From: Johannes Trimmel On Wed, 12 Oct 2011, Onno Meyer wrote: > * He was a significant threat to Europe. W:WW explains why > he had little chance of ultimate victory, but he got > within shouting distance of one before he ran out of > steam. > > Compare Jean Kambanda -- and if you have to google him > first, I just made my point ... >
> I somewhat disagree here. For RPG villians, in my experience small is > beautifull. > With a large threat, either you need explainations why the pcs are not just a > little part in the effort to remove it. Either you run into the problem you > have outlined for the virus, or the pcs need to have exceptional superpowers. > And with that, you can have a hard time to come up with minor adventures, > that they can't walk through with their superpowers, without either > cryptoniting them, or without the inflationary use of superpowers on > adversaries for single adventures. (Simon R Green books are often examples of > the last option) I agree with Johannes, which is why I suggested the jilted ex. I suppose it depends on the style of game you play, but the most memorable villians were ones that were specifically out to get 'the PCs' on a personal level rather then out to conquer the world. Sure you can put your PCs to fighting some sort of totalitarian regime for what ever atrocity you want commited in your world (and this makes a great background) but the villan they remember is the one they interact with directly. So instead of worrying about what Hitler is up to (sure he was a bad vicious guy and the PCs should be working towards the downfall of his regime - assuming you are going with a WWII model) but make sure you have an evil SS officer that's out to get specifically them for some reason (maybe the PCs made a fool of him at one times) and add a traitor in their midst who is revealled but escapes the PCs justice with in the first couple adventures (If you can weasel it that the traitor is a love interest that will usually obsess the PCs more then a simple traitor but it doesn't need to be.) If you want to be nasty have the traitor working directly for the enemy who is out to get the PCs. The PCs need someone at their level, someone whom they might reasonably be able to take on as an enemy to capture their specific interest. The trick is to keep allowing the enemy to slip out of their grasp for enough episodes before they graduate to someone further up the chain of command. You don't need a villan that eats babies for breakfast, you do need a villan that the players can focus on an interact with directly. -Sue _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
