Your main villain's apocalypse

This is the theory:

In order to qualify as a Villain (capital V), your character must intend a vast change to the status quo. You have to have a plan that "Must be stopped!"

This change must be either destructive to society by it's very nature (and I mean destructive to society as an entity, not just to a particular society) or if well-intended, not worth the cost/unjustifiable means.

In short, all Villains either turn into Lord Recluse, or "Wastelander-type" (ruling over destruction and disorder ranging from constant social unrest to a barren wasteland) or Emperor Cole "Iron Fist-type" (with something that looks like a society or even a paradise, but which is populated by zombies/constructs/no one at all).

There is also a matter of scale: some villains would legitimately stop at the Peer level (recognized as equivalent to a world power), Supreme level (recognized as master/destroyer of Earth), Ultimate (recognized as master/destroyer of all sentience).

This applies to all media and literature.

Count Dracula would ultimately rule over a world divided into servants/food and fellow subservient vampires as evidenced by his attempt to expand into England.

Emperor Palpatine (movie version) apparently wanted to rule the entire galaxy through overt fear and manipulation; running a successful shadow government that the Jedi could not even pin down wasn't enough.

Lex Luthor, on the other hand, is ultimately just a thug. He really has everything he wants, except for Superman's head over his mantle. Multiple alternate versions of Lex have proven ultimately heroic, so long as they are given a world where they are seen as the ultimate power.

Of course, there are those guys that just want some variation on "give me booze and the respect of people of the appropriate sex and leave me alone", but those are 'small v villains".

And some Villains would ultimately actually improve the world; but at some cost that ultimately isn't worth it: the destruction of another equivalent world, genocide, the sacrifice of education and creativity in perpetuity, etc. "Price-type" villains. Mister Glass from Unbreakable could be seen like this: he proved the existence of supermen, but at what price?

The final type of villain is the as one of the above, but the thrust of the story is unseating them from power: they have already won, and the heroes must restore the world or lead a successful rebellion.

If your character intends to improve the world, their ultimate plan would improve the world, and the cost isn't too high/unethical to pay, then they by definition aren't a Villain. Perhaps a misunderstood hero.

...

Anyway, am I way off base here?
Do your red side characters fit in the above categories?
Is this a fun way to think about things?

I'm looking forward to your feedback. I think a good part of the "villain experience" that could be added to this game would be the ability to define an ultimate goal for your villain that would essentially fall into the category of "Conquer the World" "Destroy the World" and possible "Fix the world at too great a price". You would be able to work toward this goal throughout levelling, and ultimately be rewarded with the ability to create a alternate world reachable through Portal Co that was to some extent personalized (via AE tech).

Of course having 'won' to some extent doesn't mean your villain would not continue to wreak havoc in Paragon, Praetoria and the Isles...

...what do you think?

What you describe is sophomoric villain lore, not really supported by most works of fiction involving evil/bad characters. Dracula as an example, in most respected literature and movies, wanted to be left alone, and had no dreams of ruling anything.

Comics and video games are meant to grab young people, who are only impressed by big fish tales, and less concerned with realism and subtleties, which is why you get what you get in todays games.

Even a game that's generally well written falls prey to this, like Deus Ex for example. But there's a certain enjoyment there from a game that tries to convince us that we were always on the precipice and just didn't know it, so it gets a pass from me.

Obviously we all want to change the world, villains would be no different in that regard, but rarely would their talents, even when super, coincidentally allow them a channel in which to shape the world to their vision. They would have to be more realistic with their goals, and quite frankly after a while they would settle for pursuing their immediate self-interests and greed, which is what was at the true center of what made them a villain in the first place.

Let me put it this way for my main Villan, Cerise Dawn:

She would read your OP, and then decide that it's childish notions of 'Villain' need to be snuffed, and would end you. That's it. That's all.

Doesn't matter if you're right or not: She doesn't feel like being classified, and would hunt you down, because you're simply not worthy to classify her. No one is. She is Cerise Dawn, and that name alone should be enough of a classification.

