To Evil, or Not to Evil

[orikes]

... That is the question.

What place do villains have in the community style roleplaying on a MU*? Everyone loves a good villain, but it’s very hard to get and keep good players for them. Too often the players who want to play them don’t have any understanding of the word subtlety. Or, conversely, your good players of villains end up burning out from dealing with the OOC grief they get for being bad.

I’ve played on games where anyone can create anything and what you are is what you are. I’ve played on games that specifically allowed players to apply for characters designed to be antagonists. I’ve played on games that declared villains would be NPCs and that’s that. Ultimately, I haven’t been happy with any one choice. I still can’t decide if having villain player characters is a good thing or a bad thing.

With players running your bad guys, you can get some amazingly inspired roleplay happening. With mature players behind the antagonists and the protagonists, the stories take on a whole new dynamic. Players realize they no longer have the safety net they act like they have when the bad guys are NPCs. The interaction between good, bad, and the gray stuff in the middle takes on a life of its own.

With that, though, you get all sorts of potential staffing headaches. There are the bad players who make everyone’s life miserable by playing a bad villain. I don’t mean a person who has evil in their hearts, but simply a poorly played character. If they don’t let the power go to their heads of being a bad guy, they start acting like they’re a good guy and get upset when people start plotting against them.

Then there are the players who can’t separate IC from OOC and start taking the insults of a character as insults against them instead of their own character. Combine that with the eternal ‘white hat’ and you burn out some very solid players trying to play antagonists. I’m sure anyone who played on Aether during the heyday remembers Altair. He went through what, two Princeps, three Khalids, and countless Praetorians and Agni Haidar.

Is there a happy medium where you can promote dynamic stories without having to run every single NPC to drive conflict, but avoid the worst of the OOC headaches that come from villain PCs?

I’ve wondered if perhaps a mix of NPC/PC would work for this type of thing. With NPCs, even if played with a character bit, players seem to know that the NPC is tied to the life of the plot they’re part of. They have a shelf life that will expire at some point, thereby making the danger less real. Perhaps making some ‘feature’ villains would solve the problem. The character itself would be ultimately owned by staff, but under the immediate control of the player behind the bit.

Someone I used to play with ages ago had written an essay on the art of playing a villain. One of the things he suggested is that when you play a bad guy, keep your RL and OOC identity quiet. This serves two purposes. It keeps the mystery of the character in tact, and lets the other players focus their enmity at the character rather than the player. I’ve always thought this was a wonderful idea and would love to see more people practice it.

So what do you think?

[Poll #695508]

Comments

[jengagne.livejournal.com]

Considering I've played my share of villain characters (and characters I thought of as antiheroic who other players declared villains!) of course I'd argue players should be allowed to play villains. They shouldn't get any special chargen advantages, though.

For feature-level villains -- preferably the temporary/predoomed type so the player isn't invested heavily in survival -- then I can see having it be a not-too-strictly-judged app character with preset abilities and limits, etc. Even though these sort of villains are meant to make a splash, they shouldn't be super powerful, and ideally they'll have built-in reasons to AVOID being so oversensitive or depraved that they just randomly kill people. That way, the villain's player can avoid painting other players into corners.

That said, I also like what you describe above -- the idea that a major villain COULD be a long term threat if s/he plays her cards right is very appealing.

Even then though, I think you need villain players who are willing to take an NPC-ish attitude toward the character's survivability; stirring things up means they must be OOCly willing to take the hit for the consequences if they get cornered or trapped or caught in a way that makes sense. Yet, correspondingly, they may need to cut other players who don't want trouble more slack. Maybe it also depends on how consent-oriented the game is, though.

I mean, my personal favorite kind of villain is the evil predator type who slinks around, frames people, generally makes life miserable as cleverly and sneakily as possible... victims being all consenting players... until someone finally catches up with him/her and gives them the well-deserved smackdown.

