PC antagonism done right

Arkandel

@Three-Eyed-Crow said in PC antagonism done right:

Whatever a game does, they need to be upfront about it. It's like a consent/non-consent policy. This shit is important for players who're deciding whether or not they want to play somewhere. I strongly dislike PvP to the point where I'll generally avoid games that emphasize it, but I can tailor the design of my PC to minimize my need to engage in it (and generally prepare myself for something I'm eh on) if I'm aware it's a thing. If I'm not aware OOC, I can't do this.

Absolutely, consent settings (maybe with adjusted values on certain in-game benefits) could be a good idea. Then players can choose their own level of engagement in the adversarial race - or to simply not participate at all.

Misadventure

@Tinuviel

If a player doesn't have a friend they would like to see as their antagonist player, then without being snarky about the players ability or value, I would say they aren't set up enough to get an antagonist. Not because they don't deserve fun, but because without anyone else to share the story with, they are asking for a staffer to provide essentially one on one entertainment, and I've yet to see a place able to handle that.

There is also the question of what is an antagonist supposed to provide? Surprises? Serious contesting of goals, serious conflict? I see this role as mainly about providing a story from outside the player that it is focused on. There can be a little magic in not coming up with ones own travails.

PS haven't read anything else so if this is way behind or whatever, apologies.

faraday

@Arkandel said in PC antagonism done right:

@faraday said in PC antagonism done right:

But I've seen that work successfully an awful lot more often than I've seen people play healthy IC antagonists (outside of short-term 'bad-guy' type plots).
I mean your IC friends in games give you so much even just counting system benefits. You exchange +votes/+reccs way more often, they can buff you in games like Mage, exchange +task support on Arx, lend you their well-statted Haven and Herd on Vampire, share pack bonuses on Werewolf... that's before we even count scenes.

I think it's an interesting question. But I will point out that I come from a different game world than most of the people here. There are no system benefits to having friends in the games I play, so there are no systemic downsides to being an antagonist. Even so, the social downsides are so severe that almost nobody wants to do it. That's why I think it's not a problem that can be solved with systems. But that's just my 2 cents. I look forward to seeing what others suggest.

Lisse24

@Misadventure
So, here's my idea, starting with my idea for XP.

To get XP, the player types a command like the following:
+xp/conflict JimmyBob=JimmyBob and I fought over whether or not to use stealth to fight the bigbad!
JimmyBob confirms that yes, they did have that fight, and they both get XP.

There is now a record that Player and JimmyBob had an argument.

JimmyBob and Player liked the RP even though it was tense, so they RP a few more times and have a couple more disagreements.

The third time they claim XP for a disagreement, a little emit pops up:
*Player and JimmyBob seem to have a lot of disagreements. Did you know that Player and JimmyBob can be rivals? Rivals get extra XP when in conflict with each other and get bonuses to rolls when in conflicts with each others factions. To set your rivalry, type, +rivalry/set JimmyBob vs Player. Both players must agree. Players may only have one set rivalry at a time.

Insert appropriate commands and incentives where appropriate. The idea is encouraging disagreements, tracking them, and then using them to help players play up their disagreements with other players in a congenial fashion.

Before Arkandel asks: How do you encourage congenial disagreements? You work at it. You have staff on the ground, listening to channels, paging players to check in, and giving kudos to friendly competition, etc. Is it a lot of work, yes? Will it make a better/more fun game? Yes.

SG

I don't think I've ever been in a situation where an anatgonist was not presumed to be a staff pet who was going to win no matter what. Often, they'll cite the hero's journey cliche and say something to the effect, "Oh, don't worry, you good guys always lose in the first few chapters, it makes your ~~future~~ never happening triumph even sweeter.

I'm a bit sour to PC antagonists, but thinking about how to do them right, I think having a flag or bboard requests section on players that are LOOKING for an active antagonist would help. This way both players are into it.

Then, as a fan of board games, I'd likely have something like Antagonism Tokens. For each story one side 'wins', they get a token, with consequences getting higher the more tokens have been earned. If one player begins outstripping the other by a far margin, then staff can introduce an outside factor to begin to mitigate things to end the antagonism, like the colony surgeon installing MAD cortex bombs so they play nice with each other.

Seraphim73

@Ghost said in PC antagonism done right:

some of the my story society tends to avoid difficult characters on an OOC level, which bleeds into IC.

