Painting the PCs as villains in as few sessions as possible

[arcady]

What tricks do people have or can they come up with to make the PCs be seen as villains in as few sessions as possible.

 

Whether it be by trickery, misrepresentation, or even getting them to do something which turns out to be villainous.

 

Any ideas?

[Hermit]

Re: Painting the PCs as villains in as few sessions as possible

 

How about the imposter using the same costume trick?

 

Assuming the powers can be faked/duplicated/whatever it can really make a hero's rep go down hill fast depending on the crime in question the imposter pulls.

[SKJAM!]

Re: Painting the PCs as villains in as few sessions as possible

 

If you are an evil media master, editing real footage of the heroes with nearly untraceable other footage to make it appear that the player characters are acting villainously, then playing it every ten minutes on the news channel, along with experts proclaiming "We don't know if the Champions have truly become criminals who hate America and should be shot on sight, but this footage certainly is damaging."

[Guest Dragon]

Re: Painting the PCs as villains in as few sessions as possible

 

What about someone with a lot of levels of mental illusions and/or mind control?

 

That next fight the hero's are in fighting the villians....well those villians are really innocent bystanders and of course the media is involved. All it would take is a smidge of MC to activate someone's beserk disad or make them -think- the condition is happening.

 

-Or a device that increases the characters powers. (something with a ton of AID). And I mean increases it x50 or so. So the next time they are taking out a bad guy with a small restrained shot.....they take out a city block.

 

Combine this with MC and you have an unrepentent hero....or you could get a shapeshifter who could step in at this point, pretending to be the hero and gloat and laugh....on camera.

 

Its hard for me to think of ways to make the players seem evil....all my players are villians to start with. Of course in a previous game....they shot down a flying villian who was carrying a hostage....who both crashed to the ground...several stories down....into the busy street.....and caused a bus of nuns to crash among the rest of the pileup. Did I mention the villian had unluck?

 

Of course....you could just have a media superstar simply not like the heroes regardless of what they do. Their news reports would consist of things like rather then report on how the hero saved a train from derailing....what gets reported is the hero jostled a moving train minorly injuring dozens of people. Instead of the reporter showing how the hero risked her life to stop a supervillian from a downtown rampage....they report that the heroine was busy getting her nails done when the city needed her. "When our heroine FINALLY arrived.....well....you see the result people. Maybe if we didn't have superheroes....we wouldn't have supervillians either"

 

Many people believe everything they see on tv or in the paper.

 

just a few ideas....

[pinecone]

Re: Painting the PCs as villains in as few sessions as possible

 

The most evil thing I ever did was Viper pressured a poor sap into anoucing that he knew the characters secret ID and would release it to the media later that night...this was a recording...meanwhile the patsy was in a costume leading a Viper raid...on blast from the Hero (who had a bad rep about blasting normals) and ...."It's shocking! Not only did blazer try to kill this man ,he tried to cover his crime up by dressing him in this stupid costume! Mr smythe has no super powers and is a respected member of the community! We Demand immeadiate action!"

[OddHat]

Re: Painting the PCs as villains in as few sessions as possible

 

Rush Limbaugh them.

[JeffreyWKramer]

Re: Painting the PCs as villains in as few sessions as possible

 

Use their evil doppelgangers from an alternate universe to frame them. They're trying to get the PCs out of the way so they can take over this universe.

[OddHat]

Re: Painting the PCs as villains in as few sessions as possible

 

Hack their base computer and set it up as an internet Super-Porn host, then let all of the other super groups know that their team is hosting the stollen tapes of Lady Freedom's wedding night.

[Chuckg]

Re: Painting the PCs as villains in as few sessions as possible

 

Use their evil doppelgangers from an alternate universe to frame them. They're trying to get the PCs out of the way so they can take over this universe.

 

Oh crap.

 

Guys? Alibis. We need to start recording alibis.

[LadyChaos]

Re: Painting the PCs as villains in as few sessions as possible

 

Use their evil doppelgangers from an alternate universe to frame them. They're trying to get the PCs out of the way so they can take over this universe.

We just finished up a scenario like this--took several sessions. *shudder* It's not just that they're your dopplegangers. They're your evil dopplegangers. Think of your PCs and what they could and would do without the stops (and with twisted psyches).

[Chuckg]

Re: Painting the PCs as villains in as few sessions as possible

 

We just finished up a scenario like this--took several sessions. *shudder* It's not just that they're your dopplegangers. They're your evil dopplegangers. Think of your PCs and what they could and would do without the stops (and with twisted psyches).

