What do your villains want?
By
AkuTenshiiZero,
Posted on: 2012-02-16 18:37 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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I've always hated the heroes reactive/villains proactive thing. I mean, cops don't do that. They're proactive about preventing crime before it happens. And many heroes have more to them than just "I wait around for bad stuff to happen." They've got their own stuff going on.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I think when people talk about the proactive and reactive nature of heroes and villains, they are talking about two different, and almost opposite ends of the spectrum, things. First, in terms of how they relate to each other: villains commit crimes and heroes stop them. "Proactively" stopping villains from commiting crimes is not so much heroic, as anti-heroic. The Punisher is proactive. Conversely, its rare for villains to simply wait for heroes to do something and then act to stop them. Villainy is presumed to have an agenda besides stopping the heroes, although there are exceptions.
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You want to know the secret of the world? It's this: Save it, and it'll repay you, every second of every day.
@Dr. Reverend - My DeviantArt Gallery
Crow Call - Gods of the Golden Age
Eh, I don't RP or anything, but the concept for my Arachnos Soldier is... well, the Soldier. Same kinda guy who'd be on the PPD in Paragon, just happens to be working for the other guy. So it's... kinda on the list. Kinda. Higher Purpose, I guess.
Is a Lawful Neutral guy in a place where the laws are kinda evil... evil too?
Personal gain: Power, wealth.
Often idealism (misguided or otherwise). I am not sure that all idealism that leads to villainy is misguided in and of itself. Sometimes, society really is the problem.
I can't think of any of my villains who are purely malicious and/or sociopathic.
Elsegame: Champions Online: @BellaStrega ||| Battle.net: Ashleigh#1834 ||| Bioware Social Network: BellaStrega ||| EA Origin: Bella_Strega ||| Steam: BellaStrega ||| The first Guild Wars: Kali Magdalene ||| The Secret World: BelleStarr (Arcadia)
In this game all my villain wants is to win.
"Samual_Tow - Be disappointed all you want, people. You just don't appreciate the miracles that are taking place here."
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Kicks and giggles: Maybe you're bored, maybe you enjoy a challenge or maybe you just enjoy fighting. You do evil not because you necessarily want to be evil or even because there's anything to gain, but just for your own personal entertainment.
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Sorry to jump on the bandwagon like this, but the whole Dark Knight's Joker and Captain Jack Sparrow theme is just awesome. The idea of a character that 'just wants to watch the world burn' because it's awesome and fun is something a lot of people have always liked, but is difficult to explore because it is an inherently shallow motivation that is best suited to action adventure movies.
This is what I make my one villain around, which I chose kinetics for. A very active, colorful set that keeps you moving and keeps the team moving.
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I want to turn your argument around for a moment, because now that you mention it, I'm starting to think writing for villains can be just as easy if only the story didn't try as hard. Let me explain:|
Originally Posted by Lycantropus
Oh, don't get me wrong. I agree heroes can be just as complex and as pro-active as villains generally are, but it's still easier to write for them in-game because these contacts need help, and our heroes respond to the environment. It's much easier to imagine our protagonists doing their pro-active stuff "between the panels" (running their company, doing charity work, teaching at the University, supporting a cause, etc.)
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Long ago, Launch hero content was designed to be given out by "Mission Terminals," which is what I believe the current "Info Kiosks were intended to be. This got canned in favour of "Contacts," but their original dialogue still remained largely inert, generic and uncharacteristic. Hence, most of the Launch hero content really applies to everybody, because it doesn't assume motivation. It's just a series of "go there, do that, here's what it accomplishes" but it never assumes why your character actually WANTS to do this. It's assume that's for the good of the people, but you can fill in that motivation box with almost anything and it would fit almost as well. Maybe you're being paid for your hero work, maybe you just want to kill mages (I have a hero like that), maybe you're just a daredevil out for kicks and giggles, maybe you're taking out technology-based villains to reverse-engineer their tech. The possibilities are as broad as your imagination, and most of them fit.
Why not write the same way for villains, then? I get that the City of Villains writers went for much more personality in the contacts, but what if they'd gone for the same "Mission Terminal" approach? Just a series of missions which tell you that if you go there and beat up these particular people, you can acquire that particular item. Why do you want it? Who knows? Maybe you want to sell it, maybe you want to keep it, maybe you don't even want it and just need and excuse to beat people up. Whole story arcs can work like this - they start off with wanting a simple relic, then it turns out you're embroiled in a complex situation, then you find the right people to beat up and the right items to steal to walk away the victory.
If anything, our writers are trying too damn hard to make a thrilling, cinematic story and so ending up with stories that are so specific they leave no room for interpretation. But if heroes can be written as simply wanting to help, then why can't villains be written as simply wanting "something?" This could plain money, it could be an artefact, it could be influence, it could be an excuse to kill people, it could be a challenge, it could be a huge number of things, all of them easily expressible by a wide variety of stories.