Disclaim. If someone pages you to ask, explain that it's all part of the show.

FOR FUCKS SAKE, BE WILLING TO ICLY SUFFER NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES.
If you're making a character designed to generate conflict, it is a MUST that you are willing to give the people you're antagonizing a victory.
If one player refuses to roleplay their character as having lost at all (I.e. despite being fuck-pummeled in a fistfight, the loser laughs and walks it off), then not only is it poor rp, but it's cheesy and shows a lack of ethics.

Be realistic. No one is 100% antagonist.

I agreed with so much of this so much... and then you got to this point:

Keep it IC. Always.

I think that this is the one thing that you CANNOT do when playing an antagonist (either a "bad guy" or a "person with opposing goals"). I absolutely think that you have to make it clear that you are NOT your character, and the easiest way to do that is to be a joy to be around OOCly, even if your character is a pain in the ass ICly. All too often, people tend to assume that you believe your character's beliefs (usually because they're playing an expy of themselves, but with more rock-hard muscles/lithe curves)--if this happens to someone playing an antagonist (especially a "bad guy"), then you get OOC conflict.

I agree with @Lisse24 and @Arkandel that "antagonist" doesn't have to mean someone who is a bad guy, it can simply be someone who... I don't know... wants the new city council decision giving the job of making sidewalks to Company A, because they have ties to Company B. That person will be an opponent of anyone supporting the decision, but they could be perfectly pleasant to be around and certainly wouldn't be an antagonist.

I also love the suggestion that @Lisse24 made about designating rivals. This would really only work on a political game where votes/decisions/influence attempts could be tracked, because that extra XP would be tied to times where they came down on opposite sides of an issue.

A slightly more subtle nudge to encourage both opposition and losing might be the idea that any time someone loses a fight (especially a political one) they get a little boost from NPC opposition as well (a plot hook, some information, something like that) because they've demonstrated that they're willing to stand up to "those in power" (or that they're aligned with those in power for those not-nearly-rare-enough times when PCs bloc together to vote in something wildly against the interests of the masses of NPCs).

To @Arkandel 's question about how to "Make sure conflict is driven by character motivations..." one of the coolest little innovations that I like on Fires of Hope is that there is a +goals system--each character has to have 1-3 (I think, it might be 2+, or 2-4) goals. They assign logs toward achieving those goals (one per week max), and when they accomplish those goals, they can turn in the +goal for XP based on the number of logs they put toward the +goal (each +goal also has a minimum, mostly to keep really huge goals harder to attain). I think a system like this helps to ensure that players are constantly reminded of their goals for their characters, and it's also--in a political game rather than an almost-entirely-PvE one like FoH--a great way to put people in conflict based on their characters' goals. A player could even have a +goal to -fail- at something (I might just take myself up on that, now that I'm thinking about it).

I absolutely agree with the idea that choices need to have consequences--it's not just "which shiny do I want right now," it should (almost) always be, "What shiny do I want now, accepting that it will hinder me in some other way." You have no action without tension, and there is no tension without consequences to choices.

I think that @Three-Eyed-Crow really hit things on the head though... Staff has to encourage the culture that they want in their game.

To the question of what an opponent brings to the game that @Misadventure brought up... they provide friction. We all know by now (whether it's true on a particular game or not) that NPC opposition is just there to be a speedbump, but when there is another PC pushing back on us, we don't know how things will turn out, and everything the opponent does provides us with something to react to--the world is only really fun (to me, at least) when it pushes back in response to your pushes, giving you something to work with in the process.

Edited to add: @Kestrel did make a spectacular opponent-player on The 100, and I think one of the best things she did, besides just being nice OOCly, was a good bit of journaling/vignette writing. When you see why someone is doing something that you think is "bad," you can understand the choice and the character a lot better, and you're (usually) less likely to have an issue with it.

Ghost

@Seraphim73 said in PC antagonism done right:

Keep it IC. Always.

Let me rephrase this.

Keep the antagonism IC. Always. Being an IC antagonist doesn't work well when you're an OOC bag of dicks.

Arkandel

@Ghost said in PC antagonism done right:

@Seraphim73 said in PC antagonism done right:

Keep it IC. Always.

Let me rephrase this.

Keep the antagonism IC. Always. Being an IC antagonist doesn't work well when you're an OOC bag of dicks.

