what content should be the template for the future?

Hell with Nemesis. I'm waiting for her to turn out to be Darrin Wade 2.

There's also this, as well. For me, a lot of old cartoon shows were made good because they had a good villain. The Swat Kats had Dr. Viper and Dark Kat, for instance, and both of those were sold both as real, respectable threats and as very capable, powerful individuals. I've always hated shows with a weak, bumbling joke villain because it really demeans the accomplishment when he's defeated, which is why Kim Possible never worked for me. I don't like stupid villains any more so than I like stupid heroes, is what I'm getting at.

There are some stories where a villain will be so good you'll want to cheer for him. Not necessarily want him to win, obviously, but you'll want him to lose graciously and show up to be a villain again later on. THAT is the kind of villain I can respect. To this day, I feel that half the reason I watched Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! is because of Mark Hamil's Skeleton King as the main villain. That guy is put over so strongly it's just a joy to watch everything he's involved with.

To me, City of Villains is the opportunity to create these kinds of villains for myself, and to play them off as the cool antagonists. That's what makes them fun.

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.

So...you *are* evil, then. Well, not evil, really, just not good. More like a chaotic neutral. Lex Luthor without Superman.

Good will always win, because evil is dumb. Maybe I'm naive, mayhaps even a little misguided, but I root for good to win because it's GOOD. Who wants to see the Chitauri slaughter the Avengers? Who honestly wants to see Vader kill Luke?

To be less pedantic, good always wins because that's what humanity needs. The belief that no matter how bad the odds, the truly good can triumph. Whether it's defeating the universe-devouring aliens or helping the cussing grandma across the street, people need to believe that being good is a good thing.

Originally Posted by EarthWyrm But I do understand that there is an internet rule that any bad idea must be presented by someone at least twice a year to remind everyone who hasn't already read every previous thread on the topic precisely why the idea is bad.

If I wasn't good, I wouldn't love my wife so much or cuddle my dogs every day or bust my butt working to support my family. I'm no chaotic neutral. As a human being, I consider myself neutral good. As a roleplayer/gamer, I drift from neutral evil to lawful evil from time to time.

This has absolutely nothing to do with my morals or my intents. I just want to play a video game/watch a movie where a charismatic, likeable, capable bad guy trumps the hero.

Besides, the Chitauri were violent slaughter-bots as far as a plot device were concerned, and even Loki's brand of crazy is tough to swallow as a "what would have happened" villain. I wouldn't want to see Vader kill Luke. I want Luke to see the ways of the Force through his father's eyes, joining as father and son to strike down Emperor Palpatine to become the new superpowers of the Empire.

...Yes. I actually wanna go make a picture of that.

I disagree. Good only wins frequently enough to largely nullify evil. Otherwise, individual conflicts wouldn't matter! I mean, yeah, maybe in some cases, good consistently trumps evil, but then, there have been many times where evil has won, if only for a while. A good story doesn't have to be "The good guys win. Period." In my opinion, the one where the heroes and villains are on even footing, or even when the villain tends to win, because then the hero's fate becomes more uncertain, and their battles with evil become more exciting! And the villain may win, they may even take over the world for a while, but that just makes the hero's victory that much sweeter. All desert and no main course is bad for you. It can cause blood sugar problems such as insulin resistance and diabetes, metaphorically speaking.

Thank you for bringing this up and saving me the trouble of starting a whole new thread over it like I was gonna'

Heroes are not reactive characters. They can be, but it's not required, nor is it a part of their being a hero. Pretty much the only place you'll see the "reactive" heroes done the most strongly is Saturday morning American cartoons, and that's just because of the traditional format of one-of "shorts" that don't connect to each other in any way aside from featuring the same characters and setting. Pretty much any hero of the last few decades that you pull out of a cartoon will have roughly the same format, from the Swat Kats to Hong Kong Phoey, from Top Cat to Huckleberry Fin. But that's not all heroes can be about, it's just what's the easiest to re-run out of order.