I like how the Spoony One expresses this notion when arguing against the Vince Ruso booking of making matches needlessly complex: "Just tell a basic wrestling angle. Wrestler A has a title. Wrestler B wants that title. You don't have to make it so complicated!" Really, villainy doesn't NEED to be complicated. It's a fairly basic motivation which gains depth through context and characterisation, and with the tools provided, I believe we can handle both.
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Originally Posted by UnicyclePeon
Huh. All my villains are boring cop-outs that explain nothing.
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I'm not trying to judge, believe me. Character motivation is sacred to me, and whatever works for you, I can respect. I'm just sharing my view on the subject of madness and insanity.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Actually, I don't even see most of my villainous characters as "villains." I see them as "outlaws." I think that best describes them. They disregard the law, the social rules, and the typical moral code that most people adhere to most of the time. Its not so much that they pursue evil, but rather that they refuse to live under the restrictions that good requires.
I can't play a "straight villain" - someone who thinks its wrong, knows its wrong, but does it anyway. I can play an outlaw: everyone else thinks is wrong, but I don't, so I do it. And I can play completely crazy: everyone else thinks is wrong, but they don't count because their heads are upside down and they taste like ginger snaps. But its not generally in my nature to play evil for its own sake. I can be Magneto. I can't be Hannibal Lector. |
I think there's something to be said about "playing by different rules," though. When I say a villain recognises he's doing something evil but does it anyway, I don't mean that he does it BECAUSE he recognises it's evil. Often, my villains do evil deeds because they really don't care one way or the other. They know right from wrong, they just don't really mind doing the wrong thing if it suits their needs or, hell, even if it strikes their fancy.
Consider the basic double standard. If I infiltrate your organisation, steal your secrets, blow up your generators and kill your scientists, then that's just aggressive business, so what are you crying about? If you infiltrate my organisation and do the same, then you *******! How dare you! You'll pay for this! In this case, it's not that I play by my own rules ("the rules only apply to other people" isn't a rule), but rather it's that I do whatever I want, rules be damned. If they suit my objective, then why not make use of them? If they're against my objective, then why not break them?
In a way, villains who simply reject people's rules and play by their own are a lot more... Respectable? A lot easier to sympathise with, at least. That's how games like Saints Row, for instance, manage to be so easy to get into the spirit of even though you're running people over in the street, buying meth labs and running a prostitution ring. It's because the game sets up an alternate system of morality rules that, once you accept them, you can play by and still feel like you're doing the right thing, even though you're actually doing the wrong thing. Cops are bad, gang members are good, guns are lovely, that sort of thing.
By contrast, a villain who's aware of his villainy is a lot more amoral and a lot more difficult to sympathise with. It's the sort of villain that you just can't shame. You can tell him all the ways in which his plan is evil and repugnant and selfish and he'll just reply with something like "Oh, cry me a river!" A person playing by his own rules still respects SOME system of rules. A person who simply doesn't care about other people's rules is playing by no rules at all, except what suits his needs and objectives. That's a LOT harder to justify.
And yet... For some reason, these are the kind of villains I create the most and feel most comfortable playing. Part of it is precisely BECAUSE they don't feel the need to justify their objectives and their actions. They're simply strong enough to do what I want without needing anyone's approval. Just like heroes are a power fantasy in the sense that if I were one, I'd have the power to do the right thing, so villains are a power fantasy in the sense that if I were one, I'd have to power to not have to put up with other people's ********... So to speak. Not that I'm evil in real life, honest!
I find heroes and villains to represent two different kinds of release, both representing different sides of feeling powerless. Heroes represent release from the frustration of being unable to live up to our aspirations while villains represent release from the frustration of having to kowtow to other people. If you have EVER felt like you wanted you put your hand through your screen and punch another person over the Internet, you'll know what I mean. That's exactly what many of my villains do. When they need to step on someone to get what they want, they will. It doesn't matter if it's right or wrong, moral or amoral, legal or illegal. The only thing that does matter is what my villains want.
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Originally Posted by Egos_Shadow
You can be a perfectly nice, even friendly person who is utterly committed to a villainous ideology, or an ideology that is regarded as villainous by the rest of the world. If there is no way of squaring the circle - of achieving the goal without requiring evil acts - then it may be impossible to redeem an Anti-Villain. The very fact that they're not totally evil becomes the flaw that keeps them an antagonist, as they won't surrender the quest for the greater good just because Captain Justice keeps punching them in the face or they had to eat a kitten or something.
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Granted, that's probably not what you meant, but I'm simply listing someone whose goals are superficially positive and whose personality is welcoming and inspirational, but who is nevertheless completely rotten on the inside. That's my way of marrying the two ideas, at least. If you're talking about a good, kind person who regrets having to do the evil deeds he does and really would like to find a better way... Then I just don't think I could work with this person as a villain. Maybe a rogue, at most, but again - to me, these are hero material more than anything else. In a sense, giving a person who really, really wants to be good some plot reason to be unable to stop doing evil just bugs me.