Yeah, but other than people reporting each other over this, how do we make it happen?

I think a valid approach is by making being IC antagonized rewarding for you. Then you might (I dunno, might) be inclined to not be a complete asshole to the guy playing your political nemesis, who also happens to represent 40% of your total XP revenue in the last three months.

Arkandel

@Seraphim73 said in PC antagonism done right:

I also love the suggestion that @Lisse24 made about designating rivals. This would really only work on a political game where votes/decisions/influence attempts could be tracked, because that extra XP would be tied to times where they came down on opposite sides of an issue.

My concern with this is if people would try to 'designate' their allies into these roles. "Oh, Bob always likes to antagonize me" even though they're in it together for everything important.

I prefer a more organic approach; say, all game-wide political decisions involve NPCs as well, and they go through a centralized system. Characters vote (which might be a literal vote in a council or other means of applying pressure in the direction you like - say, if you have a wealthy merchant it could represent bribing nobles, if you're part of a criminal organization you lean on certain people, etc). Everyone's 'vote' has a different weight based on their stats, and it's fed into a formula to determine what the outcome was in the end of an alotted time period.

At this point it gets simple. Every time two characters' votes clash the code keeps track of it; the higher their disagreement, over time, the more rewards they get from it. Characters who usually agree get almost nothing from each other - their 'reward' is simply that they get a higher chance of winning IC goals. In this system there's no need to designate anything, probably no need for staff to track things 24/7 (which can be very tiresome) and probably just works. Maybe.

A slightly more subtle nudge to encourage both opposition and losing might be the idea that any time someone loses a fight (especially a political one) they get a little boost from NPC opposition as well (a plot hook, some information, something like that) because they've demonstrated that they're willing to stand up to "those in power" (or that they're aligned with those in power for those not-nearly-rare-enough times when PCs bloc together to vote in something wildly against the interests of the masses of NPCs).

I like that. There's some IC reasoning as well; almost everyone (NPC?) opponents. If an NPC sees you usually opposing the Baron, even if you lost, they act favorably toward you - it's in their best interests.

To @Arkandel 's question about how to "Make sure conflict is driven by character motivations..." one of the coolest little innovations that I like on Fires of Hope is that there is a +goals system--each character has to have 1-3 (I think, it might be 2+, or 2-4) goals. They assign logs toward achieving those goals (one per week max), and when they accomplish those goals, they can turn in the +goal for XP based on the number of logs they put toward the +goal (each +goal also has a minimum, mostly to keep really huge goals harder to attain).

That sounds a lot like the nWoD's Aspirations system. It can work, and I always liked it; the rewards as implemented on MU* have traditionally been a bit low for my liking - you can often outpace a major IC achievement (1 XP IIRC?) with a week's automatic XP from merely being on the game, but that's just a matter of tweaking numbers. It also has the IC advantage of staff getting a glimpse into your character's path over time.

I absolutely agree with the idea that choices need to have consequences--it's not just "which shiny do I want right now," it should (almost) always be, "What shiny do I want now, accepting that it will hinder me in some other way." You have no action without tension, and there is no tension without consequences to choices.

Yeah, I think that's a major piece missing from most games. Being a selfish bastard gets you nothing, since there's an infinite pool of goodies (or at least being a selfish bastard doesn't grant you better access to it). So why be one? It only makes you less likely to succeed, not more.

Now... Here's a more overall question for y'all.

If a game allowed players to pick their own level of required consent then, in the context of this thread, would you also adjust characters' IC advancement accordingly? For instance would you give someone who picks PvE engagements only fewer resources per week (since they risk less) than someone who's opened the door to conflict? Assume PC death is out of the question here to make things more clear.

Alamias

I like to think that I can play a good antagonist. At least I try. shrug. Maybe I am just an asshole and don't realize it.

Ghost

@Arkandel said in PC antagonism done right:

Now... Here's a more overall question for y'all.
If a game allowed players to pick their own level of required consent then, in the context of this thread, would you also adjust characters' IC advancement accordingly? For instance would you give someone who picks PvE engagements only fewer resources per week (since they risk less) than someone who's opened the door to conflict? Assume PC death is out of the question here to make things more clear.

I see nothing wrong with a risk-based model.

I've been on games where people didn't want to bother with the war, the combat, and in some cases the central theme to focus on roleplay around things like horse breeding and tinkering with mechanics, but never wanted to be involved in anything violent or risky at all.