Correspondingly, my least favorite kind of villain is any (poorly played) type who is either SO individually powerful or so organizationally powerful that starting anything with them or even just crossing them in ways you might not have even had a chance to realize... will result in insta-doom for your character. When these sorts go to stir up trouble, it affects lots of players who'd rather not deal with it OOC or know they can't resist IC, and as a result they just end up frustrated.

I think it is possible to play an individually powerful or organizationally powerful villain well, but it requires even more willingness to work with rather than against other players OOCly -- or a willingness to just plain avoid forcing already-annoyed players to deal with your sprawling all-powerful network of faceless ninja minions. ;)

I'd be happy to hear counterpoints to all this, though. Please, slice my theories to ribbons and offer alternate approaches! :D

[jengagne.livejournal.com]

P.S.: Read Astra's article lately? http://realms.demoe.com/villain.html
I hadn't seen it in a while... just dug it back up. I need to reread it myself.

[orikes13.livejournal.com]

I agree that the ALL POWERFUL villain is just annoying. Whether it's run as an NPC by a staffer, or a player who just happened to get a heap load of points to build the omnipotent badass.

I think one of the keys you hit on was 'consenting players'. Players who are willing to have bad things happen, and not just in the titilating (kinky) way that I've seen go down on some games.

Ultimately, rp ends up being a cooperative venture, whether you're looking at the relationship between staff/gm and players or characters with each other.

[jengagne.livejournal.com]

RE: consenting players... Since some players are there to goof off and some are more inclined to seek drama (or even traumadrama), I do think it's very important for the villain to clear things preemptively with the players of the would-be victim. Preferably, the would-be victims also volunteered for the victimization OOC!

Anyway, there's so much more to being an evil or borderline evil character than just stalking and mauling people...

[pomr.livejournal.com]

Personally I've seen so few villains played well and responsibly that I'm dead set against letting them into the hands of players at all.

Even if I know the person in question I wouldn't feel right about giving them a villain since I wouldn't give it to someone else. And one must be fair if you're going to staff.

Villains should be the exclusive property of the GM, or in this case Plot Staff/Storytellers in my (not so)humble opinion. I also don't allow evil PCs in my tabletop games; to me the games are about heroes, and this isn't suitable for all audiences, I realize this.

[jengagne.livejournal.com]

Wow, not even any evil PCs? I wonder, what is it that makes a villain-nonvillain conflict so very different from any other IC conflict?

If you have the staff to support it, I can see how running the villains strictly as NPCs could still work. It just seems very high maintenance.

[pomr.livejournal.com]

I don't see anything fun about inter-party conflict. It is my job as the GM to keep the players busy anyways. They shouldn't need to fight each other too. The few time inter-party foo started up it caused WAY more stress than I was willing to put up with, and left a lot of people with bad feelings.

That combined with the time when my character was murdered by another PC left a bad taste in my mouth. I don't see what is fun about internecine struggle. Those resources can be better spent...for example, rearranging one's sock drawer.

See, at Crucible City the solution is that there are a ton of Prestatted villains that folks can emit. This takes a lot of the load off staff's shoulders.

[orikes13.livejournal.com]

I can see the point of that for a lot of reasons, and in action, the concept doesn't suck on a super hero/comic book MU*...

*BUT*.. it makes for a boring game to a certain degree. I think players tend to develop a certain complacency when they know that every average joe they meet on the game is going to be a 'nice' guy. Any sense of conflict that occurs during every day play ends up being soap opera drama of relationships and the like.

Don't get me wrong. I know the pain you speak of. But I'm hoping to find a middle ground that balances between the good and the bad of both ends of the spectrum.

[goweli.livejournal.com]

Altair, I always hated that little bastard.

Sorry. Had to say it.

[orikes13.livejournal.com]

Heh. You were one of the 'burned out' people I was thinking of when it came to dealing with that particular prize winner.

He tried so desperately to be a nice guy. If only he'd had an actual clue.

[niherlas.livejournal.com]

Seconded. Effing twit.

Arahael/Niherlas.