I guess that's where I draw the line: My villains don't regret being villains. They may not always be happy with their lives, but it's not because they're really sorry about what they did. Usually, it's because they can't have what they want.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I think when people talk about the proactive and reactive nature of heroes and villains, they are talking about two different, and almost opposite ends of the spectrum, things. First, in terms of how they relate to each other: villains commit crimes and heroes stop them. "Proactively" stopping villains from commiting crimes is not so much heroic, as anti-heroic. The Punisher is proactive. Conversely, its rare for villains to simply wait for heroes to do something and then act to stop them. Villainy is presumed to have an agenda besides stopping the heroes, although there are exceptions.
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Oftentimes it's said you can't stop a crime before it happens. Ignoring the fact that you CAN (act on a death threat, find who sent it, put him under surveillance, catch him hiring a hitman), an other analogy I feel is better suited here: You can stop a fire before it happens. It's called fire prevention. There are more ways to help fight crime than actually stopping crimes in progress. Developing better security systems is one way, improving police response times is another, infiltrating known criminal organisation and arresting their members before they have a chance to commit more crimes than they already have is another still.
Similarly, villains don't always have to be plotting crimes for heroes to stop. This is where my villains' greater plans and motivation come into play. Even though their ultimate objectives are something heroes would want to stop, the way to achieving those objectives isn't always done through committing direct crimes. Tyler, my cyborg villain, wants to destroy all humans and replace them with a race of sentient machines. The trouble is, he only has one truly sentient machine so far, and he's currently working on creating more. He's not really committing any crimes, he's just working on his science. Any crimes he commits to procure materials, steal research or take people's brains to use in his machines are only incidental to his greater goal.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
On a different level entirely, I believe that heroism is almost always associated with a certain amount of selflessness and service: a need to serve others. So in a grander sense, superheroes are always reacting to need. Others need help, they discover that need, and they try to serve it. Villainy, on the other hand, tends to be associated with selfishness: with seeing either one's goals, agenda, or personal preferences being superior to everyone else's. Villainy tends not to react to others but to react to their own needs and desires.
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Honestly, though, I almost never write heroes whose actual goals are fighting crime. To most of them, that's just incidental to their larger objectives, a side job, if you will. Yeah, it's the right thing to do, so if one of my heroes learned about a major crime about to be committed, then of course he'd jump at the chance and lend a hand. But they don't spend their time patrolling the streets or listening to the police radio waiting for crimes to happen in order to respond to them. On the contrary, they have their own lives, their own work, their own pursuits that they spend the most time engaged in.The Steel Rook runs a major corporation engaged in security technology, as well as a network of various science labs. He only intervenes in person when his security drones can't handle a situation just on their own AI. Inna is an ancient cosmic being heir to the very power of creation, so she spends most of her time training her body and mind to channel and collect that power, as well as tracking down Kragoss, the entity which seeks to usurp that power and bring an end to all created things. Yes, she helps people in need, but that's part of her training. Commander Tarara is a time traveller from over a million years into a perfect utopian future, trapped here with her squad when that utopian future disappeared when someone messed with the timeline. She helps people because she's a good person, but most of what she does is look for ways to restore her timeline and save her perfect world.
To say that heroes are reacting to some kind of need of others is just limiting to their potential motivations. I really do prefer heroes who have some kind of project that they're pouring their energy into, rather than looking for needs to satisfy. There's nothing wrong with that, obviously, but I can only really have one or two heroes that do that before I want new things.
Similarly, villains don't always have to be proactive, either. Granted, I'm sort of arguing against myself here, but villains can react to hero actions just as much as heroes can react to villain ones. Hell, practically the entire new Mercy Island storyline is a reactive one. Longbow have pushed into the Isles and occupied Fort Darwin. Villains need to react to this development and push them back. More abstractly, if the Steel Rook developed a full-proof security system that ensured bank vaults can never again be broken into, then villains would need to react to this and find new ways to break open those new vaults. In fact, a lot of my villains are children of circumstance. I mentioned Duriel, my insect hive queen, recently, and her only reason to be on Earth is she reacted to an opportunity given by her ally, who offered interstellar travel in return for military assistance.
Now, granted, you can spin all of that to explain how heroes are finding some need and reacting to it while villains are manufacturing that need and taking opportunities to act on it, but what I'm saying is you don't HAVE to. It limits the story potential and pigeon-holes characters more than is strictly necessary.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
An individual act may be proactive or reactive, but the motivations most associated with heroism are reacting to others in need and villainy tends to be associated with serving one's own interests. We normally describe serving ones own interests as being proactive, while serving others interests as being reactive.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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My villains want integration. What is this; the 50s?
Mala Gatita would love to spend her down time just walking the clean streets of Paragon City. You can only hang out in the Isles for so long before the stench, decay and rubble turns your typical stir-crazy into shaking-psycho.
Skornne, self-proclaimed "Goddess of the North", can't seem to find a crack in the fence... unless, of course, she feels the need to dumb herself down and perform acts of mundane violence to maintain relevance. Then the gates are thrown wide open for her. "Hell, even the Skulls get to come and go as they please." -Skornne
Artemis Kali just wants to go fishing for something other than Makos, corpses and Coralax ambushes.
