Player Characters are the Villains

[USRPG]

Perhaps an alternate title for this topic would be, "when is dark, too dark?"

This is more of an inquiry, rather than actual debate. To anyone who has ever moderated or partaken in an RPG session, where the player characters are the villains and the GM is the good guys. How "evil" do things get, and what are the player's general reaction to their deeds? I assume, that the general mayhem is view from a nonchalant nature, but is there any retrospective guilt in their actions?

Not that I expect anyone to even attempt it seriously, but let's imagine there was a Homicidal Maniac d20™ - does the premise cause disgust, or does it peek interest into trying it out?

In a world of Grand Theft Auto, the point may be moot, but I just thought to ask.

As for my own opinion?

It's odd. People don't seem to bat an eye too killing someone in a fictional setting, or even committing mass genocide, but then cruel torture and rape seem to be an instant detractor. Murder being less extreme than rape (if it doesn't result in the victim's death) is an strange contradiction.

[mothlos]

Personally, I have never seen this as a problem. The big issue when dealing with what kind of 'bad guy' to play is why is the person 'evil'. This is probably not an exhaustive list.

The Maniac: Motivation - Insanity: The character is an evil maniac and does terrible things compulsively. These people may have some sort of vision they are seeking or not, but the character plays out in two ways. How can the character commit these horrible atrocities and how can the character avoid being prevented from doing them.

Can this character be saved? How long will this go on before somebody brings a stop to it?

Given the right group, this could be a lot of dark fun, but such a group is a special thing. This probably involves discussions which outside observers would take great offense to.

The Zealot: Motivation - Means to an End: This character wants to achieve something and is willing to employ tactics that most would consider unreasonable. While others dutifully put in their time and hope to make it big, this character, either through personal conviction or through a criminal subculture, employs illegitimate means to achieve goals.

Is the goal as important as the character once thought? What is the character's breaking point? What happens if the goal is achieved?

I would argue that most hack and slash treasure hunting games are this in part, killing to become rich and powerful.

The Soldier: Motivation - Loyalty: This character is the good guy who works for bad guys. This character is, voluntarily or not, associated with people who ask him or her to do bad things. This character usually derives no pleasure from his or her work. This includes people trying to support a family in hard times by thieving.

What are the limits of this character's loyalty? What can the character do to change his or her circumstance?

I just got done watching the GunGrave anime which gave my understanding of this archetype a refreshing awakening.



All of these characters can be played with varying levels of seriousness and the more serious, the more disturbing it can be. Insanity is probably the most difficult for players to pull off effectively as the other roles are less foreign in thinking.

I'm not sure i completely agree with the Rape > Murder argument. I would say that Rape > Killing, but it is a definitional argument. Our culture doesn't have the literary shorthand to describe rape as casually as we describe killing. We have plenty of examples of struggle to the death where you defeat your opponent and the climax is fulfilling. Try to describe what it feels like to orgasm while physically holding down your victim.

When thinking about this process, I tried pulling the experience out of the normal contexts many people role-play in and try to imagine a game where I play a teenager in school who viciously murders just a single person, then has to go to school for the next month. Then I compare that to raping a classmate and having to go back to school for a month as well. I think it would be harder to play the murderer than the rapist, but both would be quite emotional.

[USRPG]

Not to stray too off topic, but having spent several years in Japan, I've seen quite a large number of "rape role playing games" thrive incredibly well there. Granted none of these are in the pen-and-paper fashion - almost always PC games - but it nonetheless is an "interesting" niche to study from an outside point of view. Having looked on Google, I've noted there's a MUCH smaller market for these digital games in North American and Europe. I'd rather not post a direct link, given there might be minors on this site, but it isn't too difficult to find.

It's a more "adult" evolution of the Japanese dating games... although this isn't to say all adult dating games are rape-centric (they maybe consist of only 10% or so).

[lumpley]

Here are some actual play threads you might find interesting:
We Killed Us Some Puppies
Two [censored] at once!
Notice that those threads are really old; don't post to them.

