If you do any game design, whether electronic or pen-and-paper, one of the keys to success is having memorable antagonists to challenge your players. Toothpick gives you some hints on how to build bosses that will be remembered for the ages.
This is written from the perspective of a pen-and-paper game, but the basics apply no matter what the game you're designing for as long as long as it's roleplaying based. The Ferret has had many experiences building memorable antagonists for his parties. Yes sir, this is one of the things that makes roleplaying games fun! When you've got the Big Bad Evil Guy (BBEG) or that AOGG (Annoyingly Obnoxious Good Guy) who stands against everything the party holds dear, it makes for a better game. When the Ferret goes about designing just such an antagonist, there a few rules of thumb he follows:
1. Lasting Power
The antagonist must survive more than one adventure/scene. An antagonist which gets wiped out by the party tank in a single encounter will be seen as only so much roadkill in the grand scheme of things. That's not what we're after. The antagonist must be able to face up to the party, to be able take what it can dish out. You get the idea.
2. Intelligence
Dumb antagonists are dead antagonists. Dumb antagonists get tricked and out-maneuvered by intelligent roleplayers, thus ensuring that said dumb antagonist has no lasting power. A tank with a bunch of hit points is still a single encounter antagonist, especially when the party has heavy artillery (wizards, sorcerers, clerics with flame strike) to bear. If the party doesn't have heavy artillery, this is one of those meh encounters. You know what I'm talking about... the 15 round championship fight that last for three hours and leaves everyone with cramps in their dice rolling hands. This is not a good game for most.
3. Escape Routes
Given that our antagonist has lasting power and is intelligent, the antagonist will surely consider that he or she is not the be all to end all. What that means is the antagonist would have considered that someone is going to come along that can smoke him/her. Therefore, being intelligent, an escape route is planned beforehand. This way, the antagonist lasts more than one scene. An antagonist that can soak the party's attacks but has no way out leads us to the scenario I just described in #2.
4. Active Opposition
Intelligent antagonists don't sit still and wait for the fight to come to them. Not if they're intelligent, they don't. Intelligent antagonists actively consider what the likely options are for the party and considers what counter-moves are possible. Now here's where a lot of game masters screw things up. They start considering what an antagonist can do from the perspective of the game master. BAD idea. See, the game master is effectively the all-powerful god of the game. The game master knows things the antagonist can't know. The game master must consider things from the perspective of the antagonist. And that leads to...
5. Making Mistakes
A memorable antagonist is one the party can have some measure of success against, even if it's small. This goes into that whole psychology thing of inconsistent rewards. Even though the party may succeed only a small fraction of the time, that's what they'll remember... sort of like slot machine players. The psychology is well-researched and well-supported. Use it! Antagonists aren't omniscient. That means some of their plans will fail. If the party is the direct cause of the failure, all the better. A very intelligent antagonist will succeed most of the time, but the few failures he/she does have will continue to encourage a party. And a smart party will use these victories to determine the weaknesses of said antagonist. After enough experience, this will lead to:
6. A Final, Memorable Defeat
A memorable antagonist is one that is eventually overcome. Gamers like to tell tales and the tales they like to tell the most are when they succeed. If you're designing an antagonist you want remembered, plan his or her defeat. If the antagonist never goes down, the tale won't be one of the party triumphing over an almost impossible foe. Rather, it'll be about the one boss / NPC that really sucked because he or she couldn't be beat. That tale will get dragged out during gripe sessions, which isn't what you want. And make sure that when you plan the antagonist's defeat, it's a good one. A cheezy ending is just that: a cheezy ending. Nothing is more of a letdown than having built up to the final fight only to have it go by like a bug hitting the windshield.
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