But even speaking of Saturday Morning cartoons, I can instantly pick out a great counter-example: Samurai Jack. Jack's entire story revolves around needing to find a way back into the past to kill Aku before he took over the world and became invincible. Everything he does is either an effort to achieve this goal, or a distraction that happens along the way. In one episode Aku keeps flying away with a time machine, so Jack learns to "jump good." In one episode Jack finds a time portal, but he can't get to it because the guardian is too strong. In one episode Jack looks for a monastery with a time portal but Aku destroys it before he can use it. When you get down to it, that's all Aku ever seems to do - watch what Jack is doing from afar and try to react to his actions. In that cartoon, it's the villain who is reactive and the hero who is proactive.

And that's just American television. Pick pretty much any anime, watch a few episodes and you'll realise you're essentially watching one very, very long movie that's just broken up into episodes. And in that very, very long movie, you are, more often than not, following the heroes who have been sent on some sort of quest. Maybe they need to get to somewhere, maybe they need to find someone, maybe they need to learn the true meaning of friendship or whatnot, and the villain is generally either just trying to stop them or having parallel adventures of his own.

Even if you go to comic books themselves, you'll rarely see a run that's comprised entirely of heroes waiting by the Powerpuff Girls phone, then responding to a disaster when it rings and immediately going back to waiting by the phone. Maybe in the old days, like the 60s, when stories were, again, not very interconnected, but these days of "sequential art," you're pretty much always going to have the hero out doing something to move the plot. Sure, it might start with the hero responding to a crime in progress, but a lot of the time it will develop into a plot where the hero needs to be proactive - to take action on his own initiative - in order to resolve the situation. And that's if you ignore a fair number of heroes whose chief characteristic is something they're always trying to do, like Bruce Banner being driven by finding new ways to fail to rid himself of the Hulk.

Basically what I'm saying is it's very easy to write heroes as being reactive, but it's not a very good way to go about making compelling stories. In fact, if you look at pretty much any City of Heroes story arc from the oldest to the newest, you'll find heroes being proactive in it. Sure, it's the contact that comes up with the plans, but the hero isn't exactly a mercenary following orders for money. If you look at the relationship between hero and "contact" as the dynamic it was meant to be - that between a detective and a street contact - you'll find it's a collaboration. The contact comes up with the information and the hero and the contact agree on a course of action. Almost every story arc starts with "Something is happening and I don't know what it is. Go find out!" but immediately thereafter turns into "OK, that's weird. We need to understand this, and to do that, let's take the initiative."

Now contrast this with your typical I6 City of Villains story arc, let's say by Operative Kirkland. "Hey, I have a problem. Solve it and I'll pay you." "Hey, that didn't solve the problem, but do this other thing and I'll pay you." "Hey, that almost worked, but go do this last thing and I'll pay you." "All done? Get lost!" Where City of Heroes starts with heroes responding to a crisis but turns into a proactive investigation, old-style City of Villains starts with responding to a contact's needs and proceeds by responding to a contact's needs. Far, far, FAR too many I6 CoV story arcs don't really have anything to their story, so much as they're a string of paper missions joined by a common plot.

The reason Dean, Leonard and so forth have arcs that resonate so well with the community here is that they allow the villain to be proactive in much the same way as a hero would be - the villain would initiate the story by reacting to an opportunity, but will then proceed to be proactive in exploiting that opportunity. If a hero can be generalised as working for the greater good and thus working WITH a contact towards a proactive solution to a problem, so a villain can be generalised as working for his own agenda and thus working WITH a contact towards a proactive exploitation of an opportunity.

This is the direction future story arcs need to follow: What can I do with this situation to turn it in my favour? This is also the way future story arcs need to end: What do I accomplish at the end of this arc that helps me in any way?

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.

And that's precisely the worst kind of way to structure a story. If good wins because evil is stupid, then good hasn't earned that victory and the story has lost its power. A good story needs a good villain because a good villain makes the hero's victory meaningful. There's no satisfaction to be had if the villain trips over his own feet and knocks over his own doomsday device (I think Drakken may have actually done this), because at no point did the hero's actions seem necessary or difficult. In order for a "good triumphs over evil" story to be interesting, good needs to earn its victory, and this requires a villain that this victory is meaningful against.

