on villains, monster roles, and all things antagonist

[650Booger]

Hey guys, I hope you don't mind, but I was enjoying the derail of the combat roles thread started by Ath, where we started talking about antagonists, gith, and the gameplay experience of said.

Maybe we can brainstorm some ideas on how to make these roles last longer and be more fun.

About the Gith role.  It seems like there are several problem areas that arose when this was tried.
1. It was purely a PK role, with little or no RP with non-gith
2. It was hard to find other Gith to play/RP with
3. regular PCs hunted the Gith mercilessly, more than they would normal NPC gith.

so how can these be addressed?  some ideas.
1. Give Gith sirihish.  especially if they can be permanently stuck in the "just learning" phase of the language where half the words are garbled.
2. Give Gith PCs one or more guard NPCs that they can solo RP with using the order command, and also that they can bring into fights, to make them a bit burlier.  Also, applicants for this role should be ready for alot of solo RP, and know that going into it.  some people enjoy this.
3. I think if we open Gith up to karma, and start seeing a regular stream of Gith PCs, that the likelihood that every regular PC will automatically witch-hunt gith PCs to extinction will ease off, and we'll achieve a steady-state of tension rather than a flash war like we did with the last Gith rolecall.

Now lets talk about Antagonists characters in general.  Somebody said that as soon as they decide to go the antagonist route they are gibbed within 2 RL days.  How can this be avoided?  Don't reveal yourself as an antagonist.  think Tony Soprano villain, rather than Freddy Krueger villain, and you might live alot longer.

other ideas or thoughts are welcome!  I'll stop now.

[BadSkeelz]

The problem with making the gith a viable PC 'antagonist role' (which is itself a flawed notion) is that it would require changing their character to the point where they'd stop being gith. Gith docs are great, but they make no bones that these things are straight up fucking evil without a single redeeming feature. Decent NPC antagonists, but rather lacking in nuance.

PVP Conflict isn't fun when it begins and ends with ">kill dude." And that's all gith PVP will ever be.

I would caution anybody against creating a PC with the goal of being an "Antagonist." Not only are you simply going to get piked by the first powerful set of jimmies you rustle, you're running the risk of creating a flat character... like a gith.

Fun player-conflict comes from two things: PCs having mutually-conflicting goals, and players having the restraint to not immediately escalate to the nuclear "kill all competition" option. Look for other ways to fuck with each other.

[650Booger]

these things are straight up fucking evil without a single redeeming feature.

I think its perfectly possibly to play a purely evil, malicious PC that has a very interesting personality and social interactions beyond:

">kill dude." And that's all gith PVP will ever be.

It will just require the desire and intention by the player to make it that way.  I have not tried the Gith role, so I am being hypothetical, but I can think of lots of things I would like to try beyond >kill dude

I would caution anybody against creating a PC with the goal of being an "Antagonist." Not only are you simply going to get piked by the first powerful set of jimmies you rustle, you're running the risk of creating a flat character... like a gith.

I don't agree, as I'm sure is becoming obvious.  it's perfectly possible to go into a role planning purely to fuck with people and disrupt the status quo. 

Fun player-conflict comes from two things: PCs having mutually-conflicting goals, and players having the restraint to not immediately escalate to the nuclear "kill all competition" option. Look for other ways to fuck with each other.

here we agree, although I would contend that mutually-conflicting goals can be easily applied to Gith PCs vs Normal PCs.

[manipura]

these things are straight up fucking evil without a single redeeming feature.

I think its perfectly possibly to play a purely evil, malicious PC that has a very interesting personality and social interactions beyond:

">kill dude." And that's all gith PVP will ever be.

It will just require the desire and intention by the player to make it that way.  I have not tried the Gith role, so I am being hypothetical, but I can think of lots of things I would like to try beyond >kill dude

I may be wrong here, but I think BadSkeelz is meaning that players will go right to 'kill dude' when confronted by a gith, because there is no reason not to, not that gith will resort right to 'kill dude'.  What motivation is there for a PC to try meaningfully interacting with a non-human, straight up evil creature with no redeeming qualities?

[BadSkeelz]

It worked both ways in practice. While I think the language barrier had something to do with it, gith war RP was just not very deep on either side. As a gith, you're not supposed to do anything but >kill, or >sap if you want to try and take someone alive for torture (And no other reason). And it's harder than you think to take someone alive.

