Two types of villain

[BaronOfHell]

After some thought I noticed two types of villains.

1) The Nale-type is a villain who keeps brining the battle to the protagonist(s). Especially the type who wants nothing more than destroy the protagonist(s).

2) The Xykon-type, who has his own agenda independent of the protagonist(s).

In OotS, the protagonists are the OotS, but had the story being about the Scrible, I believe Xykon would be more of a Nale type villain.

From a story perspective, I believe the Nale-type villain ultimately has to lose most encounters, because otherwise it won't be a very long story.

On the other hand, the Xykon-type villain has to win the majority of his encounters with the good guys, or once again the story would quickly end. The exception is that if the Xykon-type villain is not the main-villain, in which case he could probably just be a random encounter or similar. However if the Xykon-type villain is fleshed out with a powerful backstory, a character with lots of power, and in principle have all qualifications to become the main villain, a spot not already covered, I believe it's likely this person won't fall within the exception.

Therefore, I guess for the majority of stories, a villain who wants success ought to be a Xykon-type villain with his own agenda independent of the protagonist(s).
So had the story been about the Scrible, and we'd never know about the Stick, then I believe Xykon would not have succeeded as much as he has, as he'd ultimately be undone by some actions done by the Scrible.

Examples of these types in other works of fiction would be the Nale-type in Power Rangers, and the Xykon-type in Diablo 2.

In Power Rangers we've a villain whose sole target in every episode is to destroy the Power Rangers. Keeps on bringing the battle to their turf, and of course ultimately loses every time.

On the other hand, in Diablo 2, the hero keeps on failing his hunt after Diablo who has an agenda independent of the hero chasing him, and first after several failures does he manage to track down Diablo for their final confrontation.

It had been my view point that Tarquin was a Xykon-type villain, because he did not seek out the OotS, nor did his plan seem to have much to do with them. Therefore, I thought that ultimately, for the Order to defeat Tarquin, they had to actively oppose him, and not merely defend like they did against Nale.
However now Tarquin is actively chasing the Order, which I believe places him as a Nale-type of villain, and if he succeeds, I'd imagine there wouldn't be much more story to tell, so he has to fail.
To me, Tarquin is analogous to when Lord Z replaces Rita Repulsa in Power Rangers. At first he was this mighty ruler of the Galaxy who could hardly care about our puny Earth, and was there mainly to punish Rita, and quickly finish the job, making him more of a Xykon-type of villain, but after his first failure, and obviously repeated failures as he'd turned into a Nale-type, he went from a fearsome creature to a Rita replacement. Different costumes, same stories.

I wonder how exactly is Tarquin supposed to avoid becoming a Nale-type villain. I suppose he could call off the chase and take the eventual failure as a man. I wonder if he'll realize that Xykon qualifies for the main villain spot, and as such, Tarquin can at most be a character whose fall would happen in a different story, and therefore ought not to force the confrontation to avoid being only a minor part in someone else's story.

[Killer Angel]

I wonder how exactly is Tarquin supposed to avoid becoming a Nale-type villain.

The Order could kill him in the next fight... :smallwink:

[Koo Rehtorb]

I think there are plenty of villains with their own agenda that also have no problem in taking some time to swat down some pesky heroes along the way.

[Sir_Leorik]

There are more than these two types of villains. Xykon actually combines the two types. Sometimes he's content to let the heroes seek him out, since he needs them to do something he can't do himself, so he sits for weeks on end, bored out of his skull, eating potato chips he can't taste and watching on his crystal ball. On the other hand he was a very active villain during parts of SoD and Books Two and Three. Then he went back to waiting around in Azure City in Book Four.

The thing is that Xykon is very impatient; he's more impatient than V, Belkar, Elan and Right-Eye combined. But when he has to wait, he'll do it, at least for a while. Also Xykon is usually rather laid back. While he was alive, he usually cracked jokes while murdering scores of innocent people. But when he was insulted to his face Xykon would lose his temper and lash out. Otherwise, he ignored minor slights, unlike Nale who seethes over everything anyone has ever done to him. Really, what's the main difference between Nale and Belkar? Belkar has a shorter attention span. If you insult Belkar he'll try to kill you, but if you escape, Belkar'll just make a half-hearted attempt to Track you down, and fail because he has no ranks in Survival and Wisdom of 9 or lower. Nale nurtures greivances for years, planning meticulous ways to hurt some guy who cut him in line to buy a pineapple or a teacher who gave him a C- on his homework in 3rd grade. Xykon and Belkar take revenge immediately, but they can't be bothered to nurture this kind of hatred, not when there's plenty of destruction to do that doesn't involve revenge.