 

*muttered voice from under the bed*

 

I am thinking about it. That's why I'm down here.

[Metaphysician]

Re: Painting the PCs as villains in as few sessions as possible

 

Yes, but are they "We want to make the world a better place at any cost" evil dopplegangers, or "We want to conquer the world and use it as our personal playground" evil dopplegangers??

[BcAugust]

Re: Painting the PCs as villains in as few sessions as possible

 

Please, like the thought of Cyrande coming to Earth and uplifting it slightly to be her personal playground and vacation spot is scary....

[The Watcher]

Re: Painting the PCs as villains in as few sessions as possible

 

*muttered voice from under the bed*

 

I am thinking about it. That's why I'm down here.

I'm too busy trying to wrap my mind around the concept of an evil Starguard to be afraid of her.

 

Stargaurd as a Bad Girl?

[Metaphysician]

Re: Painting the PCs as villains in as few sessions as possible

 

Well, for the clearly and obviously evil analogues, it'd pretty much have to be something along the lines of "Blackguard: cute anime girl merged with Satan Himself."

[Chuckg]

Re: Painting the PCs as villains in as few sessions as possible

 

Or, as I said the last time we talked about this, "Dark Seraph's even more evil kid sister."

[Metaphysician]

Re: Painting the PCs as villains in as few sessions as possible

 

Evil Microman, OTOH, is easy: think Ultron.

[JeffreyWKramer]

Re: Painting the PCs as villains in as few sessions as possible

 

Oh, given what I've put together regarding Starguard's secret origins, it wouldn't be hard to do that at all. She has a connection/is merged with some sort of mystic entity. Maybe the entity isn't a completely benevolent one, and in this world the dark side overwhelms Helene's basic, good personality - or maybe the Helene of this world was not a good girl in the first place.

 

Even if the entity in the regular universe was angelic, perhaps in the alt universe it could be a *fallen* angel.

 

As to the others, Microman would be more like Lore - or Ultron - than Data, obviously. Maybe in that world, Dr. Collins used a lot more of Mechanon's programming as inspiration than was the case in the campaign U.

 

Warp would specialize in doing NND KAs by teleporting people apart, or teleporting objects inside of them... or the fearsome Extradimensional Movement Usable As Attack...

 

Horus-Re could just get pushed a bit more toward the Black Adam motif, or be somewhat jihadist/crusader in his mindset.

 

The Warmaster would come from a race with a more Lawful Evil/might-makes-right motif... or the alternate U could be one where V'Han and Earth were in a sort of alliance and he was acting as an Emissary of the Empress.

 

Cyrande... well, if she was just a bit more typically Malvan, she'd already be more or less the quantum energy equivalent of Gravitar, but with a cultural predilection toward slavery and such.

 

BTW, I've done the "Evil Duplicates" scenario before, to great effect. The set-up was this - We were playing about twice a week, once a week for group adventures, once a week for rotating solos (back in those days, I had more free time). During one of the solos, the group's super-mage got attacked - and curbstomped - by the evil counterparts. His analogue took his place on the team for a couple sessions (played by the super-mage's regular player), then during a big fight he turned on the group. They all ended up captured and shunted off to a dimensional nether-realm. Meanwhile, the characters played their followers (one of whom knew what had happened, and barely escaped with his life) and competent DNPCs for a couple session, until they could free the heroes. All this time the heroes' evil counterparts were creating great carnage. When the heroes got free, they managed to trap the evil counterparts in a null-magic dimension, leaving them stuck there for a long time (until the end of the campaign, in fact, when those guys and various other past baddies returned for a multi-part gangpile epic), but this didn't happen in a way that could be easily confirmed. One of their Hunteds, more or less a cross between Luthor and Rupert Murdoch, kept insinuating that the evil acts had been performed by them all along, supporting this argument by questionable - but influential - "investigative special reports." It took a long time for them to get their reps back.

[Metaphysician]

Re: Painting the PCs as villains in as few sessions as possible

 

IOW, start coming up with Tower of Babel plans.

[Chuckg]

Re: Painting the PCs as villains in as few sessions as possible

 

I may have designed our characters too well, it seems.

