I'm not cut out for villainy

[Oubliette_Red]

21 hours ago, MTeague said:

21 hours ago, Apparition said:

 

Yep.  That's how I run it.  I side with the Resistance on the Seer 1381 mission arc to free the Seers, but my characters are ultimately Loyalist.  They see far more good than bad in the system, and work to maintain law and order while quietly working to remove the bad apples in the background, or at least work around them.

Sounds about the same.  If I'm trying to play a decent person in Praetoria (ie, not someone who's rabidly in it for power ...)

 

  Reveal hidden contents

• I back Cleo over Washington 5/6 times so far
• If I don't accidentally block myself from getting there by taking down Cutter Cain too early (sigh), then I help Katie Douglas
• If I do the power arc as well, I'm about 50/50 to let Belladona escape vs bringing her in.  I don't trust Sinclair by that point, but BV's not exactly screaming trustworthy, and I don't like having to take down Riptide
• I *always* let Vanessa DeVore escape when sent after her
• half the time I let Kang do his thing at the very very end of the Responsibilty arc.... but half the time I take him down in a tragic standoff.

 

I have one Praetorian (gathering day jobs at the moment) who is running strictly through the Powers arc, as I don't recall ever having done so back on Legacy. She an ex-Destroyer that got tired of getting stomped on by every other mob in the city, not to mention the alien invaders so she sacrificed her entire crew to get jacked-up by Neuron and now she want to be top dog. Keeping that in mind I find it a lot easier to make decisions based on her mindset rather than what I would choose myself.

 

Regarding playing redside, my main villain makes decisions not based on what may seem heroic, harsh, or evil. I don't play him... it much at the moment because of the pandemic because he... it, is a walking, breathing pathogen. He was the second or third character I made when I got back into the game over a year ago and not due to our current circumstances. So when missions provide options that would spare or sacrifice the subject, it will opt to spare. Not out of any type of altruism on its part, but because the living are more capable of spreading the pathogen than the dead.

 

So it's not so much about the text of the missions, but the context your characters view it in based on their own mindset.

 

[Myrmidon]

On 10/14/2019 at 2:03 PM, eldriyth said:

Villains are cold hearted and selfish criminals. However, they can have deep feelings about certain things. Look at Magneto or Kylo Ren for example.

Good villains are the heroes from their point of view.

Edited July 16, 2020 by Myrmidon

[Arnabas]

First time I made a villain, I couldn't empathize with him because he was a horrid individual. I deleted him and killed him in my head cannon.

The trick for me was to ultimately create a stalker that was actually an undercover hero. When sent to "deal with" people, she would defeat them, tell them "I was sent to kill you. As you see, I could have done so. I suggest you run fast and far, and take a new identity." Then she would report them dead.

[Six-Six]

On 7/14/2020 at 1:34 AM, Dafydd Hywel said:

I always felt out of place Red side as well.

I've never felt more at home than in the Rogue Isles. 😃

Blueside's too dang bright, both in atmosphere and in spirit. ugh. 😃

[Leo_G]

On 10/13/2019 at 9:03 AM, SaintD said:

I didn't spare them because I'm good at everything I do, even if I don't like it! 😡

It's actually only really Fire Wire and Harris who made me feel bad at that level. You kinda want to kill Fire Wire until you actually do it and he's kinda pathetic, which doesn't feel very good unless you're actually horrible. The Harris thing though, good God you're literally just nudging along this jilted mess of an idiot until he's staring at the corpse of the person he loved, and when he finally questions himself, you can straight up tell him that, yeah, he did it all to himself and you just used him. And then you kill him.

I do like Grave's arc. Objectively you're doing some ludicrously terrible stuff, and you do actually murder a fairly cowardly little man at the end.....but it's all delivered with Saturday Morning Cartoon levels of silly obliviousness.

People always complained that the stuff in Going Rogue wasn't very villainous, but I liked the down-to-Earth lack of pretentiousness throughout a lot of it. It was usually just a whole lot of beatin' faces for a bit of a payday, but everyone seemed to want to be Evil Superman and deserving of such respect and awe right from level 1. I saw, and still see, a lot of that in people's bios when they bother to write them. They can be so desperately grandiose.....buddy, you're fistfighting Hellions in groups of three in the street, reel it in, you're not there yet.

I like this guy 👆 

[Leo_G]

3 hours ago, Arnabas said:

First time I made a villain, I couldn't empathize with him because he was a horrid individual. I deleted him and killed him in my head cannon.

