Lack of RP conflict between heroes and villains?

[GraspingVileTerror]

That name sounds familiar, @stegosaurus.  Did we play a scene before?

[kito]

I did not want to bring up a dead thread but this one was interesting and I did not want to just start a new thread as this one is small and interesting.    

 

I have done more then a few hero villen conflict over the years some have gone good outher poorly. I do agree one of the larger issues I have seen with them is when the hero just wants to use the villen as a prop for there RP. We have the AE system for that. And to me yes that is what the main issue manly talked around in the thread.people.wanting to use outher people's characters as props. 

 

(To go off topic for a moment to answer some of why it's ok to use a villen as a prop)

 

I never bought into the hero has to win line in city of hero's. They loose all the time fault line, Boom town, Warzone, All places in the city where the hero's lost.  

 

PvP again is an issue only if you go in wanting to win and not wanting to RP. There is alot of home rules I have seen over the years where hero's or villen would "hurt" eachother just a ooc rule to turn off another toggle until they can be one shit. Or even when your blue bar runs out it means you lost the fight. 

 

Text can be a issue but I have always just had someone post what they wanted there power to do, and leave it to the outher player on what happened. Often takes godmoding out as an issue. 

  

( Out of the way)

  

 

No player in the game is there for your hero/villen to use. That is what npc are for. Go to the AE you can make a mish and put any npc into the game you want can make them say anything you want, and it's fine there not people.  

 

When you want to do a hero/villen conflict rp you need to be respectful to all parties. In my biased time in the game that has not been my experience. Hero's often want to be a power fantacy, witch is fine until they want to rp it out with outher people and your just expected to accept it because _____.  

 

Over time I have worked out a some rules of thumb for who my villen can or can't rp with hero wise. Rule number 1 being goals.  

 

1. Goals. Lots of hero's/villains are friends even FWB in comics as there goals do not conflict. Is the hero trying to stop all crime everywhere always?  Well like d&d my thief will not work with your paladin you need a new hero if you want to fight. 

 

Once you have goals in both hero and villains both can easily RP with eachother and both win and fight and have fun. "Dang they got away with the money but we stopped the bombs."  

 

2, how far is each willing to go?  

 

Will your hero kill? Are they willing to die? That changes things. 

 

As the villen if I loose I loose my toon until they break out. Possibly forever if they die. If they never succeed in a plan what does that look like RP wise? How can I be a big feared villen threat if I have always been stopped? Let's ask condiment king.  

 

Heros often want a low risk on there end of the RP. Are they willing to be injured possibly loosing a toon to a hospital visit for a few months are they willing to die to stop the big bomb?  

 

Both have to win/loose in conflicts. It's a rough balance. 

 

3. Don't forget the RP. 

I have had more then a few hero/villen conflicts just become a PvP fight and the "winner" was just the victor. That was not what they asked for. You want to PvP there are people who like that. You want to RPvRP then what is going on? Am I a troll trying to blow up a new part of the city and you beat me up great! But that won't stop bombs.  

 

Normally if I'm doing villen/hero conflict and the 3 rules can't be followed I'll drop out. And tell them about the A/E system.

 

 

IMO the largest issue with hero/villen RP is what I see as a lack of maturity. They all see themselves as the DM of the world but the DM does not play in the world they make it. I have had toons I made go in ways I never thought they would because of RP. I have had some die that I did not want to die. Both in D&D and COH. That is part of RPing for me making something to play in the world and seeing how it goes some go well, some don't.  

 

Also clearly red side best side 😉

 

 

[Redletter]

On 9/7/2021 at 5:51 PM, Oginth said:

I don't have a long history with CoH, but during my initiation run with HC (last year before my PC exploded and I didn't bother to reinstall after I got a replacement), I was thinking maybe I would see some sort of RP conflicts, that out of tradition, villains always lose, but not before giving the heroes some troubles worth conquering. When I learnt that CoH has a base system, and once had base-invasion gimmick, I even imagined of RPing base invasion.

 

I might not have experience everything RP in HC, due to my timezone and limited stay with HC, and me not initiating anything but just going with the flow, but what I saw are player heroes staying with player heroes, player villains staying with player villains, they rarely cross paths except when it's drinking and dancing time.

 

There is that Mission Architect, and some SG do provide some RP experience, but it's still player heroes vs AI (and GM?), are there any for player villains? And still, outside of PvP, heroes don't RP fight villains. It's kinda boring for a world with heroes and villains.

 

I do not know what I'm expecting, or how RP conflict should/would work, just my opinion, this thought comes out of nowhere as I reinstalled HC after nine months of absence.

