Hur man gör spelarna hata din skurk, men inte ditt spel

Mina bästa skurkar är baserade på vad spelarna bryr sig om. Jag ska prata om metoder och några nyligen (i de senaste 3-4 åren) exemplen. Du kanske vill kolla in min 7 typer antagonister också.

Vad spelarna bryr sig om - Flaggor

Så första gången brukar jag spela spel med explicit mekanik för spelare att berätta för mig vilka slags konflikter de är i . Det gör det lätt för mig att räkna ut vilka typer av skurkar kommer att trycka på dessa konflikter på intressanta sätt. När vi spelar, är en nyckelpunkt att ta reda på vad som precis träffar en spelares heta knapp som vanligtvis är nära, men inte riktigt på flaggan de har gett dig.

The General

About a year ago, I ran a game of Tenra Bansho Zero - the player had a character who was basically an adopted outsider to the daimyo - he was close to the family but still politically a second class citizen. Emotionally, he's like a step-brother to the daughter. In TBZ, mecha can only be piloted by children and adolescents - so usually daughters are put up to this task while sons are raised to be leaders.

Long story short - the country ends up having to fight a defensive war, and a general is pretty eager to send her out on the front line. The player character speaks way out of line at court, and gets exiled by the general's pressure.

The general has hammered on the fact the player character is an outsider, separated him from one of the NPCs he cares a lot about, is going to send her into serious danger, and also put the player character out to the border where he could possibly die.

This only worked because I had successfully played up the daughter as being sort of a great younger sister character - a nice kid trying to do her best - so the player CARED about her, and now the general was basically threatening all of that. The thing is, the general actually isn't entirely wrong about wanting to use the daughter to defend the nation - they're outmatched and a giant robot is actually one of the fwe things they've got to equalize. Because of this, it makes it harder for the players to argue against it. What finally made him absolutely hateworthy was that the general had nothing but trash talking to the player on TOP of everything else. (The general falls under "The Hater" category).

AU Star Wars

5 years ago, I ran a Primetime Adventures game in an alternate universe Star Wars (clones were not an army, but rather a way for the government to replace troublesome individuals in positions of power...)

We had several villans who were all very good and emotionally charged:

A senator - the father of one of the Jedi. He was kind of an ass and ended up getting in the way of their plans, though I made sure his motivations were clear. He was hated because it hit on the player's actual personal issues with his own father.

A clone of one of the player characters - absolutely there to take over someone's life, and threatened to pretty much do the opposite of everything the player character wanted to do. The player found themselves having to kill the clone and feeling terrible about it - it forced them to cross their own moral line in the process (see below for more on that).

A Jedi who was on the same side as the player characters, but was just a little too overzealous and violent. He took the player's goals but twisted the reasons for doing so, even though he often used the same rhetoric. He made the players question the very cause they were fighting for.

Momentet av moralisk konkurs

Det som vanligtvis gör skurksklicket för spelare är punkten när skurken korsar en enda linje som gör spelarna arg. Vad folk ofta förvirrar är tanken att denna moraliska linje måste skada spelarens karaktärer eller deras allierade - det gör det inte. Detta kan också vara hur en karaktär som är relativt neutral eller till och med uppbärande av spelarens karaktärer blir en skurk i ögonen.

Det här fungerar bäst om målen är förståeligt, men metoderna är extrema eller vridna längs vägen.

Transhumanism whether you want it or not

I recently ran a sci-fi game where a roboticist found out one of the AIs he had built had survived the destruction of his lab, and in fact, was still out there, doing stuff. Since the lab and it's fellow robots were destroyed by angry rampaging humans out of ignorance, it decided the solution was to improve and fix humanity. To snatch up souls from the dead and give them immortal bodies, better bodies, and more time to learn - eternity.

Of course, no one was asked if they wanted this. And the AI simply treated them as objects, to be turned on or off at will. ("Don't worry, if this unit bothers me too much I'll just reset it's memory. It's easier that way.") And the AI decided that in order to show how much better this new path was, it would destablize the religion on the planet by supporting terrorist violence along the way - "If they die, it doesn't matter, I can simply bring people back. This is why my path is superior to religion. I can bring people to life, eternally, now. So who cares if they die in a bomb blast? They'll be back soon enough."

