Villainous arcs more difficult to avoid railroading Player?

I'm playing around with an idea for an arc, and it happens to be the first villainous arc I've started to write. I'm aware of the feeling that villains shouldn't be lackeys that's held by a lot of Players, so i was thinking about ways to make tge villainous player pro-active in the arc rathrr than just responding to a contacts 'hey, you- do X for me, will you?'

All the ways i've thoight of so far (the contact is the player's journal or computer setting out his self-originated plan, or a minion of the Player reporting on an opportunity, or a victim blacmailed or pressured into giving info on sth etc) seems to make more assumptions about the PC than happens with heroic arcs where the contact could be asking any old hero for help.

Do i have to assume that villains have minions, or are the type that uses a computer, or what?

Any thoughts?

Eco

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

I'd say that the contact for villain players of your arc should be something of a fan. You know, somene who has seen this villain rob a bank, perform a kidnapping, or even read them up in the paper and just developed an obssession of helping them. Alternatively, you could use something like a Longbow agent gone rogue and is now only interested in bringing the Corps down, and passes on vital information about Longbow's infrastructure to the player.

Just shooting out a few ideas there.

I have two villainous arcs. The first one presumes some naivety on the part of the player character villain, which I know is considered a mortal sin by some of the folks on the forums. But since the whole thing is a tongue-in-cheek, not serious, gratuitous gross out arc, I'm just going to say "tough". I think it accomplishes what it's intended to do and provides some fun along the way.

The other one is motivated mostly from flattery from the contact, the Facemaker in this case. I think flattery is pretty easy to go with, because it should apply pretty universally. Everyone likes to be told they look stunning, or they really rock. This can apply to heroes and villains in fact.

The other typical one for villains is the old greed motivation. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to assume most villains might want to take advantage of an easy money situation. Of course things never turn out to be as easy as you expect, do they? You could do something like make the contact "Guy With Expensive Watch". He could respond to your character as if your character were intending to rob him.

Yes, that is the inherent problem with villainous arcs. You have to make some assumptions about the player's character. Different villains have different goals; one might want to take over the world, while another might think that's too much work, and just want to amass as much wealth as possible.

If your description gives some indication of what the player character is trying to accomplish in the arc, I think that would be enough for most players to decide if the arc is suitable for their villain.

The assumption that villains use computers is a pretty safe one to make, since we're constantly stealing stuff off other people's computers. As for using a minion as a contact, you could use a general suck-up, someone who is afraid of you, or someone who wants to be your minion and is trying to prove his usefulness. Then leave it up to the player what they do with the contact once the arc is over.

If you can come up with an interesting and unique take on framing the mission for villains that would very cool.

Most missions are in the second the second person (where "you" do what the contact says).

I've seen a couple of "journal" arcs written in the first person and it's an interesting change of pace.

I've even seen one that's in the third person, describing the actions of the character as if it were a story about your character. The one I remember was like a Norse saga.

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I'm working on my first MA arc (still). It's a villainous arc.

I'm still playing around with the text but, the way I have it set up, the contact is merely an overseer. He doesn't even tell you where to go or what to do but he comments about your actions. The story, for the most part, is told in the clues presented in a way that your character is unveiling this stuff himself and thinking how to approach the situation. You can also not read the clues and charge the missions like a ravenous animal and the other text implies that option.

How does that sound to anyone? We're still on rails with the story here, so it's just an approach I'm trying.

...and yes, I need the contact to be a person overseeing it and not an inanimate object. It's part of the theme of the arc.

You're on the rails regardless. The very nature of the contact system guarantees that. Arcs that have your character figure things out from clues rather than have an omniscient contact tell you where to go are a Good Thing IMO.

But as Hydrophidian pointed out, it's all about attitude. The difference between the Hardcases and the Vernon Von Gruns of the world is immense.

There are ways to fail a mission, but they rely on bugs that will (hopefully) get fixed.

Timed missions will auto-fail when a captive reaches the door. So making the "wrong" answer a captive is one way to go about doing it, for now, as long as the captive is obvious and easily avoidable by a character without stealth.

The most interesting "choose your own ending" I have ever seen is in an arc called "The Beating Heart of Astoria." The player has complete control over whether to succeed or fail.

I have also seen the "wrong answer spawns massive ambush" tactic used in an arc based on riddles. The problem with using this, is that the wrong answer ambush would have to be EXTREME (as in, probably multiple Elite Boss with the settings cranked up extreme) or some Scrapper will go in, outrun the ambush, or if the timer is long enough deliberately trigger it for bonus xp and tickets. The arc I played handled it by exemping the player to level 10 or so, which was solved the "outrun or defeat the ambush" problem but introduced an additional problem of having to search a large outdoor map in a short timeframe with no travel power, except the very slow raptor pack, and not everyone has one of those.

My villainous arc "Standing Within the Mists" relies on a contact who is obviously working for you on a somewhat freelance basis. Your "acceptance" dialogues are you telling her what to do next ('Go check out this location') and when you return, she reports back on what she found. Her dialogue contains your own plot line ("So, I guess you're going to do this now, huh?") plus some additional pop-up notes as required to keep you in your own loop.

Obviously, this still railroads the character since I'm putting words in your mouth but I've gotten a lot of positive feedback on the contact. I guess it's different enough that it beats being told "Go do this, maggot."