 

So, when I first found the game in the time before time and I was TRULY baby, I thought that villains, like, any character MADE as a villain who inhabited the world of city of villains, was a bad guy -- automatic. They were playing villains as villains and we didnt get along because I grew up in a world before villain team-ups were main stream (Spider-Man 3 had like, JUST come out maybe a year or so prior). And the same was true for me for heroes. Heroes were heroes who wanted to help and save the day and team up and stuff.

 

Now, the reality is this isnt the case. "Alignment" is a game mechanic, your "villain" can by all mechanics be a hero -- they can stand right behind Miss Liberty in atlas park and yell about the glory of Lord Recluse or whatever they want. So we have to look for narrative alignments.

 

That takes us into the most important aspect of RP -- Consent.

 

Just because you're playing a hero, doesnt mean you consent to being harassed by villains. Likewise, just because youre playing a villain doesnt mean you consent to being harassed by heroes. We are, mostly, strangers here. Let's just have an example.

 

Major Malus (Agent Malus, Arbiter Malus) is my arachnos guy. He's handsome, well spoken, dutiful, dedicated. He enjoys simple things in life, like upholding the law. His backstory is basically "wow super powered psychos like Mako sure do suck, i sure wish somebody would come along and keep those guys in check" and he became the change he wanted to see in the world. He can usually be found in the isles, running mission teams under the RP auspice of "Ok, things need to get done around here and trusting villains to do them unsupervised is exactly how we end up with a pile of bodies that didnt need to exist", but you can catch him in the Rikti Warzone, and even Pocket D.

 

Now... Ive enjoyed some scenes with Longbow characters. I like these scenes because it gets a chance to have some fantasy ideological banter.

 

What I don't do is go over to Longbow characters, or super HEROES and say "Hey fuckboy, you grow a dick yet? You big enough to kick puppies and kidnap kids and headbutt grannies?" because not only is this against the character's entire premise, but frankly, the only reason to directly antagonize another character is because YOU are looking for more conflict. Now, sure, you could be playing a character who thrives in instigating these sorts of things (Crom comes to mind as a character who deliverately was made to be obnoxiously obstinate and conflictious) but, generally, people are not playing those kinds of characters, because most people arent interested in pulling people into that sort of RP tone. It's not fair to expect a person to react positively when you come up to them and go "Heh, lookit the little capey wapey. You mad, capey wapey? I flayed THREE babies today and drank their yummy nummy eye juice and YOOOOOOU didnt save them heh! You gonna cry? Piss your pants maybe? Maybe shit and-" and you get the idea.

 

I wouldnt say a lack of conflict between alignments is a problem. Some villains are small time crooks nobody has heard of, some heroes are bibically awesome pseudo-gods who send criminals to prison by blinking at them -- and the inverse is true. Some heroes are just randy street level do-gooders while some villains are card carrying members of the global extinction perpetrators club.

 

What would you say to Darth Vader if you saw him just chillin at a bar post Alderan explosion? Are YOU gonna be the guy to walk up and be like "Hey that was a DICK move, dude, for realz" or, likewise, what are you gonna say to Batman? "Heheh BATman? More like... DEAD PARENT! Ha! FACE!"

 

These things take nuance, trust, and time. All of these things can be spent on NON-conflictive RPs as well and leave people just as satisfied.

My remedy would be to have like... a "Be my antagonist" thread, where people could advertise a character they want an antagonist for to participate in more combative (not neccessarily pvp) RP. People could suggest their characters who're looking for the same.

 

TLDR; We need Tinder, but for Arch Enemies.

Edited February 3, 2023 by Redletter

[American Valor]

weather it is hero on villain  or villain on villain, hero on hero consent is what is needed for good role play weather its battle, romance or just getting drunk in an RP together it is easy to cross the line weather in game character rp or forum writing if ever in question always send a tell pm or occ text  making sure for consent.

As in RL No means No and maybe means NO.

If you chose to rp; "no means maybe and maybe means take me i'm yours forever"  it still would have to be consented about first. 

 

Always remember just because cosent was given doesn't mean it can't be taken away if it makes the other player uncomfortable.  I havent done any Hero vs Villain since live I should start hanging out in the D arena or the call 

[Lady Victory - The Watch]

On 9/10/2021 at 8:55 AM, Latex said:

Heroes v Villains needs some sort of proper arrangement and structure. The adage 'The Villain always loses' needs to be thrown out the window, loss is good for character development, guaranteed loss is predictable and bad. Then you've got to question what makes a Villain a Villain? Most topics that aren't 'Saturday morning cartoon Villain' might involve more adult themes such as torture, blackmail, manipulation, widespread terror, a lot of Roleplayers muddy the waters here, IC/OOC blend and drama can occur.

