Painting the PCs as villains in as few sessions as possible

[Chuckg]

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

 

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.

 

The thing is, since the cops were framed right alongside the superheroes(*), this means that the police department has a vested interest in clearing the heros' names... because it's also clearing *their* name.

 

As soon as the usage-of-force investigation fails to turn up any actual SWAT cops who actually pulled their triggers, pretty much everybody involved will start figuring out where that dead fish smell is coming from. And with the evening news reporting that the Local PD is backing up the heroes re: the "phony cops" story...

 

... well, it's a temporary name-blackening for a couple of days, but barring massive Plot-Induced Incompetence on the part of Internal Affairs, that should be it.

 

 

 

 

(*) The police department has a major vested interest in not being the guys who shot first -- so IA will be looking *very hard* for whichever dumb idiot in blue shot first. And when they can't find any such idiot actually on the force...

[naturaltwenty]

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

 

I used a Neverwhere (Neil Gaman) scenario where the PC's faded from reality to become one of those people who you pass on the street but pay no attention to. Pictures faded with their images, bank accounts were closed, people moved into their bases and apartments. No matter what they did no one would listen to them.

 

While the book was set in London I used Chicago and it's historic areas to immerse the characters in battles with Native American ghosts walkers, gangsters, even Sue the T-Rex from the museum made an appearance.

 

The villain, Lord Portal, was the nemesis of Sidestep, our resident teleporting/alternate dimension hero, who had a grudge against Sidestep abdicating his throne in an alternate dimension.

 

After fighting their way back from Neverwhere the world had changed slightly and their persona's were now those of the villains.

 

Great fun that was.

 

Later,

 

Natural Twenty

[OddHat]

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

 

Mind Control and a mental Transformation Attack with completely invisible power effects is great for this, perhaps too effective. Don't use it on the PCs; use it on local TV producers and reporters, police officers, school children, the mayor . . . A few implanted memories will do endless harm to the heroes, and that type of villain almost impossible to detect and fight in time.

[LadyChaos]

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

 

I may have designed our characters too well' date=' it seems. [/quote']

That's how we felt at the time. It was bad enough when they just crossed over into our dimension, but when they managed to shunt us off into the future and take over our lives, it got worse.

 

Two mad scientists, a serial killer, a demonic cannibal telepath and "Dr. Mengele" were just some of the alters.

 

It was a great scenario, didn't take much for the GM to set up, and scared the bejesus out of all the players. We played it out over several sessions, but you wouldn't have to do that if you didn't want.

[Captain Obvious]

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

 

The thing is, since the cops were framed right alongside the superheroes(*), this means that the police department has a vested interest in clearing the heros' names... because it's also clearing *their* name.

 

Well, of course everything you said here applies in the real world. It definitely wouldn't fly in a gaming group with a cop, or a cop's brother, or even a police department fan-boy. But for most of the public, who don't have much experience with police procedures, it would likely fly. As I mentioned before, this is a comic book simulation.

 

Either way, the main point is that the PCs are misdirected in such a way that they attack the cops who are supposed to be stopping the robbery. Having the players attack the cops of their own free will makes a much more elegant setup than anything as unsubtle as Mind Control. I'm sure someone can come up with a better scenario than the ones I laid out, but they were the first things that popped into my head.

 

Even if the SWAT scenario is used, and the brass knows it was some sort of setup, though, the media doesn't have to make the department's investigation big news. Some paper might play up the PCs part in the heist, and play up the injured cop angle, and bring up some past incidents between the PCs and police to provide a motive for the PCs going renegade. The Daily Bugle never had any basis in reality for labeling Spiderman a criminal, yet it did, again and again, and many people believed it. It's likely that even the police would start to believe "facts" they heard from official sources, if they heard them often enough.

 

Again, just more brainstorming.

[Chuckg]

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

 

1) One of those genre things usually in comics is that unless you're in a very Iron Age game, or a Dark Champions campaign, the cops are *not* the enemy.

 

2) Any police force that believes what they read in the paper more than what their own investigations are turning up is retarded beyond belief, and would be utterly out of place in anything save a Wacky Comedy and/or a Totally Depressing Iron Age campaign.

 

 

Edit -- and who needs a relative to be a cop? A player could get the required level of knowledge just from watching enough "Law & Order".

[Captain Obvious]

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

 

Well, once again, Spiderman was widely considered a criminal, even by cops, from his Silver Age beginning. Only people with direct experience of him saving them from criminals believed otherwise.

 

As far as cops turning against the PCs based on rumors, I'd have to admit with established PCs, even damning evidence of their wrongdoing wouldn't convince everyone. Yet, in the Vietnam War, even though the US didn't lose any major battles, and didn't lose much in the way of minor skirmishes, many soldiers began to believe that they were losing because of the way the media covered it. Militarily, Vietnam was a huge success. The war was lost in the papers and the evening news. With relatively new characters, or those who haven't made a history of selfless sacrifice in the media, this would be fairly easy to do. Not all of the police would go for it maybe, but there would be enough dissention in the ranks to build support for the PCs-gone-renegade theory when other incidents occur.

 

Anyway, this is kinda starting to turn into a pissing contest. Unless a wider cross section of Herodom Assembled than you and me chimes in, I'll be bowing out. Maybe my ideas were totally retarded, or maybe we just have different levels of belief-suspension in comic books, but I have more fun brainstorming ideas than defending them to the death.

[Chuckg]

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

 

> Well, once again, Spiderman was widely considered a criminal, even by

> cops, from his Silver Age beginning.

 

Which is why I focused my objection on what the police's internal investigation *of itself* would turn up. Unlike Spider-Man, they know where their own officers live, and what their real names are.

 

[snip]

> As far as cops turning against the PCs based on rumors, I'd have to admit

> with established PCs, even damning evidence of their wrongdoing wouldn't

> convince everyone. Yet, in the Vietnam War, [snip]

 

Not a parallel situation. For this to be parallel, the *high command* would have had to believe the newspapers over what their own sources of information were telling them -- which did *not* happen.

 

Plus, the scale of operations is not an entire country of which you can see only one little part, it's an investigation of an event that the PD can see the whole of.

 

And finally, people are a lot more cynical about the media now than they are then.

 

[snip]

> Anyway, this is kinda starting to turn into a pissing contest.

 

... the hell? What, people aren't allowed to analyze any longer? I thought the whole point of posting scenarios on this board is so that other people could find the plot holes for you and point out what needs fixing, *before* your players did the same thing on game day, when it's too late to fix anything.

 

Dude, I suck at cheerleading, OK?