Deathclaw the puppy kicker has strong 90s energy. Love it.

When people are into "morally grey antagonists" then arguing for "pure evil" villains might be an uphill battle - but you are running up that hill.

“Morcock” is not an unfortunate last name, for the right person.

I like capital E evil villains who started out gray, but have continued to make the 'bad choice' until they are truly evil. In this way I'm able to give the idea that there's a road towards evil and being 'morally gray' might be a short stop on the way to pure evil.

I start campaigns with EVIL villains who once were good and just kept being bad, so when players come across the next morally gray villain the PCs have to wonder 'should i empathize? Should i try to redeem? Or should I stop them before they keep going down the road I've seen before?'

If you don't show players that morally gray villains CAN become pure evil, then they’re less likely to actually fight against whatever your antagonist is doing.

John Wick sold me on the power of the puppy kicker. Wick himself is kind of a bad guy. He is an assassin. His redeeming qualities are he mostly kills one bad guy for another bad guy rather than innocents and he likes puppies. When he gets attacked by greedy pricks with no moral qualms about killing puppies, even the nicest, most kindhearted little mom who doesn't like action movies seems to lose all moral reservations with Wick killing scores of people to enact justice on the puppy killer, which is impressive because he's not even that evil all things considered.

Congrats on reaching 11 years, good sir!

Then there was the GM who named his BBEG Filet so the underlings could be called Filet's Minions...

If Vecna is an actual god of secrets, than every version of him that appeared in adventures or out homegames can be a big scheme of lies for a multiverse takeover!

Hurray! My character found Vecna's head.  I can't wait to use it....

I used Vecna as my ultimate villain back in highschool between 1985 and 1987.  Back then there was NO information about Vecna.  Just the Hand and Eye writeups in the DMG.  Just from those two writeups, I came up with a Lich who was the most powerful wizard and necromancer in history who had to be dismembered and scattered to stop him.

In the earlier part of the campaign, the party's theif took a killing blow, but I gave him a choice.....he can keep his life but lose a hand.  The theif's player chose to lose his hand because he thought that would look cool.

A few xp levels later, the characters came across a treasure horde after fighting their first beholder and among that treasure was a golden box protected by multiple wards.  The pary wizard dismantled the wards and they found the dessicsted hand within.  The theif just grabbed the hand and placed it against his stump before anyone could stop him and it attached itself.  And that started off a 3-year arc of the return and rise of Vecna.  Eventually the theif (really the hand) lead the party to find the eye (guarded by a dragon) and moving on its own, the hand of Vecna ripped out the theifs eye and put the Eye of Vecna in its place and Vecna then took over the body of the theif.   (I had already discussed this with the theifs player as he had expressed a desire to try another character class) so they characters had to try and hunt down and defeat their former comrade before he could attain his full power.  They failed and Vecna was able to raise an army of the dead to invade the lands of the living so the characters had to pivot to trying to convince all the nations who were constantly at war with one another to put aside their differences and unite against the undead horde.

Such good times.  Back before we considered these tropes to be "tired".  (For the record, I still love these tropes)

Somewhat related, I think it's also valuable for games to have unambiguously Good characters. It can be interesting for players to form tense alliances with people who might double cross them or who have selfish motivations, or for friendly NPCs to have dark secrets, but I think it's also important for there to be at least a few people that the players can count on to reliably do the right thing

I am surprised how rare it is to hear about games where the players actually tried to show the morally grey villain the error of his ways. I think I hear about it more when they're facing irredeemably Evil villains than relatable ones that chose the wrong path; in the latter case, all the discussion is about kill or capture. I wonder how much of that is due to DMs not making it clear to their players that, succeed or fail, talking is always an option with an NPC that would really prefer not to kill them if given an option.

Early on in my Tyranny of Dragons campaign, one of my players was conflicted about the moral implications of destroying dragon eggs, and me and other players taught her dragons that dragons were basically always evil. She was a bit miffed upon learning about metallic dragons, lol

Morally grey villains are for engaging with questions about morality, ethics and perspectives while still having fun - they're for engaging in both a battle of might and also wits, as you destroy the villain not just physically, but philosophically, rejecting their evil with your ability to debate and reason.

Evil villains are for when I have a bad day and need a punching bag.

Meanwhile I am still haunted by the Planescape villains who tried to rid the world of magic, because what's stopping a witch from tricking a father into killing his daughter with a body swap?

One of the straight up evil characters in my setting is a little weird in that he was a PC. Abder is an evil lich who rules over the the undead city of Krell. He's objectively evil and very self interested, but nobody has done anything about him because, since he's a PC, he's one of the heroes who saved the world and freed the Darklands from its curse. Of course he also actively holds that over people to get what he wants. The only thing keeping him in check is the Church has basically said "Hey, if you step out of line we will take action," and Abder goes along with it because he just thinks "That seems like far more of a hassle than its worth and I have more important things to worry about."

4:00 Thank you Dadis girlfriend for including this in the script. The world is a better place now that we've heard him say that.

I wish I could have a game about this at some point. I ALWAYS end up with Intrigue and Grey. And I just HATE it.

I love morally gray villains with tangible motivations, but I think they work best as lesser villains or villains of shorter campaigns. For a long and epic campaign you really need an irredeemably evil villain. Also playing irredeemably evil villains is very, very fun...don't read too much into that.

I cackled when you got to Deathclaw the puppy kicker! Absolutely cackled! Great job!