Making a Good Bad Guy

Take your average hero.  I don't care if it's Neo or Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter or Batman.  Now set him down in a peaceful, quiet town and watch what happens.

What happens?

Neo continues to work at his day job, while doing small-time hacking on the side.

Luke works on the farm and on weekends races stock cars on the local dirt track.  He keeps talking about joining the air force, but there's always some piece of machinery on the farm that needs his mechanical skills.

Harry Potter continues to study magic and is one of the brightest pupils in his class.

Batman doesn't even exists.  Bruce Wayne is the founder and CEO of one of the largest corporations in the world.  He does his job, donates to charities (including the Fraternal Order of Police), and sleeps soundly at night.

Wait... isn't there something missing?

Damn right there is.

Heroes are easy.  They're a dime a dozen.  It's the villain that makes the story.  Without Hans Gruber, John McLane is just a wise-cracking cop with relationship problems.  Neo is lost in the Matrix.  Luke Skywalker is just a farmer who likes to drive fast.  Harry Potter is a nerd with funny glasses who studies magic.  Batman doesn't even exist without a villain to cause Bruce Wayne to put on tights when he gets home from his day job.

The tricky part is, what makes a good bad guy?  Or, what makes a compelling villain?

It's not enough to just be evil.  There's evil all over the place unworthy of being a foil to one of the above heroes.  Does a villain have to be strong?  Smart?  Cunning?  What is it that makes us love to hate them?  Or hate to love them, as the case may be.

Let's look at some of the greatest movie villains of our time.

One of the most memorable movie villains ever started out as a whiny teenager who thought the world owed him something.  He was seduced by a power he didn't understand, and crippled while losing a fight to his former teacher.  He wasn't particularly smart.  He was just seduced by power.  His name?  Darth Vader.

Another of the most memorable movie villains of recent times is The Joker.  Whether portrayed by Mark Hamill, Jack Nicholson or Heath Ledger, this guy is a lunatic.  He is driven by a love of chaos.  He isn't particularly intelligent, just cunning, crafty, crazy like a fox.  He isn't attractive or strong.  But he drives the Batman nearly insane with his clever morality traps.

My favorite movie villain isn't even a person.  He/It is a computer.  Or, more correctly, a Heuristically programmed Algorithmic computer.  You can call "him" HAL 9000, or just HAL for short.  HAL isn't necessarily evil.  He isn't seduced by power or driven by greed.  HAL is just trying to stay alive.  He's basically just Johnny 5 (from the movie Short Circuit) with an attitude.  HAL is a computer that has developed sentience and is trying to keep from being, in Johnny 5's words, "disassembled."

So, what makes HAL, or any of these villains for that matter, so great?  So memorable?  So... hero-worthy?

For one, they all have extremely engaging personalities.  So, is that the key to writing a good villain?  Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I submit to you one Agent Smith.  This guy has less personality than the box that my breakfast cereal was packed in.  Nope.  It isn't personality.  Or at least, not entirely personality.

Are you ready?  Do you want me to give you that magic ingredient for creating the best villains?

Well, I don't have it.

That's right.  I don't know exactly how to do it.  It's not a precise formula.  It's more of a guy thing.  It's more of the interaction between the hero and "his" villain.  Like Ledger's Joker says, they "complete" each other.

I can tell you one thing that all of these villains have in common, though.  To their respective heroes, they're all completely alien.  No, I don't mean they come from outer space, though to be fair, Darth Vader does.  But that's beside the point.  What I mean is, the villain is something that the hero, the protagonist of the story, cannot relate to.  The villain's drives and motivations cannot be comprehended by the hero.  Sure, Luke Skywalker knows what power is, and definitely comes to understand how a person can be seduced by the promise of it, but until he learns that he is a simple farmer with a taste for adventure.  John McLane has arrested his share of criminals, but he has never been in such close proximity to someone so truly mad and devious.  Harry has no concept of how someone can be as twisted and evil as Voldemort.  Bruce Wayne has to never encountered a force of chaos quite like The Joker.  Neo begins by not even knowing that the Matrix exists and must learn the nuances of the program that is Agent Smith in order to even consider eradicating it.  And Dave?  The protagonist of Kubrick's masterpiece can program a computer, but has no concept of what it would be like to actually be one, and be threatened with destruction.  Ironically, in sequels, Dave and HAL form a symbiotic relationship of part man - part computer.

Is that the magic trick?  Alienness?  Is that even a word?  No, it's just a potential first step to creating a memorable... a worthy villain.

What do you think?  What are your favorite, your most memorable villains?  What do you think are key ingredients that go into cooking up a good villain?