I'd say that's Villain with a capital V, but hey, I'm biased.

Her Apocalypse, though, is this: She will wipe out every single person on this Earth if it would mean the end of her Sister, Ruby Dawn, the Heroine... and actively pursues that action. She doesn't care one whit about everyone else, nor how their being gone affects her in some way... Ruby has to die.

The backstory is... well, silly, I admit, but it's a backstory, and crazy evil can come from silly.

/Ok, short version: Rodney the pet Iguana kept her sane, in effect, but Ruby screwed up a Magic spell, and Rodney was gone. Cerise snapped, and has been insanely evil ever since.

Well, my assassin, she wouldn't stop any time soon. She might claim that it's "just a job", but the only way to stay the best assassin is to keep being an assassin. The only mark that's off limits is Lord Recluse, since she saw that starting something with him will lead to an old-school apocalypse with lots of fire and no living people. That, to her is a failure scenario. A win-state to her is a flawed society with plenty of work for an assassin. So, basically, she's already won with being a highly respected assassin in the Rogue Islands. High enough that Lord Recluse trusts her with assaulting the Freedom Phalanx. Now if Recluse was deposed and law and order was restored on the Isles, she'd plotting a revolution to restore the Rogue Isles to an assassin's paradise, but for now, it already is. That or join Vanguard full time, since she has a few contacts there for when ET needs killing. No primal humans to kill? Plenty of Praetorians and Rikti, though. As long as there's a new job lined up, she'll keep going. She might be better off as a Rogue, in the game, come to think of it.

The hedonist wouldn't stop if she had the key to an all boy-band version of the Playboy Mansion. Sure, she'd go there, for a while, but it'd get boring. She has a bit of ADHD with things like that. It's not so much about what she has, but about what she wants. Having is no fun. Taking is. If she ever tries to take over the world, which I doubt, it'll be to be able to say she did, not to keep it. She'd probably set it on fire, just on principle, though.

She does, however, want to burn Crey to the ground, and throw the Countess into a vat of acid. Personal reasons.

Interesting, McNum:

It seems to indicate that no 'win scenario' can be written for either of these characters because one already has won and for the other, winning is effectively losing.

I wonder how common that is.

For me, they in general seem to fall into the category of villains in the vein of the Juggernaut or Luthor: all they really want is more of what they have, and to be allowed to enjoy it as amorally as they want.

They wouldn't even necessarily welcome Ultimate Power and would possibly defend society if it came to that because to a certain extent they need it in order to continue to live in the manner that they enjoy.

'Rogue' or 'Scoundrel' might be a good alternate term for villains of such a nature.

even sayings top though can have different connotations for different villains.

For example Lord Dire my MM is a classic Power Armored mega genius. He is also a raving megalomaniac He believes, no He KNOWS that he is the best perosn to rule the world and that everyone should recognize that and just falla t his feet. he is driven to prove this by any means neccesary and if that means leading a robot army to wipe out 2/5ths of the worlds population and use a WMD to force the worlds capitulation then so be it.

My Stalker/MM White Lotus is a classic Ninja she has given her loyalty to a friends Character and actively works to further his goals. She has a sense of honor and duty but she performs truly heinous acts such as Murder and Assassinations and acts of terrorism to further those goals.

Grahn my Brute is a classic thug and bully. A former arachnos spy who joined arachnos for power and money, who through a fluke accident gained enough raw physical power that he was able to defeat the freedom phalanxe untill the Demolition girls super group finally delayed him long enough to allow positron to defeat him. Now he seeks to regain the enormous power he had and use it to get all the wealth and privlege he thinks hes entitled to, women, money fame, but will it ever be enough?

Probably not as rocko says in Key largo."what does Rocko want?" Everything, and when will it be enough? "Itll never be enough never has been never will be."

villains have different motivations some like grahn are simple greed, some like Lord Dire and White Lotus are evolving motivations. once they achieve their goals they then mvoe to a new motviation of maintaining the prior goal. After all just because you took over the world doesnt mean that its over.

