So by now we figured out the bare bones of who our villain is. The next two villain articles are on what they're doing. You're going to find there's a lot to skip in the next two villain posts if you're designing a "little" villain. That's okay. Part of what separates a good GM and a bad GM is knowing where to put the rich detail and know where to leave it thin. More on that in a future post, just know that putting a "simple" villain in a short story is not just okay, it's downright necessary sometimes.
So basically that means we're talking about a Big Bad style villain. If not the driving force behind the game, certainly one of them. They've probably got big motivations, or at least motivations that are going to require some severe antagonism, strife and pain for a large group of people. Basically, back when you decided on their motivation, you were also deciding on the scope of the game. Contrary to popular belief, it's perfectly okay to run a game that really only affects a city, or even a few city blocks. They're just not(in general) going to be as long as a game with a wider scope. Anyway, I mention this because the villain's plan also has a hand in determining the game's scope. In very general terms, I'm saying the villain's plan can "iris out" the game's scope through overreaction, like a gang leader who plans to set off a city-destroying atom bomb simply because they lost a turf war to the PC's gang. Here, the plan "changed" and it added more life to a game that could have been over and raised the stakes. Here's the thing, though...you can't lower the stakes permanently. Don't try. You can't go from a world spanning game to one that safeguards a single city, not really. You can include that city, those blocks, that single Bar in turmoil as a side story or single adventure, but you can't ever make the game feel smaller. The PCs are always going to remember what they did before they got there.
Plans really don't have to be complex or mysterious. A mystery villain who feels like thye're moving chess pieces around a hidden board can feel great, OR they can feel like you're just making shit up. So your first piece of advice is this: Have the villain's overarching plan in mind when you begin to present it as an adventure. If you want their eventual goals and motivations to be a mystery, this is especially true. A GM often has to fly by the seat of their pants, but in this instance, you really need a mental outline to make sure every puzzle piece fits together. It takes a very experienced GM to make off-the-cuff decisions that feel like they were all planned, so keep that in mind.
So now that's out of the way, how do you make a plan? Well, in general I'm going to present two categories of villains which we'll call Saturday Morning and High Fantasy. This is going to control a lot of the game's tone by virtue of "plans" essentially being the adventures you're throwing at the party.
Just to be clear, this isn't going to be a Goofus and Gallant thing. Both categories are perfectly viable for game building and each have their pros and cons.
A High Fantasy villain is a typical D&D villain. They have a goal, and an overarching plan. Their big plan is full of little steps, little plans that serve as the adventure hooks. A game can be entirely filled with just one complex plan, and most stock fantasy games are. This is your typical five hundred step steal-the-artifact, take-over-the-world stuff. The pros of this is obviously that it has a more epic and serious feel and even if there's no mystery, it's going to feel like the PCs are putting puzzle pieces together and they're locked in a pitched battle with this person or organization. The pitfalls are, somewhat obviously, that this needs a longer outline from you. You need to plan out everything the villain is going to try to do in general terms, then react as the PCs foil(or fail to foil) their plans. You also need to keep space "open" so you can take a break from their big overarching goal to run a side-story, do things the PCs want to do, or introduce other small steps to their plan to lengthen the game. Basically, with this model, pacing and letting the PCs "breathe" is something you need to seriously consider.
A Saturday Morning villain, conversely, has a goal, but no overarching plan. Like a SatAM or comic book villain, each adventure is a separate plan to accomplish their goals directly or to gain some sort of advantage for next time. Obviously this is going to have a loose, less serious tone and works well when there's multiple villains. The pros of this is that you can be really loose with your plans and introduce hooks as they come to you. You can even use a rogue's gallery and several villains each trying to accomplish something different and the game won't feel crowded. This also works well with a game that has a bunch of hooks the PCs can follow, making them feel like they're doing what THEY decided to do and making the game feel less linear. The cons are that, unless the game transitions to a single villain with a very serious goal, it's not going to feel as "epic". The fact that the game will feel a bit like a comic book may also seriously rub some players the wrong way, and you need to be aware of that. Some people enjoy seeing villains come back(and getting a lot of time with the villain helps you characterize them) but other people will get annoyed at the seeming impermanence of their accomplishments. It helps this method a lot if you're playing a system or world conducive to this, like a Superhero or Super Spy style game, but I believe it can fit anywhere.
So can you transition between the two? Sure. A High Fantasy game can absolutely sometimes "open up" into a "there's a lot to do" segment, like JRPGs typically do. Alternatively, a game with a rotating rogues gallery can have them band together, or become less important as a new, more serious villain comes to light. In this case it's a lot easier to cause something to change than it is to simply say that the existing villain "got serious" because it would make the PCs wonder why they weren't "serious" this whole time.
We'll go into what makes a great adventure, hook or "plan" later, but that's something that deserves a whole topic to itself. When we return we'll be going over Means, or what the villain has at their disposal.
No comments:
Post a Comment