by Scott Roberts
June 26, 2001

"Am I Evil? Yes, I am."
—Metallica, "Am I Evil?", Garage Inc., 1998

One of the most disheartening things about staffing an online prose game is that there are so few players who want to play an interesting villain. There is no shortage of mundane villains--petty thieves, breaking and entering artistes, muggers, murderers, and the like. Playing the petty criminal comes naturally to a lot of players; the unfortunate part about this is that these are the players who rarely have any roleplaying skills. Fugitives from MUDs where the norm is that any item on the ground (or anyplace that you can get into easily and pick up stuff) is free for the taking are all too common. I should point out that in many cases this behavior is easily trained out of the player; some of the better roleplayers I've had the pleasure of knowing come from that sort of background. Unfortunately, however, these people rarely go on to become true villains; they instead want to play the hero.

As I've discussed in previous columns, players by and large want to be heroes. They want to prevail over the odds; right wrongs; become famous; and do the good thing. Players of roleplaying games in general often seek to be "good"; even the darker White Wolf games portray some game elements in terms of how much humanity the character has remaining. These games often punish one for being evil. Most games that allow an "evil" option don't tend to support it for very long; evil characters often have trouble working as teams. The only game I've dealt with in any detail which effectively works well with parties of evil characters is In Nomine, where players can play different demons with a single goal; while the characters will conflict there is enough of a reason for them to achieve their group goal that they can often have a very good time doing so. Eventually, however, even the characters in this game will betray each other and lead themselves toward sour roleplaying sessions.

This is, of course, due to one of the shortcomings of tabletop games: small groups of players with limited time working with a single gamemaster. By their nature, such games must involve groups; playing effective small groups of evil characters is difficult. Most really good villains are solitary creatures; when encountered in groups, a strong leader who does not brook disobedience usually leads them. This doesn't lead to much fun in such groups. While villains can be played in other types of games like LARPs due to their large sizes, LARPs don't usually have a long lifespan when compared to tabletop campaigns, so the planning and execution of the villain's plan is usually restricted to a single session, which prohibits some of the more interesting characterizations that could be possible.

The online prose roleplaying game offers a venue that is ideal for player-character villains. Long-term character development is possible; you aren't competing with the gamemaster for the other players' attention; you are not necessarily destined to lose to the machinations of the Good Guys; and you can choose your friends carefully to avoid being backstabbed or betrayed by another player character. Your planning and machinations are much more secretive than they would be in a tabletop setting--you can conduct conversations with gamemasters and cohorts without passing obvious notes or arranging private conversations which detract from other people's gaming. On many games, you can even play multiple characters, so if you want to be a hero, you can do that with one character, and play the villain with the other.

Despite these advantages, however, the online prose world suffers from a lack of serious player-character villains. This is no doubt a carryover from other forms of gaming for some players; it simply never occurs to them to play a villain because they like playing heroes too much. In other cases, it's a case of simply being unable to be convincingly evil. The education and upbringing demographics of most of the players I have met simply condition people to not be bad. There are notable exceptions, of course, but by and large we all want the people we play the game with, villain or hero, to be the sort of folk we would not mind encountering in public. It's difficult for such people to get into the role of playing evil.

Playing a villain, however, can be an extremely rewarding experience. It's fun to do the wrong thing from time to time. It provides the player with an opportunity to act out a role often completely different from both their real personality and their idealized version of an alternate-self. It can be extremely empowering to thwart others' plans to upset your own. Providing a challenge or conflict to other players is guaranteed to make the game more interesting for both you and the other players; it can be especially rewarding on a game that allows you to play multiple characters: you can hear about your opposition's attempts to puzzle out your latest scheme as your other character, and perhaps offer hints or misdirection to the players involved (although it is important to note that here is a very important place to avoid crossing IC information for one character with what's IC information for another; if your intent in such an instance is to help people puzzle out your villain's plan it's okay; if instead you are using your other character to find out information your villain would not know to use it against your opponents, it's wrong and should not be done.)

Disassociation

The first key to playing a convincing villain is to disassociate yourself as a player from the actions of your character. This of course should be done to some degree with all characters--it is a game, of course, and your characters are not yourself. However, most players in online prose games tend to identify very strongly with their characters; they get truly upset when their characters are thwarted and they truly rejoice at their victories. Their characters' opinions and actions tend to reflect what their own would be if placed in the character's setting with the character's attributes, skills, and equipment. This can be dangerous if not impossible when playing a villain. Overattachment to an evil character (who should, for the sake of everyone's enjoyment including your own, eventually lose) can cause sadness, anger, and disgruntlement in either the player or the characters that the villain is constantly thwarting due to the obsession of the player with the villainous character.

Disassociation from their character is counterintuitive in most roleplayers' minds. They tend to think in terms of method and improvisational acting; getting into the role is important to them, and this leads to the player getting attached to the character. That's well and fine when your character is a "good guy", but getting too into a villain can actually ruin the fun of playing him effectively. Instead of associating yourself too strongly with the villain, I recommend trying to consider your character as you would someone you are writing a story about; don't try to truly become the character. There are some elements of the characterization you will want to handle in a method acting style where you put yourself in the character's mind and body, but once these are established, disassociation is key to playing the perfect foil and eventually the ultimate triumph for other players when they defeat your schemes and plans. When the time comes for your character to have his or her schemes foiled, you should be disassociated enough to be cheering along with the heroes as they manage to finally outwit your villain and bring his or her nefarious plans to an end.