I think trying to look at this in terms of "good" and "evil" is misleading, so let's look at a basic wrestling angle of a "face" (someone you cheer) vs. a "heel" (someone you boo). In order for any wrestling angle to be successful, you need the crowd to cheer the face and boo the heel. One without the other will not work. You want to get the crowd engaged, you want them to care about the outcome, so you want them to like the face and hate the heel. That's what makes one "a good heel" - when he is able to get to the crowd and really make people hate him. You also need to make the heel look like a legitimate threat, like the hardest fight the face has ever had to fight, you want the audience to cheer every time the face gets the upper hand and boo when the heel takes control. In all of this, you NEED a good heel or this simply doesn't work.

It helps to look at this from the standpoint of a storyteller, rather than a player. When you're creating a story purely of your own, you need to manufacture the drama yourself. You cannot afford to favour the hero or the story you produce will be boring. A story about an invincible hero who never faces adversity and curb-stomps an incompetent villain is boring in the extreme, and this was probably THE first lesson I had to learn when I was first beginning to write. YOU need to create a good hero and a good villain and off those craft a good story. You cannot afford to take sides because this WILL be evident in the final story you create and observant people will pick up on it.

We don't want to see a hero lose, but we also don't want to see the hero win a victory he didn't deserve. Short of outright defeat, this is probably the worst outcome a story could have. In fact, depending on how it's handled, it can often be worse than a defeat.

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.

What about God-Man?

God-Man is what I had in mind when I wrote that.

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.

Actually, I regularly hear Phipps described as "the sort of stuff we need more of".

And in the end, that's always going to be the problem with writing content for Villains. Content for Heroes is easy. People are doing bad stuff, we stop them. There may be nuances about how we want to stop them, different views of the sort of bad stuff they're stopping (many of my characters are street crime guys who feel really out of place stopping interdimensional evil), but still, it's "stop the bad guys".

For villains, who are doing bad stuff by nature, it's not so simple. There are the gentlemen thieves who steal from those who can afford to lose it (and perhaps deserves to lose it), the straight out thief who'll take whatever isn't nailed down, there's self-centered jackass who knows what he wants and will do what it takes to get what he wants, the megalomaniac is out to rule the world as is his right, the lunatic with twisted thinking that has them not grasp the idea of good and evil, and the flat out sadist who wants to see people suffer and know he did it. (Male descriptors for descriptive purposes only, female villains cover the same range.)

There are those who really enjoy the despicable characters. That's a preference, and no more indicative of personal morality than my interest in Harry Potter and D&D meant I was ready to practice Dark Arts. Me, I've got no interest in that, the villain concepts I'd want to run tend more towards the gentleman thief. So I found much of the content more evil than I wanted to do, while others were saying "but when do my guys get to really let loose and be evil".

A hero is reactive in the sense that, if all the villains packed up and headed to Alpha Centauri, the hero would be pretty much out of a job. If all the heroes packed up and headed to alpha centauri, the villain would say "Playtime!"

In a good story, yes, it's not just "he's robbing the bank!" "let's rush to the bank and have a big fight". Lots more work to find out what's going on, who is responsible, how to deal with it.

Samurai Jack is reactive to Aku taking over the world and becoming all powerful. Yes, time travel is moving the effect (Jack trying to stop Aku) before the cause (Aku all powerful and rules world), but that's standard time travel story stuff, the cause is still Aku.

The significance of the hero's reactive nature lies in the goals. The hero's goal is to correct the damage done by the villain - lock him up as punishment and to stop doing more damage, and try to repair the damage already done. There's a wide, wide, wide range of ways to deal with that, lots of stories to tell and ways to tell them. But at least in the setup, the hero is somewhat interchangeable - Lex Luthor may be Superman's arch nemesis, but he's run up against most of the D.C. heroes (who deal with him differently based on their unique powers, methods, and habits).

On the other hand, villains are more unique. Consider a plot that a well-written Lex Luthor sets in motion. Swap him out with the Joker, or Catwoman - it won't work, Joker and Catwoman just don't do things like that. Same with the Joker's plots.