 

This is why the Hero group and Villain group need to trust each other OOC to have fun IC, that takes organization and setup which is time and effort.

This is one of the biggest issues. As someone who runs an IC morally bankrupt SG, we were very heavily OOCly hounded at for the sheer notion of villainy or writing characters that were anything worse than mustache twirling saturday morning cartoon characters. 

If the good guy always wins, it feels disengenuous, meta and just washed down bad writing.

There should be a bit more nuance, and nuance requires OOC collaboration and communication. 

Couldn't agree more.

[Seed22]

14 minutes ago, Lady Victory - The Watch said:

This is one of the biggest issues. As someone who runs an IC morally bankrupt SG, we were very heavily OOCly hounded at for the sheer notion of villainy or writing characters that were anything worse than mustache twirling saturday morning cartoon characters. 

If the good guy always wins, it feels disengenuous, meta and just washed down bad writing.

There should be a bit more nuance, and nuance requires OOC collaboration and communication. 

Couldn't agree more.

Seconded about the good guys always winning.  Mustache Twirling has it's place to balance out constant edge, but it gets very boring very fast. I've seen y'all's SG and loved the concept! It creates in a way, a more moralistic/philosophical type of villainy not really seen here in CoH(imo CoH is too black and white, even on tips, with morality.)

 

A personal...idiom, I suppose? That I take with my characters is that only 3 are what most would consider 'True Blue'(Heroic hero types). The other litany of characters are all a smattering of Rogue or...okay mostly just rogue. It only makes sense that unless specifically prompted to use their powers and magic for good, most would default to self-serving interest, or only look out for their close friends and family(i.e. act like a normal human being would). This, I feel, leads to more nuance in their character than, "I must do good all the time!". Plus, it makes you weigh the consequences of your actions more heavily; Act like a selfish rogue? Maybe you burned a bridge with someone who could have been a significant ally in the future.

 

Just my thoughts on the matter 🙂

[TwoDee]

To qualify my own prior statements about "the heroes should always win," since it's clear the principle ruffles feathers: it's not my opinion that your roleplay is Bad, Wrong, and Invalid if you're running some storyline and want the Council to massacre the King's Row PPD precinct, or Miss Libby to get tortured, or whatever (if I had a nickel for every VG I was a part of that had a roleplay that was explicitly about capturing and torturing a canon NPC, I'd be able to cash it in for 15 minutes on a parking meter).  If antagonists don't get their wins in, then there are no stakes to a storyline in the first place.

However, what I do hold "the heroes should always win" to be is a statement of best-practices "in the wild," when there have been no session zeroes and no discussions of consent.  If I initiate a conflict between my villain and a hero without a robust OOC discussion of intents, I play the heel and then "do the job," because the expectation of shared RP spaces like Pocket D necessitates a return to the equilibrium.  As @Redletter alludes to, things start to sour real quickly if you roll up into a space with superhero players (who vastly outnumber villain players) like "damn, it felt so good to eat the still-living organs of that screaming Longbow Sergeant, now it's time for cocktails:" it's telegraphing a threshold of villainy that beggars immediate and active response from heroes, and especially when there's no always-on PvP and so adjudication of conflicts has to fall onto roleplay, it sucks if a villain player drops something like that and then doesn't budge on "no, if we fight my guy wins because he's like, WICKED powerful."

That doesn't mean that the same can't happen in the inverse -- a hero player rolling up on a group of villains and going, I don't know, "Longbow is great!  I just beat up eleven jillion Arachnos!" -- but even that isn't really equivocal, just because antagonists are active and protagonists are reactive; it doesn't break the fiction of the shared space for the villain to just shrug that off and go "yeah sure buddy, I killed eleven jillion Arachnos before lunch, I'm a villain" or "Why do I care about Arachnos?  I'm literally a black dragon," the way that it does for a hero to be nonreactive to a villain doing something appalling in their presence.

 

Anyway, this is a lot of words to reiterate that I don't think you're wrong for wanting the redsiders to notch a few Ws.  My policy is for interacting with the roleplaying public when outside of curated spaces that are more towards personal sensibilities.  It's not "fair," but it's a good fallback when the alternative is either a robust Session 0 before each roleplay. or a flaming blowout where everyone blocks each other and starts insinuating about godmoders or edgelords on the forums.

 

Think of it like wrestling: people love heels because they provide menace for the baby faces, but at the end of the day regardless of who wins the heel should be working with the face to create an interesting narrative arc, rather than fighting to win for the sake of the villains notching a W alone.