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Shepherd's Pie: Fourth Helping

Everybody knows what a link dump is.  Well, almost everybody.  I assure you it's not a bunch of turds all hooked together and floating in the porcelain pond.  Though I did have Turd Pudding a few weeks ago.  One blog I read calls its weekly link dump post "Applesauce."  Chuck Wendig's "Painting With Shotguns"  paints a much more gruesome and catchy title.  Pun intended.  Deal with it.  I call mine Shepherd's Pie.  Everything, all the week's awesome goodness is thrown in and mixed around.  Sometimes it comes out pretty appetizing and sometimes it just looks like puke on a plate... or on a page, as the case may be. It looks like Wednesday has become the de facto Shepherd's Pie day.  At least on Wednesdays that I decide it is.  Otherwise, it's luck of the draw.  I can do it on Saturday if I want.  It's my place.

And you're my guests.

Welcome to the 4th helping of Shepherd's Pie.

I'll keep it short, sweet, and to the point today. If you love dice, or playing love games with dice, and want to write about a dice-centric topic, Gameplaywright is hosting a Blog Carnival to commemorate the release of The Bones. There's a lot of discussion going on about the role of "just having fun" in role-playing games.  Will Hindmarch shared an excellent quote from that discussion that really spoke to me.  Here is a link to it, but I am also posting it in its entirety here:

"Because a game is about much more than 'fun.' Game play is a meaningful part of our culture. Game play engages a significant part of our personalites. Competition, strategy, puzzle-solving, collaboration, fairness, uncertainty, risk, reward -- these are elements of games that make them fun. When we play a game, we enter a special mental space, separate and different from all others in our lives. We agree -- explicitly or implicitly -- to abide by the rules so that all of the players can engage with the activity in a fair and reasonable manner. Now, 'fair and reasonable manner' can mean that I get to shoot you in the face during the game -- and you have to leave the field when I do -- but once the game is over, there's no more face-shooting.

Thus in roleplaying games, we engage with a system that challenges us. We use a set of rules that forces us from our comfort zone and encourages us to think and act in a manner we would not otherwise. We play the game. We don’t need the game to have fun. We can have fun anywhere, any time. Rather, we use the game to create unanticipated, unexpected results. We use the game to give everyone at the table a role in play. And we engage with that game as a neutral arbiter, to ensure that play is fair."

I think this is a key thing to remember.  Balance in gaming, as well as in any other facet of life, is important.  It's vital.  I'm not talking about game balance.  I'm talking about social/emotional balance.  If you feel you need the game to have "fun" with a particular person/group of people, you should take a step back.  You should be able to have fun playing the game with these people and you should be able to have fun doing other things with them.  Ideally, they should be your friends.  If every gathering you have with them is "gaming only" then why is that?  Whenever you get together, do you only play, or talk about, the game?  Do you get annoyed when people in the group want to do other things or have other interests or commitments?  Do you ignore anything they say that isn't about the game?  This seems to me to be a balance issue.

A few days ago, I shared an amazing piece by Jesse Burneko.  Well, Jesse's at it again.  He and Justin Achilli always seem to challenge me and make me think about games and my views on games.  For that, I thank you both profusely.  I have had my fair share of games that have ground to a halt or collapsed.  I think Jesse's nailed it again when he says that a major contributing factor in this phenomenon is the lack of a clear objective in the game.  He says that most role-playing games (he uses GURPS as an example) are toys.  I prefer to think of them as toolkits or frameworks.  A working game has to be compiled from this framework.  He's correct when he says that most games cannot be played straight out of the box without a lot of customization from the gamemaster.  Most of the time, the gamemaster writes plot hooks, defines characters, creates of fleshes out a game world, etc.  Rarely does the gamemaster, at least in my experience, set out a clear objective for the game.  And Jesse's right, "Have fun" is not a clear game objective.  If you read the above link, you know that everyone's definition of "fun" is different.  One paragraph in particular of Jesse's article resonated with me, because I have seen it happen at my table several times:

"In our Diaspora game Will, as the GM, was operating under the assumption that the game was fairly episodic in structure. He assumed the object of the game was to deal with a string of sci-fi space encounters as you moved relatively quickly from place to place. I, on the other hand, assumed the object of the game was to pursue my character’s personal goals (my default assumption and preference when the game fails to tell me otherwise). Since we were playing towards two different objectives the game ground to a halt. Will kept considering things done and resolved while I was considering those same situations just the tip of the iceberg."

I own this situation.  This is my fault.  The only thing that really matters is, "What am I going to do to make sure it doesn't happen again?"