"Being able to go out for a bit and just... 'lose it for a moment' gets boring in the same old haunts. The peds don't even flinch when I feed my inclination to put my fist through a window... and I'm a damned Incarnate. I'm all like, "RRRAAAAHHHHH!" and they're all like, "meh"." -Tanker Bhel
Did you know that Organism Eden has a single out titled, 'It Never Rains in Southern Mercy City'?
[Not to say that there aren't ulterior motives involved...]
Apparently, I play "City of Shakespeare"
*Arc #95278-Gathering the Four Winds -3 step arc; challenging - 5 Ratings/3 Stars (still working out the kinks)
*Arc #177826-Lights, Camera, Scream! - 3 step arc, camp horror; try out in 1st person POV - 35 Ratings/4 Stars
Fortunate Daughter is pretty happy as she is. Arachnos is her employer, she gets to do a job she enjoys, meet wonderful people, and sometimes kill them. What's not to like?
"Men strunt �r strunt och snus �r snus
om ock i gyllne dosor.
Och rosor i ett sprucket krus
�r st�ndigt alltid rosor."
Well, to pick a few villains:
Dread Necrosis (NecroDark): Wants to kill all life and raise it as his undead slaves.
Mother of Machines (Bots/FF): Wants to kill all life and replace it with "perfect" machines.
The Darkness That Burns (Fire/Dark): Wants to kill all life because it's there.
Hellforge (Bots/Thermal): A demonic entity who became fascinated with human artifice and came to the mortal world to learn all he could of it,(after exhausting what he could learn from damned souls. Regardless of how much damage he has to do in the process.
Occam the Razor (BS/Nin stalker): He wants to eliminate unnecessary entities.
Herald of Armageddon (Demons/Time): A half demon time traveler from a future timeline where the infernal legions have conquered the mortal world, he seeks to ensure that his future is the one that occurs, and that the Apocalaypse happens on schedule.
The Opener of the Way (Illusion/Storm): His purpose is to, well, "Open the Way". To what no one knows, but no one really wants to find out. A Lovecraftian homage.
The Wolf of Fimbulwinter (Ice/Dark Corr): As the physical embodiment of Fimbulwinter, it is his goal to grow in power until he can break his chains, manifest fully and wrap the world in an eternal dark winter.
Dark Mechanix (Bots/Dark): An enslaved former hero of a universe consumed by the Primal Darkness, he has been sent to weaken Earth in preparation for its own consumption.
Mad Man Max (Mace/Will brute): Wants to do what the voices tell him to do. And the voices tell him to SMASH!
Arc #40529 : The Furies of the Earth
Most of my villains are more like Silver Age type villains. Guys who don't want to hurt people per se, but are in it for the money ... essentially almost all my villains would be rogue by temperament if not alignment.
Damon McCoy was probably not the nicest guy around to begin with, but when the Countess Crey kidnapped him and experimented on him in hopes of the secret of his semi-identical cousin Simon McCoy's mutation he got a whole lot meaner. He would love nothing better than to beat up the Countess-- and Simon since he would not have been kidnapped if Simon had worn a costume and taken a secret id like a sensible hero. Aside from those two, he has no particular grudge against anyone and is mainly in the villain business to earn a living.
Space Kadet is an alien that comes from a super intelligent society. On her world, she's considered "simple" so she came to Earth where she would be considered super intelligent. She's essentially a "ditzy blonde" with killer robots. She can be sweet and friendly ... but if you cross her, watch out!
Desmond Darke, on the other hand, is as close to pure evil as I got. Admittedly, he's kind of banal evil, but ... He studied sorcery to remedy his poor health and pick up chicks. He got power and improved health, but his luck with the ladies is not so good. When a girl turns him down, he tends to cure them ... having turned one of my other characters into a Dark Melee/Fire Scrapper who can never look at someone else without a mask on without driving them mad with fear and turned a dancer from Saint Martial into a Claws/Super Reflexes Brute.
Spider Blue I describe as being Prince Namor with a sense of humor. Until he met Hardcase he was a typical "The Strong Thrive, the Weak Perish" Rogue Isles kinda guy. After meeting Hardcase, he found himself thinking more along the lines of "The Strong Thrive-- and protect what is theirs"-- and that includes the people of the Rogue Isles. If it weren't for that whole "Overthrowing Recluse will destroy the world" thing he might move to be in charge himself.
I know that a lot of people have complained about not having the opportunity for their villains to be villainous enough, but I'd like to have more opportunities for my Rogues to be more Roguey ... surely there could be some Blueside and Redside Contacts willing to just HIRE someone to look into things for them.
