"Love to Hate" versus "Hate to Hate"

[Black Omega]

I've luckily not seen much from the Hate-to-Hate villains. And if I've accidently created any I used them little enough no one felt the need to tell me.

It's very hard to create a love-to-hate villain until you know a group pretty well. Otherwise it's an accident and all too often not at all the villain you thought it would be.

This last session had a 'Oh, I want to kill him' villain of sorts. He acted goofy, helped a PC away from a burning building, only really attacked when someone else attacked first. They did end up capturing him alive, though a few were -really- tempted to kill him.

A villain too tough for them to beat who constantly shows up, destroys all their plans, kicks their butts, and seems immune to any of their efforts no matter how creative will become a hate-to-hate.

This is so true. Hate-to-Hate villains are often simple power trips by the GM or too-beloved NPC's, sometimes former GM PC's. You have to balance the PC's general need to win with being able to let the bad guys do enough to be a real threat. One thing I always disliked about the FR novels I've read is the bad guys only got to really kick butt against other bad guys. Against the good guys, they would always lose.

 

[Numion]

This is so true. Hate-to-Hate villains are often simple power trips by the GM or too-beloved NPC's, sometimes former GM PC's. You have to balance the PC's general need to win with being able to let the bad guys do enough to be a real threat. One thing I always disliked about the FR novels I've read is the baqd guys only got to really kick butt against other bad guys. Against the good guys, they would always lose.

It was kinda sad that in Salvatores FR novels are some of the coolest villains I've ever read about, but still they lose like suckers to the good guys. I'd much rather read a book where evil triumphed.

 

[rounser]

Quite frankly, black and white scenarios have been done to death (literally) and CRPGs are full of two dimensional bad guys and bosses.

Point taken. Although, incidentally, I'm working my way through Throne of Bhaal at the moment, and was confronted just last night by a morally complex situation with no clearly defined solution, and so wouldn't say that they're totally absent from CRPGs...


SPOILER
There is a man who wants his daughter's soul returned, as it has been stolen by a lich who he wants the heroes to slay. However, discussion with the lich reveals that the man had a deal whereby he would hand over his soul in return for 20 years of success and riches. At payup time, the man refused, so the lich stole first his wife and then his daughter's soul until the man would give his soul willingly - as agreed. I thought there no clear, black and white villain here, and the solution a subjective one.

At my table, I want to present situations where there are no easy answers and the characters grow because of the degrees by which they measure their own decisions, not because they pushed one of two buttons and some candy dropped out of a shoot.

Ha! Sacrilege! "Kill things and get rewarded for it" is one of the sacred, unquestionable cornerstones of D&D - it's powerful enough a hook to keep Diablo and Everquest compelling (for a little while, at least), even when the games lack plot and depth alike.

Seriously, though your point is well taken, I believe that a mixed approach is probably best. If all villains are black and white and all problems solved with force and fortitude, the game lacks depth. Yet if all villains are morally gray and undeserving of an ass-whooping just as they are undeserving of total forgiveness, the vicarious thrill of delivering comeuppance is missed. For the morally complex situations and villains to stand out, they need their black and white counterparts (and vice versa) - sort of a yin and yang thing, I suppose.

Then again, your group's tastes are better known to you than to I, and they may well be specialised in this direction.

 

[Psion]

Galea and other villains

Hi all!

Heh... funny how rounser uses my thread as an example, but the villain in my thread really doesn't have any sympathetic traits.

She does have memorable traits, though. She does have distinctive traits -- the players know her as a dark haired woman with a dark complexion, which IMC are a sign of the people that live in the isles in the southern seas. She also has a modus operandi -- she hangs out invisibly while summoning creatures to harrass the party. Incidentally, that is one thing I did learn from the 2e villains handbook... give villains a signature method or a trademark.

Betrayal and tragic villains are tools that I have used elsewhere in the game. However, Galea was pretty much rotten from the get-go. As mentioned in that thread, she wasn't really designed as a long term villain, so I saw no need to weave her deeply into the politics of the game.

Other than her memorable traits, I think one thing that made her a villain was that with Galea, the conflict was personal. There are other villains in the game that the party had to strive to stop, but the thing is, the villains often don't personally identify the party. They are just people that got in their way on the way to other goals.

But when the party tripped up Galea the first time, she turned her obsession on the party and started planning ambushes for them personally, instead of just pushing forward the plans of the alliance of wizards she was working for.

Recent events in the campaign have produced some interesting developments for Galea. A duellist claiming to be Galea's cousin showed up on the party's doorstep and demanded that they answer to a breach of honor for their "false accusations" of Galea, and insisted that Galea was a perfectly kind and gentle woman who would never do the things that the party accused her of. The party eventually found out that the woman the party faced was not the woman who was born as Galea. Galea and her companion out the time entered a mirror-universe (per MOTP) and were slain by their evil doubles. The doubles took over the lives of their "unmirrored" selves (which led to another adventure in which the party uncovered that a lord in the kingdom was secretly a mirror self. To date, the party has assumed that the "mirror lord" and Galea were an item since their "real" selves were, but in fact they have nothing to do with each other.)

