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Villian Side on PnP?
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I seem to be the only one asking this question. It seems the community wants this real badly, but I can't find a reason to have one if it's not in the source material. The thing is, I honestly don't know. Can you play a villain? Not just in a player or GM made encounter (you can do anything in those).
It seems that most people just want CO to be a different game.....
It seems that most people just want CO to be a different game.....
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The PnP game assumes that you are playing heroes of some sort in much of its presentation, but that is for ease of use, not because that iws inherent to the system.
The Hero System, and the Champions Universe are specifically designed to allow you as player and GM to create and play however you like. There is nothing in either to direct the layer as to how they should play. There are suggestions on how to implement common comic book elements depending on your preferred play style.
My take on villain side play is that it is much more difficult to implement than hero side. The reasons are numerous and have been mentioned so many times that it would be silly to reiterate them all in detail, but basically it comes down to the idea that the bad guys are proactive while the goodguys are reactive.
A villain game would need all of the following in order to fulfill its role:
1) The players get to be the bad guys in the story (obvious)
2) The scope of what makes the players the bad guys must be limited in such a way that the company backing the game are comfortable with releasing it. (dissecting children may be someone's escapist entertainment, but investors will likely shy away from such)
3) The scope of what makes the players the bad guys must have broad appeal to the game's player base. (Even if the devs and investors decided to take a chance on, "Psychopaths Dissecting Children Online," many or most of the comic book/MMO fans who might find the idea of playing a villain to be interesting will shy away from such)
4) The nature of the game needs to provide as much self determined plot as possible. A hero, regardless of his background, is likely to get involved in stopping a bank robbery if he sees one in progress. Few villains bother with robbing banks. The player needs to be able to direct his character's own actions according to his own villainous goals.
5) The game must have structure. WIthout some sort of structure the game ends up being random characters running around blowing stuff up. Fun for a while but quickly becomes tiresome. Structure also helps the developers to create content for the game by giving it direction. Its hard to write the next chapter in a story if you dont know where the story is going.
My suggestion is that a villain side version of CO would be best served by having several overarching storylines.
Each storyline would center around a classic sort of comic book villain. Similar to, but greatly expanded, the manner in which we choose a theme for our nemesis.
A player chooses the archetype for his character (mastermind, anarchist, thief, Robin Hood, etc) which will determine how the game world interacts with him. Nothing would ruin villain style play more than having your dumb brute who smashes things villain put on a mission to steal components to build his next deathray satellite.
The storylines, each tied to an archetype, would provide the structure from which, "capers," could be launched. Each should provide goals for characters fitting that archetype.
Provide rewards based on accomplishing goals within a villain character's archetype.
Create a previously unknown organization that provides benefits to villains of particular capability or renown (high level ?). One of the benefits would be intelligence on potential capers. THis could fill the role of UNTIY/UNTIL for villain side play
Include villain vs villain (PvE) content. Villains often clash as their goals conflict. Do the same for PvP. Different player villains, each trying to steal the same diamond, might very well come to blows while the Champions rush to stop them both. (a themed PvP map ?)
I think it is very possible, and could be very interesting if done right. I do think that it would require more effort than a hero side game.
THis is just a bunch of rambling and isnt really meant to be taken as a coherent suggestion.
Unless they live in the Rogue Islands.:D
You mean in that old game: City of Henchmen (to real villains) ?
I bet if you stop by the Hero Games forums at www.herogames.com and start a thread about the subject of villains campaigns you'll get some interesting feedback and suggestions from people who've created or played in such games, or have thought about them.
I like Champs just the way it is, thanks. I have no desire to play a villain...although I've detailed in another post how I'd like to see villainous players handled in Champions...in other words totally different than in COH.
Like the new sig, Thundrax. But what happened "Twenty four years ago" that caused all hell to break loose? Surely my birth wasn't that bad
... Well. You sold me. When can we expect this?
TOTALLY SERIOUS YOU GUYS
Seriously, though. I would love that so much.
I would like to offer you one solid gold plated internets. Where would you like it delivered?
That's referring to the "Demonflame Incident," a DEMON plot in Boston in 1986 that was so dangerous that VIPER actually helped superheroes stop DEMON. Specifically, the leader of DEMON was trying to siphon off the power of Sharna-Gorak the Destroyer, who was largely responsible for the Cataclysm that sank Atlantis. Fortunately, it didn't work out... but the culmination of DEMON's century-long plot in 2012 may give its leader a second chance.
You can find out more, along with all sorts of other cool stuff, in our supplement DEMON: Servants Of Darkness.
Demon: Servants of Darkness, by Allen Thomas, is widely acclaimed as one of the great HERO Sourcebooks and with good reason. Highly recommended.
I bet if you stop by the Hero Games forums at www.herogames.com and start a thread about the subject of villains campaigns you'll get some interesting feedback and suggestions from people who've created or played in such games, or have thought about them. " Hero Steve Developer.