[BadSkeelz]

Really it was no better than the "War" roleplay which eventually devolved in to two half-giants sitting outside of Tuluk ganking any northern PC they saw. Nevermind the unit NPCs camped out not 2 rooms away who would not react.

Gith have no nuance to their character other than physical conflict, which is the lowest form of interaction among PCs.

[650Booger]

are there other docs besides the Gith helpfile where I can learn more about their culture?  because having only read that, I don't even see where it says they are pure evil hellbent only on death and destruction. 

and I can think of plenty of scenarios where a regular PC might encounter a gith and not automatically type >kill, but it would require some creativity and a bit of a culture-shift with how Gith are perceived.

what if there was a resource that was only available deep in the heart of gith-held territory.  a gith approaches you, speaking barely comprehensible sirihish, and holding a smelly bag full of this resource, asking to trade for some fine city-made arrows.  you're not sure you can trust him.  he could easily betray you when you bring the arrows for delivery.  he smells really bad.  he has a necklace made from human teeth.  but you -want- that resource.  do you type >kill, or do you try and negotiate?  you have options now, see?

[BadSkeelz]

The gith had quite a few docs written for them that the players received. Staff would have to make the call on whether to release them.

"Trade" is not really in their lexicon.

[650Booger]

"Trade" is not really in their lexicon.

yeah I guess I would need to see the docs to understand why this is true...

*edited to add*
even if every single regular PC/Gith PC encounter does result immediately in non-roleplayed combat, is that bad?  it seems like when a PC gets to a certain skill level, NPC gith are no longer a threat, to the point where a single character can stack up a pile of gith NPC bodies.  once the NPC AI is figured out, it becomes easy to defeat, whereas a human opponent is unpredictable.

I'm going to let other people respond for awhile.

[Reiloth]

The problem with Gith is if you turn them into a sentient race that can talk, then they can trade. If they can trade, then they can be reasoned with. Then they become yet another 'Ally in the Federation'. It's akin to the Romulans vs Borg vs the whatevers (blanking on Star Trek Names) but I think that's even in the Gith Docs. Races of people that start as 'Pure Antagonist' and they are humanized, and then another Pure Antagonist has to replace them.

I say leave Gith how they are, app in a few now and then, and don't make it too complicated.

[Delirium]

Cardassians. Dominion. Klingons!

Everyone wants to be Garak bc he gets to hang with the cool kids and has built in conflict regardless. If you're Gul Dukat you just show up now and then to be snarky and badass but you never even get to make out with Kira.

I had a point with this...

[ghanima]

Gith to me are not the best adversary. Human to human conflict allows far more depth, including the option to play among them as a turncoat or a spy. If Tuluk cannot be reopened at this time, I'd suggest that any alternative antagonist should be something which allows players to infiltrate. You're not going to infiltrate a gith encampment by pretending to be one of them to learn their secrets, you're just going to either fight them or simply not interact at all.

[John]

If player and/or staff sentiment is that gith should remain evil bad guys who could never ever unite with anyone to overcome a threat to their safety, then opening gith to the players isn't a good idea. I'd personally think broadening up the role of gith would be more desirable, but cest la vie.

You could always open up another d-elf tribe that's based in the Tablelands. Although to be honest gith have a "cool" factor that d-elves don't have

[nauta]

There's no reason not to have a both/and, rather than a neither/nor here. 

Playing a monster is a good escape from the one city state; having monsters out there makes travel exciting and brings the world alive, even if its as simple and brainless as an extra gortok or a desert elf (jokes).

I'd like to see human (or intelligent) antagonists too, but we haven't had that since Tuluk closed.

[spicemustflow]

Red Fangs (RIP) did some virtual trade with gith and there was a role in the tribe for a gith diplomat of sorts. That seems to support the notion that some gith communities could be talked to.

I'm really curious if it's at all mentioned in the docs that the players of Mesa gith received. I'd love semi-open gith clan and don't see any reason against it. You can kill people in fun ways and deserts are way too tame.

[Miradus]

While I enjoy monstrous roles, I do not like the flat, hard-coded evil roles. They're too one-dimensional.

