Superhero Games: Quest For Villain PCs
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@Thenomain I agree completely on all presented points.
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There's the amount of coordination and that does kill some spontaneity. Example would be that the heroic player(s) would have to allow the villain to rob the bank successfully knowing full well that this leads to the funding of the giant city destroying laser that will be the battleground for the climax.
Also hoping the bank robbery doesn't lead to the villain starting something crazy like cutting off hostages faces and wearing them while the hero is paralyzed by the agreement the robbery would be successful. I can imagine the fall out.
"You said I would get away with the robbery!"
"That was before you starting mutilating hostages and river dancing in their entrails."I'd like to give the benefit of the doubt that people could hash out an easy agreement but I've seen wild things happen in the MU* world.
I'm just spinning my wheels here thinking worst case scenarios that would make me die a little more on the inside. Villainous victory to a more awe inspiring epic loss is a good thing for certain.
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@TwoGunBob You're running on the presumption that there's no oversight on any of this. It couldn't happen without some kind of oversight. Staff would want a heads up on any major plots going on, and individual scenes would still likely have a GM of some kind guiding it.
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@TwoGunBob Yeah that was the sort of thing I meant when I was talking about having an environment to support this sort of thing. The heroes and villains both need some assurance that defeat does not leave them completely screwed -- that there's a bigger and cooler story hinging on it and their short term loss will be worth it. Everyone needs to be on board with that idea, and that level of trust and cooperation is sadly hard (impossible?) to come by in MU-land.
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Continuing to agree with you, and I'd also like to agree with @Ghost.
Trust starts OOC. In some game systems, trust is maintained by the system or by the table. In Mu*s there is rarely a strong sense of "the table" (aka the game) and therefore a far more tenuous sense of trust.
What @Ghost describes is a betrayal of trust. How can you trust other people if they page their friends to manipulate the situation in their favor? But on the other hand, how can you build that trust if you don't share your gaming expectations with others, which can only be done OOC, aka "table talk"?
I'm not talking about scene-by-scene, moment-by-moment expectations, but the expectations and understandings that make up the game's culture.
I clearly don't think the problem is with OOC tools, but the use of the system, both IC and OOC, against other players.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
@Thenomain Yeah, on the face that this is how it is with everyone on board. Trust issues, I always remember the quick thrusting back stab over the months of carefree gaming I've had with numerous players and staff. I admit, I'd give it the benefit of the doubt and try a villain in such an environment. But I jam Johnny Thunders- Born to Lose so a villain in defeat is my jam.
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@faraday I keep trying to upvote as many times as I can, but it must be broken
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@Miss-Demeanor Way back on one of the iterations of MXT, a few of us with villain PCs had a "super-science symposium" scene whose premise was that some of the most brilliant and unhinged minds met to discuss their recent academic innovations and argue over various impossible/crackpot theories. (Really, it was an excuse for us to try and one-up each other with technobabble.) It was one of the more enjoyable scenes I've ever done.
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@fatefan See, now that to me would be hilarious good fun and I would enjoy the Hell out of it!
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Apologies if I'm rechurning what someone else has already said. I did read through the thread which prompted me to think about this but I may have not committed every comment to memory.
I guess my issue with villains in any game or story setting- PC or NPC- is that its such a binary concept. Good vs bad. Nice vs mean. Grace vs. evil.
And that's not wrong. But.
It's a concept that presumes that your character is in the default position of being in the right and the villain is the default position of being in the wrong. And their actions are supposed to be a staircase to your good PC achieving a state of grace through their act of evil.
And I want to be clear that I'm not knocking stories that have this sort of push/pull. There are people who want to unpack them for a number of very valid reasons. But the reason they're operating through this lens is because they're presented from a point of view that polarizes these actions that favors the 'good' because the intention is usually for good to win. The result is that triumphing actions are treated with virtue and the behavior of the villain is generally termed as having an antagonism. And I think we're conditioned to accept virtue on its merits even when there's little logic or actual supporting evidence that what's happening is actually good and the behavior of the villain is slanted for cause, wherein we're given within reach ideas about why this is bad.
I'd like to see the whole dynamic re-examined, I guess and step out of this frame work. So much of what we understand as conflict on a global scale is deemed as complicated and the argument about who is wrong vs. who is right is a thing steeped in relativism. That's definitely not the case in binary villain v. hero motifs most of the time and I wonder if purposefully framing it in the notion of who did what to whom is steeped in relativism would actually take the pressure off who needs to win.
