Villains to Use but NOT Written Up

[Hugh Neilson]

12 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

It also, despite the cover blurb stating otherwise, was absolutely not an adventure.

 

Stronghold was the start of Hero's "every module should bring something of lasting use, outside the adventure" model.  It was definitely more setting than adventure, with any escape scenario being more plot seed than actual adventure.  Of course, we called them "modules" back in those days (and yes, using that phrase makes me feel old), and either the Island Adventure or the SuperPrison could be slotted into an ongoing campaign.

[Hugh Neilson]

As I think back to those early-1980s days (Champions 1e was published in 1981; 2e was in 1982), how did the Island of Dr. Destroyer compare to other adventures of the day?  It was pretty clearly a first outing, and lasercage traps didn't really feel right.  But was Doc D less developed than similar villains in V&V adventures? Island of Dr. Apocalypse had a bit more plot, with its Part 1, Day of the Destroyers, but when I ran it for Champions, I added some underlings on the Island.  [ASIDE:  V&V modules were a useful resource back then, although a bit challenging to translate due to V&V's resource management structure - Champions characters couldn't be whittled down by a series of minor encounters.]

 

D&D was just starting to add some setting, plot and villain motivation to some of their dungeon crawls, and move towards incorporating some story into the traditional strategic, tactical and sometimes adversarial model of early RPGs.

 

Doc D was just another derivative powered armor villain in an RPG sea of derivative adversaries with limited character development back then. Growing him to a full backstory and persona today would be great, but if he had all that back in 1981/82, he would have eclipsed the PCs he was designed to be defeated by.

[Dr. MID-Nite]

On 10/8/2023 at 8:34 PM, Lord Liaden said:

 

With or without Dr. Destroyer in his history? And what is it about Muerte that makes him more appealing to you than Destroyer?

 

I guess I just like villain masterminds leading a group...like Magneto and his Brotherhood or the various Brotherhoods from DC's Doom Patrol. Muerte's considerably less overpowered, but still fills the same role. He also feels a lot more like Doom to me (if you remove his hero worship complication) than Destroyer ever will. Destroyer also has zero personality beyond "being evil".  He's so over the top asshat that ANYONE working for him seems beyond belief. Muerte is basically a toned down version that I feel is more in line with Silver and Bronze age comic eras.

[Michael Hopcroft]

I'm thinking in terms of the villain who wields so much "mundane" power that he cannot be touched. He is nowhere near where anyone can even get at him if he does not wish them to. And he won;'t fight the heroes.

 

He doesn't have to.

 

He has more than enough loyal associates that he can ruin the lives of anyone who gets into his crosshairs, wittingly or otherwise. Not just agents or supervillains on retainer, but also lawyers, corrupt police, politicians, and judges, and so forth. You can catch up with his minions but never get enough on him to merit direct intervention.

 

An example is Rupert Thorne, from Batman: The Animated Series. He was the one enemy Batman could never touch. One of the two principal bosses of Gotham's underworld, he was far too busy running an illicit empire of drugs, gambling, prostitution, and all the other things you didn't dare mention on a "family show" to have time for the sort of capers most of the Batman villains would try to pull. Batman was determined to pull him down, but never managed it. He was the master of half that was evil and all that was undetected in Gotham, and not even Batman could do a damn thing about it.

 

Here's a real-world example. In the 1950s, my hometown of Portland was the Mos Eisley of the West Coast. The city had a crime lord who ran casinos and other "dens of iniquity" throughout downtown. If he saw someone heading into his territory, he would trick them into buying their equipment from him, letting him set up the operation and saying he would keep the police off his back. But he also had the press, cops, judiciary, and City Council in his pocket, and the trap would be sprung when his pet reporter ran a story on this terrible new cesspool of vice, which would inevitably prompt a raid. The mark would have no choice but to slink out of town with nothing, while the boss bought back his own equipment from the police at pennies on the dollar and get ready to run the game all over again.  (At the time, it was the sort of city where a Jack Napier could accurately say "Decent people shouldn't live here. They'd be happier somewhere else.")