[PoorWandering 1]

Re: Painting the PCs as villains in as few sessions as possible

 

How to ruin the pc rep depends on who wants to do it. In a campaign I was a player in long ago a relatively low powered super villain wanted our group out of the way but they could not face us directly so they baited us. They dropped clues that they would be at the site of the new sports stadium the city was constructing. Like idiots we flew in guns blazing. They were there. During the fight they triggered explosives that rendered the stadium Structurally unsound. It had to be torn down and rebuilt. As we were a city backed group the cost was paid by the taxpayer. We knew the explosives were placed in advance but one of our team members was known for his rather liberal use of explosives and the fire investigators reports showed that all the explosives used in the fight were identical and matched the explosive used by that team member. (he wasn't very good about retrieving spent arrows, the bad guys recovered enough explosive from a couple of dud arrows for them to duplicate the formula he was using) And then they did it again this time using the explosives to remove the top 5 stories of a down town office building. Leaked security footage showed that the Rainbow Archer was in the building before the explosion. The member that overused explosives was known to be involved in a violent vendetta with Rainbow Archer and the explosives were placed to imamate the pattern of that team members "cluster grenade" arrow. (xd6 RKA autofire explosion) The team was no where near the incident but most of the team had secret id's and therefore could not make their solid alibis known outside of official circles. Headlines like "COVER UP" and "SUPER GATE" soon followed. So using rudimentary disguise skill, it's not like Rainbow Archer would come in to testify that she wasn't in the building, and some good demolitions and chemistry skills (we knew the other team included a guns/demo expert) the other side not only destroyed our rep and lost the group our official status but the uproar was such that the mayor and city council were recalled and strong anti-vigilante laws enacted. We eventually found enough evidence to clear us and put away the bad guys but not before the archer team member was convicted for, to quote the judge "wanton disregard for public safety and flagrant, seemingly joyful violation of state and federal weapon laws."

 

The moral? Use the campaign background, the deal that got the stadium built was very unpopular

so the public REALLY loved having to pay to build it twice. And exploit any questionable behaviour on the part of the players. Oh, and destroy a lot of property. Once the rich and powerful turn on the team getting positive media coverage for the team gets harder and harder. Fair warning though it was frustrating to play that fall from grace, esp. as my character was the cleaner than clean public spokesman for the team. The players will get annoyed. I think what held this game together was the way the GM kept revealing bits of the enemies plan giving us the feeling that there was a light at the end of this tunnel, that and frankly I wanted to see how it all came out. It also helped that no one was all that fond of the Archer character, ultimately even his player agreed that he was a bad egg.

[PoorWandering 1]

Re: Painting the PCs as villains in as few sessions as possible

 

But if you want to destroy them quickly nothing beats a sex scandal.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Painting the PCs as villains in as few sessions as possible

 

Anonymous tip to the heroes that a criminal group (undercover VIPERs maybe) are about to carry out a robbery at a local museum. When they get there, and take out all the suspicious guys with guns, they find out that the robbery went down anyway, and the guys they subdued were actually the police. The local media goes into an uproar.

 

The next anonymous tip comes in, and the characters are more circumspect this time around. The lack of decisive action allows the bad guys to get away with whatever it is they were after. The local media starts in again, making it seem as if the characters were there as a distraction to cover the escape. Now the police absolutely do not trust the heroes, and suspect them of working with the bad guys.

 

When the "evil doppelganger" cliche comes up, an APB is put out, and the characters have to run or face arrest. And of course, the use of superpowers in a crime means that they'll not be eligible for bail.

 

With any luck, the renegade types will already be on the lam, and even the super squeaky clean characters will have to break out of jail to clear their names.

[Metaphysician]

Re: Painting the PCs as villains in as few sessions as possible

 

Exactly how do you mistake SWAT team and police for VIPER agents??

 

( unless the VIPER agents are dressed as police and SWAT, in which case, it should be pretty easy to confirm that the "police" are no such thing )

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Painting the PCs as villains in as few sessions as possible

 

They'd have to be plainclothes cops obviously. Any criminal organization should be able to get its hands on plain clothes and standard firearms.

 

So, the cops are tipped off that there will be a big assault-robbery (standard comic book agent tactics), and they're in place for a surprise counter. The PCs are tipped off that there some sneaky stuff going on, and see all these guys milling around the area with guns, and maybe some concealed body armor. The actual thief comes in ninja-style and steals the goods while the fireworks are going off between the cops and the supers.

 

Just a brainstorm.

 

Another brainstorm: the cops are there in SWAT getup. The bad guys are there in SWAT getup. The PCs can't tell them apart, so when they are shot at, they shoot back. The cops can't tell them apart, so when they see PCs taking down "cops" they shoot at PCs. In the confusion, the goods are stolen.

 

Too easy. This is the comics, after all.