The Villain Maketh The Game?

[Rover]

Hi All,


I sort of started this thread in the Campaigns thread so I hope you'll be patient if the grammar and context of the qoutes are off a bit.

hI aLL,


nEWBIE HERE

I've run and played tabletop RPG for years now and have allways been a fan of games that had a noir feel.

So I'm hoping that I can chill with some like-minded spirits here.


In discussing the running of 'dark' games like Dark Champions does anyone here feel that the villians used in a tabltop game sets the tone for the campaign and even genre?

I don't know if this subject is quite on the nail for this thread. I'll be happy to open a new thread on the subject if anyone objects to this post on this thread.


Regards,

Rover.

Welcome to the boards. While this might be grist for new thread, I'll just post my basic answer.


The villain is EVERYTHING... in a book, movie, RPG... whatever... the antagonist defines the tone and feel and theme of the story as much or even more than the protagonist.

In supers... if Joker is a madcap who ties Gordon to a big penny, that is vastly different than if Joker is firebombing a busload of cubscouts. You have two wholly different stories based on the villain interpretation.

In movies... take Die Hard as an example. Hanz Gruber is an all time great movie villain, because while murderous and despicable, his ruthless, brilliant scheming personality sets the tone and makes him so much more than just "some guy who kills people." Compare him to the villain from Die Hard 2. Who you might ask? EXACTLY. The lame "killer commando" bastard from that movie was no Hans Gruber, and eminently forgettable.

Holmes is nothing without his Moriarty.

Superman is nothing without his Lex Luthor.

In Dark Champions... tone is everything. A muderous psychopath that must be stopped is a very different adventure than stopping the gang of professional jewel theives.

Good point.

Welcome to the boards. While this might be grist for new thread, I'll just post my basic answer.


The villain is EVERYTHING... in a book, movie, RPG... whatever... the antagonist defines the tone and feel and theme of the story as much or even more than the protagonist.

In supers... if Joker is a madcap who ties Gordon to a big penny, that is vastly different than if Joker is firebombing a busload of cubscouts. You have two wholly different stories based on the villain interpretation.

In movies... take Die Hard as an example. Hanz Gruber is an all time great movie villain, because while murderous and despicable, his ruthless, brilliant scheming personality sets the tone and makes him so much more than just "some guy who kills people." Compare him to the villain from Die Hard 2. Who you might ask? EXACTLY. The lame "killer commando" bastard from that movie was no Hans Gruber, and eminently forgettable.

Holmes is nothing without his Moriarty.

Superman is nothing without his Lex Luthor.

In Dark Champions... tone is everything. A muderous psychopath that must be stopped is a very different adventure than stopping the gang of professional jewel theives.

Good point.

Welcome Rover!

Probably a good subject for a brand new thread, but I don't have much to add beyond what RDU Neil said on the subject. I guess I would add that villains are a great way to reshape a campaign that needs fixing - changing the villain mix as discussed above changes the tone, so it can be a relatively easy way to remodel, though you do need to do something about any villains that are current and not in the vein you want.

I have found that I vary tones pretty dramatically in my game and the villains are there to prove it. There was Kingpin, modelled of course after the Marvel version, but a somewhat more bloodthirsty killer, more of a psychopath mixed with control freak. He had one of the PC's mothers killed (the PC wanted drama...) brutally. More recently the PCs have had to deal with the Martians...and although I didn't consciously build them this way, one way to think about them is they are like that race in ST:TNG that was incredibly imitative, brilliantly so, but almost retarded in terms of anything beyond pure imitation. These Martians are almost blithering idiots with some high degree of power but mostly they're just laughable. Currently they've been used in a sort of proxy war between the PCs and the mastermind evil mage Herr Kietersling, said to be Odin of mythology but if not at least certainly a powerful man of mystery.

These are the qoutes from the Campaign thread. But I would be interested to hear if anyone else has any view son this subject.

Once upon a time... I was running a S&S game(in A,D&D whaich I later, run in Fantasy Hero) in which the players while appreciating the unique world & campaign I had written were busy doing what they allways do.

Thieves were... thieving,

Priests were politicking,

Wizards were ducking, rule-lawyering & glomming,

And Fighters were Thieve-bashing.

It was OK but it was also pretty predictable. Hardly worth writing an original world and campaign for.

I spent a lot of time catering for individual needs as oppossed to addressing the needs of the party.

Then I introuced the party to one of the Villains. Well, I should say 'The Villain' because taht is what he became.

Origionally the villain was to be the guy behind the scenes. He was a famed adventurer, a diplomat for his church & state politician. He had status, which meant he couldn't be mowed own in broad daylight.

The villain's name came up once or twice and then increasingly so as the players made stalked him(He did have his fingers in a few pies) and the met the villain at a function (no-mans-land) where he let the party know of his awareness of thier movements and politely suggested thier health would benefit from avoiding his affairs.

From then on the players seemed to gell as group. It didn't matter if they rousting a nest of goblins for easy cash. 'What was the movements of the villain?' 'Did he know what they were doing?' 'Could they bribe the authorities to ignore an assault on this diplomat?'

Players of, so called, good alignend characters considered the morality of assasination for the first time.

I believe the villain can make the campaign.

I'm not so cock-sure that I think I know everything. So I would like to hear arguments for, or against, this idea.



Regards,

Rover.

[Greatwyrm]

A game needs cool challanges to overcome to stay entertaining. The more the players have invested in trying to defeat a villain, the happier they'll be when they do it.

[Michael Hopcroft]

No doubt a truly comeplling villain is the glue that will hold a campaign together.

One can go for a while going after relatively faceless enemeis such as the Yakuza, but sooner or later you will need someone with style and panache to bring the PCs together in a real way. So while a war against the yakua may work for a while, it will eventually get boring unless you intorduce the deadly and cunning leader who has taken a personal interest in sending the PCs to Hell before he kills them.

Or she. the daughter of the Yakuza kingpin who pulls the stinng not only of her Father's clan but of every political and criminal group in the city, who is beuatiful, cunning and ruthless, is no slouch in a fight and who has ways of making her enemies suffer that they cannot even imagine -- this is the sort of villain the players will remmeber for a long, long, LONG time.