 

The deadliest villain is the one you can never reach. You might not even know he exists until you're in his crosshairs.

[Lord Liaden]

The "corporate robber baron" incarnation of Lex Luthor is another example. Enormous "soft power" due to money, influence, and connections, with the outward image of respectability. Heroes know he's dirty but can never find proof. The Champions Universe has its own analogue to that character, Franklin Stone, pretty much Luthor without his obsession with Superman. (In Champions Villains Volume One.)

 

The Circle of the Scarlet Moon is a CU organization (CV Vol. 2), a whole cultish conspiracy of behind-the-scenes manipulators who have used subtle magic to accumulate vast control over the economy, the media, political apparatus, even law enforcement. Almost no one knows the identities of any of the higher-ups, and magic makes many of their activities untraceable by normal means. They don't send blaster-armed agents to deal with their enemies, at first favoring legal harassment, financial pressure, and media tarnishing of their image.

[Gauntlet]

Much of VIPER would also be behind the scenes. While they do have agents and supervillains they also have a number of characters with no real powers themselves but still can screw with the characters, the Duchess being a prime example. Other organizations as well, such as the Institute of Human Advancement, like to screw with characters from behind the scenes, making it so that it doesn't matter that they can take a direct nuclear strike, they can still be screwed with. Even a number of individual supervillains, like Harlequin, who loves to screw with characters from abroad.

[Lord Liaden]

You can and probably should run some of VIPER as a behind-the-scenes operation -- their resources and reach are vast. But almost everything and everyone you'd want to use actually has been written up, in either the 4E or 5E VIPER source books. The sheer detail Scott Bennie put into those books is very impressive.

[Rich McGee]

On 10/8/2023 at 12:26 PM, Duke Bushido said:

If you want a villain of that level that incites curiosity, wipe Destroyer out of your universe and replace him with Kreuzritter from Silver Age Sentinels.  He has had exactly 1/10000 as many words written about him, and is still infintely more interesting, even while being a stereotype at heart.

You know he's back in print in Dyskami's Absolute Power, right?  The game is nothing but a new edition of SAS with the setting time-skipped forward a bit.  No better balanced than ever either, I might add.  And Kreuzritter is as much a cardboard cutout of a master baddie as ever, so if you liked him before you'll like him there, he hasn't changed in any meaningful way.  But he does have quite a few more words written about him now - they split the setting into its own book, making it a $120 two-volume game if you want the world and the rules.

[Lord Liaden]

Kreuzritter also receives HERO 5E system stats in Reality Storm: When Worlds Collide, a multi-part adventure crossing over the SAS universe with the Champions universe. A number of other SAS characters, villainous and heroic, also get that treatment. The book includes a conversion matrix between the two systems. The matrix and the converted characters are a bit clunky -- HERO and Tri-Stat aren't very compatible -- but it's a good start if you want to use those characters in Champions games.

[Duke Bushido]

It's even harder to use if you opted for the D20 version of SAS.

 

 

 

[Rich McGee]

On 10/4/2023 at 3:56 PM, Lord Liaden said:

I've used the occasional cosmic being and conceptual entity, essentially as a plot device to set up the story and move the action forward. Where conflict with it was involved, it was against any minions the being had.

That's my approach as well, alongside the occasional "big convoluted conspiracy no one can fully stamp out" (eg VIPER) and "stays in the shadows" mastermind types.  Learned my lesson with D&D's Deities & Demigods way back when - if you give combat stats to an entity, it will eventually be beaten in combat because you gave it stats.  There's nothing wrong with foes who cannot be defeated in a conventional fight, not even a super-fight. and they do not need stats. 

 

Just use them wisely and if defeating them does become a plot necessity, offer the players at least a couple of ways to do so that don't involve a brawl.  Defeat can mean a lot of things, and what the heroes may see as a win for them is often just an unstoppable foe deciding they have better things to do.  Save the "monomaniacal obsession with punishing the heroes" stuff for their lackeys and other foes that can be beaten with punching.  "Fiat invulnerability" villains shouldn't behave that way any more than you'd declare a vendetta against a gnat.