Redemption: No NPCs Past This Point?

[HolyCouncilMagi]

So... Let's set aside system for the moment. One, because this is the Roleplaying section; two, because I may tear out my own eyes if anybody brings up Sanctify the Wicked; and three, there are good and bad people in all varieties of game even without the nuance-crushing imposition of alignment.

Basically, I wanted to get you guys' thoughts on PCs attempting to redeem major bad guys. I've always considered it a great opportunity for story development and roleplaying, as well as a decent way for the morally upstanding PCs to prove that they are, in fact, morally upstanding. And I imagine that a good number of players would feel quite proud of themselves for doing it.

Yet it's an option I've never once seen finalized in a game. Either the PCs just default to murder (not unreasonable in most games, I suppose), or they try for it and the GM doesn't give the concept a passing thought no matter how many times or how cleverly/valiantly it's attempted because, at least according to my past three GMs, ending a major bad guy's reign as "plot villain" in any other way than a final battle with an epic finisher would be too anticlimactic.

Am I weird for wishing I could see more major NPC redemption in RPGs if the players put forth the effort? Do my GMs have a point about the whole anticlimax thing? Or do I just game with weirdos, and is NPC redemption something PCs have tried hard at and accomplished in games you've been a part of?

(Obviously, I get it that not every bad guy is redeemable. But for more than two dozen major villains, I've tried as hard or harder to understand them and work to redeem them as the party in general has tried to stop their nefarious schemes. Zero successes! Maybe the problem is that I should find a different group xD)

[hymer]

Well, I can see why it would seem wrong to attempt to redeem the villain in most cases. Most of them have passed the moral event horizon (no link, we all have lives to live), or can only redeem themselves in death. They're villains, after all. Killing the villain is the obvious solution in most cases, making a neat narrative cut.
That said, I'd like to see redemption be more of a possibility. But then it shouldn't be tagged on towards the end of the story arc. The DM should plan for it as a possibility from the beginning. The villain should probably be doing things that can be undone if the villain is redeemed, and likely for relatable reasons. And the DM should include a way (which the PCs may or may not discover, but it should be there for them if they manage it or think of it themselves) that the villain can come to see the other way. And, of course, the PCs may well decide to do the usual thing anyway, and that should be their prerogative.

[Thrudd]

On what would you base the pc's ability to redeem a villain? Pure role playing (ie you decide if it happens based on your subjective opinion of their performance)? Or is there some skill or ability or mechanic involved? Most systems do have some form of social mechanic whereby players influence NPCs. A reaction roll, or diplomacy, or a series of contested rolls, or something. If they choose to negotiate or have a chance to talk to the NPC, then the rules of the game should lay out pretty well what it would take to change someone's point of view. Also, how redeemable you have designed the npc in the first place, their behavior and whether players have any opportunity to talk to them will be largely in your control.

whether the players give the bad guy a chance to surrender or change their mind or convince them to abandon their evil ways is entirely up to the players. You would probably have to make it obvious that the character was redeemable and was not totally convinced that evil was the right path.

[Segev]

Redemption is hard to run, for reasons alluded to by earlier posters. Climactic battles may be exhausting, but there are rules in place and it's known what effect PCs' actions can and should have. By and large, attempting to redeem a villain requires role-play and...well, how do you manage it when your exposure to the villain is just during fight scenes? Do you talk him around in a few sound bites every few months?

And worse, even if you can interact with him on a long-term basis, it really is all role-playing. I say "worse" not because that's inherently a bad thing, but because it becomes hard to define whether the PCs' efforts are "good enough." It is hard to have the GM say, "Well, you can try," and come off as meaning it, because there's a strong sense - right or wrong - that the GM has already made up his mind as to whether or not it will succeed. Which means that it's more about convincing the GM than about actually playing a game wherein your PC convinces the NPC.

I'm not saying it can't be fun and rewarding. Cooperative storytelling really can be a lot of fun. But it really pulls us into the realm of narrativist/thespian rather than gamer/strategist. Because the rules for games largely support strategy only in physical conflict, not social manipulation. (This isn't 100% true, but such mechanics are in their infancy, comparatively, and are tackling a much harder-to-define thing about characters and their abilities.)

So, it's rare because it's the kind of thing that you can't satisfy the "I want to play a game and succeed in spite of the odds" player with. The GM is the ultimate arbiter of the NPC's state of mind. It's rare because GMs are people, too, and nobody likes having their characters warped from their original conception without their consent...so unless you can convince the GM it's a cool story, the GM will likely no-sell it. He'll have good reasons, in his own mind, but it doesn't change that it's a no-sell from the PCs' standpoint.

Long story short: it's rare because it's hard to do believably and statisfyingly in an RPG context.

[Red Fel]

Am I weird for wishing I could see more major NPC redemption in RPGs if the players put forth the effort? Do my GMs have a point about the whole anticlimax thing? Or do I just game with weirdos, and is NPC redemption something PCs have tried hard at and accomplished in games you've been a part of?