[elsewhere7.livejournal.com]

I'll chime in.

I've seen two types of villain-players. One is the type who says 'I'm playing a villain because I want to run plots, and show the other side of the coin for a bit. And some shades of gray.' Which is fine. Some villains are almost sympathetic if done right, or just victims of bad luck or circumstance. They're playing a villain just to add to the game. Which is fine.

They are also few and far between. VERY Few.


The other type, and the majority from my own experience, is 'I'm playing a villain because I OOCly hate superheroes and the people who play them are schmucks!' Now, as a villain, if you want to be an ass IC, fine. It allows for great snark and good lines and all that. But these are the unevolved mongs who use the exsuce that their character is a villain to be a complete and utter dick on the OOC level. I don't care who your character is, OOC, you act like a human being and not some pile of human refuse that makes me want to see about getting Free Will revoked. And you treat people as human beings.

It's because of that 2nd mindset that I don't like player-run villains, because the 2nd type far outnumbers the first.

[jengagne.livejournal.com]

Wow, both folks who mentioned superhero games say the twitty powermongering jerks outnumber the other types of players. o_o;; I guess I should be glad I only do superhero RP on City of Heroes, eh?

[tony-giovanni.livejournal.com]

I think part of the answer depends on the OOC environment of the game. For example, if you have a game where players don't trust each other or staff, and staff doesn't trust each other or the players, then it's very difficult to have villain inspired conflict.

Villains too often get portrayed as characters that exist simply to screw other characters, and that often gets transposed to "You (player) are out to screw me (player)." People don't usually trust the anonymous people on the other side of the screen that they've never met and have no connection with not to mess up their story. Most of us are raised not to trust strangers.

Villains often are also perceived by the player base as "disposable" characters. They're obstacles to overcome immediately, then move on to the next task. I've experienced it where a villain gets on the grid, and suddenly everyone knows that it's a Bad Guy and so they're all Out to Get Him/Her before that character's even done anything. Or even worse, the villain finds that no one wants to RP with them.

And with villains being run by staff, players often perceive those NPCs as all-powerful, unstoppable, and all knowing. I've been on plenty of games where when a sphere starts struggling so staff sends in a kick-ass Supreme Whatever to knock some sense into the players so they'll Do Things Right. Players end up thinking staff is out to get them, and in some cases, they're often absolutely right.

Villains cause conflict. And a lot of people are uncomfortable managing or participating in conflict. Most often even in their own lives. Conflict isn't safe. Some of the best villains I've either RPed or RPed with, have been in "safe" environments. By safe, I mean, the game supports all characters and players (not just white hat staff buddies), there's rules of conflict (you know when to use the +warn code and what happens after you use is), everyone knows Bad Things May Happen, and the results of those Bad Things will be enforced.

I guess it boils down to the climate of the game. Whatever you do, villains are sticky subjects that need to be handled carefully. They push a lot of people's buttons. Especially in environments where players view characters as sacred and belonging solely to them. They can immediately impact the mood of a game, and a lot of times not in a good way.

[jengagne.livejournal.com]

Agreed -- while I still feel a certain degree of assumed disposability can be a good thing, it's way off base for players to classify a character
based on OOC information and then get a hate-on for no IC reason!

And yeah, climate is key. So is whether people perceive them as a source of IC conflict or more OOC conflict...

[orikes13.livejournal.com]

That's the rub with NPC antagonists, isn't it? Players either assume the NPC is all powerful and nothing they can do will affect anything, or they consider the NPC a disposable entity and disregard the reality of the story to 'win'.

The more I ponder what I wrote and the responses I've gotten (love everyone who's voiced an opinion), the more I realize it's a game of Catch-22. If you go with one option, you end up with certain problems. If you go with a different option to avoid those problems, you end up with different problems.

Maybe the key is to look at the controls set up by the game itself to make the environment 'safe', as well as understanding the maturity level of the players taking on gray or dark characters.

