Darkness and Light

[ArmachiA]

Alas, even that is subjective. Look at how many different branches of Christianity there is because of a different belief system.

 

Catholics believe divorce is a sin

 

Pentecostals believe that listening to secular radio is a sin.

 

Mormonism once thought polygamy was okay.

 

Jehovah's Witness's don't celebrate birthday's as it puts you before Jesus.

 

Amish don't use any new technology as it's ALL a sin.

 

Etc Etc

[Trizzip]

Now that I think about it' date=' was there any FF villains who weren't mentally hilarious?[/quote']

 

For sure, lol. Kefka had the mentally hilarious laughter to boot......and he dressed like an acrobat from Cirque du Soleil

[DAISHI]

Alas, even that is subjective. Look at how many different branches of Christianity there is because of a different belief system.

 

Catholics believe divorce is a sin

 

Pentecostals believe that listening to secular radio is a sin.

 

Mormonism once thought polygamy was okay.

 

Jehovah's Witness's don't celebrate birthday's as it puts you before Jesus.

 

Amish don't use any new technology as it's ALL a sin.

 

Etc Etc

 

It's subjective to the human, it's not subjective to the divine. What man does is try to meet the divine to the best of his ability, but that doesn't mean the divine standard changes.

[ArmachiA]

But we don't know what God wants so everyone can bend it to their will. Until he comes down and says "This is how it is." Morality will always be subjective.

 

Even in the bible there's a passage that says something to the effect of "The rules of man are also the rules of Heaven." which means anything we change, Heaven adapts. The world is not black and white, as God has proven by giving us free will.

 

It's cool that your religious, but remember there are may who are decidedly not and their morals come from just knowing what's right and what's wrong.

[DAISHI]

Um, didn't I say from the start my worldview was different?

[DAISHI]

And I'm not religious I just have a certain view that there are absolute rights and wrongs. I didn't try to prescribe what those were. It's not a fair shake to talk about how uncertain morality is and then to suggest I shouldn't talk about absolute moralities.

[ArmachiA]

 

Seemed relevant :lol:

[Shamadconde]

:lol: I would say so.

[Ellion Goto]

Don't think you're being called absolutely wrong here (least I'm not; apologize if it seems so) I just disagree.

 

I'm reminded of a very comical skit about this though from comedian Eddie Izzard. Funny as hell.

 

P.S. - Ah yea.. there it is... hahahahahahaha.

[Seraphine Felstar]

Let me use the main "villain" of my story and current Table-top game as an example. Apparently, he's become so famous as a character within our table top games, his reputation has spread to other games that I'm not even a part of as an awesome character/villain. Many people vehemently portray him as the main NPC hero of the story, and this is OOCly.

 

I play in the tabletop game Zane is talking about and honestly this is the only villain I have ever enjoyed playing against. At one point in the game, right before he was revealed to the world as the bad guy, my character was put against him in a non-lethal tournament. Although there was no way my character could have physically bested him, she wrote down on a piece of paper exactly how someone could beat him. When their match began, she made a speech stating that "X" was powerful and had the makings of a great leader. She built him up as someone the people should follow and respect, quietly made a comment about how he should endeavor to deserve such a position, and then gave him the note describing the weakness in his fighting style (which I came up with all on my own OOC and impressed everyone with the tactic. Points for me ^^).

 

He took the note, read it with a straight face, accepted the praise from the crowd, complimented my character, and left the tournament arena... then put her on the list of people he needed to get rid of.

 

I know that was a lot to read, but this scene was simply fun to do. I had an enjoyable time figuring out the strategy, a great time roleplaying this huge speech with just a hint of a politely worded threat at the end, and watching OOC everyone's reaction to the scene. It made it fun to be a good guy (girl) for once.

 

Conversely I have a friend in the same game who god-mods, meta-games, pushes every single rule and tries to make his character infallible. A year ago my character won against his and he still goes on about it. Not only that but after that event all his characters disliked mine because he decided they got together and talked about it (some of those characters didn't even like each other beforehand). His character is just simply not fun to play against and lately he's mostly been playing a storyline on his own because no one wants to interact with him IC.