It's fair to the players who risk their characters, take risks, and reach for the golden ring to get better rewards than the players that just want a social playspace to RP out whatever; boyfriends, horse breeding, coffee talk.

I don't think that providing these rewards to the players who take risks requires any psychotic policy or system, either. It's simple:

Event #24 involves risk
Event #24 has an XP bonus for completion and potential gear
If you don't attend Event #24, you don't get it.

Lisse24

@Arkandel said in PC antagonism done right:

My concern with this is if people would try to 'designate' their allies into these roles. "Oh, Bob always likes to antagonize me" even though they're in it together for everything important.

I have no problem with people designating OOC friends as political rivals as opposed to just automatically being on the same side. The thing about my system is that the players only get the incentives when they're in conflict. If they're on the same side vs big bad, no bonuses. If they're both trying to poach the same trading conflict, bonuses.

I prefer a more organic approach; say, all game-wide political decisions involve NPCs as well, and they go through a centralized system. Characters vote (which might be a literal vote in a council or other means of applying pressure in the direction you like - say, if you have a wealthy merchant it could represent bribing nobles, if you're part of a criminal organization you lean on certain people, etc). Everyone's 'vote' has a different weight based on their stats, and it's fed into a formula to determine what the outcome was in the end of an alotted time period.

At this point it gets simple. Every time two characters' votes clash the code keeps track of it; the higher their disagreement, over time, the more rewards they get from it. Characters who usually agree get almost nothing from each other - their 'reward' is simply that they get a higher chance of winning IC goals. In this system there's no need to designate anything, probably no need for staff to track things 24/7 (which can be very tiresome) and probably just works. Maybe.

This is similar to what I'd like to do on my game, although exact mechanics aren't worked out yet. The one area of concern I have with what you've laid out is that it may be too black boxy. If players don't see the connection between action and incentive then they won't take the action.

That doesn't mean there needs to be big glaring signs that shout "Incentive here!!" It just means that a player needs to be able to mentally put together that he can push button A and get a fish biscuit.

I absolutely agree with the idea that choices need to have consequences--it's not just "which shiny do I want right now," it should (almost) always be, "What shiny do I want now, accepting that it will hinder me in some other way." You have no action without tension, and there is no tension without consequences to choices.

Yeah, I think that's a major piece missing from most games. Being a selfish bastard gets you nothing, since there's an infinite pool of goodies (or at least being a selfish bastard doesn't grant you better access to it). So why be one? It only makes you less likely to succeed, not more.

This. This so much. Players need to make choices, have to choose between the things, and get less able to grow the more they have, necessitating them pulling people in so that they can get things done.

Ganymede

@faraday said in PC antagonism done right:

Let's pretend that there's a totally mature player who won't start OOC drama, needs no encouragement to play antagonism, and is an awesome RPer. I don't want that person playing my character's antagonist, I want them playing my friend. Because 95% of MU scenes are social in nature, and who wants to hang out with their antagonist?

I can think of a number of players that I'd want to be my antagonist, mostly because I can count on them to not trick-fuck me behind the shade.

And I've had some of the best, most salacious RP with enemies. There is no doubt that Galina and Raven on Reno were antagonists, but you'd really never figure that out given all of the wicked, horrific things they did together.

Ghost

Competition is an issue.

In this format (MU*), for the most part, everyone understands that on some level, players are in competition with each other. The golden nugget in this hobby is relevance. Relevance equals scenes. Scenes equals roleplay. Roleplay equals not logging in and sitting on your ass for 12 hours waiting for something to happen when you could have been playing Mass Effect.

I think it's really important, that in many cases, antagonists may not always be antagonists. That the intended story of the antagonist is to upgrade to antihero. If the intended story of the antagonist is to be an antagonist, then it should be assumed that there will be an event. If the intention of the story altogether is the fight of good versus evil, then the antagonist player has to understand that it's the prerogative of the majority of the playerbase to defeat said evil.