My COX Fanfiction:
Blue's Assembled Story Links
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
If I had to break my own rules and give broad general motivations, I'd break them down like this: Personal gain: Be this money, power, influence, fame or eternal life, your goal is to get something for yourself. The evil you do is a means to that particular end. Misguided idealism: Whether you want to save everyone, purge everyone, control everyone or what have you, you perform evil deeds because you honestly believe it's the right thing to do. Whether you recognise that what you're doing is bad or believe it's actually good, you do this because you must. Megalomania: You believe you're better than everyone else and, naturally, deserve better than everyone else. The evil you do, you do because other people simply don't matter, so if you end up hurting them... Well, who cares? Higher purpose: You do what you do not because you want to, but because that's simply what you have to do. Your actions are out of your hands, you have been chosen for this. You don't see any evil you do as your responsibility, because you really feel you have no choice. Pure malice: You like to see people suffer, you like to see good things destroyed, and sometimes, you just like being bad. You do evil because that's simply what you enjoy. Kicks and giggles: Maybe you're bored, maybe you enjoy a challenge or maybe you just enjoy fighting. You do evil not because you necessarily want to be evil or even because there's anything to gain, but just for your own personal entertainment. Revenge: At some point, somebody did something to you that you cannot forgive, and have now devoted your life to exacting brutal, unfair revenge. And not necessarily just against the people who wronged you. |
Alpha has kinda been sidelined for now, but he mostly fitted into the 'Personal gain' and 'Me and my friends for the win' kind of band. If you didn't mess with him, people he liked, stuff he owned or stuff he wanted to get his hands on, he'd mostly leave you alone.
As for my more recent and better defined characters;
Umbral Nightwalker
A mixture of misguided idealism and higher purpose. A very old Nictus scientist who saw his initial experiments (which were developed around the same time as the big name Nictus stuff) as exploration and trying to push the boundaries of life and death. He also sees the Peacebringers as backwards zealots who cling to a way of life that is antiquated and unfulfilling (especially given he and his colleague were nearly killed by Peacebringers). He wants to push the Nictus to the 'next stage' of evolution, turning them from what he views as parasites into beings who do not need hosts to absorb power and enjoy what is essentially immortality. His thinking is just totally alien; humans would call him immoral, while he simply doesn't think the same way they do. Come quite close to 'Evil Villain'.
Operative King
King pretty much fits into Megalomania, the special Arachnos brand kind. She was picked up as an orphan by a Special Sciences team, who took in the albinistic girl as on of their own. She survived against the odds, and began clawing her way up the Arachnos ladder, displacing or outright killing anyone who got in her way. She fully embraces the kill or be killed mentality, and has no regrets about what she is. As far as she's concerned, mercy, trust and weakness are for lesser humans and inhumans. All that matters is strength and your place. She's definitely my true-blue Evil Villain.
Caesar the Troll
Caesar is all about business. One of the few trolls with muscle AND a fully working brain, Caesar exploits that to his advantage by running his own mafia operations out of Oakes and Martial, cracking Family skulls and hiring up some of the smarter Trolls and working on turning them into something better than dumb muscle; smart muscle.
He's mostly just in it for power an money. He's not a bad guy, per se, and definitely classifies as a Rogue. It's just...business.
Wyld Fire
Wyldy is in it for number 1; Her! If you get on her good side, she's nice enough. If she likes you she can be protective, generous and quite the part animal.
She also has no qualms about charring people who get on her bad side into little more than a scorched outline on the wall. Being a low-ranking Hellion member/girlfriend made sure any traces of mercy were beaten out of her early on, as did nearly winding up as a sacrifice herself. Until she twisted the deal so she got the powers, in exchange for a thousand souls by midnight. The fact she fulfilled that bargain in one day goes to show just how much people need to avoid her wyld side.
Lord DeFeurard
Lord Leon DeFeurard is handsome, charming and very well off. He's also a vampire.
Leon's been around since British Medieval times, born into the blood rather than brought in. He's seen a lot, done a lot and been to a lot of places...and he's not grown bored of that yet.
Leon is, again, not a bad sort. He just tends to find rules and laws rather boring. He's more of a Rogue for certain. He's also made a hobby out of keeping the other undead in the Isles in-line, and can be a really magnificent bastiche when he wants to be.
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.
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Oh I forgot one of mine!
Kid Kaiju - SS/WP Brute - Kid Kaiju is an economy sized Japanese movie monster. He wants to be Godzilla when he grows up and eat Tok- err, Paragon City. In an abstract sense. Mostly, he rampages and robs banks and stuff in order to get money to buy comic books and action figures and video games. He's destructive in a childish way.
You want to know the secret of the world? It's this: Save it, and it'll repay you, every second of every day.
@Dr. Reverend - My DeviantArt Gallery
Crow Call - Gods of the Golden Age
Mordres - A dark elf necromancer from another dimension on the quest for ultimate power. His ultimate goal is to set himself up somewhere as either the ruler of an entire world, or as the primary villainous force of darkness in a tower somewhere. His role models include Sauron and Lord D'tesh. He's incredibly self-aware and knows that most of his goals are petty and pretty unjustifiable with the line of reasoning that "Someone has to be the bad guy, so why not me? They have it pretty good."
He's a weird combination of "In it for the challenge", "In it for himself", "A higher calling", and "Why the hell not?"
Servitis - A "demon", in as much as he can be called one. The Archdemon of Business, who came to Primal Earth on vacation. Said vacation has really mellowed him out, as the people he's interacted with have shown him what kind of pain he can cause people when he goes whole hog. He's still "evil", since as a demon he's contractually obligated to do terrible things, but he tries to temper it with benefits and choice.