Let's look at several points. Redeeming someone is hard. Think about any series or movie in which redemption of a villain occurred. It happened because the hero(es) knew what buttons to push to snap the bad guy out of his mania and force him to confront his issues. To do the same in a game, the PCs have to know enough about an NPC as a person to know what caused him to go bad, and what could motivate him to turn things around. It's a lot of work for not a guaranteed payoff. The moral event horizon is a thing. Look, if your NPC is a typical baddie-mook, or hasn't yet executed his fiendish plan to annihilate half of the world, then there's still room to stop catastrophe. But if he has already gone on a spree of baby-murdering or has committed a couple of genocides, no amount of tears and despair can make up for that. Not only do the PCs have no incentive to redeem someone that monstrous, it's not clear if it would even succeed. After all, how can you come back from that? What's the point? What will the PCs accomplish by converting an enemy to the forces of Good? Will they earn a tag-along NPC? Because that's a pain, frankly. The risk is high. Look, you can either walk into a boss fight holding a sword or an olive branch. If you're right, the olive branch will make him realize the error of his ways, and everyone is happy. If you're wrong, you're a corpse.

The bottom line, in my mind, is this: redemption of NPCs is a burden placed primarily on the GM. Here's why. If the GM has established a world where killing NPCs gets things done, expecting redemption is changing the rules, and that's not cricket. If the GM has given the PCs no information on who the NPC is as an individual, how are they supposed to know how to turn him around? And if the GM makes his NPCs unwilling to talk, how can the PCs even try to redeem one?

I'm not saying that the GM carries this burden exclusively. The PCs still have to try, if they want to redeem someone. They have to research him, do the legwork. They have to learn a lot about him. But that information is within the GM's purview; it's his to give, not theirs to find at random. The GM has to make it clear that redemption is an option, and has to provide the means if the PCs do a reasonable job of looking for them. Because of the work required for both sides - GM and PCs - I don't see it happening with great frequency.

[mephnick]

It also relies on a very specific group of characters. Even most heroes won't sacrifice safety and revenge to redeem a badguy.

Everyone in the party has to believe in the general "goodness of man" to believe an evil NPC could be redeemed. This is only possible if every player AND every character is on board with it.

If some evil knight burns down my village, and I'm not playing a paragon of forgiveness, dude is getting his head cut off. If the other three members of my party want to let him live...dude is still getting his head cut off.

[Kid Jake]

My Mutants and Masterminds game has quite a few redeemed villains, though it's less that the PCs cared about seeing them on the straight and narrow and more that they agreed to work together for mutual benefit until they started seeing each other as friends. There's not really much difference between the 'heroes' and the 'villains' in my setting though, so it's probably easier for them to relate to one another than it would be in more traditional games; plus the theme of the game is basically assembling a bastardized Justice League out of winos and petty thieves.

[Farmerbink]

I realize I have different perspectives regarding this game than most people, but I like where the OP is going with this.

For the sake of a frame of reference, I'm a HUGE fan of the idea that combat is deadly. Period. In all of the best literature, combat is viewed as a very dangerous necessity, at best. Often, it is aggressively avoided, because the best protagonists know that they aren't immortal.

To that end, I would very much enjoy exploring the results when trying to redeem a bad guy- particularly a low-ranking mook. As has been mentioned, the higher you go, well, the harder it gets. As dreadfully awful as the movie was, in Spider-man 2 (I think), once Doc Oc has created his world-consuming sphere of energy, the only way he could be redeemed was to sacrifice himself. I can see similar situations with other setups. Major, catastrophic world-altering event has been set in motion. SOMEONE has to die to stop it, blah blah.

Of course, that's all an extension of "the GM has to plan for it to be an option."

[gom jabbarwocky]

It took me a while to remember this, but I've actually ran a game where one of the PCs redeemed a villain! Granted, there were a number of technicalities involved;
- The villain was merely a lieutenant to a more powerful villain, and even then the villain they worked for was periphery to the main villain faction.
- The villain wasn't completely evil so much as a misguided fanatic and as a result, well, you know what they say about the road to hell...
- The villain was redeemed posthumously. You may wonder how this is possible, but one of the PCs was a medium with some spirit mojo, so chatting it up with the dead wasn't exactly a challenge.
So this is far from typical. The PC ended up trying to redeem the villain he murdered by reaching out to her ghost and trying to teach her the error of her ways. Surprisingly, he provided good enough roleplaying and salient enough rhetoric that it worked. It wasn't easy, and it took place over the course of the better remainder of the campaign, but it happened.