All you'd need to do was change the text to something more like:

Wrong. Heroes do more than stop villains, and focusing JUST on stories like that makes for a boring game. In fact, focusing on stories like that makes for a boring hero. Again, a hero who does nothing but sit around and wait for crime to happen is not interesting, and that's not what most heroes in comic books are. It is, moreover, not all heroes could be.

Examples are easy enough to come by and I can cite many off my own roster. Sam Tow himself is constantly wrestling with a foreign consciousness inside his mind, and looking for a way to either rid himself of it, or end his own life by undertaking ridiculous risks, with "hero stuff" being just the result of his antics. Ren is a time-traveller from a future which has disappeared due to someone messing with the time stream, and everything she does is aimed at finding who that is and restoring the proper timeline. Morten, by contrast, is a succubus demon who feeds on people's essences, recovering from evil habits and looking for real emotions to give her grounding in the world. She spends most of her time trying to help the people she likes. And then there's Stardiver, who has just returned from a trip to the core of our sun and is spending her time on Earth until her core cools down enough for space fight and looking for friends in the meantime.

Heroes who stand around waiting for bad stuff to happen and then reacting to it is only one small subset of a much larger dynamic. In itself, that's not a bad story, but JUST that story is really very boring.

It's exactly the same, actually. A good hero and a good villain both need to have a goal, they both need to have an approach to achieving that goal and they both need to be proactive towards achieving that goal. If not, you have characters that are rarely interesting to read about. Let's go with something simple: "Obtain an artefact." A villain might need it because it's the last piece in his invention, while a hero might need it because without its magic he will die or transform into a monster, or because he wants to achieve ultimate power. A villain might be courteous and not torture people, he might be ruthless and kill anyone who gets in his way, or he may be sadistic and take time away to make people suffer. In much the same way, a hero could be naive and only hurt villains when they won't back off, he could be ruthless and just kill villains for being villains, or he may be vengeful and go out of his way to hurt villains to send a message.

Heroes and villains are not dissimilar characters. How they differ is in their personalities, not in the nature of the stories you can tell about them.

Wrong. If all the villains shipped off to Alpha Centauri, then the Spirit of Light will simply sheathe his sword and continue his quest to return his soul to life. If all the villains disappeared, Kim would continue her life of looking for personal gain and will, in fact, have a much easier time of it when she doesn't accidentally keep bringing the wrath of evil men onto innocent people by association and doesn't keep getting dragged into saving people she put in danger in the first place. If all the villains spontaneously combusted, the Steel Rook will keep doing what he's been doing - run his corpotation and develop autonomous androids, though he may need to swap business models and retrofit them for manual labour instead of as gun platforms. If there were no villains to fight, this would make no difference to 13, who's quest in life is to to understand herself and come to terms with being a synthetic, created form of life with no real purpose. If there were no evil, then Captain Indivisible, he corny super hero, and Grimwall, the alien demon queen from another planet, would simply settle down and have a family like they always wanted. If there were no evil anywhere, Inna would live up to her destiny as the holder of the Power of Creation and work to reseal that into a new elemental forge where it doesn't threaten life again.

Heroes don't need villains to be interesting. Granted, action stories of combat and adventure need... Well, action, combat and adventure, and this requires people to oppose each other, but this doesn't mean that's ALL heroes are about, that's all they want and that's all they ever do. If anything, creating characters who don't extend past the specific narrative is a mistake. Again, watch any anime series and you'll see proactive heroes. Naruto has the titular stupid kid questing to become the leader of his village and be recognised by his peers, Shaman King has Yoh Asakura questing to win the Shaman Tournament, DBZ has Son Goku, Son Gohan and Vegeta questing to be the strongest warriors and find ever more challenging opponents. Baldur's Gate protagonists quest to find the person who murdered the father. Most D&D parties quest to find treasure or slay dragons. Any story which focuses on a hero needs to give that hero something he wants to achieve, or otherwise tell a VERY compelling story because without that, you have a forgettable tale.