Definitely a "higher purpose" villain, albeit one that doesn't agree with said higher power. An angel has commented that Servitis would probably rise above his hellish origins if he weren't so damned determined to be a demon like he's "supposed" to be.
"Life is hard; it's harder if you're stupid." - John Wayne
Oh why not Ill bite.
My only red sider is an old pre cov scrapper named T'Keron Valmaz. Now days my friends call him the original rogue.
As my fans here likely are aware he is drawn heavily from COX lore specifically Infernals origin and all things in the game connected to COXverse demonology.This allowed me to make both an indepth and cosmic class being, who was still bound by rules not of my own making to help restrain any desire to god mode, as is so often the case with pretty nearly every demon wannabe I meet who seems to have more in common with D&D tanari'.
Being the lord of demonkind allows for an arrogance in attitude worthy of a classic golden age mastermind. He often wears the proper moustache to go with such style. Ofcourse being one to rather loathe godmoding I embraced many ideas of human fragility. As its not some mere possession or hybrid by birth but a full blown magical mishap and cosmic accident that fused a human and demon into one new unholy being.
I chose katana/SR for his power sets to represent needing arcane weapons to replace shadow and flame. His incredible speed all he had left to depend upon for defense with his immortality and regeneration lost along with his legions of followers who in no time turned to chaos and civil war. He would eventually align with those elements in the circle of thorns who held true to the ancient pacts and sought redemption still for thier betrayel and full restoration of thier body and soul.
His goals are many for various motivations. He seeks to full restore his demonic power, something Ill consider accomplished only with all incarnate slots filled to max tier whenever that long away issue comes.
His human nature still yearns to both redeem himself and prove himself superior to Infernal. I fullfill this in game by running various bits of content that bring them in contact and do some random RP to spice it up for my group.
He courts Numina to annoy Infernal, I often afk by her and doa few random emotes and bits of banter in local to trip out anyone passing by.
He seeks to bring back the ancient days of humans seeking to make pacts with Demons and does his best to spread trust and faith between the to cultures. Showing them that pacts are always kept to the last letter, and requirements like blood,flesh, and souls have no malice behind them, but simply the fact they are all humans have that possess any real value.
He mocks and seeks to drive off any false demons which he suspects come from another earth akin to the rikti homeworld where humanity long ago in a fit of emo biatchery all started to act like what they thought cool demons would be like until thier entire world came to believe the delusional fantasy. Those that think a full demon would even hang out where mortals could encounter them is equally delusional.
Frankly I dont even think Id want to level a villain up red side even in the early days the story over there was even worse and railroading you then the blue side. Way to much Arachnos this and that to really allow for the freedom of origin that being a being of two worlds who began his career in paragon living in the shadows manipulating events gave me.
Mala Gatita would love nothing more than to expand her gun-running gig. With everybody becoming wannbe demi-god's, business has definitely been in a slump. She needs better hardware and more diverse contacts. Goldbricker sonic weapons, Malta sappers... heck; she'd even sell some rewired clockwork if she could get her hands on a stable supply. Maybe her Longbow connection has some heavies they could misappropriate again...
Apparently, I play "City of Shakespeare"
*Arc #95278-Gathering the Four Winds -3 step arc; challenging - 5 Ratings/3 Stars (still working out the kinks)
*Arc #177826-Lights, Camera, Scream! - 3 step arc, camp horror; try out in 1st person POV - 35 Ratings/4 Stars
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I think this counts for many. I know Liz sees herself as doing the right thing... for her. Even alive many of what she did wasn't a crime. It is normal to discipline your servants etc.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
That probably describes most of my villains. They are villains because other people see them as villains because the rules they play by are not the rules other people play by, but they make perfect sense to them.
Actually, I don't even see most of my villainous characters as "villains." I see them as "outlaws." I think that best describes them. They disregard the law, the social rules, and the typical moral code that most people adhere to most of the time. Its not so much that they pursue evil, but rather that they refuse to live under the restrictions that good requires. I can't play a "straight villain" - someone who thinks its wrong, knows its wrong, but does it anyway. I can play an outlaw: everyone else thinks is wrong, but I don't, so I do it. And I can play completely crazy: everyone else thinks is wrong, but they don't count because their heads are upside down and they taste like ginger snaps. But its not generally in my nature to play evil for its own sake. I can be Magneto. I can't be Hannibal Lector. |
She just goes too far of what is socially acceptable. And that makes others think of her as a villain.
- The Italian Job: The Godfather Returns #1151
Beginner - Encounter a renewed age for the Mook and the Family when Emile Marcone escapes from the Zig!
- Along Came a... Bug!? #528482
Average - A new race of aliens arrives on Earth. And Vanguard has you investigate them!
- The Court of the Blood Countess: The Rise of the Blood Countess #3805
Advanced - Go back in time and witness the birth of a vampire. Follow her to key moments in her life in order to stop her! A story of intrigue, drama and horror! Blood & Violence... not recommend to solo!