In Your Eyes

The second key to playing a convincing villain lies in the early development of the character: that part of his or her career during which you should try to get into the character's mind. Neglecting this part of playing the character is what often leads to two-dimensional villains, and it's also a part that player characters can do a lot better than gamemasters in most cases. In this area, player-run villains can be much more interesting than any plot or scheme run by a staff member due to the time that the player can spend on developing the villain.

Consider the famous adage: no one is ever a villain in his or her own eyes. Adolf Hitler himself, probably the single most evil individual of the 20th century, was under the impression that he was a savior of his nation, a defender of racial purity, and the embodiment of the destiny of his country.

In order for a villainous character to work, the character must have an internally consistent reason for villainy. The character's motives should make sense within their own rationalizations, even if they are contemplating or performing truly evil actions. One of the oldest and most common motivations in various genres is the deal with a more powerful being wherein the villain performs some nefarious acts in return for power or other dreams being fulfilled by the being. This is a simple and somewhat effective plot, easy to develop and maintain, and hence it is a staple of villainous action. There is certainly no shortage of variations on the theme--villains who will do anything for power. In an online prose environment, however, it's entirely possible for the player of a villain to come up with richer and more complex reasons for their character's villainy.

Many of the same motivations that are used to craft believable heroes work to create effective villains when applied with a twist. The easiest of these is the revenge motive--instead of some sort of justice or peace being sought in response to nasty things being done to the character, the villain decides that it's a better thing to pursue pure and simple revenge as measured in body count or stolen wealth. Perhaps the villain was initially a coward--instead of heroically resisting the enemies' attempts to torture out the truth, the villain sold out his friends or family, and in order to live with that the villain is attempting to make that betrayal worth something by working on behalf of the enemy. Another twist on this is the misery-loves-company angle; the villain inflicts pain and suffering on others in order to prove to him or herself that anyone can break or betray others, it is not simply the villain's failing, but that of the entire human race.

As with angst-based plots, madness is a wonderful area to explore for a villain. The nuances of insanity are very subtle, and some of the more obscure or rare conditions can be interesting to roleplay and make excellent explanations for a villain's behavior. Secretly convinced of the government's use of mind control lasers? Work to overthrow the government while keeping your tin-foil hat on at all times. Afraid of spiders? Overcome your fears by stealing precious artwork and rare arachnids as pets. Think you're Napoleon? Take over France. Too many sessions with bad psychiatrists or the genre equivalent have driven you over the edge; they don't take you seriously and they just don't understand the truth. "True" psychotics are difficult to portray, but in an online prose world they can be simple if you perform the ultimate in disassociation. Many psychotics view other human beings as not real, or as playtoys; they are the only real things in the world and hence no act they perform on others is truly bad because everything else is not real, inanimate, or fantasy playthings. Well, playing this sort of character can be interesting insofar as it's relatively easy to remind oneself that other characters are, after all, just imaginary beings in a computer and not real; translating that mindset to your character should be simple enough. There are many different ways to handle madness; it's very easy to overdo it, but if done properly, insanity can be not only a wonderful motivator but also an excellent fatal flaw.

The Ends Justify The Means

The third key to playing a successful villain is the developing actual thought processes which lead up to the character doing something like, say, turning the population of California into Parmesan cheese statues of Christian Slater. In such cases a good adage to remember is that the ends justify the means--for villains. Where you or I might quail at the idea of killing ten million people just to achieve the goal of praising our favorite actor while at the same time increasing the world's supply of cheesy pasta toppings, our villain believes that the sacrifice is worth the grater good (pardon the pun). Playing fast and loose with rationalizations and justifications can produce truly complex and convoluted plots for villains.

Credibility and intelligence are necessary, however. The thinking behind your villain's master plans and schemes should be, where possible, logically understandable even if they're emotionally or morally reprehensible. A time traveler who comes back in time to wipe out two billion of the planet's population may seem like a two-dimensional action villain until it comes out that those two billion people could possibly have carried a recessive gene which will, two hundred years from now, wipe out the entire human race. On a smaller scale, your villain might be motivated to steal money from others to achieve a goal which seems odd--like purchasing a precious piece of fine art which is about to fall into another's possession, but that the villain is convinced will only be safe within their own clutches.

Another thing villains like to do is to perform actions for someone else's "own good". Holier-than-thou villains are firmly convinced that their actions are absolutely, positively good and only the blind, ignorant, or stupid would disagree. This motivation is often found amongst the fanatical or the insane, and can make for some interesting villains. My favorite villain of this type, however, is the scientist (wizard, sorcerer, or genre equivalent) who has come upon a new invention or process that he or she believes is worth any sacrifice or cost to produce. It may be that the end result enriches the human race (or just the inventor), but whatever it is, the course of action required to reach that result would horrify most normal folks. These villains can function normally in society except when it comes to the topic of their obsession; their schemes and plots often involve assembling necessary materials or personnel for their research, and bits and pieces of their plan can be revealed and even thwarted while leaving the main thread of their schemes intact.

The Master Plan

Join me next week for the next installment in The Mummer's Dance, where I'll be discussing different ways to actually be villainous without imbalancing or destroying the game you are playing on, how to trap and tease, and how to do many things without eliminating your opposition. It's much more fun to toy with them. Until then, I look forward to your own insights on the Forums!