Should villains be glamorous or disgusting?

'Disgusting' villains, true ones, are few and far between. It's becoming increasingly rare to see villains who are malign for malignancy's sake; vile beings who do vile things simply because they delight in doing them.

More often, you'll find that even villains who do atrocious things are (mis)guided by their desire to do something that they see as good. Among these you'll find those villains who are of the "ends justify the means" mentality, knowing they're doing wrong but hoping that the outcome will outweigh they things they'll do to reach it, or those who are so convinced in their ultimate goal that they don't view their actions as evil.

When it comes to creating villains, I always find that the latter are easier to layer; you can give them a rough motivation and start building upon it: "Why are they working towards this goal?" "What were the precipitating factors that lead them to want to do this?" "How far are they willing to go?" "How do they view themselves?" "How do they view those who are trying to oppose them?" And so on. You could say that these types of villains naturally lend themselves to having more depth of character.

Now, that's not to say that a 'disgusting' villain can't have depth, but it's going to look a lot different. Imagine, as a template, a villain that is completely base, someone that joys in doing awful things because he takes a wicked satisfaction from them. That's always going to be that villain's motivation; the question, "Why are they working towards this goal?" is always going to be "Because they enjoy it." And while you can flesh out from there, you can't stray too far from that core concept that they like doing evil things, because if you do you start falling into the other category. The more sympathetic the reason a 'disgusting' villain glories in doing awful things, the less they become 'disgusting.'

That being said I do enjoy playing around with these types of character concepts. While I enjoy writing villains that have some depth beneath the surface, I also like characters who simply are the way they are, just because. As an example, an idea for a villain I had spawned out of an idea for a piece of dialogue: "I don't need a reason. I just need conviction."

Oh, Sam, Sammy, Sam, Sam... I'm going to post a very long reply to this later... Because I am lacking the time to do so right now...

Quickly though...
I believe I understand that you're referring to the overall narrative of telling the tale/adventures of a villain and whether or not I prefer to be shown realistic repercussions of the villainous deeds or, instead, to see an epic looking (or seeming) villain who we all know does terrible things, but they happen more behind closed doors...
Do you want to feel like you've just trekked through utter darkness and seen things you didn't want to... Or would you rather skate along the surface with a sleek looking and powerful villain of cool?

I, personally, lean towards enjoying the disgusting villain experience a little more... However, I absolutely enjoy both.
Just a disclaimer... I actually do not enjoy gore movies or torture movies and things like that. That's different. (I mean, I love some Sam Raimi gore... And I love seeing Jason Vorhees (before the reboot) kill in fascinating ways... but that stuff is hilarious!! Not serious, torturous tragic gore fests!

I think I enjoy the deeper, darker stuff in reading and imagining... but far less so in film. Most likely just through the quality that it is portrayed/performed/delivered.
I did enjoy Titus... I did enjoy Silence Of The Lambs... I did enjoy American Psycho... I didn't enjoy the Friday The Thirteenth Reboot (it seemed a bit more like Saw and the like)... Hmm, can't think of other examples that I didn't like.

However, I also love Darth Vader... Willem DaFoe's Green Goblin...
Okay, running out of time!
My last comment before I run...

IF I had to choose only one way of writing villainous stories for an mmorpg (which, I don't think is necessary, given possible options and various content and all)...
I would likely choose a shadowy glamor and shove the consequences behind the doors and in-between scenes... That way the user/reader/player can fill in the gaps as they please!

One major gaming difference between you and I, Sam, is that I don't look for the game to deliver these stories to me. I prefer to pull them out of my own mind as I run through more generic content.
Neither is greater nor lesser, in my eyes... It's just something I was considering when reading through this thread (and based on past conversations).

This is also why I am completely fine with leaving greater detail behind closed doors.
Still... you can't hide all of it, as a writer, so some of it has to come out!

I think I am going to detail my roster of villains and their stories and my playing of them and see if that helps you, entertains you, frightens you or some such combination of all the above!!

Evil - Going the D&D route here; I prefer to be LE although moments of CE may creep up from time to time.

I am not an anarchist by nature but sometimes a little anarchy is needed to readjust the order of things.

I may do atrociously evil things out of provocation; things that would normally escape my day to day routine - even if there is no loftier goal than to knock someone or something down a notch or just to make me 'feel' better. - Lashing out.