[thenomain.livejournal.com]

The whole concept of Heroes and Villains is, to me, a pretty limited one. I've seen as few good Heroes on a Mu* as I've seen good Villains; generally people are (if unintentionally) somewhere in between. I don't mean to be crass about the whole Superhero concept when I say it, it's simply my preference for RP.

Player Characters should be allowed to have goals that aren't in alignment with the common good. They should be allowed to have views that are selfish, that are skeweed, or even psychologically or physically harmful to another person or stereotypical group of people. Are these Villains or just people? One of the things I like most about the TV series Smallville is that there's no black-and-white, and while Clark Kent comes closest to being a hero everyone -- even Lex -- has heroic moments, and human moments, and villainous moments.

The best games I've ever played on allowed the players to make unpopular actions. Were they Villains? Well, that depends on which side you were standing on at the time.

[jengagne.livejournal.com]

I couldn't agree with you more -- I remember how surprised I was when I heard another player calling my character a "villain". It doesn't get much grayer than that. ;)

After that, I sat back and really thought about it and finally realized that yeah, she really WAS more villainous (or at least selfish) than heroic. More chaotic neutral.

[orikes13.livejournal.com]

That is true... something I hadn't put much thought into yet. When you get away from superhero settings, there really aren't very many well played heros. I've seen plenty of badly played 'white hats' as I have badly played villains. Altair is probably one of the prime examples. Wyatt was another.

Your post reminded me about some of the good stuff that went down on Aether. The characters who were neither good nor bad, but out for their own interests beyond the common good. I'd forgotten when I got stuck thinking about the problems that arose when a 'badguy' was poorly played, or other players made life miserable for a well played one.

[7th-son.livejournal.com]

"Hero" and "Villain" are concepts as old as mankind and are the heart of storytelling. A common misconception is to assume that a "Hero" must be a person who always does "good", who never lies, never hits a lady, never does anything sneaky or underhanded, and always takes it on the chin. Such individuals are chumps. No wonder no one wants to play them.

The "Hero" is, by definition, the individual who embodies the values of a given society. If your society is a Vampire one which values loyalty, bravery, cunning, subterfuge, and the appreciation of mortal culture (just to pick some traits out of a hat) then its Hero will be sneaky but brave, true to his word (but he won't give it very often), and he'll protect human beings that deserve protection because he instinctively knows they are more innocent than he is, and innocense is rare. Doesn't mean he can't be a nasty son of a bitch. Being mean might even be revered by the society, and thus part of his Heroic virtues.

In contrast, a "Villain" is the person who threatens society's values. He will prey on human beings, especially those who don't deserve it. He will betray. And when his machinations are exposed, he will not admit it and force a stand up fight, he will turn tail and flee. He may have one or two heroic qualities -- no one said a Villain has to be one-sided.

The definition of "Hero" and "Villain" change in every setting, in every genre. And the more experimental the game, the more likely that the cultural values will be different than the Western norm. Your Heroes and Villains may come out looking pretty different, but the concept is anything but limited.

JT

[7th-son.livejournal.com]

I'm going to reinforce a notion suggested in passing earlier, and that is that the definitive factor here may be your genre.

In a fantasy game, most villains are monsters killed quickly. A single "Boss" can serve as a villain for an entire group of players, and sometimes for several groups of players. He is met very rarely, he may vanish for long periods, and in the end he usually gets either killed, fed to the tentacled horror he is trying to summon, or kicked into a magical prison. In this sort of set-up, staff can play the villains. The time requirement is not particularly onerous. If you are running a D&D MUSH, this is doubly true, as D&D is explicitly a game of heroic adventure, with all evil characters controlled by the GM.

In a vampire game, everyone is a little bit shady by definition. There's not much reason to forbid PC villains; sometiimes you can hardly tell the difference. In fact, characters shift from hero to villain depending on who you ask, and this is part of the game's charm.

