MUSHy Musings

In games with feature characters (possibly even only feature characters) like MUSHes based on comic books, the question of how to handle villains comes up. There are a few possible answers to this:

1. Players cannot play villains.
2. Players can play heroes and villains alike.
3. Players can play villains only if they show a knack for generating RP with their characters; villains are “major PCs”, in effect, and sort of like mini-staff.
4. ... and a host of thousands.

I'm going to touch on each of the first three and explain both the virtues and the flaws of each before proposing a system which might fix up the problems.

No player villains

This is a solution I've seen in several games and it has some virtues, to wit:

• All villains are open to staff and player plots.
• It avoids a lot of the OOC drama that tends to surround player vs. player gaming, especially when you have heroes who refuse to lose to villains in a scene or villains who do likewise. (This is discussed at length in a previous blog entry.)

Of course these virtues come paired with some problems:

• What's a 'villain'? Is the Punisher a villain? Emma Frost? Eric Killmonger? From various perspectives literally every character in comics can be taken as a villain. This is a difficult concept to define in a way that doesn't come across as arbitrary and whimsical: “Yes, we'll allow Emma Frost, but not Satana.” I've seen battles erupt over this.
• It's hard to tell coherent stories when you run a plot for ten sessions that has Dr. Doom on the moon building a secret base to control the world MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! and in the middle of it someone has a teenaged runaway punk him and one-hit knock him out in the middle of another plan to control the world MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA! (That mysteriously only lasts for one scene.)

The solution isn't a bad one, but it comes with some flaws that players and/or staff may consider to be showstoppers.

Anything goes

This is also a solution I've seen in several games and, as before, it has virtues and flaws:

• First, playing villains can be great fun for everybody, villain and hero alike, (if you do it right).
• It spreads RP around the player base since villains' players need to be involved when plots involving them come up. This permits for outside input in plots and stories that can lead to richer outcomes.

But, as always, there are some flaws to consider:

• Not everybody plays villains correctly. And a badly-played villain is no joy at all.
• A villain that is a PC is a villain that can't be used in scenes run by other players. The more villain PCs you have, the fewer options people have to run plots of their own with NPCed villains.
• Player vs. player hostility is almost guaranteed to erupt in games that have villains and heroes, especially when you have heroes who don't know that their job is to initially lose to villains, or villains who don't know their job of losing in the end.
• In consent-based games in particular, problems erupt. Like if a team of good guys is building up (hasn't even been made yet!) and a villain is already wanting to join the team incognito to mess with it from within: where's the consent boundary here? Around the team's leader(s)? Around all the members? How do you handle a situation where some team players would like to get some time to develop a team dynamic before villains fuck with them? It can get very messy.

As with the first solution, this solution isn't a bad one. It's just one that requires staff to be aware in advance of these problems and be ready to deal with them. There is, however, one more problem with it.

Villain:Hero Ratio

It is typical in comics for major villains to be few and far between. (There are minor villains aplenty, naturally: just look at Gotham! But major villains are sparse and spartan.) The problem is that when villain PCs are allowed, people tend to reach for, say, Loki instead of Condiment King. And this leads to ridiculous situations like having a 1:3 ratio of villains to heroes, and almost all the villains are top-tier with almost none at the Condiment King level.

Think about this. Really think about this. A villain like Loki is a threat to all of Asgard in Marvel. He's powerful enough that he's a concern to Odin, Thor, Sif, Brunnhilde, Heimdal, The Warriors Three, Frejya, ... you get the drift. Yet in most games that have free-for-all villainry, you've got a Loki, and an Amora, and a Hela, and the various big-name dark elves and giants and .... often outnumbering the people playing heroic Asgardians by a wide margin!

It takes careful management and monitoring of villain PCs in such games to make them not absolutely, 100% dominant in play, but such monitoring is rarely done.

Again it's all manageable, but you have to realize this problem before the problem destroys your game.

Semi-staffed villains

I've seen this at only one game. In it, there were a few rules:

1. You had to have a proven track record of being an active player before you could app a villain.
2. Villain PCs were monitored fairly closely by staff in how they behaved both OOC and IC.
3. Villain PCs were treated like “junior staff” in that they were to work together with hero PCs (especially “Major PCs”) to come up with plots for other players.

And it goes without saying that failing to abide by these rules had you lose the villain character in no time flat.

This has a few very impressive virtues:

• It reduced the number of villain PCs so that villains could still be emitted in player plots without worry.
• It ensured villains were active in the game and spreading RP around.
• It ensured villains were played according to the community standards of the game (not necessarily of each player, but of the staff in gestalt at least).
• It made clear to the villain players that they were there in service to the enjoyment of their fellow players, not their egos.

It also has a few flaws:

• The strong requirements to field a villain PC can turn away good players of villains.
• The villain PCs who do exist can slow down plots because of scheduling conflicts with people who want to have them in their stories.
• Perceptions (and let's be honest: realities) of favouritism erupt in any MUSH when special classes of character (“Major PCs, Villain PCs, etc.”) show up with exclusive qualities.

Further, while it gives good, on the whole, PC villains, NPC villains are still a wild west of inconsistent (and oft-incoherent) characterizations and locations and actions. (Which, in a comic book game, at the very least, is entirely on-point so not necessarily a problem!)

A modest proposal

So here's my proposed system. Set up a “villain registry” of sorts. Any time a player doing any kind of public scene (especially plot- or event-related) wishes to use a villain, the villain registry is consulted. This can lead to three cases:

1. The villain is not in the registry.
2. The villain is in the registry but flagged as “available”.
3. The villain is in the registry but flagged as “in use”.

In the first and second case, the villain is placed in the registry if needed and flagged as “in use” with a date. That villain is now unavailable for others' uses while that reservation is in place. If necessary that villain could even have a character sheet built for it and be logged in as an ersatz-PC for the plot's runner (or trusted associate) over that period of reservation. When, finally, the villain's role is completed, the villain is flagged as “available”.

Which leads to the third case. If a villain is “in use”, nobody else can use said villain in any public scene. (What people do in private scenes that don't get shared as game canon is irrelevant.) If someone wants to reserve a villain that's “in use”, they can put a hold on it. When that villain is made available, anybody with outstanding holds gets next crack in a first-come-first-serve basis.

The villain registry, especially if paired with actual generated character bits, allows for organized access to villains without the issues of dealing with villain PCs and the inevitable blocking off of stories that happens when you have them. Some scenes and stories might get delayed but it's better than eliminating them entirely.

But ...

There's a distinct flaw with such a system that impacts the game's outliers in a big way: it favours people who are active at the game's most active periods. If, for example, the X-Men players latch onto Magneto for a plot that runs for six months, that means Magneto can't be used in any plot anywhere else, like let's say some off-hours New Mutants types. The Magneto character is effectively a villain PC for the X-Men. This implies that said reservations must be time-limited. And that time can't be very long. Two weeks, say. If you can't, because of scheduling problems or whatever, finish with your Magneto-driven plot in two weeks ... well, tough. Yes, it's no fun that it got suspended or even cancelled, but, bluntly, your problems scheduling and running a plot doesn't mean everybody else has to do without. Suspend your plot and put a hold on the villain when it's time to continue it. Let others have a crack.

(Perhaps, too, that two-week time limit will actually motivate people to move scenes along instead of pausing them endlessly after two poses.)

This system can be mixed with allowing villain PCs, but I would think it interacts very poorly with free-for-all villain PCs. (It might work OK with the more controlled villain PC option.) In the end, however, I think it might just be best to leave villains as a lending library: checked out for limited periods, but must be returned for the use of others with a hard deadline.