As it happens I'm playing a horrible villain in my group's current game, too.

I'm sure that most of us old-timers here have our favorite "we played the villains" actual play writeups.

-Vincent

[Ryan Macklin]

In an Unknown Armies game I just finished up, six of the players played the "good" guys and three of them played the "bad" guys.  It was a pretty gray game, so "good" meant "greedy and insane, but didn't want to destroy the world" and "bad" only meant the first part of that statement.  This was out of six players total, so three were playing both sides at times.

One player said that was one of the best games he'd be in, because the players had so much influence over the game.  But that's different from what you're asking, since the GM in this case was neither the good or bad guys, but everyone caught in the crossfire.  Now, that wasn't the intent of the game, as I had a villain set up.  Only a couple of the characters did stuff that made them even better villains, and after taking those players out of the room and asking if they wanted to play both sides, I tossed my old villains away.

As an aside, was an awesome answer to the question my game asked:  What happens with insane mages from Unknown Armies stumble upon the Mythos?

[Conteur]

Did you saw the White Wolf book "Player's Guide to the Fomori"
In it, they are monster with very gorrific powers who cause rape, torture, mass genocide...
All my players refused to try it but one of my best games I currently play is with a Neutral Evil Priest who revere Hiddukel(the god of betrayal and profit). He made a Sacrifice of a god priestess to  summon a Demon who he sent to gather as many virgin as he could to make a much more powerful Sacrifice.
I love this game and my player too but It take maturity and I would never let my kid play that kind of character. That's why the book of Vile Darkness of D20 System is Adult only but I really think that when I was 18 yers old, I wasn't mature enough to play that...
You must stay sure that the game stay a game and that nobody find some good ideas there...

[scrandy]

OK, just one question: Why would anybody want to play that kind of serious villain?

Well, at first I thought, what a good Idea to play evil. Like in the PC-Game Dungeon Keeper or like in Kyrandia3, but evil like that?
Why should anybody play a villain that rapes or murders somebody for fun. Isn't RPG a thing to have fun. Seriously, guys, why would you have fun in a rape? And don't tell me it's about control or possibilities. Well, I am not that black/white-thinking but in fact some things are not to be played, at least not seriously.

Why don't you want to play evil characters in a funny kind of way, like in "Dungeon Keeper" or in "Shrek" where you can in some way identify yourself with your "Hero-Badguy". I can't identify myself with a rapist, and you shouldn't either.

I think the Game-Designer should have some responsibility for his game. Or do you want, that a player gets inspired by your game?

[Sentience]

Things like rape and homosexuality seem to be less taboo in Japan than they are in the states. Homosexuality is one thing, but I can't see how anyone would want to role-play rape. I suppose if playing a game about rape gets the idea out of a person's system and prevents them from doing it in real life, I can't argue with that, but then again there are alot of really stupid, really impressionable people out there who's urge to do such a thing would only be strengthened by a game like that.

While the idea of rape comes up in alot of RPG's, it's usually in the sense that the Heroes are on the side hunting down the rapist or otherwise trying to rectify the situation. But, I think rape is almost as dark as you can get. Maybe it's just a screwed up, desensitized American outlook, but to me, rape is worse then murder.

I've played multiple D&D sessions where the players end up killing an innocent person for whatever reason, though most of the time they actually felt genuine remorse, even for killing an imaginary person. I played a game of Shadowrun where the players were drug dealers, and that actually turned out to be really fun.

[Moreno R.]

Things like rape and homosexuality seem to be less taboo in Japan than they are in the states. Homosexuality is one thing, but I can't see how anyone would want to role-play rape. I suppose if playing a game about rape gets the idea out of a person's system and prevents them from doing it in real life, I can't argue with that, but then again there are alot of really stupid, really impressionable people out there who's urge to do such a thing would only be strengthened by a game like that.

