(Crap this came out a lot longer than I expected it to. Either read this when you have plenty of spare time or just skim over. Sorry! Also, please excuse any mistakes I missed.) Heyo everyone! Haven't been exactly 100% active as of late because I didn't want to get involved in any serious RP since I have a surgery Wednesday that I wanted to take care of first. But putting my life struggles aside for a moment, I wanted to discuss a little concept with you all. I'll just jump right into it. Now as everyone knows, every story that exists has an opposing force that serves as an obstacle for the protagonist(s). Whether it be not being able to make it on the basket ball team because lack of skill or the inability to escape an island in the middle of nowhere, there is always something. However; especially in video games, there is always some sort of villain. Like the Joker from Batman, they can be extremely clever and tricky to catch, or they can be the exact opposite- such as Godzilla going to town on whatever gets in his way using his raw power. Whatever the case, I think we can all say that nothing beats that feeling when you had finally beat Bowser for the first time. A main-boss is a challenge, and is presented as such throughout the entire game. The progression makes it clear that when you finally face this guy, it's going to be a tough fight. The adventure along the way leads up to that one crucial, decisive battle- and the buildup itself is half the fun. A lot of you may not know the exact reference of which I am about to refer to, but in World of Warcraft there have always been two opposing factions; the Alliance and the Horde. However; while the conflict between them is always apparent, several third party forces intervened occasionally to progress the lore, like Ragnaros the Firelord, Arthas the Lich King, or Deathwing the literal harbinger of death. Even if you are not familiar with the game, it's still an easy concept to grasp. So, let's put it in relation with the server, yeah? Let's say, hypothetically speaking of course, that the Fleet and the Armored Wolves went to war. They're duking it out on several planets and since neither side wants to lose, they continue to fight for awhile. It's fun for a bit, but then you get to a stalemate. One of these factions has to make the decision of losing the war in order to keep the story going. BUT- there is the third option as I mentioned before. Now let's throw in a super-genius villain that's able to destroy entire planets because he's built a giant moon laser (a cannon that fires literal moons at things). However, he is not aligned with either faction A, nor faction B. This is a third party, stand-alone bad guy that's seen often in stories. Well, neither the Fleet or Wolves wants to get hit in the face with a moon, right? So they team up together and take down the baddie after a series of battles that were a change of pace from the usual war. So Moon-Man gets his base blown up and he's out of the picture- now what happens? Whether it be to call for a cease-fire or to sign a peace treaty and hold hands, the third-party did in fact mix up the outcome of the previous war. It still gives plenty of freedom for the factions to RP to their desire, but adds much more depth and fun along the way! SO- I am sure a lot of you are probably ripping your eyes out (if you haven't already called tl;dr on me) and want me to get to my point. Well my first character, Zalexia, was off doing her own little story arc like everyone else when I kind of got stuck. A quick rundown would be the following; 1. She found rumors of 'Ancient Archives,' and 'Unnatural Diseases,' in some abandoned, standalone USCM research labs. 2. She found a few other people who tagged along in her little investigation, and they followed leads that progressed the story little by little. 3. The team broke apart after a few fights and Zalexia was left to find answers by herself. Now, I'm not sure about you guys, but RPing by yourself isn't very fun (unless you're into that thing I guess), and that's exactly where I ended up with that story arc. I didn't want to drag more people into an already half-progressed story as it would be difficult, as well as selfish on my part. On the other-hand, I didn't want to simply scrap my first character without finishing her story, as it would be a waste. So finally, here is my proposition. Zalexia found what she was looking for, the planet that the 'disease' was originating from as well as the mentioned Archives. However, being alone and unprepared, she fell victim to it and lost her sanity. Let's say the disease was a parasite of some sort that corrupted organisms to survive, using them as a sort of host. Zalexia's memories were jumbled up with the parasite's control and therefore lost all ability to reason. So what makes her a fitting bad guy that would make for an interesting RP? Well I don't exactly want this to be a quick event where I jump into a city and swing a sword around until I get shot- that would be the opposite of interesting. First off, the parasite will give her heightened natural healing abilities. By this I do not mean Wolverine-healing where if you chop my arm off it'll grow back, but enough to come back after losing a fight at full strength. After all, it was mentioned by a staff member that if you play the role of the bad guy, a few victories here and there are allowed, but the end-result must be with your loss. Moving on in the list of what she will be contributing, it should be clear that she'd work off infection. Both the weapons she wields are basically living essence of the disease, so getting sliced by it can cause some pretty serious (and disgusting) wounds if not treated. Not only will she infect people, but the places she claims as her own. The best example I could give would probably be the Flood from Halo. This could lead to me building some neat little hideouts that I could hold the events in for everyone to partake. As I want this to be clear before I end this post, this will be an open story-arc. I want to keep the conclusions of every battle with Zalexia open and vague enough that anyone would be able to jump in at anytime and still be able to follow the story- so no personal/hidden plot-lines that would confuse fellow RPers. So what do you guys think? Would this be something that you might be able to get a character to take part in? Everything listed prior is open for discussion, as I want to get the most experience out of this for everyone. I personally think the server could do with a little bit of large-scale coordinated boss battles to keep things interesting. After all, I keep hearing people on Galaxy chat claiming there is nothing to do, even though there is quite plenty. Maybe something big to grab people's attention?