But I believe the superhero genre creates specific needs which cannot be served by villains played as regular characters. Such villains will always be drastically outnumbered by the heroes, resulting in a ridiculous environment in which "heroes" who can dogpile the villains six to one no longer look heroic and the villains become sympathetic underdogs. See Moore's "Watchmen" for IC discussion of this issue.

Continuing on the topic of the superhero genre, most villains are highly restricted in their RP circle. While there will always be one or two Mystiques and Chameleons who can blend in with heroic society, most villains should risk immediate capture any time they venture out in public. This is a profound obstacle to RP, which is hard enough to find as it is. It would be possible to build a large enough circle of villains and place them in a secure area -- a hidden fortress, if you will -- that they could RP with one another pretty well, but this does not suit all games and doesn't alleviate the other villain-related concerns.

I firmly believe the solution is one in which villains are NPCs, but any player can GM. The player can then "adopt" a particular villain for a storyline, "play" the villain for the duration of that story, and then hand the villain back to the central pool when the story is done. While most players use this priviledge solely in order to throw villains at PCs in a mindless brawl in the street, this is a failure of PC vision and villain marketing, not a problem with the system per se. Players have to be made aware that they can run a villain as an NPC in the player's own adventure, so long as they obey certain broad limits (like "don't destroy the grid"). If a player were to submit a very long story, that required a particular villain remain in his hands for several months, I would see no reason not to consider that, provided everything else in the story was satisfactory.

Good luck,
JT

[jengagne.livejournal.com]

True -- both genre, as well as the OOC "culture" that's developed among players in that genre.

Hey Ang, what genre are you contemplating here, anyway?

[thenomain.livejournal.com]

Fantasy: Where sterotypes are reasons to kill.

I never thought about that before until the following event took place in my AD&D group:

I was playing an over-the-top Neutral Good character, and we ran across some mutated goblins. (The six-armed kinds called Chiteen, I believe. Not really the point.) The party saw one, just saw one, and let loose the arrows and spells.

I was horrified. This is a strange humanoid creature that hadn't attacked us, and most of the group decided it was to be killed because it looked like a creature they didn't like.

Who were the Villains in this situation?

...

I suppose the allure to most people with Superhero or Fantasy games is the ability to not worry about this kind of thing. I'm going to have to guess I'm in the minority considering the continued popularity of the Superhero Mu*.

[orikes13.livejournal.com]

That's something I probably should have realized in the start of this whole thought process. The setting is going to dictate what type of PCs are needed, desired, and encouraged.

If I were creating a superhero game, I probably would stick with the bad guys being NPCs. The way I saw it handled on Crucible City does limit certain things... like the shades of grey that can make life interesting for characters. But, most actual villains are so over the top 'bad', that they just can't survive as PCs. Either from lack of RP, or from being immediately targeted by the good guys.

Of course, I've seen that same thing happen on WoD games when they allow Technocracy, Wyrm, or .. whatever those vampire bad guys were. They're played as so over the top and stereotyped that they aren't very interesting at all. They either make life miserable for the PCs of the standard groups, or they burn up in a great ball of fiery death when the PCs start targeting them.

[youngwilliam.livejournal.com]

I've talked about this with someone, somewhere, at some point (I'm Mr.Accuracy!) when it was concerning a DC Comic genre focused around Gotham. Basically an idea of a stable of antagonists, most either out of town or in Arkham Asylum or Stonegate Prison, when in "standby mode". One can either set up a hero-type character, or can take an 'Antagonist Ticket' Character. The antagonist ticket allows one to play a primary antagonist (who supposedly just breezed back into town, or decided to bring their evil plan to action, or who escapes from Arkham/Stonegate) until they're bored and go to ground, or get locked up in either the asylum or the prison, or.. (very rarely) ..are killed. Then one can play a "hired thug" for another antagonist presently played. If that antagonist boss of yours gets locked up or goes to ground, you can then start up another antagonist or have your thug get hired by different one.

So pretty much you'll be playing goons that help the primary antagonists (Joker, Penguin, etc..), but you can alternate every other go-around as one of the big names (assuming they're not presently being used nor are dead).