Xykon's motivations are also what distinguish him from Nale. Xykon wants to rule the world. Not even conquer it, just rule it. Threaten to use the Snarl once, and everyone will do what he wants. What will he do then? Probably get Redcloak or Jirix to organize stuff, while Xykon can enjoy watching peasants impaled, or gladiator fights. Y'know the fun stuff that makes unlife worth unliving.

Nale's motivation has always been revenge. Revenge on Tarquin, revenge on Elan, revenge on Malack (and probably Miron, Laurin, Jacinda and that guy with the sword and shield, too). He tried to do that by getting artifacts, or using zany schemes. The one time his plans worked, they worked because of careful timing and simple steps, and even that backfired horribly, leading Vampire Durkon snapping Z's neck, and Tarquin murdering Nale and Laurin disintegrating Nale's body.

Redcloak's motivations are more complicated. He's motivated by a combination of revenge, piety, concern for his people's welfare, and guilt. That means he's more invested in The Plan than Xykon is (or Right-Eye was). He's keeping secrets from his ally Xykon, and murdered Tsukiko to keep them secret. He's got more riding on the success of the plan than Xykon. If he fails he may be punished by The Dark One, he'll definitely be consumed by guilt over the actions he took to get this far being for nought, and all his people will have to show for his actions is a single city-state that's thriving thanks to a growing chain of Goblin Dan's Hydra Burgers in Cliffport. (That latter part is my personal fanon, so you might want to disregard it, but Goblin Dan did make his first million gp from one hydra, and why not export the meat to Cliffport?)

The motives of the IFCC are to unite their people, end the Blood War and declare war on the Upper Planes. They hope to use the Gates and/or Snarl to do that, but how is a mystery. But they stated their motives quite openly in their conversation with Vaarsuvius, and I see no reason to doubt them.

The Snail's motivation is probably a desire for fame. He's seen monsters come and go in the pages of Dragon Magazine, and if he's going to make it he needs to kill some prominent adventurers like the OotS. Otherwise his attacks on them seem pretty unusual. On the one hand, he specifically knew that Haley and Belkar belonged to the Order of the Stick, but he had no real motivation to kill them. So I think fame is probably why he tried three times, unsuccessfully, to trap and kill them.

Samantha had equally murky motives. Was she trying to get money or dates? And why not just go into a town, sit down in a tavern and cast Hold Person on a hot looking guy? (Not that I approve of such things, but if she's going to be a villain with that motivation, why does she need a bandit army? Especially when that Bandit army is incapable of supporting itself under the 3.5 NPC gear rules? As Haley pointed out (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0158.html), they would need to use less powerful equipment than the DMG expects for their level, lowering the EL of any encounter with them, or they would starve to death in a few months.)

The motivation of a Villain might alter the strategies he or she might take, or it might determine whether a Villain flees when defeated, or fights to the death. Xykon and Redcloak flee because they know there are other places to put the Plan into motion, while Samantha fought until she's badly hurt and out of spell slots, becuase she needed to maintain control of the bandits she led. (That didn't work out so hot.) As much as he desired the destruction of the OotS, the Snail always fled at the end of each encounter. Too bad he's never coming back. Unless he shows up in Gygax Magazine? Or maybe he's living on the planet in the Rift! :smallbiggrin:

[F.Harr]

I wonder if RPG's lend themselves to "pursue the villian" type naritives.

[Gift Jeraff]

Yeah, Tarquin's obsessive chasing down of the OOTS is starting remind me of Nale. The only difference is one sought to bring Elan down while the other seeks to build Elan up.

Maybe Tarquin should listen to his own advice: "Careful. You're starting to sound like Nale."

[Lettuce]

Huh, an interesting observation. In short: whoever has 'home field advantage' has a bias towards victory, villain or hero alike?


I wonder if RPG's lend themselves to "pursue the villian" type naritives.

I think that they do, in general, yes. If OotS were entirely from Xykon's point of view, and we saw hundreds of comics of him basically doing nothing but sit around every day for months in the conquered Azure City or in the weeks before the Order arrive at the first gate, I think the general audience would lose interest pretty quickly.

I think people like stories where the protagonist has a goal that he's actively perusing; where he has struggles to overcome. We like intense conflicts, a varied cast of characters, and the culmination of various events leading into a grand climax. And one of the best ways to get all of that is through the main character or cast physically moving. (And generally that means either they continually gain new goals, or the goal--in this case, the goal being the villain himself--moves). After all, for the reader, often it's not really about the goal--it's about the journey.

And I feel like this is the case especially in a visual medium like OotS--we like to see the scenery change. It feels like visual progress and prevents us from getting too bored. :smalltongue:

[Sir_Leorik]

I wonder if RPG's lend themselves to "pursue the villian" type naritives.