But in Japan there is something like the lowest rape rate in the world. So this leave all the people who say that "showing this thing could urge stupid or impressionable people to do it" with the duty to explain this hard fact that contradict what they said. Do they think that it's because there are less stupid and impressionable people in Japan?

I think that people should learn to differentiate between facts and fiction, and stop worrying about "all these stupid people who could be urged by fiction".  A guy who role-play a rape in a rpg doesn't do any material harm to anybody (I said "material" because making his poor friends hear while he role-play it could be seen as a cruel and unusual punishment).

Said that, I agree with you that role-playing a rape in details is a sick thing, something that I assume only some sick teenager morons groups with relationship issues could enjoy.  (I had once a GM, many years ago, that to "motivate" a girl player narrated - as a background for her character  - a flashback of her previous rape by her thief guild chief. He wasn't a teenager but he surely was a moron, we didn't enjoy this in any way - imagine the look of people around the table thinking he has gotten insane - and for this and other things we stopped playing with him)

But you can use line and veils, use rape as a issue in your game, NOT to get some sick enjoyment, but to say something about the issue. To "let out" your rage, or your outrage, or your insecurity. To talk about it.

See this for example:
How to Make A Character You Care About: a case study.

[Sentience]

But in Japan there is something like the lowest rape rate in the world. So this leave(s) all the people who say that "showing this thing could urge stupid or impressionable people to do it" with the duty to explain this hard fact that contradict(s) what they said. Do they think that it's because there are less stupid and impressionable people in Japan?

Well, I did say that perhaps doing a detestable act such as rape in a fictional setting may prevent people from doing it in real life. But you can't truthfully say that some people aren't influenced by stuff like this. Just because rape in japan isn't as prevelant as other places, doesn't mean it doesn't happen. I never said that 'because japanese people like rape video games and like rape cartoons means that all japanese guys rape girls all the time'.

I think that people should learn to differentiate between facts and fiction, and stop worrying about "all these stupid people who could be urged by fiction".  A guy who role-play(s) a rape in a rpg doesn't do any material harm to anybody (I said "material" because making his poor friends hear while he role-play(s) it could be seen as a cruel and unusual punishment).

I agree, people should be able to differentiate between real life video games (or RPGs or movies or whatever). But, there's nothing fictional about the fact that rape is a semi-popular (though underground) subject in Japan. More then half of the adult japanese cartoons out there feature girls getting raped by tentacles and demons and other extremely strange things. While I agree that watching these things won't influence most people, you can't ignore the fact that there are stupid and impressionable people out there that get caught up in this shit and take it to the extreme. There are screwed up people every where in the world, of every ethnicity and every background.

As much as I love Grand Theft Auto, you can't say that it doesn't influence idiots to do GTA-ish stuff. I, for one, love violent games because it lets me take out the primal instincts that all humans have, without actually doing harm to anyone. I do think alot of people blame video games and RPGs for the dumb shit that they do, but I can't help but think that at least a few screwed up people out there get off on watching someone get raped, and then decide they want to actually do it in real life.

There's nothing wrong with someone playing a rape RPG (though it is extremely wierd) as long as they don't decide to do it in real life.

Don't take this as an attack on Japanese culture. Of all the cultures in the world, it's Japanese culture that I'm most interested in. However, it's the truth.

Also, if I misunderstood what you were saying, I appologize in advance.

[David Artman]

As a data point--one not related to Japanese culture (can the designer write in Japanese? Then it's moot)--my playing groups over the years have regularly had evil PCs and even whole parties. In both table top and LARPs--and believe me, it's a LOT more intense in LARP than in TT!

It's all lines and veils. To really get into evilness, you will have few lines... but probably a LOT of veils (again, especially in LARP).

And think beyond sex crimes and such (which, frankly once done are rather boring upon repeat--"Oh, yeah, OK, Bob. You rape the elven hostage with your mace handle... again. She's sobbing quietly and praying in Elvish. Can we move on, now?").