Play-wise, I like to keep my evil structured... sticking it to the man and opening the eyes of the world beyond the 'black-and-white' picture... unless its PvP; then it's horror movie evil time.

AE-wise, I like to mix it up; mainly organized evil... because it presents better storytelling opportunities. Although a little 'Smash TV' can be good from time to time.


[and somehow, I doubt that we have gotten either glamorous or disgusting villainy as appropriate terms to describe the bad guys in CoX - some disgusting crimes are things we'll never see villains commit in City of Heroes and even our most notorious baddies redside still hang out in cave, sewers and abandoned warehouses... no statues, no bling, no luxury cars or jets; always under the thumb of a despot that also likes living in a slate prison styled fortress]

I don't understand why one should think that EVERY villain should be "disgusting" or EVERY villain should be "glamorous." Redside is way more fun to play when you've got different types/levels of evil in your stable.

Just to go through a few of my characters:

I have 2 Freakshow-themed villains. My Elec/Shield Brute is very much in the camp of "let the world burn, I just want to have fun." The SS/Invuln Brute is out to prove that he's better than the other Tank Smashers and should have a place at directly at Dreck's side (or possibly in his throne).

My main villain is very much the "glamorous" villain, though. In fact, he's very much a rogue by the game's definition. He isn't in it for the money--he wants the infamy and to be seen as truly strong, and will skirt the line of the law for a chance to make headlines. And the only reason he's evil at all is because he hates my main hero and wants him disgraced and/or dead.

Then I have another villain, who has effectively gone insane from hatred. He hates everything, including himself, and his body won't let him die. He kills indiscriminately because he sees no value in any life, and he's convinced that the only way to end his own pain is to destroy the entire universe.

They're all fun to play at times: the anarchist, the guy who wants to prove his worth, the show-off and the "DEATH DEATH DEATH EVIL EVIL!" guy.

(That's barely scratching the surface... I've also got a terrorist sympathizer, a crippled woman who made a pact with a demon to become mobile again, an immortal six-gun for hire, a bullied nerd out for revenge on the world... and those are just the characters I can think of off the top of my head.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

I have a non-answer response to the question: more than glamorous or disgusting, I think villains need to be entertaining. This is also where I break with a number of other posters in terms of the importance of realism in story lines. Super-heroic stories almost never present the realistic consequences of violence, so any hope of presenting realistic violent people is lost. I don't consider this entirely a loss. IMO it is possible to "characterize" without necessarily being "realistic," in the same way it's possible to cartoonize a person rather than produce an exact portrait. Actual evil actions are less important than the idea that the villain is up to no good. This is what allows Universal Studios theme park to build a Dr Doom slingshot ride without having to apologize to victims of actual crimes. The character is a "fun" representation of the concepts of fear and destruction, not a literal example.

Like I wrote in the other thread, to me comic villains (and City of Heroes characters) are child-like. Villains plot to destroy the city/world less because a real person would actually do that (though some would, because notoriety itself is sometimes its own motivation) than it is it provide a vehicle of conflict and entertainment. I guess that puts me on the side of "glamorous," but the term I'd use would be more like "childish flamboyance." Villains perpetrate images of evil rather than actual evil.

Real life villainy is nothing like what is represented in comics or movies; it is both too depraved and too boring. In real life, you are considered a villain if you intentionally murder an innocent person one time. In comics and movies, entire cities can be bloodlessly wiped out by the villains and the story still end happily because a single father rides a cropduster into the responsible spacecraft. Even horror movies, crime dramas, and police serials rarely linger significantly on the victims of murder, unless the victim is special in some way, even when the word Victim appears in the title of the show.

This will be a double-answer. The question, it seems, should be broken into two branches.

"What do you play?"

I tend to gravitate towards the realistic. So, I play the entire spectrum of villains. Some are mindless drones (Arachnos Unit 99BTF), some are in it only for the cash (Geist Dieb), still more are verifiabley' insane (Geiger Killer) and still more are in it for the sport and pomp (Stone Mistress).

My robot is given tasks and does them, mercilessly. So I play him like that. The thief is a former Longbow Spec Op that came into contact with the DESTINY Portal and realized the future is a disaster. She has morals about killing civilians, but not if they directly impede her desires. The deranged scientist is a schizophrenic madman that arbitrarily switches between a pleasant physicist to a genocidal maniac. And the earth Dom? Well, she just really likes messing things up. Sheer anarchy. If I could target allies in missions, she would always kill them.


