a Villian game

[nightbringer256]

hi guys
last night i was up late reading CKC getting ready for my game when i caught myself woundering what i would do as a villian. a bit later i realised that i didn't have to wounder, i could start a PBEM villian game where everyone was a villian. let me know if your interested, also i am kinda new to this so if there is someone out there who would like to co-gm with me just PM, and will talk. just want to sound out the idea for right now, don't know for sure if i am going to run it or not. one thing i would require is that all villians have a list of goals and a main goal or two. that way i can plan out the plot. well let me know what you think

-night

[levi]

Games where the players play the Villains are always dificult becuase the players have to be very pro active. Heroes tend to hang around the super-base and wait for an alarm to go off signaling them into action or they follow leads to the action. Villains create the action. You use an entirely different set of plot hooks and as a GM you have to be ready for the players to have characters doing all sorts of heinous stuff. This campaign would definitely have to come with a Mature Content disclaimer. Also villains tend not to work together very well, unlike a team of heroes who may have one mildly anti-social type among them, the villain team may be entirely made up of sociopaths. Maybe someone else has more positive advice, but mine would be to walk away...cool idea, but not worth the headache.

[Hawksmoor]

Go to www.globalguardians.com then click the Campaigns tab. Find Damocles Directive, that's the one with the sword plunging through the earth logo.

That is my campaign.

Villians are trickier than heroes. Most tend to be one trick ponies. They should have some problems working together.

Actually doing a reverse-champions game is a good idea, just remember Villians always lose in the end. And to have a decent revolving door prison concept.

Hawksmoor

[Barton]

I have thought about this and maybe a short duration game would work, maybe only a dozen sessions or so. Just my 2 cents.

[Supreme Serpent]

Make sure you're clear with the players about what kind of villains you want. Especially if they're supposed to work together at least reasonably well as a team.

You don't want to end up with a team of (to use CU examples) Foxbat, Lady Blue, Armadillo, Mechanon, and some Hudson City Dark Champions rapist-serial killer with superpowers.

If you want robin-hood type "villains", tell them.

If you want get-rich, might kill sometimes villains, tell them.

If you want a world-conquering megalomaniac and his team, tell them.

If you want villains who are eeeeevil and depraved, who kidnap and torture random victims for fun, tell them.

Then be firm as to what kinds you let in. If they're going to be a formal team, it's probably a good idea to do "group" character creation if you can, to establish roles within the team, how they got together, any linked origins or themes, etc.

[nightbringer256]

i was thinking world conquering meglomaniac and his team. except that all the player are equal point level and are working to gether to conquer the world, once conquer they will divy it up (ya right like that'll happen). but that is the kind of game i am shoting for, also anyone who would be interested in co-gm just, drop me a line.

also an idea that i had would be to use AIM, or trillian and just do that for an hour or 2 a week instead of doing PBEM. let me know what you think

-night

[TheEmerged]

Villain campaigns are fun if you have the right kind of player -- which, thankfully, I have :D

You do have to be more proactive as GM. I've found it helpful to develop a series of opportunities and let the players decide which to pursue.

You also find yourself having to create more material, because (/sarcasm on) for some unknown reason (/sarcasm off) DOJ has decided they aren't going to publish much in the way of NPC heroes.

[WhammeWhamme]

Actually one thing I read that I liked:

Sometimes, the bad guys work together because they like each other.

They want to conquer the world, and they've already assigned who get's what. leave it to the players to determine exactly what, but some good divisions...

"I get a bunch of research institutes and all the supplies I need to experiment!"

"I call the US!"

"Ah... give me South America, I like the climate."

"Europe has that old world charm... and ancient magic. Dibs."

"I want to be a benevolent and progressive dictator. Give me someplace that's used to dictators. Actually, give me most of the places."

"I want the oceans. And I want your humans to stay close to the coasts."

