[center][u][b]Its My Job[/b][/u] [i]As the scene dies down, and the injured are tended to the hero takes the masked man away to question in on his intentions. "Why," he asks. "Why would a man of your ability, and your resource waste a shot at a bank and get caught?" the masked man shifts in his chair. "Its what we do, isn't it?"[/i] ~~~---~~~[/center] This is probably the worst kind of villain you can have in a roleplay; someone who is only antagonizing, not to build the story, but to get caught. Sure, you can throw in a few small crimes or acts of violence here and there. The hero characters might want a good fight where they succeed in stopping the crime, but don't do this without a reason for the events. There is nothing worse than fighting some criminals without a motive. Frankly it feels like a waste of time, and your players may feel like they are being cheated if this is all they get for an antagonist. When playing in one of my first zombie survival roleplays, me and a group of survivors found a trail of clues leading to a small faction of "snatchers" (a group that enslaved you for hard labor: achieving a means of security/communication in this case) that was hiding on the other side of town. For the most part we tried to avoid them because the were so ominous. I will say good on the GM for that part, they really did seem scary at the time. As time went on though, we eventually had a confrontation with them leading to a few of us being killed, but taking them out in the process. Once we subdued the last of the Snatchers we decided to question them on what they were doing. At this time [b]they[/b] had picked over much of the town taking broke-down cars, building supplies, and in one case deconstructing a radio tower. We figured that if we could find out what they were doing we might be able to progress faster to establishing a working colony. Unfortunate for us their answers were. "We just needed supplies, nothing special." The problem here was mainly that the GM hadn't really thought out that far. They didn't really think much about why they took what they did or why they were grabbing people. They just knew that they needed an antagonistic group to make things more difficult for us. While we were thinking that they were gearing up a convoy and making some sort of communications. What we came to find is that they were simply taking things to take things. We had no gain from stopping them, we had no real victory in killing them. honestly we felt like monsters for killing this group that was only taking HALF THE TOWN'S CARS AND A RADIO TOWER FOR SUPPLIES. It was hard for us to pull together after that due to the realization that the world we were playing in was no bigger than the town we were in. On a more one on one note, lets take a look into a villain I played early in my villain "career" so to say. The setting was a Deity/fantasy RP where players took on the roles of gods, champions to said gods, or both. This RP had a lot of bumps along its way before it really came to fruition, and mostly because there was no real drive to it when we started. There was a gathering of the people in a ceremony where the gods would choose a few mortals whom would be tested to see if they are deemed worthy of being champions, but there was nothing beyond that. I thought that I would add an antagonist to the mix to attempt to spice things up. After talking it over with the GM they let me add a character who was trying to release a cursed army of the damned on the known world. With this came the addition of a few [i]Forsaken gods[/i] and a little bit of additional lore, and all seemed good. That is until it came down to the motives for releasing said army, and of the army themselves. I hadn't thought of was going on behind the character, I was just thinking "Hey this army was cursed to never rest and this guy wants to release them as his own personal army of ghost warriors." The issue here was there was no end game for him, when consulted by the champion of the Trickster there was nothing for the champion to exploit or try to twist his logic because he didn't have any reasons for what he was doing. He was a two dimensional villain with nothing to fuel his actions, and this made a few people upset because their characters were based around charm, logic, and wit which had no effect on me since I had nothing for them to work with. My attacks on towns and strongholds were merely the act of conflict without motive, and no amount of diplomacy could stop him. He only wanted to cause problems because causing problems is was people like him do. In the end the GM and I put the RP on hold until we could come up with a good backstory for our villain which we will talk about in the final section. My number one rule for being a GM/Villain "Make it fun and give it purpose." If you have to throw in a small event to keep things moving plan it out. How do you want them to catch on to this event? Is it a big deal or something you have to be looking for to find? are the ones involved independent or group? Were they hired or is it their plan? You can see where these few questions will add immense depth to the world you are running or the roll you are playing. If you are the main antagonist remember to think out your character. What drives them? Why are they doing this? Could they be swayed from their beliefs? Is there something more sinister lurking behind their plan that might be discovered if you open the right doors? Sometimes I throw in some smaller plots of drug rings, weapons trades, and smuggling just to keep things moving, but there can always be something deeper to these small time villain. Remember in a bank heist, someone always needs money for something else... unless you are just sending a message. Until next time, Stay Tilted