Tabletop RPGs have a major narrative limitation: the narrative is limited to a "second person" perspective provided by the GM. The Players describe what their PCs are doing, and the GM describes what happens. The PCs ask an NPC a question, and the GM provides exposition (and sometimes a corny accent). The PCs read a dusty tome of eldritch lore, and the GM provides exposition (and in a Call of Cthulhu game makes the PC roll a sanity check). The villain could have a complex motivation, a rich backstory, and a well thought out plan, but it if the Players don't ask the right questions, bribe the right NPC, read the right scroll, infiltrate the right cult, or go to a nearby Vistani caravan and speak to the Raunie, they could miss out on all that.

Both OotS and Goblins show how PCs could miss out on very important plot elements. The OotS doesn't know much about Redcloak's background, and they're kind of hazy on just what Xykon and Redcloak plan to do with the Gates, just that it's something bad. Fogath and Minmax don't know that the Goblins they fought are now adventurers, or who the White Terror is (or that several other Goblins oppose her.) In a typical RPG, unless at least one PC witnesses events or learns about them from an NPC, a journal, diary, confession scrawled in blood on a dungeon floor or a group of flowers spontaneously rearranging themselves to spell out a message, the events may as well never have happened. The only place they exist is in the GM's notes.

This is basically how real life works; people are not born spontaneously knowing about historical events or literary works. They need to witness events or learn about them somehow, and read a literary work (or watch a movie or TV show), or at least hear a description of that work. And even then the knowledge you gain second or third hand may be completely inaccurate. This is one of the ways Tabletop RPGs try to simulate real life. A good GM knows how to pepper clues to the plots of a major villain, or other event, as well as to provide hooks to locations that the PCs might want to visit that don't house a major villain scheming to complete a villainous plot. In many works of fiction the antagonists set the plot in motion. In a Tabletop RPG the plot depends on what the PCs want to do and what the GM has prepared. In tournament style game modules, you can play the adventure as is, or walk away. In a home game the Players and their PCs can influence not only the outcome of the plot, but the GM's initial idea for the plot.

[Liliet]

Yep, Tarquin has missed on this piece of narrative rules: as soon as the villain's agenda is something like "defeat the heroes", he starts losing. So long as the villain's agenda is "do my own thing and not let the heroes stop me", he keeps winning until the very end. There can be minor situational swings of the "last-second victory snatched from the jaws of defeat" type, but the general trend is indeed there. Xykon wasn't ever "Nale-type" towards OotS; he was indeed very active, but his goal was never "kill the bluepommel guy", it was always about his own plans, and he kept winning.

Tarquin had put his bets on being Xykon-type, dominating the world and ignoring the heroes until "the last 5 minutes". Then his son came along and T lost his cool.

A story can take multiple directions here:
1) T realises what a fool he has been to pursue OotS and switches to either just ruling his Empire as he always did, or pursuing the Gates like everyone else;
2) T does not realise it, and replaces his son in his narrative role. Too bad for him;
3) T dies here. Too bad for him.

Interesting...

[F.Harr]

Tabletop RPGs have a major narrative limitation:. . .


Yep, Tarquin has missed on this piece of narrative rules:. . .

Two good analyses.

[BaronOfHell]

Some very excellent posts indeed in this thread, thanks for all your contributions so far, very interesting reads. :smallsmile:

[snikrept]

These things are only true if the story has to necessarily end with the villains' loss.

Tragedies exist.

[Sir_Leorik]

These things are only true if the story has to necessarily end with the villains' loss.

Tragedies exist.

The narrative of a Tabletop RPG ends in one of four ways:

1) The PCs defeat the villain permanently.

2) The villain escapes to make a comeback.

3) The party suffers a TPK.

4) The players who make up the group discover that they no longer can meet on the scheduled day or night of the game. Perhaps someone's wife had a baby (or the player herself had a baby); maybe the GM got promoted and can no longer devote time to preparing for the game sessions; maybe a player gets married and moves to another city; maybe the players' schedules suddenly conflict. Whatever the reason, the players disband, and the game screeches to a full-stop.

In my experience, the fourth way is most common, followed by 3 and 2.

[F.Harr]

I keep thinking of the Cylons in the various Battlestar Galactica itterations. Those guys were definately "Nale-type".

[Fish]

Counter example: Tuco.

From "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." Tuco was a despicable person in many ways, lawbreaking and disrespectful, murdering and vengeful, greedy and unethical. But he worked with Blondie when he had to. For all that he began as a Nale-type character, hunting down the Good out of revenge, that was not his only defining trait.

Then there's Angel Eyes, same film; he's no better and probably no worse than Tuco, who wants the same thing that Tuco and Blondie want. They want the Confederate gold. Angel Eyes will work with Blondie too, but has no need of Tuco once he's got what he needs out of him. Is he a Xykon character? His wants are far from independent of Blondie's...