I'm a chronic tabletop GM. I'll share with you my playbook on creating npc antagonists for my players, because I think this method should be applied to MuAntagonistPCs

You exist to give other people something to fight against. Expect this.
Other players will want to defeat you. Expect this.
Players will want to defeat you ASAP. Plan accordingly. There's no sense in creating an antagonist and think you have this great long-term idea in mind, then get hit with an avalanche of dice, and then have to use GM-fiat or GM-magic to keep the antagonist alive because they devoured your NPC before the good shit you had planned could be unleashed.
Be a bad guy and bully the characters, but not the player. Everyone wanted to see Daniel LaRusso kick Johnny's ass. High five them when they kick your ass.
STEAL from great examples. Darth Vader, Dark Helmet, Every Michael Wincott character he ever acted (caw caw bang fuck I'm dead). Find the things you love in villains and share that love with your players.
Most importantly: Understand your role in the story. Your role is to provide conflict, and conflict ultimately requires trials, tribulations, and resolution. Your antagonist could be a short-lived one or a long-term one, but if he/she is a long term antagonist, it will be your job to provide little victories against your antagonist along the way to make it worthwhile.

If you explain that this is your mindset to the players, OOCly, they will appreciate having something to fight against, so long as you're fair and appreciative of them.

Never. Ever. Ever. EVER. EVER forget to OOCly high five them for the attention they give your antagonists.

Arkandel

@Ghost said in PC antagonism done right:

If you explain that this is your mindset to the players, OOCly, they will appreciate having something to fight against, so long as you're fair and appreciative of them.

Never. Ever. Ever. EVER. EVER forget to OOCly high five them for the attention they give your antagonists.

Unlike table-top though, where the antagonist is either the GM or at least a known face sitting at the same table, on MU* it's a bit more blurry. People expect parity and fairness - even if it can be argued a better story could be told without it - and the unfortunate part is historically we've seen this go really awry where staff blatantly favored their friends or even alts this way.

Darth Vader and his ilk are way more powerful than almost everyone else in the same settings. The resource staff usually lack to pull this off is trust.

Misadventure

Related to being an atagonist, here are three story shapes that show when to do how much:

alt text

I love that David Yang kept E = Electricity, which Kurt actually meant Energy, but was avoiding saying End. The most popular story is Cinderella.

Ghost

@Arkandel said in PC antagonism done right:

Unlike table-top though, where the antagonist is either the GM or at least a known face sitting at the same table, on MU* it's a bit more blurry. People expect parity and fairness - even if it can be argued a better story could be told without it - and the unfortunate part is historically we've seen this go really awry where staff blatantly favored their friends or even alts this way.

Idea: Flagged antagonists.

Staff could include some kind of incentive to agreeing to certain behavior/guidelines for antagonist characters (such as mine above) and then flag the character as an approved antagonist/antihero type character.

It's possible that, at least, a staff "stamp of approval" on the character knowing going in that they'll be playing the character that way might help. Might also make it so that people avoid RPing with the character due to OOC avoidance, which would be bullshit, but whatevs.

Thenomain

@faraday said in PC antagonism done right:

Antagonism makes for good stories, but in a MU* environment I think it's a lost cause. Mostly for the reasons you mentioned, but it's even more than that. Let's pretend that there's a totally mature player who won't start OOC drama, needs no encouragement to play antagonism, and is an awesome RPer. I don't want that person playing my character's antagonist, I want them playing my friend. Because 95% of MU scenes are social in nature, and who wants to hang out with their antagonist? Antagonists are best metered out in small doses, and that runs contrary to what you want to be doing with your awesome RPers.

While I know I'm five internet-years behind on this thread, now, but I did want to say that this kind of player is exactly who I want to play against.

The word "antagonist" was unfortunate in its connotation to this discussion, but let's look at President Roslin and General Adams's relationship. They had aggressively different agendas through most of the early seasons, and in many ways they were antagonistic. Dr. Baltar was almost textbook antagonist, and your player description would thrive in that role.

In Amber, antagonists share the same space. In World of Darkness, you have people against you because it's Tuesday; a game of Vampire can be chock full of antagonists you can't kill even without bringing in the groups that are usually thought of when someone says "antagonist".

We don't need Cylons, we don't need Shadow, we don't need Sabbat, we just need two people whose goals oppose, and for this I want a million of the kind of person you describe.

Misadventure

Someone to contest your goals may be a better way to think about it. They aren't trying to destroy you, or even your goals, but they do want the same resources, or are otherwise not able to let you have your way and get theirs too very often.

Arkandel

When you jerks come up with a better one-word term than 'antagonist' I'll be happy to use it from now on in the thread.