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What Makes a Great Villian
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<blockquote data-quote="Herpes Cineplex" data-source="post: 1822174" data-attributes="member: 16936"><p>Not as a general rule, no. Fear was generated more by specific situations rather than by specific NPCs. For example, towards the end, the BBEG's lieutenants were most often being sent to do nasty things to people and places that the player characters liked, and so there was usually a nervous "what if we're too late?" vibe going. Some of the side plots (mostly unrelated to the villain's main plans) had really scary evil things happening and scary evil NPCs to match, though.</p><p></p><p>But the main storyline simply wasn't about making the PCs be afraid of the villain, in the horror-movie sense. He was a bad guy, with goals we didn't like, and we were aiming to stop him; so really, he was more like the bad guy of a Western movie, or maybe akin to a comic-book archenemy. You know, the way that Reed Richards isn't exactly afraid of Doctor Doom, but definitely considers him to be a serious threat and will always oppose him.</p><p></p><p>If our major villain HAD been utterly terrifying, I don't think he would've had nearly as much personality, and so he would have been much less interesting to us. Certainly we never regarded the really scary evil NPCs from the side plots as being "serious villains"; we'd remember them as being frightening, but beyond that we didn't really have much else that we could say about them. As a result, we could never muster up the kind of interest in them that we could for the main bad guy.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Not that I'm disagreeing with you; I like a good horror game as much as the next guy and probably more than most. It's just that not every game with a villain is a horror game, and so not every villain is best served by being scary. But if you're going for horror, then, yes, your villain should be as thoroughly unnerving and terrifying as possible. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /></p><p></p><p>--</p><p>villains should be memorable and appropriate for the type of game they're in</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Herpes Cineplex, post: 1822174, member: 16936"] Not as a general rule, no. Fear was generated more by specific situations rather than by specific NPCs. For example, towards the end, the BBEG's lieutenants were most often being sent to do nasty things to people and places that the player characters liked, and so there was usually a nervous "what if we're too late?" vibe going. Some of the side plots (mostly unrelated to the villain's main plans) had really scary evil things happening and scary evil NPCs to match, though. But the main storyline simply wasn't about making the PCs be afraid of the villain, in the horror-movie sense. He was a bad guy, with goals we didn't like, and we were aiming to stop him; so really, he was more like the bad guy of a Western movie, or maybe akin to a comic-book archenemy. You know, the way that Reed Richards isn't exactly afraid of Doctor Doom, but definitely considers him to be a serious threat and will always oppose him. If our major villain HAD been utterly terrifying, I don't think he would've had nearly as much personality, and so he would have been much less interesting to us. Certainly we never regarded the really scary evil NPCs from the side plots as being "serious villains"; we'd remember them as being frightening, but beyond that we didn't really have much else that we could say about them. As a result, we could never muster up the kind of interest in them that we could for the main bad guy. Not that I'm disagreeing with you; I like a good horror game as much as the next guy and probably more than most. It's just that not every game with a villain is a horror game, and so not every villain is best served by being scary. But if you're going for horror, then, yes, your villain should be as thoroughly unnerving and terrifying as possible. ;) -- villains should be memorable and appropriate for the type of game they're in [/QUOTE]
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