using Villains

A while back I discussed the traps that a gamemaster can fall into, one of mine is the Scheming Villain; that is those villains, fell fiends and foul fellows such as Professor Moriarty, or the insidious Fu Manchu. Most of this type of villains seems descended from Cardinal Richelieu. For me the scheming villain is the easiest villain to do and I usually fall into these, heck with the type of games I run a scheming villain seems mostly du jour.

I’m trying hard with tantanea to avoid having a big scheming villain behind everything. Sure there are some schemers but I’m trying to avoid the Richelieu archetype. So my question for everyone is what sorts of villains have you used in your gaming and what makes them distinct?