(08-28-2019, 06:29 PM)Omicega Wrote: Villains like Joffrey from Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire, Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, or Frieza from Dragon Ball Z are all both memorable and wholeheartedly malicious, and I don't think any of them was ever worried about rationalising their cruelty as the 'right' thing to do.
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Not every villain needs to be a hero from another point of view. Some can just be evil assholes, without needing to have depth added just for the sake of depth.
(08-28-2019, 06:54 PM)Anton Okunev Wrote: In plotting there exist not only Hero/Villain, but also Hero/Anti-hero. Mass Effect choices is about Hero/Anti-hero, there is no villain side.
Thanks, that's a fair point. There are indeed good villains who are outright evil, and I totally forgot about them.
Of all the villains you mentioned, I can only speak about Joffrey from "A Song of Ice And Fire" (I think Ramsay fits the bill here too). They don't rationalize things; they have no doubts they're in the right; they are just being themselves. In overly-simplified terms, these people do what they feel like doing, because they can, and because they are sadistic. In my opinion, their greatness as villains comes from being unpredictable and inventive in their cruelty.
So, ultimately, when trying to play a "villain", there are these options:
- Just play such a ruthless character. It's a hard path, and I probably wouldn't be able to do so coherently and interestingly enough.
- Find a way to make the characters' motives resonate with our own. That's what I meant under "rationalization". It's more about the player's point of view, not the character's.
And if we all ended up playing a Joffrey/Ramsay-like "outright villains", it would probably be severely narrow and limited as well. I suppose, both types of characters are needed, and Gallia is just lacking the ruthless kind now.
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I think part of the problem we run into is that Discovery simultaneously has a massive breadth of lore and it's all about an inch deep. There is a rather comprehensive story, here, about the back-and-forth since the Council breached the barrier to Sirius - a massive amount of stories and words have been poured into a conflict just by the few people I can think of off the top of my head. There is an incredible depth there and many great stories, should you choose to find them.
How much have we seen about the political or socioeconomic nature of the Kingdom of Gallia, or the Council of National Unity and Liberation?
Maybe a few paragraphs on the infocards of planets.
This is just an example of the difficulty I think everyone who seriously wants to approach writing and immersion in this universe meets. It's hard to say whether Gallia is a protagonist in their own story, or a pure antagonist, purely because we aren't sure if Gallia is a utopia or a dystopia. Do the people in Gallia...like living in Gallia? Do they even have a concept of the rights that are stripped from them? How extensive is the assumed anti-Sirius propaganda, and how or why are people brought over to the camp of the Council if that assumed propaganda is extensive? If it's not, why is so much of the Kingdom so bent toward war against a group of individuals they haven't met in 800 years? Why did Gallia even invade Sirius, beyond an 800-year disgust for Sirius? (The self-imposed resource limitation based on that 800-year disgust doesn't count, by the way, since...it's space. Just expand the other way.) If Gallia has this hatred for all of Sirius, why are they openly trading with half of it? Do they really hate the Sirians or just Bretonia? Is this a sci-fi recreation of the Hundred Years War in reverse, or is this Nomad War 2: This Time They're French Edition?
This is something that affects newer players too, since most people come to Discovery with little more than the few tl;dr blurbs they catch and their knowledge of Freelancer's singleplayer, which barely translates at all to the current state of play. It doesn't help that the best centralized lore document we have is a wiki that has been run by a grand total of maybe three volunteers and which contains a variety of pages that haven't been touched since 2012.
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On the topic of "good villains don't always need depth" re: @Omicega; we could go on all day about villains in all forms of media who have no "good reasons". Not every villain needs to just be an anti-hero from their antagonist's perspective. Yoshikage Kira (JJBA) goes on about wanting to live a "simple" and "peaceful life", yet also acts as a completely unsympathetic serial killer who takes perverse joy in ruining others' lives. I personally think he's one of the strongest villains I've seen and he's essentially completely unsympathetic and unreasonable. Here's just an example.
(08-28-2019, 06:29 PM)Omicega Wrote: Villains like Joffrey from Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire, Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, or Frieza from Dragon Ball Z are all both memorable and wholeheartedly malicious, and I don't think any of them was ever worried about rationalising their cruelty as the 'right' thing to do.
...
Not every villain needs to be a hero from another point of view. Some can just be evil assholes, without needing to have depth added just for the sake of depth.
(08-28-2019, 06:54 PM)Anton Okunev Wrote: In plotting there exist not only Hero/Villain, but also Hero/Anti-hero. Mass Effect choices is about Hero/Anti-hero, there is no villain side.
Thanks, that's a fair point. There are indeed good villains who are outright evil, and I totally forgot about them.
Of all the villains you mentioned, I can only speak about Joffrey from "A Song of Ice And Fire" (I think Ramsay fits the bill here too). They don't rationalize things; they have no doubts they're in the right; they are just being themselves. In overly-simplified terms, these people do what they feel like doing, because they can, and because they are sadistic. In my opinion, their greatness as villains comes from being unpredictable and inventive in their cruelty.