 

Sorry, this turned out way longer then it should have ^^;; My whole point is that a good villain should be someone fun to play against and should be the kind of person OOC that everyone loves to hate.

[FF14-Tomcat]

Umm, guys, I'm sorry to break the intellectual discussion and all, but I just have a simple question.

 

How exactly do the villains play out their villainy in game? For example, the mass serial killer- does he literally commit MPK (terms of FFXI) or is the killing done by story-telling and implication?

 

How about stealing? Does the villain literally 'steal' loot or something like that?

 

 

I am a little confused as to how this is done. Sorry for the newbie questions :?

[Hiname]

That depends on the kind of villainy again. If the villain is, by all means, a common mass-murderer.. Its either using NPCs or fictional characters in storytelling.. or the murdering of another character after a long and thorough ooc-conversation with the other side.

As long its not "Hey dude, mind if I kill you ic for my char-development?" some things should be able to figgured out.

 

I strongly recommand not basing your villany on game mechanics, that will SO turn out badly.

[Zietes]

I want to thank everyone that helped contribute to this thread. Everything you all said was an inspiration to me and helped quite alot in the creation of my character. I have just finished his prologue which explains alot about him and what has happened during his life. It also gives the first signs of his 'goals', be they evil or good is up for interpretation. As many of you have said, there is no real definition of good or evil, just what one believes to be correct.

 

I also have a feeling I'm going to really enjoy playing this character. In the end actually I believe I'll be more sad than anything because of his reasoning behind his intentions. It's truly a character which I think others will connect with.

 

As I stated the Prologue is done, and I'm running it over with Kat in order to put any finishing touches on it. Once it is done I will post it on the forums for further criticism and just overall thoughts on the character. I really want to get it right so you all can have a great IC character to RP with, and so that I myself can enjoy RPing said character. So once again thank you all for your help, and I hope you all take a look at the Prologue.

[Eva]

How exactly do the villains play out their villainy in game? For example, the mass serial killer- does he literally commit MPK (terms of FFXI) or is the killing done by story-telling and implication?

 

How about stealing? Does the villain literally 'steal' loot or something like that?

 

I am a little confused as to how this is done. Sorry for the newbie questions

Hopefully tactfully. But usually it's best done through word-of-mouth or storyline post, at least from my own experiences. Granted there were times in FF11 when ballista matches were scheduled to coincide with RP - in the instance I'm thinking of it coincided with something which was already predetermined - I'm lookin' at you Tyriont (Rathium). It worked out okay, but it was never really the norm.

 

I strongly recommand not basing your villany on game mechanics' date=' that will SO turn out badly.[/quote']

For the most part, I agree with this. I can't speak too much to other MMO's, but FFXI/XIV seem to be pretty limited as far as PvP-type interactions go. If you tell a few people that you murdered some guards and request (OOCly) that they pass this along over /ls or some other medium, that's one way. It can be emoted, if the situation calls for it - and particularly if the linkpearls are treated as an audiovisual device rather than just audio (which we did in Crystalline to make RPing considerably easier).

 

Best thing you can probably do is write a post on your guild's forums or in the Storyline forums here at the RPC (or both!) and spell out what happened, making an OOC remark somewhere at the beginning or the end that the post may be common knowledge if it took place in a public location. Again, be careful - the more moral members of the community might come after you, particularly if your crime was a particularly heinous one.

[FF14-Tomcat]

@Hiname & Eva

 

Oh. Thanks for clarifying that for me. I was of the impression that a RP has to be acted out in game to suit a storyline- thought it was heavily a real-time playing out of a character's experiences. Kinda made me worried for a moment at what I was getting myself into.

 

I still have a lot of knowledge gaps left to plug about RP Hopefully I don't annoy all of you by my questions.

[Tyriont]

Hopefully tactfully. But usually it's best done through word-of-mouth or storyline post, at least from my own experiences. Granted there were times in FF11 when ballista matches were scheduled to coincide with RP - in the instance I'm thinking of it coincided with something which was already predetermined - I'm lookin' at you Tyriont (Rathium). It worked out okay, but it was never really the norm.

