(06-11-2014, 12:18 PM)Warren Castille Wrote: Villain types are generally outlaws, and as such wouldn't really be welcome in the more normal parts of the game's population. I'm sure there's room for a magnificent bastard Lex Luthor-type who's just too rich and socially/politically powerful to be touched by normal law enforcement but most bad guys I've seen are all Empire/Mwahaha-moustache-twirling-for-the-evulz type one-dimensionals that only exist to serve as a boss at the end of an arc.^ ^ This more or less. It's not as tricky RPing out in the open where do-gooders might kick your face in if your character is careful and is not doing blatantly not-good things. RP threads and other more private and/or controlled means can do wonders for when you're actually getting down to bad business.
I feel villains benefit from operating in the shadows. Blog posts and IC forum posts help give them a presence, but it's difficult to do in game just on account of them being The Bad Guy. They have a hard time hanging out in game unless they're being bad guys, and even then it's rough because I find it hard to believe anybody's going to let their villain get picked off in a random open-RP that the Heroes happen to stumble upon.
Feel free to disregard since I'm a boring do-gooder anyway, but I think the best way to have a villain in-game is to not have them be in-game until the plot demands it.
Alternatively someone could shape a mountain into a skull and have the bad guys hang out in there. I think us light-aligned folks would be willing to give concede that.
Being able to plot things out with the people involved helps a lot, too, IMO, so the goodies and baddies alike can have some reasonable pacing for story developments. And twist!!