So, ultimately, when trying to play a "villain", there are these options:
- Just play such a ruthless character. It's a hard path, and I probably wouldn't be able to do so coherently and interestingly enough.
- Find a way to make the characters' motives resonate with our own. That's what I meant under "rationalization". It's more about the player's point of view, not the character's.
And if we all ended up playing a Joffrey/Ramsay-like "outright villains", it would probably be severely narrow and limited as well. I suppose, both types of characters are needed, and Gallia is just lacking the ruthless kind now.
There's one thing about joffrey/ramsay villains that I don't see mentioned yet, though its probably the main reason people don't want to play villains: weakness. As the viewer we all notice that joffrey is a little awkward in the sense that he does not always do what we would consider smart. His character flaws result in weaknesses. I rarely see people here playing a flawed character. Every one wants to be special, or at least at the maximum of their capacity. Competitive motives outweigh good character building resulting in most characters coming across as bland b-movie heroes no matter what their background is. You even can expect criticism if you diverse too much from that status quo as I have seen quite often when portraying my corsair characters as what some consider too curious and uncivilised.
Conclusion is that you can not make everyone happy and that you should play your characters as you like. There's nothing to win if you do otherwise, but if you're brave and dedicated to blow people away with your awesome villain / hero, then be prepared to show some weaknesses in that character as well.
Please, don't delete Gallia, give Thyrzul and other [C] guys who are around (pls don't say that's only me) opportunity to unleash their nefarious plans at full scale
(08-28-2019, 08:08 PM)Scituzer Wrote: Please, don't delete Gallia, give Thyrzul and other [C] guys who are around (pls don't say that's only me) opportunity to unleash their nefarious plans at full scale
"Picardy's gates".
Only Warhammer 40k bois will understand what I mean.
(08-28-2019, 07:35 PM)Madvillain Wrote: There's one thing about joffrey/ramsay villains that I don't see mentioned yet, though its probably the main reason people don't want to play villains: weakness. I rarely see people here playing a flawed character. If you're brave and dedicated to blow people away with your awesome villain / hero, then be prepared to show some weaknesses in that character as well.
That's another good point that I started forgetting about. "Weakness" is an important aspect of a character. A friend shared a video that described how it was used heavily in "A Song of Ice and Fire" to make characters more believable. I didn't always follow that particular recommendation, and my Gaul's flaws and weaknesses aren't exactly on the surface.
Thanks for reminding me about this. Definitely something to consider.
If I may touch on this, as one of the faces of the Gallic "evil" lawfuls of the past few months ; what makes villains like Joffrey or Ramsay Bolton memorable ? Is it their character, their motivations, their achievements ? No, of course not. They're just violent ****heads that behave unpredictably and commit grisly acts of violence for no discernible reason, or just because they can, as was specified earlier in this thread.
To me, and I assume to most people, the most satisfactory moment in their story arcs is when they die, preferably in a horrible or at least meaningful manner.
To me, this is absolutely dreadful writing, meant to shock rather than engage, and to only serve as a target for the story's inevitable good guy. It's the less inspired, easiest way to accomplish this. Psychopaths are the easiest "dense" character to come up with as far as I can tell. Find a motif, make it extreme and violent, and voilà, you have a superevil bad guy for your story. I have several problems with this.
- It is easy, shallow and very much expected. It accomplishes nothing in a story other than precisely what is designed for.
- It is meant to shock and/or instill nothing but fear or disgust. I'm fine with this when it serves a larger narrative purpose. It usually does not.
- It's boring and interchangeable. Seriously, even the book versions of Ramsay and Joffrey are hardly distinguishable from one another. I could list a dozen such characters with prominent roles that are, yet, utterly interchangeable or can be summed up with two words.
- It is also boring to roleplay, and to interact with. Oh, so your complex psychopath villain can either be menacingly soft-spoken or outright bloodthirsty, which will it be this time ? YAWN. Such a role is too limited and one-dimensional to function in a roleplay environment and hold any lasting appeal.
- It is not fitting in a world like Disco. Omi has strong opinions about Gallia being poorly written ; I respect his opinion, but I disagree. Yes, there was a bit of a loose stretch in the motivations initially given to the GRN for a massive invasion of Sirius. But I felt the way it was fleshed out over the years gave us Gallic players occasions to develop our own stories and agendas, and motivations to want to see it happen. Motivations other than "SIRIANS BAD MUST KILL". Many others. That Gallia would have been branded as lead by outright sociopaths would have killed any remaining coherence and immersion capabilities. What dimension other than "BAD GUYS" would it have offered Gallia ? Who would have wanted to play in that narrative environment, who could have created interesting characters that people would want to interact with ? In short, what would have differentiated Gallia from a giant Nomad house ?
To sum up my thoughts, I believe credible villains are the best villains. They're the ones you can really emotionally engage with, and they don't have to be sympathetic bad guys. Just people you can understand. Evil for evil's sake has never held any appeal to me as a reader or writer. It is easy, lazy and overdone, and an addition such as Gallia deserved far, far, far better a figurehead than just yet another of those flat and predictable bad guys. I don't have such pretentions, but I like to imagine that Chanteloup provided people, pro or anti Gallia, an opportunity to see things from a different perspective, and a character they could relate to, try to understand or at least engage with. Beyond the usual and tired "die gaul scum", that is. All of which without sacrificing to the old compromise of whitewashing, at least I like to think so. I remember the old GRN was never too popular for various reasons, but I believe a lack of relatable villains might have been at fault.
