I play a lot of characters, and at least a couple of them are amoral/corrupt and easily fall into the antagonist role. I always enjoy playing them, as they add a nice spice and sense of variance in the world.
That aside, I've never had much interest in gathering a 'villain' guild for the sake of itself. I find that they tend to fall apart pretty fast because they often don't have a sustainable infrastructure/motivations. The reason being that they exist for the sole reason of gathering 'evil' characters under one roof so that 'good' guilds have somewhere to ask for antagonists to fight. Thats an entirely OOC reason for those characters to be connected. Not an IC one. And when the OOC needs dictate that the guild can fulfill most random 'evil' requests, its really hard create in-depth, meaningful roleplay for the antagonists; since essentially their being used for npc/bit roles. Its not really a sustainable model. Or at least, I've never seen it successfully pulled off.
Its another thing entirely to create a guild are ICly connected through their own nefarious needs. If they so happen to run afoul of some of the 'good' guilds, then, yay! But it needs to have a solid foundation that is fun, meaningful RP within itself. A solid self-identity, not one thats defined by the OOC need to have villains out in the world.
Part of the challenge is though, that 'evil' characters tend to be very self-serving, and don't often have a desire to work even amongst their own kind outside of what directly benefits them. They often don't trust each other as far they can throw each other, at least at first meeting. Its certainly not impossible to create villainous/antagonist guilds, but their inner-motivations/relationships are often different than their counterparts. I'm not counting Garleans in this particular discussion, as while they are antagonistic towards Eorzea, they are an entire foreign invasion force with somewhat murky lore motivations. As such, I don't really consider them villains, at least not in the classic sense of the word.
That aside, I've never had much interest in gathering a 'villain' guild for the sake of itself. I find that they tend to fall apart pretty fast because they often don't have a sustainable infrastructure/motivations. The reason being that they exist for the sole reason of gathering 'evil' characters under one roof so that 'good' guilds have somewhere to ask for antagonists to fight. Thats an entirely OOC reason for those characters to be connected. Not an IC one. And when the OOC needs dictate that the guild can fulfill most random 'evil' requests, its really hard create in-depth, meaningful roleplay for the antagonists; since essentially their being used for npc/bit roles. Its not really a sustainable model. Or at least, I've never seen it successfully pulled off.
Its another thing entirely to create a guild are ICly connected through their own nefarious needs. If they so happen to run afoul of some of the 'good' guilds, then, yay! But it needs to have a solid foundation that is fun, meaningful RP within itself. A solid self-identity, not one thats defined by the OOC need to have villains out in the world.
Part of the challenge is though, that 'evil' characters tend to be very self-serving, and don't often have a desire to work even amongst their own kind outside of what directly benefits them. They often don't trust each other as far they can throw each other, at least at first meeting. Its certainly not impossible to create villainous/antagonist guilds, but their inner-motivations/relationships are often different than their counterparts. I'm not counting Garleans in this particular discussion, as while they are antagonistic towards Eorzea, they are an entire foreign invasion force with somewhat murky lore motivations. As such, I don't really consider them villains, at least not in the classic sense of the word.
![[Image: 7gJtlcb.png]](http://i.imgur.com/7gJtlcb.png)