Now you have to rule the world you just conquered.

[QUOTE=McNum;3881254] CoV doesn't let you ultimately win with taking over the world and gaining ultimate power, so I made characters that didn't care for that. QUOTE]

If there were an option for that, would you make new characters that would go for that? Would it make you feel any differently about these characters or making new characters like them?

If taking over the world was an option? Yeah, I'd have a villain for that. I love the mastermind-type. The Bond villain, the Doctor Dooms if we crank up the power level. I'd make someone who's a lot more of a schemer. Mad science is always fun, so something like that. But to take over the world, you need one of two things: A plan, or enough power that no one can oppose you when you lay claim to the world.

So I'd have a technology/science type who's constantly building new gadgets while planning long term on how to rule, if not the world, then a comfortable part of it somewhere. Like Italy, perhaps. Good food, nice weather, and the ability to call yourself Emperor of Rome. That'd work out nicely. Plus it'd give a great theme for the Robotic Legions of Rome. (As an aside, I wish I could dress up Mastermind pets now, because that's a fun concept.)

I personally prefer Granny Weatherwax's definition of evil, from Carpe Jugulum:

Quote:

"It's not as simple as that. It's not a black-and-white issue. There are so many shades of gray." "There's no grays, only white that's got grubby. I'm surprised you don't know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That's what sin is." "It's a lot more complicated than that-" "No. It ain't. When people say things are more complicated than that, they means they're getting worried that they won't like the truth. People as things, that's where it starts." "Oh, I'm sure there are worse crimes-" "But they starts with thinking about people as things "

So for me, redside characters ultimately view people as things. Perhaps not all people, but certainly most and usually all.

Note that under this view, villains don't need a 'master plan'. Not every character that plays redside needs to be someone out to Change the World. There's plenty of room for petty and stupid evil.

Wretch certainly doesn't have a plan that changes the world. But he's a Villain. Your typical mad serial killer is very definitely a villain. Look at Cap'n Mako or Crosscut as examples.

I think it's a neat idea to give characters a goal to work towards, especially with the new world-changing technology in the game.

But I don't think every villain is out to change the world. Some men just want to watch the world burn.

My namesake is actually more your classical, 'rule the world with SCIENCE!' kind of guy. However he's content to simply run his highly illegal genetic engineering company out of the isles. He has the means to produce a large number of super powered beings under his control effectively.

He has quick growth cloning vats that can and are programmed to make the 'products' they produce loyal to the company, their owner and then themselves. He can alter they very fabric of a human being itself to utilize any power that is caused by mutation (he can't mimic powers of a purely magical nature) or have his team of R&D mad scientists work on something.

Heck one of them actually HAS worked on a miniature Black Hole gun which has been officially declared not to be used within several thousand light years of earth incase it goes out of control and becomes a fully fledged Black Hole.

He has his own portal technology (explaining how he can leap from the Union server to the Virtue server with 'dimensional scaling' in effect), he could find an army of himself, have all his alternate selves work together and make an attempt to rule the multiverse and bring it to scientific order under his unflinching manaical grasp.

There's just a couple of things stopping him.

First while his cloning tech is nigh perfect, it's incredibly expensive to run and as such is used only for high profile 'orders' (usually from lonely but very rich businessmen OR from super villains with the wealth available to pay for a 'made to order' super powered, supremely loyal bodyguard).

His mad science tech...well...it's mad science, he doesn't like being conventional, he recently threatened a group of heroes with a hand cranked, enviromentally friendly death ray....which took about half an hour of winding before it could get upto speed for a single shot.

He is also easily distracted, like most mad scientists, he'll work on something and probably ditch it halfway though the build or turn it into something else.

Before he made big money selling loyal super powered bodyguard to the rich and infamous, his primary income was the Walkie-Talkie toaster, for toast (and other bread based products) on the go!

Lastly...no bugger wants to work with him, heroes hate him and so do villains, he has a habit of being completely unreliable to work with when planning big villainous schemes, not to mention he's screwed over the three biggest RP villain groups on Union because he wanted to 'teach them a lesson on being complacent'.