For a "villain" to challenge whole factions, they would need to run a faction as well. Throwing around moons and viruses by oneself isn't really feasible or acceptable. Even as a faction, a person had better give some really, really, really damn good backing for it (or just keep it relatively simple, and skip the moons/viruses). As for hyper-regeneration and disease and such, this sets oneself up to have a very powerful (singular) character. It would result in you going apeshit, surviving, returning occasionally to wreck a whole colony's day all over again, get not-killed (again), then pop up again to rinse and repeat. People have been banned for this... (I can think of 2 or 3 off the top of my head) Anyway, you should avoid this. Power-down your idea, and maybe act as a villain to a small, select group of people. As far as regeneration goes, give that a loooooong duration of time for recovery, if you're gonna keep that. A severely injured character should have lasting, inhibiting consequences for a significant period. (Grenade blown up in face ------> spend a week recovering irl, rp being wrecked/deaf for a week... believe me, it can be fun.) Disease/infection weapons can be... tricky. Very tricky. Clearly define everything it does, and make sure its both sensible and not crazy powerful. In the end, going into a city and going apeshit is a bad idea, with or without healing powers/disease. Without them, you will die. With them, you'll get reported to moderators for godmoding. Think carefully.
The best villains aren't villains. Invading colonies and giving people terrifying diseases is pointless if there isn't a reason behind the madness. Not to mention the mere existence of these weapons is sketchy as hell to begin with. What's the story behind them? How the hell can they infect things? Severity of infections? Mortality rate? Cures needed? Are these diseases known to the galactic community? The list goes on and on. My vote is to plan this out better and hold off on bringing this character into the server until you know all the details, know the motivation, and then know this baddies of yours isn't overpowered as fuck. Nobody likes it when their actions don't mean anything. They like to be able to affect the outcome in some way, and merely having the bad guy come back, strong as ever after every battle, is a great way to turn people off. If they believe their actions to be pointless, they won't get involved anymore and go back to hanging around LM doing nothing. This is why you don't see any major, story-driven villains all that often. It's a tightrope act - you don't want to godmod and be all powerful, but on the opposite hand you want your character to have sufficient strength and meaning to be able to shape events, affect the lives of multiple characters and ultimately contribute in some way to the server's ever-growing history. It's very, VERY easy to do a villain wrong and have everyone hate you for it. But if you do it right? People will remember. In a good way.
While the thought of having a villain come around is interesting, I have to agree with the above points - No one likes a villain who's basically a God. Villains must be unique in the way they act. He can destroy a planet with the death star? Nice, he has to hide behind a stupid machine. They aren't going to fear the villain, they're going to fear the machine. A villain must be able to put fear into one's heart just by being in one's presence, but without even having to directly do so. Think of it like Voldemort in a way, just the mere mention of his name makes people piss themselves. Why was he feared? He sought out infinite power. If the villain wants to go on a genocidal rampage there must be a deeper reason for it, other than he's bored and feels like murdering some scrubs. Perhaps he's going on this rampage because the people he is attacking at the moment was responsible for the death of his family and friends perhaps. Throwing that in as an example. Pretty much every other point I could think of has already been made above me, other than one thing - Ain't helping no birds out. Would throw the villain at them, instead.
We don't even have much villains to begin with (or atleast any that do anything). Most criminals/villains are either very poorly written ones or just expendable types that die after first encounter. I understand why people do it, however. Whenever there is a big bad, people often flock on him or her and just kill that character off. If escaped, he or she just becomes banned from a colony. I would love to join whatever villain event there is to happen, infact I wouldn't mind doing some myself at some point. I am just not sure what and what people think about NPC factions/NPC villains.
Thinking about it a bit, I may re-purpose Lotus, perhaps. She's essentially just a Valkyrie-esque AI which follows the simple directive "Kill who kills". Essentially meaning even if someone was killing someone else in self-defense, she'd just kill them anyways. Could be interesting for a villain who doesn't even see them self as one. The only issue there would be she doesn't exactly have a faction that I think would follow her in this, except the Disphot perhaps, but even then they're a bit of a mystery.
The problem is that, frankly... I need more time. I'm still fleshing out the backstory and making sure everything is understandable, and that his motives are clear. He's by far the most important character that I have, even more so than Gamma, and I want his introduction and actions to mean something. I want the Lightbringers to make sense and I want their return to make sense as well. That entire backstory behind the three brothers is like a giant puzzle, and all the pieces have to fit together just right. Basically, I want to do Beta right, because he deserves no less. When it's ready, I want the entire arc, from beginning to resolution, to be awesome. I want Beta to be the villain the server deserves, and I want everyone to have fun fighting and ultimately defeating him. Not to mention I'm going to need time to actually run the events that I unfortunately don't have right now.