I finally started playing Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption yesterday.  The game is even better than I thought it would be. I've been calling it "Grand Theft Horse" for weeks, but let me set the record straight.  This has so much more depth than a Grand Theft Auto game.  There are lots of cut-scenes, clear cut objectives, a ton of story.  John Marston is an engaging character with superb voice acting.  On top of that, the world is huge and beautifully rendered and exists with minimal loading screens.  The graphics are far better than even GTA IV.  This is a beautiful game.  I strongly recommend that you check it out.  I'll be writing a more thorough review when I get farther into the game.  I've played for about 8 hours and have barely scratched the surface.

If you have anything to share about any of these topics, please comment.  I loves me some commentage.  Also, check out the links.  There's good stuff there.

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The Tearing of the Veil: Another Option for Gamemasters

About two weeks ago, I wrote a post outlining one possible explanation for the bizarre conditions that exist in the world of the game I am writing.  I am still working on the game, poring through mechanics and solidifying the pre-game story of the world.  I am also still working on a title and am leaning towards something like: Through Broken Veil or The Broken Veil or something.  Who knows.  It will change again.


For now, I would like to throw out another teaser.  Much like Star Wormwood and the Hopi Prophecies of the Fifth World, here is another option for the gamemaster on how the world of the game got to be the way it is, how the Veil Between Worlds came to be torn, causing the Shift.

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule-
From a wild clime that lieth, sublime,

Out of SPACE - out of time.
- "Dream-Land" by Edgar Allan Poe

It was hard to believe that it was already April.  Nazi Germany was losing the the war on all fronts.  This wasn't how it was supposed to happen.  Heinrich Himmler and Lanz von Liebenfels had made fantastic promises of an unlimited supply of fresh troops to fight for the Reich.  They claimed they knew how to access Ultima Thule and call forth the guardians of the place, those ubersoldat of lost Atlantis, to fight for the glory of the Fatherland.  He had done everything they had asked.  The castle at Wewelsburg had been prepared according to their specifications.  The mosaic and the twelve columns had been meticulously put into place.  He had financed the Schafer expedition to Tibet to find the Black Sun Artifact, which they had taken to Wewelsburg.  He had annexed Austria and transferred the Hofburg Spear to their possession.He had publicly renounced the teachings of Liebenfels and "banned" him from publishing his works. He had even publicly severed all ties with and formally disbanded the Thule Gesellschaft.  They told him that this was necessary to prevent the enemies of the Fatherland from learning of their true plan.  In reality, Liebenfels, through Himmler, was one of his closest advisors and the Thule Society was secretly alive and well.

Himmler had come to him with the plan more than eight years ago and had not embraced it at first, but when they told him about tearing open the Veil and gaining access to Ultima Thule and its armies of ubersoldat, when he learned of their knowledge of these things, he agreed to give him the resources necessary to carry out the operation.  Delays.  There were always delays.  The Veil was supposed to have been torn years ago.  Time had grown short.  But still, they  had come through enough times to warrant his continued support.  After all, last July they had come to him with the news that there would be an attempt on his life, but not to worry.  They said that "the Horseman" would save him from death.  "The Horseman" turned out to be Heinz Brandt, who moved the bomb just in time to save him.  Brandt, a former equestrian gold medal winner at the 1936 Olympics, had died from injuries sustained in the blast, but "the Horseman" had done exactly as they had said.

Now they had told him that it was his destiny to cross the Veil and lead the Atlantean Armies to victory alongside the German Wehrmacht.  They asking him to make the ultimate sacrifice.  In order to step through the Veil that had been torn open, he would have to take his own life.  His armies had held the barbarians back from the gates as long as they could.  They were frighteningly close now, but the time was upon him.  The time was upon them all.  When  Himmler had first told him of the need to sacrifice himself to accomplish their plans, he had called his guards in and had Himmler arrested.  Now, it somehow seemed less crazy.  Tonight was Walpurgis Night.  A night when it was even easier to pass through the torn Veil.  Using the Black Sun artifact and the Spear of Destiny, it was his time to become "Der Neue Messias" the New Messiah.

---

When it was over, Liebenfels claimed that the ritual was unsuccessful.  That Hitler was of racial stock too inferior to have been selected as Der Neue Messias.  Still, there were signs that at least some parts of the ritual had been effective.  The Veil was still slightly torn.  The sacrifice had apparently not gone unnoticed.  If someone brought the Black Sun Artifact and the Spear of Destiny back together, it might be possible to complete the ritual and tear the Veil open wide enough to pass through into Ultima Thule.  As long as his calculations had been correct...

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