The casual disregard for human life, or human will was pretty much what made this AI a great villian. It stepped on the roboticist's sense of responsibility for his creations, and another character's sense of obligation to the dead soldiers he once led.

Drifter's Escape - casual racism

A friend of mine played a game of Drifter's Escape and relayed this event in play. The main character, a drifter, is picked up in a truck along with several other folks to do day labor. The character is white, but the other men are latino. The farm owner picking them up, also white, says to the drifter, "Hey, why don't you sit up front, in the cab? We'll have some good work for you." and throughout the session basically offered the character preferential treatment to the other workers throughout the session.

For everyone at the table, it was a great example of a villain who didn't have to do anything overtly violent or say anything ugly - in fact, he simply offered the drifter good things - but everyone could see that part of that price was to participate in putting down/cutting out the other workers from a fair shake too.

A simple, moral line.

Rättvisa försenad är rättvisa nekad

Tillsammans med en skurkens specifika mål är det antingen ett hinder för mål eller vridning av idealer etc. En viktig del av hur du spelar ut det är att ha en skurk, spelarna kan inte betala tillbaka eller övervinna omedelbart. Frustrationen gör att du hatar dem mer, och du kan verkligen inte vänta med att äntligen se dem få deras. Naturligtvis, när den tiden kommer, kan det kosta nog att du verkligen måste bestämma om det är värt att gå för.

En bra extra är dina allierade eller vänner också som denna hemska karaktär. Det vänder slagmarken till att slåss för sina hjärtan - övertyga dina allierade om din sak och undvika social nedfall för att vidta åtgärder.

Troublesome Villains > Fiat Villains

I de spel jag kör har jag inte skurkar som helt enkelt lyckas med att göra hemska saker - de klarar inte bara att kidnappa dina nära och kära, eller får dig ousted utan att spelarna får en chans att förhindra det . Jag fusk inte tärningen eller bara spelar en "gotcha" på spelarna.

Vad detta gör är att skapa en förtroende för oss som en grupp - spelarna vet om de skyddar eller räddar någonting, de gjorde verkligen det, jag gav inte segern till dem. De vet också om de misslyckas eller saker går fel kan de eventuellt lyckas och stoppa skurken, vilket betyder att de verkligen rackar sina hjärnor över "vad kunde jag ha gjort bättre?"

I jämförelse, när du har ett spel där skurkarna gör deras onda av GM Fiat, känner spelarna inte att slåss hårdare, de känner sig lurade och arg på GM, inte skurkarna. Jag har spelat de spelen, de är inte roliga.

Följande är från en artikel av Justin Alexander, hittade här . Jag kommer inte att lägga om hela saken igen, men det här utdraget är kärnan i artikelns tankar. Huvudartikeln fortsätter att hänvisa till exempel i media där hjälten och skurken dynamiken utvecklas bra (eller inte) och varför, samt att ge några exempel på spelbordet. Det är en del av Prep Plots -serien, som jag rekommenderar starkt att alla GM: er.

First, build tension between the PCs and the villain without using direct confrontations between them. Give the bad guy minions. Have the bad guy do horrible things to people, places, and organizations that the PCs care about off-screen. Social interactions in situations where the PCs won’t be able to simply shoot them in the head without serious consequences also work well to build a personal relationship. (As do taunting communiques and phone calls.)

Second, when you’re prepping your scenarios include lots of bad guys. You’re probably doing this any way, so the real key here is to simply refrain from pre-investing one of these guys as the “big villain”. Basically, don’t get attached to any of your antagonists: Assume that the first time they’re in a position where the PCs might kill them that the PCs will definitely kill them. (This attitude will help to break any railroading habits you may still be secretly harboring.)

Third, remember that people in the real world usually don’t fight to the death. Have your bad guys run away. And not just your “big villain” (since you won’t have one of those any way): Unless their back is truly to the wall, most of the people your PCs fight should try to escape once a fight turns against them. (If you’re finding it hard to break the “fight to your last hit point” habit, try experimenting with some morale rules.) Most of them will probably still end up with a bullet in the back of their heads, but some of them will manage to escape.

The ones that escape? Those are your memorable villains. Those are your major antagonists.

This is the crucial inversion: Instead of figuring out who your major bad guy is and then predetermining that they will escape to wreak their vengeance, what’s happening here is that the guy who escapes to wreak their vengeance becomes the major bad guy.