@Catbert and Sombra : thanks, from the bottom of my heart. Gallia and Chanteloup ended up meaning a lot to me, and your very kind words are a source of great personal validation for me, especially from exquisite RPers like yourselves.
EDIT : I could provide examples of what I consider to be good villains and bad villains. The arc of Anakin Skywalker is, for one, an ode to what should be a villain and how his story should be told.
Also, read the Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. It's a marvel for anyone who likes to discuss fiction and its inner workings. Bit of a read but well worth it.
(06-14-2019, 12:25 PM)Sombra Hookier Wrote: If everyone was a bit more like Lanakov, the entire world would be more positive. Including pregnancy tests.
(08-28-2019, 10:12 PM)Lanakov Wrote: lots of things
You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but I really couldn't disagree more -- and your viewpoint is actually the contrarian one in this case, as far as I've seen among writers. Not every villain has to be complex, multifaceted, and ultimately sympathetic for them to be a good villain. With a slate as blank as Gallia's (check out @Wildkins's post for more on all the stuff that's blatantly missing), very basic elements of House lore are effectively left up to the individual player to make up as they go along, and flimsy motivations behind the Gallic invasion in the first place only hamstring the whole shebang more.
This overcomplication of villains has become something of a modern trend -- the idea that any evil character without a fundamentally sympathetic reason for being so is somehow worse than one that is. That's not to say that these villains don't have reasons for doing what they do -- Ramsay's upbringing and Joffrey's incestuous bloodline are both major factors in their characterisation -- just that they are insufficient to excuse their heinous acts. These kinds of villains are a lot easier to play because you can kid yourself into viewing them as protagonists from another angle, and all too often the raw depth of a character is conflated heavily with how 'good' they are, to the point where truly detestable villains find themselves being swept under the carpet as somehow not 'deep' or 'believable' enough. Even "collective characters" -- entities like the Alien series' Weyland-Yutani -- can be very memorable and striking without having any real moral high ground to stand on. To suggest that an evil character is somehow not believable is, in my opinion, buying into this fallacy of depth for the sake of depth. There are plenty of evil people in real life, after all.
At the end of the day, a character is just part of a greater story, and sometimes only needs to be as deep as the hole he/she/it is filling. Call me a contrarian, because I have always enjoyed playing relatively simple roles like a simple day-to-day police officer satisfied with her job, but I don't think every character ever created needs to come complete with a tragic backstory, a suite of justifications for every action they do, and to ultimately be related to by the average person. In my opinion, Gallia has never needed to be sympathetic or relatable in its role as an antagonist -- the primary antagonist for the mod at this point, in fact, since the Nomads have been so peripheral to the story at this point. Doing so only weakens the story as a whole -- a story which has been more or less "good guy Allies versus bad guy Gallia" for the better part of a decade at this point. Trying to institute an eleventh hour heel face turn that somehow makes the invasion of Sirius for any reason whatsoever somehow justified and understandable feels forced, at least to me.
If you're up for reading material, you could take a look at any number of resources regarding character arcs. Unsympathetic villains are a great example of a flat arc -- at some point in the story, they come into contact with other characters who share markedly different and contrarian viewpoints to the villains' own, but ultimately find themselves unconvinced and unchanged by the encounter(s) they experience, sticking true to their reprehensible principles (or lack thereof).
(08-28-2019, 10:12 PM)Lanakov Wrote: Evil for evil's sake has never held any appeal to me as a reader or writer.
Sometimes, evil for evil's sake is all you need -- or would have needed. Take a look at Mass Effect, where the Reapers were a genuinely mysterious and intriguing set of villains with seemingly inscrutable motives, right up until their true purpose was revealed and turned out to be a damp squib.
I'd be curious to know if those who say they want credible villains think that if Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot were fictional characters in a story, they would consider them "credible villains", and if RPing as someone who somehow ended up as one of their generals would necessarily be one-dimensional.
When it comes to the gallic storyline, I also find it strange that at the time, few people complained about gallia justifying an interstellar war with something some people allegedly did 800+ years ago, but only now complain when gallia does something that has been a widespread tactic of war throughout human history.
Leaving behind scortched earth while retreating, reprisals against civilian populations, and creating humanitarian catastrophes that will force the enemy to focus their resources on them instead of on their troops, have been and still are widespread tactics in war. Because they are as effective as they are horrible, and because those who do them tend to think that if they don't do it, their enemy will do it to them.
About GoT Joffrey being not credible... sure there were exagerations for entertainement purposes, but I gotta say he strongly reminded me of many people who held pixelpower when they were younger than 20, and a few older ones too: Inability to take criticism, taunting power, relishing in cruelty, thinking might makes right, thinking he can do what he wants because he's untouchable.