 

Correct. To give a little background here - my character was involved in a long-going feud with another, Rathium. For reasons I can't really recall, Rathium had a feud with Tyriont that had escalated to levels that pushed Ty over the edge. He'd used a friend of Ty's to betray him (I think some type of amnesia was involved) and had assaulted the woman he was involved with at the time, driving stakes through her hands. Rathium had decided he wanted to quit and this was the plotline that would kill off his character - he wanted to go out with a bang and so wanted to do it in a ballista match - the outcome, as Eva said, was predetermined but nevertheless proved why this doesn't work. At the time I was playing SAM, Rathium was MNK. If I remember right, this was before the Hasso/Seigan JAs were added to the game...and anyone who took part in Ballista knows that one on one, barring MASSIVE gear differences there simply was no way a SAM would come out on top in that match-up. I wound up taking him down a few times, but by the end the score count would have wound up with Ty getting his arse whupped. Had I been playing something like BRD it would have been even worse. The only way we were able to wrap it up with Ty winning and killing Rathium was because we decided the outcome beforehand.

 

That said, in-game mechanics can be used to add extra drama to a scene quite nicely. It takes a lot of planning though. Here's an example I've seen used outside of FFXI - a key NPC has called a group of characters out to a meeting spot in order to give them some vital information. Unknown to the characters, prior to the meeting the player who had created this NPC as an alt had taken them out and gotten them beaten up by mobs to the point where they only had a few HP left. Halfway through his speech, a villain character who had managed to get close without being noticed by the other players shot the NPC character, killing him. The impact of playing the event out that way was far more dramatic than if it had simply been emoted - seeing the NPC collapse dead in front of them really drove the event home.

 

But as said, that's very much pre-scripted and can be tricky to pull off.

[Zietes]

Hey guys, my character's prologue is now complete and I would love to hear all of your feedback on it. Now remember, all you read there is purely OOC so when the game comes out please do not use any of it as preknown knowledge. I will say that as I planned my character is indeed going to be some sort of 'villain' but how he will do this or what he is trying to achieve is up for interpretation. I know it of course but for those that may not figure it out by the end of the prologue, I don't wanna ruin it.

 

All comments are welcome and you can make them straight on that post, it's fine by me. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

 

::Edit::

I posted it in the wrong section so I had to repost it. Sorry

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=573

[Eva]

This is excellent!! You definitely have a talent for writing, and I have no doubt this will make a great seed from which a 'darker-shades-of-gray' type will emerge. Honestly, I can't wait to read more entries!

:approve:

 

I especially love your opening sentence:

My mother always told me that everything happens for a reason. My sister always told me that mother was crazy, as to my father....well he spent too much time out of the house to tell me anything.

 

Another follower of Nymeia?

[Zietes]

I'm not entirely sure yet but I'm definitely considering her for my deity. And I'm very happy that you enjoyed it! I was a bit scared at first because I thought it'd sound to cliche. So I put a bit of a spin on the parents portion even though one died in the siege. As for the father...I have other plans for him. Also I do have to give some credit to Kashemia as she helped me to edit the story alot. Also her fiance helped me with coming up with a better ending than my original one.

 

I plan to release another entry in the journal later tonight, so have an eye out for it. It'll talk about what he's currently doing and searching for as the present day begins. (FFXIV release )

[Faust]

I haven't read the entire thread yet so pardon me if I reiterate something.

 

I think it's worth noting that realism is not only contextual, but it isn't the first and only rule of RP. For example, while it might not be "realistic" for a person in our world to group up with a self-professed villain, or just generally dickish character, we have to remember that the characters we're playing aren't people in our world. And if you simply watch the CSs in FFXI, or any of the FF's, you'll find several if not numerous instances where the protagonists and various neutral characters DON'T act in ways that are realistic to us. That doesn't make them less entertaining though! Even grossly absurd characters can still be compelling if done tastefully.

 

So I would encourage RPer's of non-villainous characters to not be afraid to make their character unafraid of something that might by all rights be worth fear. There are as many motivations for teaming up with a villain as there are for being a villain. Point being, if you want the spice that comes with having villains in your RP, be flexible enough to actually encourage that kind of RP. Same goes with the "lone wolves" and jerk types-- whether because your objective requires their help, or your character is curious to understand them, or you simply want to keep an eye on them, there are plenty of reasons to keep villains close at hand and active in the RP.