Player villains, agency, Arachnos and the AE.

(Or: I Have No Idea How To Condense My Thoughts Into A Single Snappy Title Now Shush And Start Reading)

So I'm putting together a couple of story arcs for the Mission Architect revolving around a (now technically retired) former character of mine who was an absolute joy to play in the game, but due to her utterly sociopathic personality actually roleplaying her was an issue. She was dropped from the game itself but I've wanted to dig her up again, blow off the cobwebs and use her as both a contact and antagonist in two sides of my AE storyline - the Hero side will be fairly easy enough as it's much easier to involve a player when they're being directly attacked and/or responsible for the defense of the city. I mean the character's description isn't exactly what screams 'nice lady':

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Uncompromising, unshakeable and entirely amoral - Jane Lundgren quickly rose to prominence under the Black Scorpion's command. A fierce proponent of cybernetics, she Commander hasn't been seen in public for over a decade; some say she has augmented herself to the point where she is no longer considered human.

Now in this case the Heroic side of the arc has taken care of itself quite nicely. Assaults are fended off, people are saved and/or defended, with the appropriate result coming together in the end. As a general rule a 'Heroic' motive doesn't need to be much more than that so it's saved me a lot of effort to instead redirect towards making the actual experience (combat situations, etc) a little more interesting.

I'm struggling on what to do with the same villain side.

At the moment I'm not above rewriting the villain side of things, but as of now my intention is for the villain side to deal with how Lundgren came to be in a position where she's able to command enough materiel and resources to mount an attack that warrants meta human intervention - to that end she'd be recruiting the player in order to give herself leverage and obtain what was needed. You can probably see what the problem is: quite simply I cannot think of a way to write this that involves the player villain being a catalyst for Lundgren's powerbase, merely an accessory to it. A glorified errand boy, someone willing to sack a research facility or two and murder several hundred people in the process.

What I can come up with right now:

1.) I scrap the idea the player villain is assisting her. Instead you work with another contact to try and bring her down before her plan can gain too much momentum. I think this would be the easiest solution but it has a similar problem - if I want Lundgren to ultimately succeed, I need to try and find an ending where she still achieves her goal but it isn't dumping all over the player's achievement. To be told 'YOU FAILED' would be far worse than having the character be a tool for her, I think.

2.) Lundgren attempts to betray and kill the player character when they've been used, roughly two thirds into the arc. Her goal is achieved but she then makes it personal, allowing the player to 'beat' her but still lay the groundwork for the Heroic side of the arc. A possibility but seems a bit cheap to me.

3.) I try to establish her victory through background materials, clues and the like, with instead both villain and hero arcs focusing on beating her back and bringing her down. The hero arc may revolve around defeating her forces whereas the villain side may deal with hunting down and killing/incarcerating Lundgren in person. This is also promising but probably quite a faff for my first major project.

That's pretty much it on that front. Hopefully throwing the net wide will help get me some perspective on the issue - looking at it with fresh eyes would be enormously useful, so thanks in advance there.

However, a second issue and one much more simple - does anyone have any bloody clue how to make Arachnos mobs interesting to fight against in the AE? Other than giving everyone substantial flavour text (Arachnos units under Lundgren are predominately mechanised or outright robotic) and custom paint jobs, this one eludes me. I think it's an inherent flaw with the game and one I'm going to have to struggle with regardless though.

Let's see if we can work on a process of elimination. What restrictions have you put on yourself?

1. Your villain of the story has to be a credible threat.
2. Your villain of the story needs to succeed in her plan to raid Paragon City.

On top of those, I want to put a few more limitations of my own:

3. The player villain cannot be a servant to the villain of the story.
4. The player villain cannot be fighting for the greater good or just wrestling over scraps.
5. The player villain cannot outright lose, but can suffer setbacks.

My suggestion is for you to set the villain side of the story to start shortly after the villain of the story has succeeded in raiding Paragon City, with much if not most of it taking place alongside the actual invasion, possibly continuing after it's done. This can give your villain of the story the opportunity to succeed off-panel without needing for the player villain to assist or fail to prevent.

As with a murder mystery, the player villain needs motive and opportunity to be involved. You need to come up with a motive for player villains to want to bother such that it doesn't feel like they're being suckered in, by which I mean this needs to be something the villain wants, but can still resist enough to be able to make an intelligent choice about it. What that is, I can't say. The player villain also needs to have an opportunity to make a difference in the story, such as exploiting the weakness of your villain of the story while her forces are getting hammered in Paragon City.

I'd also suggest going without a specific contact. Present the player with an opportunity in the style of a Tip mission, then use some form of paper or information terminal or some such and word your briefings like common sense conclusions on how to proceed, such that if a villain doesn't see the next step as making sense, he could always just leave by ending the story arc early. This gets rid of the "lackey" feeling entirely. Either that, or use a weasel informant like Dean McArthur who doesn't have any ideas or suggestions, but can instead follow orders and obtain information.

That's all I can do on short notice.

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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.

good stuff Sam!

It's just a personal opinion but I feel it's better to start off writing a story by asking what emotion you want to convey through your work.

This helps you illustrate how best to organize a series of events that lead to a more satisfying conclusion.

Reverse the standard villain plot so it is actually good. Make her the lackey of the player. She gets a cut of some amazing robbery that the player pulls off. The player is the mastermind, she is the up and coming villain.

One thing to do with existing villain groups is to subdivide them into your own custom groups.

Make a group of Arachnos Mu, and Arachnos Spiders, etc.

That lets you set up spawns of specific types with appropriate dialog. It is really weird having an arachnos spider make comments about grabbing a cup of coffee off duty.

Yeah, it's something I learnt quite early on. So little point in being a big warrior girl if said warrior girl isn't going to interact with anyone beyond raised eyebrows and grunts.

Anyway, thanks for the responses so far guys. Can't really add anything just yet as I'm still mulling it all over in my head, but it's certainly made me think of a few things in a different light - nothing concrete yet of course but it's positive.