Try on some Evil Overlord for a change, mercilessly driving your people and troops over an ethical cliff, using a bloody iron hand to suppress rebellion and dissension. Play a WoD vampire that revels in the killing of its "inferior" victims, taunting authorities with grotesquely posed remains (I did this as a Tzimisce once: fleshcraft is WAY evil, used "properly"). Play a corporate CEO who puts profits over the health and welfare of even his own descendants: the worst and most damned evil on OUR planet, you ask me.

As the first responder said above, you must define evil for your game and characters, and then decide where the veils go up and when the action stays "on-screen." Then stick to your guns and hold on; it's almost always a bumpy ride. Make sure your group's social contract is solid and that they take breaks when it's too intense, and that they can all drop character instantly.

Oh! And you probably want to come up with a safe word, just in case someone thought there would be lines that aren't there. Something unlikely to be said in the fiction and, ideally, silly, like "Rutabaga Soup!" or "Slartibartfast!" As "Hold!" in a LARP, this word means STOP NOW, BE SILENT, DON'T MOVE, and we got some things to sort out....

HTH;
David

[Majidah]

Well, hmm.  It's important to think not just about physical implications of simulated evil acts, but cultural ones as well.  In the previous example, Rape games are popular in Japan, a place with a low incidence of the crime.  However, there has yet to be a women's lib movement in Japan, and there are far fewer women in positions of power in say, the bussiness sector than there are in the USA, which has a higher incidence of rape, and less cultural aceptance of discussion of the issue of rape.  It's tempting to say that the cultural impact of negative images reaches only so far as the direct recreation of those images (so as long as kids who play GTA never throw a grenade under an ambulance, the game has had no impact), but this isn't accurate.  I think however it is probably better to look upon entertainment as a form of media, wherein the cultural has created the media from things that were already there, impulse to violence, marginalization of women, and not that the codification of negative images in the media will lead to an increase of what the authors are simply describing.

But that is neither here nor, there! we like RPGs and want to play evil folks!

Unfortuantely, our concept of what evil is in games/movies/comics etc. is either farcial (I want to blow up the world! ) or overblown (I want to blow up the world!, cmon guys I'm serious!), and going to be limited to such.  Really good, sinister evil is hard because it requires motive that--wait for it--is not in itself, easily recognized as evil.  mothlos pointed this out before with good examples.  The Zealot/Soldier/Maniac do not think they are working for evil, they are just too dedicated/loyal/uncomprehending to see that their actions are hurtful.  This seems somehow not evil, because it doesn't grab us with a big symbolic evil that we're accustomed to reacting to, but that is precisely what makes it so freakin evil! Obvious stuff gets stopped, subtle stuff gets ignored until it's committed horrific acts.  The interesting game is one where players made all the right choices, did all the best things, but the outcome of their activities is horribly dark.  They saved stolen puppies from a burning house, and returned them to the rightful owner, only to find that he is playing kpfs. 

[fantang7]

I've taken two basic paths with having "evil" PCs in games.  The first was  having the PCs be evil in humorous or melodramatic ways.  They are villains like those portrayed in action movies - cackling, finger-steepling, mustache-twisting, evil-empire building types.  This worked well in D&D 3.5, where there's a little bit of the absurd built in and there's an overall Evil you can sort of align yourself with.  It also lets you lampoon conventions of the Fantasy genre and turn the usual assumptions on their heads, which is a lot of fun.

The second was to have the PCs be characters with complex drives and personalities who were simply evil compared to the societal norm.  This was very enjoyable in Vampire: the Masquerade, where a lot of the game deals with moral degeneration, but if you let go entirely you'll fall to the Beast and become unplayable.  This meant that characters could be 'evil' but not beyond a certain extreme.  These were also much more challenging games to run and to play in because you're still playing conflicted, complex characters, and its hard to be that immersive and continue to do terrible things.  One aspect I really appreciated was not presenting evil as funny or light-hearted but really dealing with consequences of what the PCs do.