"What do you like to play?"

Honestly? The robot. He's mindless. There are no thoughts except: "Directive- achieve." The robot isn't evil, terrible, or dreadful. He just is. A force of technology that follows orders. Period.

I like the question, but it feels to me like comparing apples to oranges. Specifically, you're asking about two of three different axes: glamorous vs gritty, altruistic vs selfish, and tries-to-be-harmless vs callously cruel. That I see them as three different axes makes it hard for me to answer your question as asked.

I have tried to play villains on the glamorous side of the glamorous to gritty scale ... and I just can't "wear the clothes." I grew up working class; yeah, I graduated a private college, but on the other hand, as a mentally ill PTSD sufferer, I've also been occasionally homeless. As much as I envy the life of the rich and glamorous, I can't portray it convincingly, and I feel fake and phony trying. (The closest I've ever come was my mafia-lawyer character, and even he came off as more Bronx/Secaucus than Manhattan/Hamptons.) I know my limitations as a roleplayer. So most of my villains, and not a few of my heroes, come across as pretty gritty.

I have tried playing characters on the gratuitously callous and cruel side of the harm axis, and have the same problems: I just can't sustain even the appearance of the necessary anger. It's a limitation as a roleplayer. So, given two ways to pull off a caper, if my character picks the route that hurts the heck out of someone, it's got to be someone that character really personally loathes, not just J. Random Bystander.

On the motivational axis, I can and do play characters almost anywhere along that axis. Probably my single most malevolently dangerous villains are my Arachnos archetype characters, both of whom consider themselves to be world-savers; they're each, in separate ways, patriotic citizens of the Rogue Isles who are willing to do anything, however awful, to anyone, however innocent, if that's what it takes to defend Arachnos political science as an ideology (Operative McCool) or the island's almost completely unregulated, dog-eat-dog, winner-take-all lasseiz fair economic system (Mary Sue Birnbaum). In fact, if there is any across-the-board bias in my characters, hero or villain, it's that I'm most comfortable playing characters who know what they stand for personally, and fight for that, whether it's to keep the corrupt and powerful from using their power to make things worse (Infamous Brad), law and order and honest government (Detective McCool), psychic privacy (Where Amy), the needs of the future survivors of the Arachnos Civil War (Earl and Key Bergey), anti-imperialism (Iblis al-Ifriti), or even just personal honor and self-respect (Kalila al-Ifriti).

Once I know what the character is fighting for, and once I decide who they're willing to hurt to get that, I know how I play them; I mostly dress them and have them talk the way I, as someone whose life experience stretches from severe deprivation up to briefly upper middle class but no higher, knows how to convincingly dress and talk.

Having said that about the glamorous-to-gritty axis, I have to say: City of Villains really sucks at offering you chances to play glamorous characters. Just about the only opportunity to play someone convincingly wealthy, glamorous, and popular as a villain comes in Mr. G's loyalist Power arc in Praetoria. In pretty much the entire rest of the game, if you're a villain, you came out of Darwin's Landing (or, now, Galaxy City) and you never get to live that down.

I really feel like the Crey Corporation side of supervillainy goes under-developed in City of Heroes and City of Villains. If you want to play a character who's more like Lex Luthor than the Joker, if you want to play a character who's more like Dick Jones than Clarence Boddicker, this is not a game that will let you scratch that itch -- not without extensive use of Mission Architect, anyway.

I miss the inherent class bias of 70s and 80s era Marvel, where rich people, politicians, and government officials are usually villains and the heroes mostly grew up in slums or working class neighborhoods. But, then, i would, wouldn't I? But yeah, no, that's not how it works in City of Villains, and there isn't even very much of it in City of Heroes.

It depends on what you want to play.

I know someone who plays a smooth talking villain all the ladies fall for.

That same person also plays a villainous mad scientist who utterly tortures his subjects, a wizard that wants to kill all Mu, and a sympathetic anti-villain who is still a total jackass.

My only villain is actually a Rogue, a Rikti who enjoys messing with people's heads and is generally comic relief.

I think Praetoria has a good model, as it offers multiple paths through the two sides.

The new tutorial is way more flexible for Villains than the current one - the intro comic just says that you were in Galaxy City "on business of your own" when the trouble started - so that's like a totally blank slate.