The "problem" with villain characters is a very subtle one.
Think about any book, movie or television show. How often do villains realistically appear in favor of heroes? Maybe one or two scenes -- establishing they've got things going on and such -- but for the most part villains are effective and scary because you don't know what they've got in their hand. You don't see them and you have those moments of confrontation.
The difficulty comes in RP when your villains are... right down the street. Like, over there. You can visit them. Too often it's either hard to take them seriously because they're not unknowable... they're just some guys. In which case they kinda end up becoming "sort of mean rivals" rather than villains. Or they're honestly evil in which case people are kind of holding an idiot ball for how they interact. Which is to say; if you know someone is legitimately evil and acting against you and you have any sort of proof behind this... why wouldn't you tell an authority to really look into it?
Like Kev says, obviously, I don't think people should be forced to just play nice. Koren is an egomaniac with enough personal issues that she might be asked to pilot an EVA, but villain is a very delicate line to balance how you play.
Think about any book, movie or television show. How often do villains realistically appear in favor of heroes? Maybe one or two scenes -- establishing they've got things going on and such -- but for the most part villains are effective and scary because you don't know what they've got in their hand. You don't see them and you have those moments of confrontation.
The difficulty comes in RP when your villains are... right down the street. Like, over there. You can visit them. Too often it's either hard to take them seriously because they're not unknowable... they're just some guys. In which case they kinda end up becoming "sort of mean rivals" rather than villains. Or they're honestly evil in which case people are kind of holding an idiot ball for how they interact. Which is to say; if you know someone is legitimately evil and acting against you and you have any sort of proof behind this... why wouldn't you tell an authority to really look into it?
Like Kev says, obviously, I don't think people should be forced to just play nice. Koren is an egomaniac with enough personal issues that she might be asked to pilot an EVA, but villain is a very delicate line to balance how you play.