Whats makes the other MMO's games out there so popular is the idea of Factions. Good and Evil at war. I don't want read about what someone else did or how they did it. It should be an option. I never seen such a community ignored by a development staff. No that's wrong I've seen WOW Dev team do it all the time. They usually change because players want it that draws more people to the game. Other than dueling this game offers no true PVP then for the players. It seems like you missed the boat. Even STO there are factions (maybe it was easier for the designers with a universe already made.)
I figure the greatest mistakes of MMOs games are made when developers aren't open to what there community wants.
They didn't miss the boat. It's a different boat.
For your information The Champions setting has been well established since the 1980's. This game Champions Online is an MMO manifestation of that setting. I say that because a comment there above made me think that you may not know this, which would be crazy since this entire section of the forums is devoted to it.
If you, as a company, want to go around grabbing up IPs to make your silly cookie-cutter MMOs, pick an IP that fits the bill. That would be the ethical thing to do, especially given the nature of the deal between Cryptic and Hero Games.
Most PnP's didn't even have PvP, but that's what companies mostly mine from. If Cryptic ports over the Foundry for CO, then you can have your silly villain characters. That's been the only way presented here so far that could account for villain PC's.
The game that you want this to be was based on the Warcraft setting. That setting had at it's heart a very PvP oriented IP. In fact, it would be ridiculous to not include PvP in it's MMO. Again, it's IP was birthed as a video game, which usually have some type of PvP mechanic regardless of platform. You will be hard pressed to find a PnP out there that has some type of PvP. When Cryptic made CoH, adding PvP was a perfectly normal thing to do, it was Cryptic's IP that they developed for the sole purpose of it's own MMO. In this case Cryptic purchased someone else's IP. It's still their's, no doubt, but that doesn't remove the accountability that they owe the previous owners of the IP. They made sure, by purchasing the Champions IP, that it wasn't a legal responsibility. It's a responsibilty that they control, and are held accountable by good faith alone.
Are the companies themselves responsible for this need to have hundreds of WoWs out there in different settings? Is Blizzard to blame? No, they aren't in the least. People like you are. You don't ask for innovation, you don't ask to push the boundarys of what the MMO genre can offer. You want to play WoW with super heroes. I'm not calling out the previous poster indiviudally here, so don't take that from what I'm saying. I blame the consumer base for tying the hands of the devs and in doing so making them complacent. The complacency is a direct result of their profit margin they make from the people. We are destroying the industry. Slowly. Slow enough to be stopped if we want it to be.
The Champions setting to be converted over to MMO form requires much innovation to the medium to work. Too bad it was pick up by the wrong company, at the wrong time.
P.s. HeroSteve is not a dev for Champions Online. He is the line developer for Hero Games, the company that originated the Champions setting and universe. Otherwise, this thread would have "Dev Post" on it's linky and he would have a yellow name.
Im not saying pk.... i hate pk and ppl the only thing to do playing a game is sucks another ppl doing quests.... ( we play for fun not for rage....)
This open another stage on this game
sorry for my bad english im spanish :P
PvP in a game from a table top, which had no PvP, is really not being responsible. Adding company sanctioned villain PC's would be stepping over the line.
inorite? Why would you want it to bear even less resemblance? I'm glad you see my point.
I don't know, it seems to me like you just want people to play the game the way you want them to and keep their opinions to themselves if they'd like to have options to play the game differently. I mean, even one of the Champions/Hero System's PnP game developers (one of the lead designers as I understand it) said it's ok to play the game however you'd like:
And it isn't this way just with the Hero System, that's the way it is for most PnP RPGs. Developers generally write all, or most, game material from the perspective that you'll be playing as "the good guys", but this is always (at least in every single PnP book I've read) with the unwritten (and sometimes clearly written) implication that you may still play as "the bad guys" if that's what your game group wants. Developers just sell their stuff with "heroes" in mind either to make their games more appealing to mainstream society (and avoid the PR issues going against the mainstream tends to bring), because of personal philosophical reasons, or both.
I almost never play villians myself and get bored fast with them when I try to, but I don't begrudge others playing them if that is what they want to. It is certainly far more interesting to play against a player run villian than a computer generated henchman, specially if there's RP involved (how do you RP with a computer run villian anyway? That would be kind of a one way conversation :rolleyes:). In a PnP game, you have a GM actively overseeing things and playing all the bad guys for you (assuming you're running a traditional hero's vs. villians campaign where the players are heroes), in an MMO, you have no such thing.
The GM's here, if/when present, are moderators--not narrators like in PnP. Even if there where to be a special event where a GM pops up with a villian and RPs with it, that would be a singular occurrence, and not something you can count on happening all the time. That leaves other players to play the villians if we wanted to RP things out.