So he does have the capacity to turn into a multiverse conquering villain, it's just he doesn't really want to...or couldn't focus long enough to actually achieve it.

Hell a cybernetically enhanced Shivan (the original green gooey kind, not the new kind) in a tie is the vice president of his company. The dude is THAT insane.

Maestro Morbidus - Necromancy/Dark Miasma.

He was a dark sorceror who died in the late 1700's. Using his magic, he was able to 'trap' the essence of Demons within him, absorbing their power in the process. Once he trapped enough demons within himself he was able to escape back into the realm of the living.

His goal?

Destruction of all reality...


He loathes reality, in all it's facets. Even the thought of an 'afterlife' is almost to much to bear. To this end, he seeks out as much ancient knowledge, as much magical power as he can. His ulitmate goal? Awakening Rularuu and assiting him in the destruction of everything.

Only then can Morbidus truly rest.


(How's that for apocalyptic?)

I only really have one Villain in this game. He is The Dark Cliche. Being the manifestation of cliche'd villainy, any given stereotypical world-ending/changing scheme might be up His alley. However, because he is the manifestation of cliche'd villainy, all such plans *must* be stopped by heroes. Were He ever to actually succeed in such a plan, He might by His very nature cease to exist.

My main villain already achieved his apocalypse: subversion.

In his universe (to avoid stepping on other peoples' concepts) he was scorned by Paragon City, left to fight Recluse head-on, won, brought Arachnos to the City and began helping stop crime. Over time they began a period of 'conversion', leading the autorities to take a swifter hand in dealing with the gang violence in and around the city, making it a safer place for the citizens to live in. Letting years slip past, dealing with the criminal element more swiftly and 'justly' and using his psychic abilities to indoctrinate the populous to seeing him as a positive element. And it worked. By the time the remaining heroes realised it was far too late to stop him and he began his campaign to conquer the world. With the indoctrination working on armed forces and the populous at large; capitulation became commonplace with the remaining countries simply surrendering to superior numbers.

So his 'apocalypse' is the one Wolfram and Hart wanted to avoid in Angel season 4

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

Okay, bear with me here, because Lord Kron has a weird, long backstory that ignores the established canon at best and holds it down and does horrible things to it at worst.

So in my weird little personal canon (which is kind of adapted from a story I've been dreaming up since I was 12), Lord Kron was once a being who existed while reality was still being created, and lived alongside several other beings as they created reality. Thing is, the void didn't like that. You see, the void itself, despite being literally NOTHING, has a malevolent intelligence. It's not too powerful, but it can speak to sentient beings through dreams.

And so it began speaking to Lord Kron, slowly convincing him that reality as it stood was flawed, and needed something to keep reality from getting too cluttered. And so Lord Kron introduced the concept of entropy into reality, and it slowly began to break down. Shocked by his betrayal, his brothers fought him to a standstill, and kicked him out of reality into the void.

He spent a literal eternity drifting through the void, slowly going insane with loneliness and the whispers of the void. But then, after eons of drifting, he found his way back. The void granted him a share of it's power, imbuing him with a physical form, and ordering him to finish what he started.

So now Lord Kron walks the earth, the void bleeding out of him. As he grows more powerful he will spread the void farther and farther, reality breaking and disintegrating around him. Earth is just the first step though. His current goal is to gain enough power to absorb the entirety of the earth, transform himself into a conduit of the void, a sentient humanoid rip in reality, and destroy the entirety of reality itself.

He's not going to win though

My Main Villain on Justice , Kitty Blizzard, Who is co- opting her body with a Cat Demoness from another dimension, wants to humiliate her arch nemesis and my first heroine Dr. Illuminatis, by turning the Earth into the world's biggest Ice Cube.

Is there anyone who would object to the option being added to the game, were it possible, to set an apocalyptic villanous goal at some point and pursue that goal via dedicated Contacts, Salvage, and Recipes to the point of creating a semi-generic apocalyptic alternate future?

If so, why?