Monthly Archives: November 2009

Helping Players Hate the Villain

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Ten Ways to Help Your Players Hate a Villain
1. Give him a magic item or gadget that one of the players wants. Have him use it on the characters with great enthusiasm.

2. Have him take credit for cool things the characters have done. If possible, have him collect a reward for their effort.

3. Give him an ally who is a genuinely good and nice guy and who is also friendly and supportive of the characters. Have this ally try to get both sides to get along, and sacrifice himself to keep his friends from fighting. Then make sure the players see the villain’s absolute disdain for this ally.

4. The villain should only rarely defeat or thwart the heroes. Instead, he should make things much more costly enough for them, costly enough to taint their victory. Give him an objective that is tangential to the goals of the PCs, rather than in direct opposition, so he can take advantage of their efforts. Make sure he thanks them.

5. Have NPCs who do not respect the characters respect the villain.

6. Have the PCs find the one chink in his villainous armor—the one good thing he does that he keeps secret. It should be something hidden but clearly good, like charitable giving or teaching kids to read or something. Make sure that the characters get at least one crack at him while he’s doing this, so they would be forced to act in front of the people who think he’s a hero.

7. If the villain is going to kill someone, it should be someone who is about to help the characters. Ideally, he should also frame them for the murder.

8. Have him do exactly what the characters would do in that situation. If that thing has gotten the characters in trouble or made them look foolish, make sure that he is acclaimed for it.

9. At some point the villain should know something the players need to find out. He should be utterly civil and willing to help them out, but the price should involve them doing something for him that is difficult (but not impossible) and plays very much to their strengths, so it is very clear that whatever it is he could not have accomplished it without their help. Make sure the fruits of those labors show up again later.

10. Have the villain think highly of one of the characters, albeit in a very condescending fashion. Have the villain offer words of encouragement and suggestions for how to improve whenever possible, and make it clear he thinks the character has so much potential and it’s just a shame he’s not living up to it.

This Monday is Storytime

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So, back in 1998 a multi-millionaire from Massachusetts realized that buying a congressional seat in Massachusetts was really expensive, but it would be much cheaper if he went someplace more rural, so his money could go much further. Heck, if he went to a small enough state, he could even afford a senate seat. he looked around and decided to claim his summer home in Vermont as a residence and put his name in the hat for the as the Republican candiate for the U.S. Senate.

From his perspective, it was pretty perfect. Vermont was a very Republican state on paper, and the standing Senator was a long-standing democratic incumbent, and democratic incumbents had not been doing great for the past few years. Plus, this senator had given up chairmanship of the agriculture committee [1], which the hicks from Vermont might have seen some use in, in favor of the Judiciary committee. The Senator had done silly things like appear in all the Batman movies[2]. Clearly, they needed a professional, and by happenstance there was no strong local Republican contender for the Senate seat, so the writing was on the wall, so to speak.

Now, it’s not that Vermont lacked in contentious Republicans, but rather that everyone was pretty happy with the sitting Senator, or at least smart enough to know that running against him was basically suicide. But the Carpetbagger failed to grasp this, no doubt confused by the rural ways of these strange mountain people.

So a little bit after he threw his hat in the ring, the Republicans in the state kind of looked at each other. This was embarrassing – all politics aside, no one likes a carpetbagger. But running against him for the nomination was suicide, since whoever took the nomination would definitely get trounced in the popular election. So what to do?

Into the gap stepped Fred Tuttle. Fred was an 89 year old dairy farmer from Tunbridge (which is, yes, the ass end of nowhere) with an accent so thick as to be nearly unintelligible and a tiny sliver of local fame for his starring role in the independent movie “A Man With a Plan”. The campaign that followed was magnificent to behold, with the high point revolving around the televised debate where the carpetbagger demonstrated that he did not know how to pronounce the names of many Vermont towns.[3]

Tuttle crushed the carpetbagger[4] and the campaign that followed continued to be a blast, as he and the incumbent would go to events together to talk to kids and stuff, and Tuttle made it clear he didn’t want to win because he didn’t want to have to move to DC.

Fred Tuttle, rest his soul, passed away in 2003, buried in his overalls with a can of moxie. I only got to meet him in passing, but I give him credit for being the engine behind one of the events in my life that really makes me believe in democracy, right down to my toes.

Anyway, this was on my mind as I watch events unfold in New York’s 23rd[5] district. I know most people think they know New York, but the 23rd is not what they think it is. Upstate New York is wild country, and it shares a border (and a lake) with Vermont, so there is something of the same character to it. Of course, when both areas were founded, the rich lived on the New York side of the lake and the troublemakers lived on Vermont’s side. I’m always curious at how much of a divide that lake really makes for.

A long time ago, one of those troublemakers, a gent named Ethan Allen (who is today most known as some sort of purveyor of furniture) was dealing with folks from out of state coming in and asserting that they were in charge. He told them “The gods of the hills are not the gods of the valleys” and ran them out of town. I can hear Fred Tuttle saying it, and in my heart I hope I can heard the 23rd saying it too.[6]

1 – Where he’d done a lot of hippie things like pushing through WIC. The years when the agriculture committee was not under the control of a Senator from an agribusiness state were really interesting in a really nerdy way.

2 – You know that bit in the Dark Knight where the one old guy at the party stands up to the Joke, and the joker puts his knife in his mouth? That’s him.

3 – He also did not know how many teats there are on a Holstein.

4 – This was helped in part by Vermont having open primaries, but that detail detracts from the greatness of the story.

5 – Short form: NY-23 is a republican district, and always will be, but like a lot of that part of the country, the republicans are not necessarily social conservatives. That meant that when the republican nominee ended up being someone who favors abortion rights and gay marriage, the GOP machine reacted by backing a “conservative” party candidate *cough*carpetbagger*cough* and throwing national support behind him. It got bad enough that the republican candidate stepped down days before the election (pretty clearly forced) but her name’s still on the ballot, and there’s no telling how it will all settle out.

6 – And lest you think this is partisan, I would like nothing more than to see the Republican candidate win. That’s who would have won if the latest incarnation of CREEP hadn’t gotten involved.