I've noticed that when it gets personal, the players get more obsessed with a villain. In a similar vein to the above, back in my old 1e and 2e games, the party was after a dark knight, an illrigger (would be a blackguard in 3e.) That was plain old ho-hum "tromp through the villain's keep and get the villain" action. But along the way, the party ran into a champion of neutrality named Fein (pretty much took the idea straight out of an old dragon article.) Fein was after the illrigger too, but he also raced ahead of the party, took the best peices of treasure for himself, and harrassed the more extreme members of the party.

What's worse is one of the party members was a druid. Later on, the party had to choke down their bile during a meeting in the druid circle when fein showed up, as not only did the other druids respect Fein, they awarded him for his great deeds.

I don't think I've ever had the party loathe a villain as much as they loathed Fein. And he wasn't even evil!

 

[Psion]

CRPG villains

Re: CRPG villains. I think Sephiroth of FFVII is a very cool, moody villain. The game lets you see the source of his loathing.

 

[rounser]

Heh... funny how rounser uses my thread as an example, but the villain in my thread really doesn't have any sympathetic traits.

I think you mistake what I was intending to use it as an example of - as how a backstage villain is less likely to end up as a love-to-hate villain than one who gets his/her/its hands dirty with the party directly. Or something along those lines, I think...*scratches head*

Other than her memorable traits, I think one thing that made her a villain was that with Galea, the conflict was personal. There are other villains in the game that the party had to strive to stop, but the thing is, the villains often don't personally identify the party. They are just people that got in their way on the way to other goals.

Zigzactly. That's what I noticed from yer thread - that pushing the PC's buttons directly maketh the villain....so long as it's artful, and appeals to the emotions ("They conned us! Grrr!"), rather than just gratuitous smackdown.

 

[Hand of Evil]

It really all comes down to the detail, how much thought you put into your villian, be it traits, trends, habits, or something else.

The players interact with those details and build a relationship to the villian. There are only so many basic models for a villian, (beast, creep, brute, misunderstood, henchman, mastermind, leaving something off) it is how you paint them that affect your players feeling.

This is ture for any NPC.

 

[rounser]

This is ture for any NPC.

To extrapolate from theories regarding villains in particular, could we say that the "actions which get personal with the PCs maketh the NPC"? That to make an NPC truly vivid and memorable, it helps to make the NPC's actions and relationship with them appeal to their personal emotions and values as both characters/players?

I suppose this goes for everyone from love interests to shopkeepers. PCs will care about a character (in a positive or negative manner) if they mean something to them because of what they say or do. Therefore, to inject life into NPCs, have their actions and words address the values and emotions of the PCs and their players.

This sounds like a big "Duh" when spelled out like that, but I suspect it's the kind of thing that is often assumed, and just as often overlooked in constructing an NPC. I am guilty of ignoring it, often looking to how an NPC can serve the plot or have an "interesting personality", rather than how he or she could serve to be personally engaging to the PCs/players.

Thou shalt make thy NPCs personally engaging to the PCs? Indeed...

 

[Henry]

In my experience, the villains that are best remembered are the ones that the PC's respect, because they are the ones that have screwed them over multiple times. If, as a DM, you can create a villain that can "put one over" on the players, and all the clues were there, but they just couldn't see it, until it was too late, then they respect that villain almost as if he were a real person.

I feel success when a villain has come to be so hated that the PC's make active plans to kick the villain's *** thoroughly, and he raises their blood pressure just a little when he makes an appearance.

The satisfaction that the players get when they FINALLY get a piece of the villain is well worth the preparation that goes into it.

 

[Crothian]

What was the nature of his betrayal?

He was secretly a member of an evil water worshiping cult. When the PCs found out this, one of them decided it was his job to kill them all so even though the cult was acting peaceful towards them he pulled out his trusty warhammer and started to kill them. The rest of the party was caught of gaurd. The PC that attacked and another escaped while the other two did nothing. The attack was literally out of left field, so the players were stunned by the action. Their orginal plan was to play nice and see exactly what was going on.

The two that did nothing tried to apologize for their friend. An alarm was sounded and the cult begin looking for the two that escaped while still treating the other nice. However, that night the two that stayed were poisoined at dinner and captured. The other two had to rescue them. Then the four escaped into the mountains, they couldn't take on a city full of the cult.

The NPC was going to betray them to the cult, they did find that out before they escaped. THe NPC then beat them back to their own city and spread rumors on how they had commited murder and could not be trusted. The NPC used his own influence to get the Pcs wanted on trumped up charges. It took them a while to clear their name. All they wanted to do was bring the NPC to justice, and to expose his betrayal and working with the Evil Cult.

About 8 months of gaming took place from the very begginning of this till the end. It ended where the PCs and the NPC were all secretly inviting out into the woods. At that point the NPC was shot down by a female Ranger. She wanted to kill him in the most painful way imaginible. The NPC had also betrayed her father and caused his death. The PCs then spent the next 6 hours of game time argueing amost themselves and with her what was to be done with the NPC. Even though he had betrayed them and done much evil, they could not condone torture and death. It was a good season filled with a lot of moralatity as they ended up trying to defend his actions so she wouldn't torture him. In the end they all agreed to just to a fast death and that was the end of him.