I had random NPC I was tasked with and made it into something more. No super powers, no otherworldy gimmicks. Just a drug dealer. While I am due to bring her out again soon, I've been pretty successful I believe in making her hated among her opposition.
Oh geez, everyone seems to think I said I was going to invade colonies and wreck face. I could have sworn I put it in there that I wanted to AVOID doing that. I hate interrupting RP's that are currently being developed by people by jumping into them without question (I said that it would be selfish if I were to just drag people into my regular story-arc). I wanted to keep this open, as I stated before. I would design little custom planets and set up a date or something for people to come check out, on their own accord. Now addressing this healing and God character points, maybe I came off too strong on this. I apologize if it sounded as though I actually wanted my character to be a big threat like the examples I listed in my post. The infection is not something I can just simply toss at people and go "okey now u ded," nor is it able to bring down the masses by making them ill. It's slow, and only deadly in large doses (Zalexia found the core of it after all, so it's natural she would experience the full brunt of it.) As for 'going apeshit' on people, I would like to actually avoid any serious fighting until the end. I want to keep most of the event in the adventure process by coming up with neat little puzzle rooms that would require a group of people to work together. Like maybe a draw bridge needed to be activated to continue, but standing between them is a gaping hole. This is where the more agile RPers would get their turn to do their thing. In another situation, there could be a room that's slowly pouring gas and the more science-y people would need to find a way to shut the valves off. I want it to be clear that when you actually get to fight Zalexia, it would be the end of it. The only advantage besides being able to heal a few scrapes and bruises would be that you're fighting in her domain. A classic example of "the fun is in the journey, not the destination." I just wanted to do some exciting RP that has no real 'bad outcome' that could negatively affect someone's character. As I stated before, the server requires all villains to lose- Zalexia would be no exception. Although I would like to continue discussing with you guys a way to make sure this is fun and agreed upon. I apologize again if what I said before felt like I was just forcing a God-like character down your throats, I am really not trying to do that. She's just insane and has been corrupted by the parasite. She won't be able to survive getting shot in the face or anything like that. If you'd like to keep giving me feedback that'd be fantastic. I don't mind you guys adding some limits to her as well, as that can always be fun too. (Oh, and the moon thing was just a ridiculous example I was giving. It felt like some of you were actually taking that part seriously... No, that'd be silly.)
Yes, that's called an antagonist, not a villain. A villain can be an antagonist, but an antagonist does not necessarily have to be a villain. Starbound is a game, but in the context of roleplay, you can't focus on the narrative as if it were a game. Video game plots do not translate well beyond a formal literary medium for a very clear-cut reason: The emphasis is more on the player's experience, and less on the story. The story, as a result, revolves mostly around the protagonist(s), and it's this kind of thinking that brings about the mentality of people who believe the roleplay revolves around them in the first place. In a game, you're the hero. In an roleplaying setting? You can be a hero, but not the hero. A villain also doesn't come out of the blue. A big mistake people have with making characters that they want to amass some sort of antagonistic force with is to just give them the power right off the bat and make them appear like a large threat immediately, which is an awful way to create a villain in the first place. The best way is to start small, and then have them grow slowly to become a bigger and bigger threat. This way, proper characterization into their brand of evil can be formulated properly instead of suddenly, and they have more of a personality as a result. Alternatively, if you want to bestow upon them some sort of factor of wealth/power (which should be avoided, but if you really feel like you have to go this route), their actions should start small and then grow more and more, each movement with their own significance to the character. That being said, I want to address the main principle of the suggestion itself, that I do like: Diversifying the ambiguities characters have in terms of morality. In simpler terms, it means more evil characters on the spectrum of morality that people can use as rally points to band together to fight back against. This makes roleplaying experiences more substantial, especially since there is a group of large entities around here that no one can do anything about in terms of their negotiations with planets and the like, it'd really give the setting a solid way to be impacted, or at least the illusion of it being so. Something to stir the pot a bit more than the usual happenings that are going on now are alright in my book, so long as they're done correctly.
Right, of course. I'm aware of everything you listed, but didn't want to even bother bringing it up until the idea of Zalexia was even accepted. I swear I will not be 'that guy' who just jumps in and pulls off a half-assed RP. I still need to make sure that everything is intricate enough to create a good atmosphere for the RP environment. I will be thinking of a way that everyone would be able to fit into the setting appropriately without clashing with their current development. This is not something I will simply do tomorrow and expect people to show up. At the very minimum, it would take maybe a week and a half before I set up a date for an actual event. In the meantime there would be build-up and foreshadowing of sorts. Maybe an occasional broadcast or something that left vague messages. Regardless, that's all something that shouldn't be decided upon so early on.
Huh? I was just using it as an example. It's not like the Flood is a unique scenario. The Thing, Deadspace, or even the cute little headcrabs from Half-life are all similar.
I believe the author of this topic tried to just use examples that some might find common and easy to understand. What he is saying is that we need atleast a single typical villain, because we don't really have any notable ones right now.
