@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:
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.