Aku may be the cause, but that cause only shows up in the opening theme song. Literally the extent of the setup is "Long ago in a distant land, I, Aku - the shapshifting master of darkness - unleased an unspeakable evil. But, a foolish samurai warrior wielding a magic sword stepped forth to oppose me. Before the final blow was struck I tore open a portal in time and flung him into the future. Now the fool seeks to return to the past and undo the future that is Aku! *wacha*" That's it, that's the whole setup, and it never comes up again until, like, 10 seasons in when we get a pretty underwhelming flashback.

So while I might concede that the overall framing device is reactive, the actual story told within it is not. Every episode starts with Samuari Jack having heard about a time portal here, or a well that grants wishes here, or he learns how he could find Aku in the future or what have you. The story has Jack as the proactive protagonist who goes out on a quest, who has an objective, who moves the story, with Aku waiting for him to act and then reacting. "Oh, Jack is at a crossroads, better make him go into this dangerous graveyard." "Oh, Jack found a time portal, better go fly it away." "Oh, Jack is gathering allies, better go kill them." Almost all Aku does, aside from one or two episodes, is react to things Jack is doing.

You can argue that that's still a reactive story, at which point you're arguing semantics. This is a hero on a quest shaping his own storyline, such that he doesn't have to wait for the villain to act before the episode begins.

Wrong. That's a boring, limited hero and, frankly, one that needs a re-write or an exceptionally strong story to work. I honestly don't get why you continuously insist that a hero has no goals but to react, when all you need to do is look at myth and legend. Beowulf is on a quest for fortune and glory, essentially. Achiles is on a quest to conquer Troy. King Arthur is on a quest to become kind. And even without going into real myths that I admittedly don't know enough about, why should a hero NOT have a real objective?

Take, for instance, Oban: Star Racers. It's a race, and the Earth Team is in the race to win "a single wish" for their own species. None of the characters are there to "stop evil." None of them even want to be there in the first place. Don Wei is there because he's a broken old man given one last chance to salvage his life, Rick Thunderbolt is there because he's a washed-up old racer given one last chance to return to the glory days of his youth and Molly is there because she's conflicted between wanting to be with her father and hating her father for abandoning and not recognising her. And it's a very well-told story of personal development and competition without devolving into "he's evil, we have to stop him!" right until a twist ending in the final episode. And even then, how it's resolved has less to do with stopping evil than it has with resolving people's emotional drama.

"Villain initiates, hero responds" is nothing more than the easy framework of storytelling, but that doesn't make it good, nor does it make it the only one. There's a reason why people say Batman is the least interesting thing he shows up in and why both Batman and Batman Returns have so little Batman in them and spend so much time focusing on the villains - because that makes for a boring, underdeveloped hero. There's also a reason why X-Men: First Class was so well-received. Despite that movie having a clear villain that the X-Men ultimately had to stop, this isn't a movie "about" the villain. It's a movie about the X-Men's struggle against prejudice, between each other and with themselves. It's a movie about their maturity and change uncontrolled deviants into grown men and women with a mission.

A story that has a hero and a villain in it does not have to follow the same tired old story that's easiest to write. A story, very often, does not even need to have a villain to begin with. Watch almost any Hayao Miyazaki movie - Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, Princess Mononoke - and you'll see a hero burdened with a mission and thrust into a harsh world where his greatest adversity is survival. Princess Mononke, especially, lacks a bad guy of any real variety. There are harsh, violent people, yes, but they are not your typical villains and the movie doesn't revolve around stopping them. Hell, go with most D&D games and you'll see a party of heroes motivated by fortune and glory, or by their own personal backstory.

The Spoony One actually has a good video on the matter, even if you'll have to be patient with it since the guy rambles on more than I do. The point, though, is a quote from him that goes along the lines of "OK, but what does he do when there are no dungeons to crawl? Does he have a job? He has to have SOMETHING." The point of this is that to create a hero whose only motivation in life is to respond to villains if they happen to show up and then spend the rest of his time, err... Sitting on a throne like the Volturi? Being emo and delivering pizzas by swinging through the city? If you want a decent hero, you have to give that hero SOMETHING to do when he's not fighting crime, and if you're really clever about it, it'll be the thing that keeps getting him into situations where he has to fight crime.

