I would say for villains, of course first seek the permission of other players when it comes to some of your general jackassery.
But I have found subtlety to be my best tool on my villain characters. I have 2, Oskar and Lenu, Oskar is your honest-Iago and Lenu, I don't even know if she's a villain yet.
For a bit of backstory with Oskar. My characters Steinn and X'hayu are defectors from the Garlean Empire, Steinn who's now an entrepreneur responsible for a larger number of Ala Mhigan refugees and X'hayu who, after the guilt of her crimes has sought a selfless goal of essentially helping those in need. It has earned her a place among the Sultansworn. The two essentially have knocked their head together to leak Garlean military tactics and are backing the Ala Mhigan resistance.
However, in their Garlean days, Steinn and X'hayu were responsible for dealing with Ala Mhigan insurgents and it wasn't pretty. They murdered Oskar's family in cold blood. So he's blinded by hate and only wants revenge. Steinn and X'hayu's secrets were protected by our pirate crew and we work closely with them and they're essentially under our protection. Oskar basically allowed himself become a part of the furniture as an Ala Mhigan employee. This meant he had one valuable asset. Information.
So with that backstory, I had a motive and a means of him manipulating things to his favour. So I had to work him into one of our FC's arcs. It took a while for Oskar to actually have a presence. Instead of, "hey, here's a villain", I took things in stages. The first stage was: have Garleans discover X'hayu. So she was hidden by our crew. We managed to kill off the trail of breadcrumbs leading to X'hayu so she could walk free.
The second stage was to have Steinn blackmailed into turning himself over to the Garlean Empire. No names were mentioned, just an Ala Mhigan hinted. By this point Oskar had shown his face to the crew, but his true nature was unknown. We as a crew investigated what blackmail they had over Steinn. The Garlean Empire was in possession of a list with all the names of locations of everybody involved with our crew's operations. This meant we had to find a means of retrieving that list. Once recovered, the contents of the list was enough to shake people up. But one location was circled - where the Captain's family lived. They were assassinated. Once people knew it was this guy Oskar, he was instantly hated.
After Saefinn captured him and after what a crew mate did to him, Oskar has been in hiding, his face resurfacing once in a while to crew unease. But his RP essentially worked because I've managed to work his motive into why he would target people in our group and rather than being overly obvious or to be an over-the-top Disney like villain, his actions and manipulation speak more and I don't have to have long periods of playing on him.
Which leads me onto Lenu. I barely roleplay her, when I do roleplay her, it's for short periods of time. My approach to her is "less is more", she saved Saefinn's life, she seems to appear at certain points in different arcs and seems like quite a reasonable character with selfless aims. But she has left random and vague notes, like "you debt must be settled, life for a life" and she turns up at points unannounced. With a more recent issue, we've had somebody kidnapped, and after a moment of almost screwing things up. She just walked into our house and saw 2 members of the FC and said "tell your Captain, his debt has been paid, life for a life." Each time she appears, things are very ambiguous and to add, I've made her a White Mage, which in itself is one hell of a taboo unless you're a Padjal. Everything about her is merely implied and ambiguous, I'm letting people fill in the gaps. When I'm ready, I will reveal her true nature, but I'd rather just keep placing seeds into people's heads when she is about in hope that she unnerves people.
I find with my villains they need to seemingly have a big impact, but not be too obvious and announce themselves. To use a bit of subtlety and manipulation. I like Iago as a villain, though Othello bored me as a whole, but it worked well.
But I have found subtlety to be my best tool on my villain characters. I have 2, Oskar and Lenu, Oskar is your honest-Iago and Lenu, I don't even know if she's a villain yet.
For a bit of backstory with Oskar. My characters Steinn and X'hayu are defectors from the Garlean Empire, Steinn who's now an entrepreneur responsible for a larger number of Ala Mhigan refugees and X'hayu who, after the guilt of her crimes has sought a selfless goal of essentially helping those in need. It has earned her a place among the Sultansworn. The two essentially have knocked their head together to leak Garlean military tactics and are backing the Ala Mhigan resistance.
However, in their Garlean days, Steinn and X'hayu were responsible for dealing with Ala Mhigan insurgents and it wasn't pretty. They murdered Oskar's family in cold blood. So he's blinded by hate and only wants revenge. Steinn and X'hayu's secrets were protected by our pirate crew and we work closely with them and they're essentially under our protection. Oskar basically allowed himself become a part of the furniture as an Ala Mhigan employee. This meant he had one valuable asset. Information.
So with that backstory, I had a motive and a means of him manipulating things to his favour. So I had to work him into one of our FC's arcs. It took a while for Oskar to actually have a presence. Instead of, "hey, here's a villain", I took things in stages. The first stage was: have Garleans discover X'hayu. So she was hidden by our crew. We managed to kill off the trail of breadcrumbs leading to X'hayu so she could walk free.
The second stage was to have Steinn blackmailed into turning himself over to the Garlean Empire. No names were mentioned, just an Ala Mhigan hinted. By this point Oskar had shown his face to the crew, but his true nature was unknown. We as a crew investigated what blackmail they had over Steinn. The Garlean Empire was in possession of a list with all the names of locations of everybody involved with our crew's operations. This meant we had to find a means of retrieving that list. Once recovered, the contents of the list was enough to shake people up. But one location was circled - where the Captain's family lived. They were assassinated. Once people knew it was this guy Oskar, he was instantly hated.
After Saefinn captured him and after what a crew mate did to him, Oskar has been in hiding, his face resurfacing once in a while to crew unease. But his RP essentially worked because I've managed to work his motive into why he would target people in our group and rather than being overly obvious or to be an over-the-top Disney like villain, his actions and manipulation speak more and I don't have to have long periods of playing on him.
Which leads me onto Lenu. I barely roleplay her, when I do roleplay her, it's for short periods of time. My approach to her is "less is more", she saved Saefinn's life, she seems to appear at certain points in different arcs and seems like quite a reasonable character with selfless aims. But she has left random and vague notes, like "you debt must be settled, life for a life" and she turns up at points unannounced. With a more recent issue, we've had somebody kidnapped, and after a moment of almost screwing things up. She just walked into our house and saw 2 members of the FC and said "tell your Captain, his debt has been paid, life for a life." Each time she appears, things are very ambiguous and to add, I've made her a White Mage, which in itself is one hell of a taboo unless you're a Padjal. Everything about her is merely implied and ambiguous, I'm letting people fill in the gaps. When I'm ready, I will reveal her true nature, but I'd rather just keep placing seeds into people's heads when she is about in hope that she unnerves people.
I find with my villains they need to seemingly have a big impact, but not be too obvious and announce themselves. To use a bit of subtlety and manipulation. I like Iago as a villain, though Othello bored me as a whole, but it worked well.
![[Image: enjin-480381-1364062850526494969-green.png]](http://sigs.enjin.com/sig/enjin-480381-1364062850526494969-green.png)
The Scholar Captain
