out with a baseball bat and she is so full of magic that she might actually explode if she is not careful. This just adds to the tension though because you can see how the characters could beat her but if they make one wrong move everything could come crashing down.
All characters need to think that they are the hero of their story. The cashier, the robber, the soldier, everyone the character meets should have their own goals, desires, and dreams. This applies to the villain as well. Most villains don't believe themselves to be villains, and if they are they should still believe that they are the protagonist of the story.
I think an often overlooked aspect to writing rich villains is that you actually have to tell your players things about them.
Now, you might think "well that's fine, during the battle at Frost Castle, the party will come face to face with the dreaded Ice Lord and he can tell them all about his tragic backstory as an orphan in the south pole in a classic, badass villain monolog!"
But here's the thing: players never. Let. The villain. Talk.
They get caught up in the moment, feeling the righteous fury and genre savviness coursing through them that leaves them all taking turns verbally dogpiling the baddy's dialogue with foolproof moral arguments and sick burns, so basically you'll get 3 sentences into your planned exposition before combat begins, and afterwards the biggest impression you've left on the players is "suck it Ice Boy!"
And the thing is I get it. Everyone wishes the hero of the movie had said That One Thing that would've undone the villain's entire worldview-- straightened out that one plot hole or flown the eagles to Mordor or what have you, to the point where its become part of the power fantasy of the game. People want to be so overwhelming good that evil is steamrolled under them.
To be clear, I'm not mocking this tendency! I've been there. I've been that player. I still am that player half the time. It's fun! It feels good! Why else do we play this game?
But if you want to tell a deeper story with your villain, this is a really long-winded way to say you need to convey the information about that story to the players in another way, without putting all the content in dialogue. Think about environmental storytelling: what do players find when infiltrating the villain's base? What letters and notes can they intercept? What orders can they find? What conversation between lieutenants might they overhear? I always think about in the Fallout games all the audio recordings you find telling stories about how X went horribly wrong in Vault YZ and yes its a little unrealistic that people were that dedicated to journaling, but it gets the point across and is discovered through exploration! That makes for excellent storytelling in game.
Another thing to consider so the story does feel more alive and allowing for some more character interaction is secondary sources. Maybe the players don't meet the Ice Lord right away, but they will meet people who have met him, fought him, served him, betrayed him, betrayed you FOR him, feared him, etc. The NPC's your players interact with on their road to confronting the bad guy should tell the story you want the players to hear. They can tell multiple stories even! Maybe each of those et ceteras I listed above have their own take on who this guy is, why he's like this, what he means to them, and how they feel about it. They can even all be true. Or mostly true-- people are multi-faceted. Let your players pick apart what's true from what's become mythologized as they go, chipping away layers as they discover who this villain really is. Then, maybe when they do confront the Ice Lord, they'll be invested to the point where they don't just see him as a figure to be mocked and dismissed. Maybe.
A good way to show a different light on a villain is to give the players another perspective. For example, maybe a warmongering king's people are all for this war, or the people on the other side that your party works for aren't as guilt-free as they said they were. It's all about showing the players that their idea of the villain isn't always correct. You could show these npcs before or after meeting the villain, either to give them second thoughts about confronting them in the first place, or to have them question their past actions. It's up you which one you think would be better.
Forever DM and perpetually online
Second-In-Command and Acting Master of the Underground