A hero is not a police officer. A hero is not 911. A hero is not just someone who stands by and waits for crime to happen. A hero has a life outside of being a hero. Even someone like my characters, none of whom have secret identities and whose daily lives involve fighting and super powers, still needs a goal that is not defined by what other people do. You can't create every hero as a co-dependent, needy individual whose life has no meaning if crime isn't happening. That's boring, it's cheap, it's repetitive and it's not necessary. More than anything else, THIS IS NOT GOOD WRITING. A good writer can create a legitimate, believable hero who nevertheless has a life's goal to rival any villain's grand master plan. Because that's what makes a character interesting.

Yes, and if you ever find yourself in a situation where you can swap out one hero for another and not notice much of a change in a story, then you've not written a very good hero. As a point of fact, you've pretty much written a horrible one, and I'd question why you didn't more to give this hero his or her own personal identity, approach and goals in life. Once upon a time, I ran a thought experiment through the RP forums: I gave people a basic setup (guarded warehouse, soldiers inside, outside and on the roof, hostages inside that need to be rescued, kidnapper leader that needs to be taken out) and asked people to tell me a story about how one of the heroes on their roster would handle this situation. Yes, it's reactive, I admit, but the stories people told me were starkly different. Some rushed the door, some climbed through the air ducts, some teleported in, some mind-controlled the guards, some walked away and didn't even bother. Each person who contributed brought a hero with a personality sufficiently different to make a unique story out of the exact same situation.

---

I'll make this simple: A hero who only ever reacts to what villains do is not an interesting hero and requires an incredibly capable writer to make that character interesting. A hero with his own goal NOT defined by the villains is considerably more interesting.

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.

Oh dear lord, someone, please, make this happen! It sounds awesome!

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.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

That is an excellent idea. People often ask: "Are you so evil you'd let the world burn? What would YOUR villain be doing instead of saving himself?" Um... The same thing a lot of people do during great disasters - capitalise on the breakdown of law enforcement. Pick any disaster that has depopulated a large area and you'll see looters, murderers, squatters, even drug dealers move in to capitalise. A villain who doesn't care about the Praetorians and figures "Meh, the heroes will handle it. And while they fight and bleed, I'll benefit!"

I'm not sure why I didn't see this angle before, but it's brilliant. Have villains go to a war zone and start stealing things, kidnapping people, extracting secret, gaining power and generally being unhelpful up to occasionally getting in the way of the greater good for personal gain. Because, Mr. Hero, are you going to be chasing after me for simply steaming the Quadruple McGuffin, or are you going to fight an elder god who threatens to destroy all life on the planet? Yeah, I thought so. Have fun being driven mad! Oh, what's the matter, is my syphoning power from the city grid to run my teleportation machine making the lights at your base flicker? Boo-hoo. What are you going to do about it? Attack me while monsters take over your base? Yeah, I didn't think so. Go fight the good fight, hero. I'll give you your power back when I don't need it any more.

Maybe I'm over-generalising here, but isn't that what a villain should be doing?

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.

Aaaand you're being purposefully obtuse and/or trolling. Good day.

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.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Something else occurred to me when you quoted this: We already have artwork for a "wall made up of scrap materials to protect a compound," as seen in the various Freakshow forts. I suspect we can just borrow a Freakshow Fort wall, replace the stone wall around Villa Montrose with that, and then stuff Turrets on top of the rampart towers to shoot at critters nearby in the same way as the turrets around the Vanguard compound shoot at nearby Rikti. That might cut down some of the artwork time since the wall wouldn't have to be made from scratch (no pun intended) and would actually look the part.

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.

I don't even have enough facepalm for this....This. You have broken my Facepalm.exe. Well done.

You've made it abundantly clear that you don't 'get' Villain aimed content, and that's fine...right up till the point where you completely label it as the wrong thing. D-Mac's arc, as one of the best examples to date of Villain content, is not 'kicking kittens'. Why the hell would my characters want to do that? My main, Alpha, likes cats, mostly because he holds them as being smarter and more independent than humans. They also listen to every word he says and don't question him. One of my Rogues is part cat. Saying 'Being a villain means kicking kittens and puppies and eating babies!' is just....it's PANCAKE. Pancake PANCAKE pancake (replacing what should, by all rights, go there....)