On a Faerun-setting mud, I had a character who was a dark priest of Shar. Not because he was evil and wanted to obliterate the universe, but because he was so good-natured that he wanted to end all human suffering and had decided that nihilism and the destruction of the universe was the only way.

I like complexity in the roles. The best villains don't know they're villains. They aren't evil ... they're just very goal oriented.

[Patuk]

Now lets talk about Antagonists characters in general.  Somebody said that as soon as they decide to go the antagonist route they are gibbed within 2 RL days.  How can this be avoided?  Don't reveal yourself as an antagonist.  think Tony Soprano villain, rather than Freddy Krueger villain, and you might live alot longer.

So.. Then what?

If this ends up happening, we're not going to have much criminal conflict at all. We're instead going to have ten mob bosses without thugs to burn down places or beat up unfortunates. The gith kind of character which appears to exist mainly to kill and burn is one end of the extreme, but going to the other where everyone is a highly sophisticated subtle manipulator won't work, either.

If some kind of antagonist is what you want, then somehow, somewhere, there needs to be an avenue for more simple brutes and heavies.

[whitt]

If some kind of antagonist is what you want, then somehow, somewhere, there needs to be an avenue for more simple brutes and heavies.

Completely agree.  It's too much of an investment of RL time to get a PC to the point (skills and connections necessary) where they can be a viable thug for anyone to be consistently willing to do this.

[bardlyone]

If some kind of antagonist is what you want, then somehow, somewhere, there needs to be an avenue for more simple brutes and heavies.

Completely agree.  It's too much of an investment of RL time to get a PC to the point (skills and connections necessary) where they can be a viable thug for anyone to be consistently willing to do this.

This just makes me miss a pc from back in the day. Gore/Gorma. He was a great brute/thug. He was lirathan'd when he dared visit tuluk though. Which made me really upset.

They exist (or have existed at least), but I agree they are few and far between.

That said, I find myself agreeing with Miradus again here. Pretty much everything he said.

A villain who thinks he's a villain is usually a caricature to the outside world. A real villain is the hero of his own story, and usually just too extreme/driven/oriented and winds up in a ends justify the means situation, or else otherwise simply runs counter to what the other protagonist wants. I think we need less villains and monsters, and more adversaries and rivals and extremists with grey area morality.

[Miradus]

I think any drama has to be manufactured.

There's not really any artificial scarcity. There's not going to be resource wars that aren't induced.

[Patuk]

Ehh. Arm's community has a great many RPG fanatics and writers, which means it skews very heavily to the complex side of things. 'Everyone is the hero of their own story' and whatever the hell else goes into overthinking territory very quickly.

Zasag the 'rinthi mugger isn't someone who thinks what he's doing is right. He also doesn't think it's wrong. Zasag the 'rinthi mugger is someone who grew up in a world without organised moralising religion. Zasag the 'rinthi mugger grew up without parents to tell him what's right and wrong very much. Zasag the 'rinthi mugger doesn't get to talk ethics over his laptop while never fearing for food. Zasag the 'rinthi mugger has one way he knows of to make sure he doesn't starve, so that's just what he does. You can go on about how this fits into grey area X or means justify the ends Y, but as it stands, anyone trying to play Zasag the 'rinthi mugger is going to die in three days with the fury of a thousand half-giants.

[azuriolinist]

I agree that having purely "evil" characters falls flat of what conflict, say, could be. While they might provide an enemy for the playerbase, that's exactly it: by being a villain, they won't provide lasting conflict because the playerbase would probably wipe them out as soon as they caught wind of such things. Sure, that might be fun every now and then. It's often a refreshing change to have to worry about travelling from here to there because of that rumor of a band of gith or somesuch going about. But it's often over with in what seems to be a RL week. Give or take.

Like those have said above, I'd prefer antagonism/rivalry caused by a differentiation in desires. That kind of conflict, in my opinion, tends to be more rewarding in the end. With a group of players split over a goal, this usually generates (sometimes meaningful) conflict.

[Molten Heart]

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[Synthesis]

The gith docs must've been changed at some point, because there used to be gith NPCs in Red Storm who presumably were there for trade.

They weren't aggro, they weren't in the alleys, they were just there wandering about the streets, not being perceptibly evil or malicious or whatever.

[Patuk]

Given that staff told the gdb there were no gith docs a year and a half ago, you're probably right.