Something occurred to me when describing Crash for another thread... OK, she's a hero, but the question applies to both sides: Do you think it's possible to make a villain who has no "grand missions" without making that villain come off like he has no motivation at all? I know people have given examples of what may well be this, yes. I think many of the Techbot's characters may well fit here - they're people who just want to mind their own business, and just go about it in villainous ways.
The reason I say this is that I find myself with a lot of villains on my hands whose "grand missions," when put into words, ends up very... Vague. For instance, Cedric wants to conquer Earth, as is his way, so that's a concrete goal, but Duriel (his subordinate insect hive queen) just wants to expand her brood wherever she can. That's not nearly as concrete... Is it? I mean, it's a question of "conquer THIS world" vs. "conquer ANY world."
In a sense, I want to ask for opinions on where vague but present motivation ends and no motivation at all begins. What's the difference between a villain who has some form of overall objective that's just very broad and ill-defined and a villain who has no overall objective and is up for whatever? That might be quite telling.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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To be honest, I think it ends when you get into the 'I'm doing it for teh evulz!' territory. You also tend to be moving into borderline boring characters; doing stuff 'because it's evul lol' tends not to be very (de)motivational, interesting or even that good(evil).
It's not always impossible. A 'Chaotic Neutral' character can and has been done right in some cases, but it can also be a bit rough dealing with a genuine fruit loop.
It's more a case of avoiding jerkism. For instance, pushing pram into roads and kicking kittens is 'evil', sure. It's also pretty pointless and doesn't paint a character as 'scary' or 'evil' and more as an amoral jerk-bag.
If a character was, say, pushing prams into roads because they were convinced that the Earth was over-crowded and that levelling out the population was the only way to save humanity...well, they're still a bit fruit loopy, but at least they have a motive. They have more depth to them.
Now take that to the levels of Recluse and his Darwinistic 'survival of the fittest' ideals and you have actual, motivated villainy. But the same can be said for having any recognisable motive; Money, power and influence or scarring the whole human race, both are villainous motives that give room for depth.
On a tangent, I'd also say the same argument is true for Heroes. Characters that do good 'because it's the right thing to do' tend to be boring and somewhat sterile. Not always, there are exceptions to every rule. A fellow Union RPer has that kind of true-blue heroine, but that sort of thinking is actually indoctrinated in her by her superiors, and she has a far more human-side that comes to the fore now and then.
Characters that have motivation are usually more interesting. Some heroes want to clean up the world so terrible things don't happen to others like it did to them. Some (like Chief Centurion Z1, one of my characters) feel they owe Earth and Humanity and seek to pay that back by taking the fight to villains so that others don't have to. Some are actually just soldiers or cops, people who do the job they chose to do and take each day as it comes with as much a semblance of normality as they can. Heck, I have one who's a pure-human reporter who gets by on stealth, a well placed knee to the groin, contacts and a driving urge to drag the truth into the light of day.
Being 'up for whatever' can still be a motive. Mercs are still in it for money. Some people are in it for kicks/blood/combat high/souls. Having no motive tends to fall only under 'doing it for teh evulz', where there is no clear goal except 'being a baddy'. Which tends not to work. Not always, but tends to.
/ramble.exe
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.
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My villains run the gamut from modern-day mafiosos, to morally bankrupt schemers who are just in it for personal wealth, to world-dominating megalomaniacs, to radical anarchists, to horror-genre monsters that just want to cause destruction and/or kill people.
In short: My villains want very different things. It's a much broader moral area than super-heroism, in my opinion. At the end of the day, the vast majority of characters you could really call superheroes want the same thing: to do good by some group of people.
Villains are much less universal in their desires, which is why it's so much harder to write a story-setting that's palatable to a large audience's views of their "evil" characters. This can be seen both in the City universe (where the redside missions are frequently maligned for this reason), to modern console RPGs, where people will often complain about how the bad-guy options don't fit with the kind of bad guy they want their character to be.
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I'll run with the crowd and add an example.
My 'magnum opus' of villains is The Crimson Alpha. He was my first, a launch-day Bots/Force Mastermind. Once upon a time, he was just a brilliant kid growing up in a place nobody should (Cap Au Diable). In his formative years (around 12) he was severely injured by a group of street thugs, and lost his right arm as a result. After he recovered, he got heavily into medical applications of robotics, and after a few years built himself a new arm.
His research didn't stop there though, and he would eventually develop weaponized, AI driven robotic drones. He entered the Black Market trade to build up seed money which he used to found a legitimate Research and Development firm, Crimson Electronics, entering the legal weapons trade as a young adult and making billions. Of course, he never really left the illegal underground arena that gave him his start - CEO William Redfield of Crimson Electronics is the legal front of the organized crime syndicate known as the Red Legion, led by the Crimson Alpha.