Sam and co. have already explained it better than I can, especially given my annoyance with the apparent block-headedness here and the obnoxious heat right now. But, please, for the love of feth stop going on about something you have self-admitted to not having the foggiest clue about.

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.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

I don't disagree at all. You're entirely correct that the developers assuming why my heroes are being heroes is a bad idea, and it's actually a lot of what sinks Twinshot despite being an otherwise OK story. However, what I'm getting at is that writing for heroes needs to extend past the themes of "Something is happening! You hero! Go stop it!" Like villains, heroes also need arcs that span more of the realm of motivations. For instance, Hero Corps would have been a great opportunity to expand this. Do you remember what Hero Corps used to be? Basically, heroes for hire. Mercenaries. You go to the station, get a job that law enforcement can't handle, you do it, go back, get paid and go about your way.

Is such a character not a hero? Well, it depends on your interpretation, and Hero Corps itself was under heavy criticism in storyline, but it was still one way to present a version of heroism that wasn't goody two-shoes. Villains have a mission that allows them to gain (if temporarily) their own clone factory. Why can't heroes have a mission where they gain (again, temporarily) their own munitions factory or ninja training school or high-yield all-purpose power source? Why can't heroes ever go in search of a mystic artefact that would give them great power? Why can't heroes ever do anything for money?

The trick here is that you don't tell people WHY they're doing things, you just tell them WHAT they're doing and let people figure out if that's something they'd proceed. Is your hero idealistic to a fault and refuses to take money for his good deeds? That's fine, pick stories that don't have you be hired. Is your hero afraid of ninja? That's fine, don't try to secure your own Definitely Not Ninja High School. Give heroes options that cover a broader range of motivations, then let players figure out how the story interacts with what's in their head. For as much as we badmouth villainous writing, at least that it has to a decent degree by this point.

Look at your basic Paper mission. You can gain artefacts, find information, gain power, get back at people, gain favour with people and so forth. Now look at your basic Scanner mission. There's a threat and it needs to be stopped. Go stop it. That's it.

Indeed, they've been getting a LOT better about this recently. In fact, it's been so good of late (at least in terms of what's actually ON the Isles), that the whole "feel" of that side of the game has changed. Once upon a time, City of Villains, to quote Z, "made me feel... Insignificant." I was just just one grunt in an army, a face in the crowd, and the world was always bigger, badder and more imposing than I was. I was always a flunky, always a servant and always worried about what the NPCs were doing. But then came Dean McArthur, and with him came a "What about MY needs, Alice? What about ME?" moment. All of a sudden I wasn't just some random faceless nobody. People were asking for my input, people were offering to help me, I was putting people over and people were angry at me. All of a sudden... I was the star of the story, and loving every minute of it! Vincent Ross had a similar slant, though with a considerably lesser story, as did Bane Spider Ruben and Brother Hammond. Pretty much all the villain-only content added recently, NOT counting Dr. Graves.

As I've always said and as Venture liked to snark wouldn't matter - it's all about how the story is told. You can present the contact as someone offering to work for the player, you can present the player as the one in control, and you can put over the player strong enough to make it feel like he screwed over everyone else. And it's glorious when it works... Which is more or less every time they try.

It wouldn't be a paying job if it were easy or simple. But at the same time, it's not so much a question of workload as it is a question of approach. For both heroes and villains, I have a few suggestions:

1. When designing dialogues, don't fill in the syntax of the player character's response. Don't write speech for me, write reactions and let me put words to the character. "Accept" as opposed to "Sure, holmes, I'm game for whatever!"

2. Provide stories that could accommodate a number of motivations, but NEVER try to explain the motivation. Tell people what they're required to do, let them figure out why they're doing it.

3. Either make the player character the centre of the story or put him over strong. A story about an opportunity or about an ill effect on the player character is player-centric. A story where the player defies the odds, shows people up and stands strong and tall puts over the player strongly.

Stick to those and stories will usually be a lot more satisfying and a lot less specific.

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.