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Would You Play A Villain? - Page 4

If you put it like that then Batman is a villain but is he really he's like more of a hero that's just different but I wouldn't call him a villain. Anyways what I'm saying is if you're like going to play a character that does things differently you're going to end up getting in probs with other characters who don't like your methods.

Villain Play Would

The only reason Batman isn't a Villian is because of the genre he operates within.

Batman is a costumed vigilante who tortures and maims people while endangering children. You can trivially drop a Batman analogue into a Roleplaying game and have him be a primary antagonist for a group of PCs.

Would You Play A Villain? Reviews RPG & Card Board

As I mentioned in a previous post, I for one do not care for campaigns in which the characters are "Evil" or the villains, but I have been the Dungeon Master of a campaign that has been going for about a year and a half now in which the characters just sort of when in that direction because I do like to run fairly open games with plenty of moral quandaries, if you will. And the players choose what they choose for their characters

At one point the wizard of the group sacrificed a pair of innocent halflings in order to complete a ritual that would create magical rings that protected him and his companions from a magical plague which was sweeping the land. At the time the character justified the action by stating that since some of the party members were infected and they were trying to find an overall cure for the plague, it made more sense to sacrifice two lives so that party could achieve the overall goal. Basically the greater good, or the ends justify the means argument.

Another character was a bard who would cut off the ears and cut out the tongues of those guards and inquisitors whom he determined were involved in the killing of civilians and that refused to ask for forgiveness from the Maker (God). When an Inquisitor attempted to bring the wizard to justice for his misuse of magic (He's a necromancer which and necromancy is illegal in the setting) by attempting to capture him, the party killed the Inquisitor and her companions, and of course the one character cut off her ears and tongue. This happened in a small village and the villagers certainly took the characters to be villains.

What I found interesting was a tendency to make sweeping generalizations about groups and organizations based on the the actions of a few within those organizations. There is a tendency to not look very deep into a nameless NPC and consider them as anything of worth to anyone or anything. The thought that the guard the character just killed may have a family doesn't enter their minds. Yes, they had observed other inquisitors killing children and even infants in an attempt to contain this plague, but they basically took that to mean all inquisitors are bad and evil, but those inquisitors were basically using the same justification that the wizard ended up using later on when he killed innocent people. Did this make them evil or villainous? In the end that is one of the themes that I am exploring in the game. What makes one a villain as opposed to a hero? Is it all relative in the end, or are there moral absolutes?

During the most recent session we discussed the possibility of these characters rising to power and then starting a new campaign with new characters in which the player's old characters are seen as the villains, the big baddies that the new characters are out to overthrow. I think that would be interesting, for the characters themselves to create the villains in one campaign and then fight them in the next.

Edited: Aericsteele on 11th Feb, 2016 - 11:16pm

Page 4 Villain Play Would

Aericsteele makes a good point, it may not be the intention of a player to be a villain but they end up turning that way mostly because they want to save their character at all costs. That mixes in with modern day justification for preemptive strike and the like. Maybe in this case the master of the game should penalize the players without them knowing it for disturbing 'the force'. .

Villain Play Would

That's an interesting idea, Role-playing Game Expert. It reminds me of an article I read about a bazillion years ago about morality in role playing. The author proposed a system for tracking the moral balance of his universe. Breaking an oath could lead to physical effects that would impact the entire realm (Bad crops, floods, things like that.).

Would You Play A Villain?

What about if a scenario is reversed so that all the characters are villains and the dungeon master plays the good guys. That should be different, makes for hell of a game.

Would Play Villain - Page 4

Not sure it would be much of a game.

Just a bunch of raving murdering lunatics, feral animals. Everyone would have opposing views and bickering, lying, cheating, and friendly fire would occur because there was nothing keeping them from being totally annoying.

Would Play Villain Board Card & RPG Reviews - Page 4

Actually, not true. Evil games can work, they just require more setup than a Good/Neutral campaign. For example, the Way of the Wicked adventure path for Pathfinder revolves around a group of Lawful or Neutral Evil characters working to usurp a Lawful Good Kingdom from within. By the end of the first adventure, the characters are bound together by an infernal contract to undertake this task.

It's a full, 20 level adventure path that not only assumes, but demands the PCs be villains. Heck, if they try to fight fair, they'll loose, because the forces of good incredibly outnumber them.

Paizo is publishing an adventure path now where the PCs are evil character operating in Cheliax, a kingdom where deals with the devil are how the nobility rolls and who's elite troops are HellKnights.

Evil campaigns aren't to everyone's tastes, but they can certainly be done, and be coherent adventures, without the PCs constantly trying to murder one another in their sleep. They just need a common goal, like any other adventure.