So it depends on what kind of game the group wants, really, but playing evil can really be fun.  The limits have to be more clear, however, in a game like this, because the discomfort level can escalate very, very quickly.  There should be some off-limits topics (rape is a good example) even in a truly depraved game unless everyone agrees its ok, and even then you should check up with the players every few sessions to make sure things aren't getting out of hand.

[jackson_tegu]

this feels like a really important discussion to have, and i've gotten some things to chew over while reading other posts.

1.something that has not been touched on is the fact that rape is not just one thing. certainly, there is a violent assault on a non-consenting individual. but also there are many grey levels of consent between sexual partners, the we-had-sex-yesterday-and-twice-last-week-so-you-will-have-sex-with-me-now scenario; i believe that a person can rape their spouse, yes. influencing, convincing, cajoling, sweet-talking, pressuring, blackmailing, et cetera; social manipulation. date rape, many levels there. rape in which "the attacked" person doesn't realize until later that they weren't really consenting. they had been convinced. fucked up, yes. this is not taken from my actual play, but from conversations with my friends about their experiences.

2. i'll admit i don't know the statistics currently in vogue, but i believe it's reckoned that somewhere around one in four women (in n. america?) has been sexually assaulted physically in some way. some way that they have found deeply upsetting, so not an in-appropriate pat on the behind in the supermarket. talking to my friends and folks i've met, this number seems to be really low. this is obviously tallying reported incidents, and most of my friends haven't reported their incidents, as that... well... let us say that justice does not have a history of being served in such instances.
speaking personally, i would have a real difficulty role playing a character who decides to rape someone due to the stories i've heard about my friends' experiences. i think i would have a hard time not thinking about my friends' faces while role playing that scene, or even just having that in my character's back story.

3. i too love playing GTA. that game is an excellent parallel to this thread, it provides and invaluable communal shared experience to draw from. a point i'd like to make which runs for both the game and the situation we're describing is --- whenever we're doing one thing, we're not doing other things.
every time i don't practice the drums, i don't get better, but i also get (just a little bit) worse.
have you studied other languages?
if so, and if you've then lived in a context where that language is not used, i imagine your experience has been similar to mine; you begin to forget it.
when we portray fucked up situations, we are not portraying healthy situations. (uh, "duh", jackson)... but we're also (just a little bit) forgetting those healthy ways of interacting. we're not practicing doing things which are conducive to us growing as people, conducive to us becoming more able to interact with one another respectfully and openly.
if you took this to an extreme, if ALL WE EVER DID was pretend fucked up things, then our lives would be a big mess, right? so, i'm suggesting that GTA and these scenarios DO de-sensitize us, DO affect us in negative ways, but, by and large, that it is by such a marginal amount that we consider it permissable.
i mean, when i began playing rpgs, killing people made me feel weird. a few months after, i joined a group which had been playing for years, who started off feeling weird when they killed people. by this point, they were breaking NPCs limbs in order to kidnap them more easily (less struggle), then threading barbed wire through their nasal cavities to... i don't even know why. it was ridiculous, i was horrified. ...but now i can conceive of that without wincing, it's the law of escalation. "and now more is needed to realize the same result".

3 1/2. two friends of mine were talking. the first: "i was watching this video on youtube, there was a building on fire and people were jumping to their deaths instead of dying in the flames. a group on the ground had a tarp and they were trying to co-ordinate their efforts with the people jumping, trying to save them, but they kept missing, and the people would fall to the ground, which made it more difficult for the folks with the tarp."
second friend "why would you put yourself through that?"

4.art is really important. and understanding other people's motivations is really important, not from an angle so that you might control them, but so that you might interact with them positively and thus promote happiness for you both.
i don't want to be dictatorial at all, of course people will do what they want in their rp games - i think folks who want to rp rape situations or incorporate those scenes into their games would be well advised, for all of our sakes, to treat the subject sensitively and "realisticly"... i suppose i mean, "with the emotional rammifications such situations are loaded with, and the damage to all parties which is inherent to the concept".
for me, that is also where the art would become valid, would become "Art". the exploration of a subject material with honesty.