Also, about the PvP thing, PnP games and MMO's have different dynamics. There's not a hell of a lot of PvP going on in PnP games, sure... because PvP is hard to implement in a PnP game--not because people haven't thought of it, haven't tried, haven't actually done it (I know I have), or wouldn't do it more regularly if there was an interesting and dynamic way to do it. PnP RPGs are driven by a "campaign" group dynamic that involves inter-player cooperation, which doesn't generally favor PvP as it can be disruptive to the group dynamic. That sort of dynamic doesn't exist or needs to exist in an MMO world because the game runs itself without the need of an active GM to narrate everything that's going on in the world and keep track of what every player is doing. Every player is off by themselves doing what they want without the need of assistance, which makes the implementation and possibilities of PvP more viable than in a traditional PnP RPG.
By comparing PnP RPGs to MMO RPGs you're just comparing apples and oranges. Both of them are fruits (or RPGs), but they're not the same kind of fruit and have different tastes and nutritional values.
Me, I've never used or participated in a game that used the Hero System and Champions with the setting in it, or any material beyond the great system at all. Most of the time the style is more akin to WildStorm (The Authority specifically) than anything else. There's really nothing in the system to stop you from making a villain game, and the game isn't really all-reliant on its setting, it's not WoD or CthulhuTech.
EDIT: And since Steve has posted in this thread, maybe he'll read this: The STUN/BODY damage system is the best damage mechanic in any PnP system I've ever read.
I just don't think that the other opinions here have countered my own. They can still have them, even if they are wrong. It's a free country.
I can't disagree. Props to Steve Peterson and George McDonald for concocting it.
They have, you just refuse to validate them even if they bring valid points.
You are aware that we could just say this right back at you, right? Simping saying that some's opinion is wrong as your only defense doesn't make them wrong. They might be wrong, but you would have to explain why they are wrong (assuming they actually are) if you want anyone to take you seriously.
The idea that "PvP" is not a proper part of an RPG universe/setting is a nonsensical notion. PvP is just a type of in game activity that occurs when two or more adversaries that just happen to be run by players back here in the real world fight it out within the game world. This has NOTHING to do with the game universe/setting, and EVERYTHING to do with how the players playing the game behave.
When two (or more) adversaries within a game world face off they might both be run by players or one be run by a player and the other by a GM (which is technically a type of player too :rolleyes:), but either way, a fight is going on (and considering that GMs are technically players too, PvP is ALWAYS going on as well), and fighting is fighting whether it's PvP or not. Whether one of these adversaries is a "good guy" and the other is a "bad guy" or not is irrelevant. Fighting is just fighting, and when it just happens that this fight occurs between two (or more) non-GM players, we call that PvP. But this "PvP" is a game activity dealing with player behavior and not a real game universe/setting element.
Certain venues, such as "Hero Games" might be incorporated into the setting that may seem to facilitate PvP activity, but this venue can just as easily be used to fight against other GM-run heroes. It doesn't HAVE to be other players and it doesn't have to be "PvP", just like the absence of such a venue doesn't necessarily mean that PvP can't happen as part of the narrative of the characters' adventures or whatever you might want to call them.
The real reason they don't normally have "PvP" in most PnP RPGs has to do with way PnP play dynamics work, as I explained in my last post. This has intrinsically NOTHING to do with the game univers/setting, and EVERTHING to do with how players choose to play the game.
You know, I'm not to big on forcing people into things either, but when you take over someone's body of work....you owe that person something (atleast to me you do). That's why I don't think open PvP should be playable villains. Open PvP should be answered with something else, something innovative. I know...naughty word in this biz.
My big deal about a villain side is that I don't want anymore MMO (in other words WoW) cookie-cutter freatures shoe-horned into a game where they may not belong. When messing around with creative properties, wouldn't you rather use a limitation and turn it into a strength? (The limitation being no playable villians sanction by Hero Games.)
I'll try to turn up a thread I started a while back about how I think open PvP should be added to CO if you're interested.
Am I the only one that thinks that sounds a bit unsavory? I'd think there would be some contraversy about such a thing, if..ya know....super heroes actually existed and started a mixed martial arts federation based on super hero combat. I'd think only a certain type of hero would sign up for that. One that got into the hero buisness for the fame.
The inclusion of villain play in CO would provide options for those who want this type of play. As long as implementation did not force anyone into anything (i.e., no non-consensual PvP; you don't have to play a villain; etc.) I have nothing against it. As far as whether it is likely; this may depend on the success of FFA. If the budget expands, I suspect that the devs will first address many other issues before considering villain play, but you never know.
generally this sort of gaming occured when there just wasnt time for a full fledged heroic adventure, or when no one was inclined to be the GM. Regardless, there has been PvP in CHampions since at least the mid-late '80's.
While I would love to play a Villain, I really dont see why they would want to since it would generally be Champions online where you can kill civs, rob banks and build Deathrays