Only the most trusted members of the group have ever seen their leader face to face (and many of my villains serve as foot soldiers and researchers in the group). The Red Legion is known to be involved with all manner of illicit action, ranging from the mundane mafia villainy of racketeering and black market trading, all the way into the super-villain stuff of legend, involving research into mutation, superscience, the occult and magical, et cetera. Several of its membership could legitimately be considered 'Eldritch Horrors,' but of course, these characters each have their own motivations for becoming involved in what is a mortal/scientific group at heart (frequently involving easy access to resources in exchange for some targeted use of their powers).
@Draeth Darkstar
Virtue [Heroes, Roleplay], Freedom [Villains], Exalted [All Sides, Roleplay]
Code:
I24 Proc Chance = (Enhanced Recharge + Activation Time) * (Current PPM * 1.25) / 60*(1 + .75*(.15*Radius - 0.011*Radius*(360-Arc)/30)) Single Target Radius = 0. AoE Non-Cone Arc = 360.
Nice character there, Draeth.
But it's 'gamut', not gambit 
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.
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I have WAY too many toons to write about so I'll focus on just two...the extreme ends of my spectrum if you will.
Doctor Zombie is a little like Mr Freeze from Batman. His wife died and he wants her back. The kinds of experiments he was conducting were illegal in the U.S. (and most civilized places) so he went to the Isles. There he found he needed funds so he traded his expertise in magic for money and equipment. Once he managed to reanimate his beloved he became a Hero (briefly). However he realized that memories are long and is now back in the Isles. He only wants peace and solitude to be with his wife now.
Total Violence is a Brute, literally and figuratively. The victim of scientific experimentation too horrible to explain, he lives with constant pain now. The only way to suppress it is to increase his adrenalin production. Doing heavy labor is good...but it doesn't pay very much. So he's a criminal. He takes what jobs are offered in exchange for money, fleeting graps at power and repairs to his numerous cybernetic systems. In the end he's a closet suicide who wants someone to put him out of his misery. But his innate desire to hurt people and break things has proven too valuable and time and again someone saves him from the brink of death or revives him. To paraphrase Doc Holliday from Tombstone "Total Violence has a great hole through the middle of him. He can never steal enough or kill enough or inflict enough pain to fill it. He wants revenge...for being born."
"Comics, you're not a Mastermind...you're an Overlord!"
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This actually reminds me of one of the "daydreams" from Chuck Norris' Sidekicks movie, where the villain talks about putting razor blades in bubble gum and dynamite in candy. I do wonder if I can't make an interesting villain based on that premise... Hmm... Food for thought. |
Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
To be honest, I think it ends when you get into the 'I'm doing it for teh evulz!' territory. You also tend to be moving into borderline boring characters; doing stuff 'because it's evul lol' tends not to be very (de)motivational, interesting or even that good(evil).
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Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
Characters that have motivation are usually more interesting. Some heroes want to clean up the world so terrible things don't happen to others like it did to them.
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This brings up an interesting parity. Are we saying that doing evil because it's wrong is the same as doing evil because it's right? Honest question here.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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In a way, protecting the world because you were hurt and want to pre-empt it happening to others is still more, or rather a more valid or realistic reason than going out and fighting crime 'because it's the right thing to do'.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Isn't that the same thing, though? You protect the world because you were hurt and you don't want others to get hurt sounds like very much the same as protecting the world because it's the right thing to do. Or are you saying that because at least there's a reason, it's more than "We do it because it's right!" as the C&C Generals Crusader tanks used to say? I can buy that, but this assumes that "I do it because it's right!" isn't a reason, or at least not reason enough.
This brings up an interesting parity. Are we saying that doing evil because it's wrong is the same as doing evil because it's right? Honest question here. |
Being honest here, what would be the first thing you did if, tomorrow, you suddenly discovered you had super powers? I know I'd probably spend a while freaking out, then experimenting and then....well, FIRST off I'd go to my old flat and get the damn money those smeg-damned girls owe me for bills which they never paid ¬¬ Then I'd probably spend a while trying to figure out what the heck I'd do next.
People don't spontaneously go "I'm going to save the world from villains!" It's an ideal, yes, but it's also not a very realistic or human one. Now, beating up villains so that they can't do to others what happened to you as a kid? And, y'know, maybe making them really sorry while you're at it? That's a human like and realistic reason. It's a heroic ideal, fighting crime, mixed with a human want for pay-back of vengeance, even if it's not a malicious or overpowering urge.
I don't quite know what you mean by the last question, though XD Clarify?
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.
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Thank you, on both counts.
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Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
Nice character there, Draeth.
But it's 'gamut', not gambit |
@Draeth Darkstar
Virtue [Heroes, Roleplay], Freedom [Villains], Exalted [All Sides, Roleplay]
Code:
I24 Proc Chance = (Enhanced Recharge + Activation Time) * (Current PPM * 1.25) / 60*(1 + .75*(.15*Radius - 0.011*Radius*(360-Arc)/30)) Single Target Radius = 0. AoE Non-Cone Arc = 360.
My villains all fall into the 'cartoonishly evil' category, with no real reason for being evil because I don't care so much about having a reason for commanding an army of plague-zombies as I do about holy balls, I got the name "Paindemic."
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