5. rape vs. murder. hmmm. when i was younger, i had a concept of rape being the worst thing you can do to a person. i think that this has changed now. rape is similar to any situation in which one person makes decisions for another person who doesn't consent to it. think of an imaginary land which has a government with strange laws. an individual breaks a fairly nonsensical law, and the goverment of that imaginary land imprisons the individual against their will, controling their physical freedom. i think rape is similar to this, it narrows the experiances that one can have afterwards; specifically making future lovemaking with a chosen partner more challenging and complicated (already a sensitive time, now compounded by feelings brought on by the memory of the attack), trust issues surrounding a certain demographic, aversion to things mentally connected to the assault or imagined future assaults (walking alone at night, pick up trucks, that part of town, smell of popcorn, an accent, etc)...
i have had two experiences which i would group into this catagory. neither i would consider as extreme an example as "rape". (A). i was beaten up quite badly along with some friends of mine, the aversions to walking at night and pick up trucks are from my experiance. (B) my heart was broken by a lover who reneged on our relationship-agreement. i have had difficulties with trust and certain demographics of people since then, which i am working towards dissipating.
though people have modified my future range of experiances, they have not taken away my ability to have experiances.
since i would rather have experiances than not, since i would rather live than die (even if i am to be raped, though i certainly hope i won't be), i think that murder > rape. or " is worse than".

6. i don't see a clear line dividing "my rp life" and "my real life". for clarity: there is a very, very clear line between the real world that i physically inhabit and the ficticious worlds that i and my friends make up while playing. but the things that i do in my head and in my story while role-playing really do affect my outlook and whole personal experiance of living. i don't think it's safe to hide behind the "it's only a game" argument, and i use the term hide because i think we're hiding the effects these games have on us from ourselves.

7. i am very interested in understanding humans. we're fascinating. many of the game models i make up involve characters who are motivated by non-socially-acceptable things, and one in which the players play "villains" would be very interesting. without camp, without cheese, just people who are really despicable. i think that it would be difficult to not make it tired, as David was saying above; perhaps the answer would be in their motivations; in situations similar to the one he described, my co-players were bored and trying to out-gross each other. a system to discourage that, to instead focus on paths dark and repulsive to our vaguely-properly-socialized selves... interesting to consider.
fantang7 and Majidah have just delineated this much better than i am doing... i guess i'm just ruminating on rewards systems for being evil which don't reward specific Acts, but are more... holistic in their rewarding of evil. ...or of rewarding the pursuit of motivations that mothlos was talking about. and how would this game even be set up, if that's the goal? as long as it dosen't include an encyclopedia of hp totals for suburbanites, email me your finished pdf and i'll review it before i continue procrastinating on all the half-finished game models i'm ignoring. smirp.

INCONCLUSION -
um... thank you for reading my essay... not what i thought i'd be doing with the last three and a quarter hours... but pretty good... i'm really, really glad to talk about these subjects. thanks so much to everyone who posted, and to USRPG for starting it off. fuck. i feel all cathartic now, which is pretty weird after so much darkness. or... pretty understandable?
keep crashing cars in video games,
jackson

[northerain]

I've been in alot of games where co-players and me have been ''evil''. Usually not all of us at the same time, which would be idiotic. But in games like Vampire: DA it's sometimes easy to become evil. I've played some despicable characters(one was a Malkavian), but I thought it was an interesting game. I was this horrible, horrible person(vampire) but I didn't show it off or waste precious game time by torturing or killing innocents or whatever. I kept it in the background and presented my horrible acts as saintly(I believed I was the ''hand of god'')even going as far as to lie to myself about my actions.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, portraying evil realistically is about playing characters that can justify to themselves why they're doing what they're doing. Although many criminals(they're considered evil aren't they?) commit crimes with no apparent reason in sight, it's terribly unrealistic when roleplaying.