[zornwil]

Games where the players play the Villains are always dificult becuase the players have to be very pro active. Heroes tend to hang around the super-base and wait for an alarm to go off signaling them into action or they follow leads to the action. Villains create the action. You use an entirely different set of plot hooks and as a GM you have to be ready for the players to have characters doing all sorts of heinous stuff. This campaign would definitely have to come with a Mature Content disclaimer. Also villains tend not to work together very well, unlike a team of heroes who may have one mildly anti-social type among them, the villain team may be entirely made up of sociopaths. Maybe someone else has more positive advice, but mine would be to walk away...cool idea, but not worth the headache.
We have a rare villains game that I run, and how I do it is that the villains get an assignment from the "Independent Mutants' Resource Center", a euphemistically-named criminal organization that hires supers for dirty work. It keeps it episodic, plus it makes it easy for people to be there or not. It's an occasional alternative for light play.

[Roy_The_Ruthles]

We once designed a villian game, where we were the monsters in this tunnel between (basically) DnD and anime tokyo japan. Our goal was to wait for adventures to wander in looking for loot and treasure etc. and then kill them and stock our own hoards.

We had...

A nanite scientist Dr. Stinenfrank (and his army of robo-zombies)

A Hafling Lich in Power Armor

A Master "ninja"

A Squid-man monster

And a big green troll person who eats people (no kidding, actually his character concept).

We never got to play the darn game, but it was fun as heck to design.

[zornwil]

(snip)
And a big green troll person who eats people (no kidding, actually his character concept).

We had/have a dark hero who started out as the Troll and he had cannibalistic tendencies. He's since mutated and changed, but anywaY, just found it interesting.


We never got to play the darn game, but it was fun as heck to design.

Argh, but I hate when that happens!

[Blue]

Saw a book today at the local gamestore, from Great White Games, where heroes were defeated by aliens and the last line of defense are villains (the PCs). I think it was for savage worlds.

[casualplayer]

I have ran a Villains game and, surprisingly, it worked well. It was a long established game world and the villains were deathly afraid of running into the player's heroic characters (and vice versa.) Heroes did die because no holds were barred, but the villains also nearly were killed by the Harbinger of Justice. When the game was retired I eventually reused the villains as NPCs and rolled some of them into Eurostar.

If you are going to do one right from the starting gate I would suggest incorporating a reason for the players to be together, a reason to do things that you want them to and a reason to not kill each other. You could make VIPER's elite strike team or Dr. Destroyer's brute squad. Dr. Destroyer has a fine motivational technique!

If you do get this off the ground, shoot me a message. It sounds like fun.

[JLHIII]

For my two cents, I like the middle of the road sort of take on the villainous campaign: profit-oriented (not necessarily talking money here), not evil, sociopathic, not psychopathic. :) The sort of villains who are far from above a good deed now and then.

I'm thinking less "villain" and more "criminal," if that makes sense.

As for villain groups and cohesion, let's remember the real world, where organized crime is hardly a fairy tale.

I guess what I'm describing is more of a "neutral" campaign than anything else; the PCs are crooks but they can be good or bad. This is in a way a response to the ridiculous concept of "superheroic goodness" forwarded by comic books and exemplified in the Spiderman movies, a concept so rigid that Spidey can't even make an extra buck appearing on talk shows or bending iron bars at the local fair.

I mean really, who in his right mind would put up with that? I wouldn't. I'd take care of me and mine first, and everyone else second, just like every other sane person on Earth. Sure, I'd help people when I could, I just wouldn't settle for eating out of a can.

edit: also, I'm surprised no one mentioned the Thunderbolts angle; heroes by day who moonlight as villains to pay the bills.

[zornwil]

As to that last post (14), that's sort of our Cyber Ninja Pirates in Space game, though it veered more villainous last game. As you say, I don't see it as a villain campaign, it's just cyber ninja pirates.

[JLHIII]

Or a reverse Thunderbolts scenario, where players get a makeover and go undercover as villains in order to get deep inside the criminal underworld or whatever.

[starblaze]

If you get a chance, pick up Identity Disc. It is a story about some supervillians notably:
Juggernaut
The Vulture
Sabretooth
Deadpool
SandMan
and Bullseye

They end up having to team up for various different personal reasons and have to steal a computer disc that has tons of information on all the superheroes in the marvel universe.

It is a really good story with some interesting surprise twists.

[J. Chamberlin]

If you can't afford or can't find Identity Disc, just rent "the Usual Suspects". Its pretty well the same story, and its an awesome movie.