The trick for me was to ultimately create a stalker that was actually an undercover hero. When sent to "deal with" people, she would defeat them, tell them "I was sent to kill you. As you see, I could have done so. I suggest you run fast and far, and take a new identity." Then she would report them dead.

I suppose there's a difference between "empathizing" and "understanding". Understanding is being able to comprehend, maybe even with some context. Empathizing means understanding and sharing a feeling. 

 

You don't have to empathize with a rioter or looter to understand why they do what they do, how they planned to get away with it or rationalized doing it in the first place. And yet, understanding those things, I still know those things are wrong. 

[MTeague]

10 hours ago, Arnabas said:

First time I made a villain, I couldn't empathize with him because he was a horrid individual. I deleted him and killed him in my head cannon.

The trick for me was to ultimately create a stalker that was actually an undercover hero. When sent to "deal with" people, she would defeat them, tell them "I was sent to kill you. As you see, I could have done so. I suggest you run fast and far, and take a new identity." Then she would report them dead.

My two favorite villains: 

 

Trifid  (Plant/Psi/Psi Dominator):

• was an accountant, very much withdrawn, preferred numbers and cats to people.
• was partially consumed by a plant-being, possibly the last of it's kind, that had survived since before the dinosaurs.
• But she was a very potent latent telepath so instead of being truly consumed they... merged.
• She is fully aware of how human society works, language, technology, etc.  She also has full memories of being a parasitical plant creature who's species watched the dinosaurs rise and who watched them fall. 
• She has become essentially a psychic vampire, growing stronger with every foe she uses Drain Psyche or Mind Probe on, and those are how she also sucks memories and knowledge. No need to interrogate, just take it from them, neuron by neuron, or circuit by circuit.
• She does not plan to exterminate all human life, but she does plan to cull the human race by over 99%... leaving a few hundred thousand hunter-gatherers surviving in pockets around the globe strikes her as the best most merciful balance. 

Not a nice person. But from her point of view, correcting the ecological imbalance of humanity. 

 

Feril  (Spines/Regen/Dark Stalker):

• He has no other name. His earliest memories are crawling through dumpsters, looking for food. 
• As near as he can tell, his parents were horrifed by his appearance at birth (blue skin, leonine face, digitigrade legs, clawed feet) and threw him into the garbage at birth. Possibly sealing him in a plastic bag first, or injecting him with what should have been a lethal dose of morphine. Possibly not. 
• But he did not die. His regeneration kept him alive and he grew as a wild thing. Learning enough language by observing and listening and hiding, but he has had no formal schooling, no home, no friends, just the street.  He has learned that life is often cheap in the rogue isles, and he must take what he wants or be left wanting. 
• Has some power over shadow. When he hides, he's not just being sneaky. He's literally NOT THERE to the best sensors available. Ceases to exist / phases into a Shadow Realm. Until he strikes.

He's gradually shifting from Villain to Rogue, because he's mostly looking out for A#1, not really trying to rule the world. 

Also headcanon, he's got a bit of a crush on Amanda Vines after the Marshall Brass arc. 

[Zeraphia]

On 10/13/2019 at 8:04 AM, Itikar said:

Also the Dr. Graves arcs are pretty badass and without villainous moral choices. Actually they were pretty tame, but still hella fun.

You may be one of the few people I've came across who speak positively of Dr. Greaves, most of the comments I've seen about his arc revolve around the fact it paints you as a stupid idiotic emotionally fueled Brute jobber with no sense of self control.

[Six-Six]

On 7/15/2020 at 6:03 AM, Myrmidon said:

Good villains are the heroes from from their point of view.

All of my toons redside (and my so far lone goldsider) don't view themselves as villains per se. Rather they see themselves as:

1) a cog in the machine. these are my B-listers, mercenaries, henchmen, soldiers, loyal supporters of higher powers -- usually a person who they believe are doing good, like say Lord Recluse or Cole. they understand that not everyone is destined for greatness, but they do their part to make such a person's vision come to fruition.
2) someone who believes they are doing what must be done... in a way no one else has the courage to do, and only history will be the judge whether they are viewed as messiah or megalomaniac. until then they will do everything in their power to fight for what they believe in.
3) one who is forced to do bad things for intimately personal reasons like survival, retribution, or protecting a loved one.

 

Rarely are any of them psychopathic, sociopathic killing machine who does what they do for no reason. Nor do they do what they do strictly for personal gain -- if such is a side effect of what they do, then they'll accept it, but not be motivated by it. Their bios reflect their beliefs, not how society labels them. Yes, they are born redside; yes they steal and kill; but one is just circumstance that they must circumvent and the other is just a means to an end -- an action that is meant to cause a reaction which in turn will make the world better.