[NichG]

I had a character in one game whose hobby was to collect over-the-hill villains. It actually became somewhat sinister since he would tend to take villains who were extremely powerful, proactive, and ambitious individuals and convince them it was in their best interest to hang out with the rising stars of the PCs because due to the rate we were growing in power, just tapping into that would do more to fulfill their ambitions than whatever apocalyptic scheme they were cooking up. But as a result they'd become sort of passive, so they actually lost a lot of their identity in the process. By the end of the campaign it was close to him having a philosophical change of heart that redemption was actually cruel because it amounted to him consuming the potential legends-that-could-have-been of others for sake of his hobby. And in a couple of eons, what would be left of people but their stories anyhow? So by doing this, he was killing them more surely than a sword.

So yeah, it can definitely happen.

[Segev]

Were these villains actually redeemed, or merely pacified into inactivity?

[NichG]

Were these villains actually redeemed, or merely pacified into inactivity?

From my character's point of view, they were embraced as allies and full members of the society we were building. I didn't really care if they held different beliefs from before (nor did I even really want them to), because the main point was that previously they were being dangerously crazy and irrational about pursuing those beliefs - or manipulated by others, or misinformed in general.

But then, the scale of things was such that the standards would probably look completely alien to a normal human. This was a game where the characters were the last survivors from their respective universes after something had extinguished all the stars. So we had gods, demons, etc in the party, and planet-wide apocalypses were generally a minor event compared to other crud that could happen. So (to my character at least), if you kill a bunch of people and send them to a nice, stable afterlife then that's bad but its not as bad as, say, creating a spiritual corruption that spreads by sight and causes ever-increasing suffering to the individual without ever letting their existence come to an end - so that burning them to ash would mean that they forever feel the heat of those flames, and scattering those ashes to the wind would mean they forever feel being torn into pieces.

That guy we didn't quite manage to redeem.

[veti]

What steps do you take to encourage players to think about redemption as a possibility, rather than just plain killing?

One: make the villain sympathetic, on some level. That means any 'moral event horizon' events have to happen, if at all, at a decent remove from the villain. She needs to be stopped, but the players don't feel a deep, in-the-blood need to consign her directly to the lower planes. Also you need to make it clear that she's got an actual motivation, rather than just "for teh evulz" or "for the Glory of Me" or whatever.

Two: give the PCs clues as to how the villain's underlying motivation might be fulfilled in other, less harmful ways. And remember that "players" and "clues" often react to one another like similarly-charged particles. The Three-Clue Rule is definitely in order if you want them to have even a 50% chance of picking it up.

Three: set up a situation where the players can talk to the villain, without the threat of violence.

I've done it once, in my career - I talked a god (Death) into dropping his vendetta against another god, which was endangering Existence As We Know It. That was almost certainly a case of the DM planning that outcome from the get-go.

[Tengu_temp]

It's very hard to redeem a major villain if the DM didn't plan such an opportunity from the start. That's because you can't force redemption on someone; they have to want to redeem themselves. And most major villains do not seek redemption, and often do such terrible deeds that even if they sought it, it'd be very hard for them to reach.

Sidenote: I'm not a fan of PCs who slaughter mooks mercilessly but spare equally evil named villains, just because they're named. It's pretty hypocritital.

[NichG]

What steps do you take to encourage players to think about redemption as a possibility, rather than just plain killing?

The thing is, this is so much of a matter of player tastes that I don't think you can really control it that much. I've got one player who basically will want to kill anyone who ever slighted them or got them a bit mad, and I have another player who is so good at undermining villains' reasoning that its actually usually a better weapon for them than any form of violence against an even remotely rational villain.

Generally though, the rule to get players to think about any new possibility is to not punish them for trying even when it fails, and to make it much easier than it should be the first few times. If a player is trying a new approach and the first time they try it it doesn't work, they're very likely to not try again. If the first time works and the second time fails, they may still try a third time.


It's very hard to redeem a major villain if the DM didn't plan such an opportunity from the start. That's because you can't force redemption on someone; they have to want to redeem themselves. And most major villains do not seek redemption, and often do such terrible deeds that even if they sought it, it'd be very hard for them to reach.

Sidenote: I'm not a fan of PCs who slaughter mooks mercilessly but spare equally evil named villains, just because they're named. It's pretty hypocritital.

In many cases, what you end up doing is to identify the toxic things that are causing the behavior in the first place and address those. E.g. you don't try to 'force redemption', but you also don't just wait for them to want it. Instead you figure out 'why is this guy going to these extremes?' and then fix that first before doing anything else. Leave them hollow, and in a situation which they themselves are unfamiliar with how to respond in (e.g. they can't just operate based on 'I'm a villain, this is what villains do!'), and then see what happens - thats usually the point where you can build a new pattern of behavior from that is less destructive, because you aren't pushing against what was already there.

This depends on the DM making NPCs who actually have reasons for their behavior beyond 'I'm the necromancer, of course I'm going to raise an army of undead and take over the world, duh'. But if the necromancer is doing what he's doing because he's afraid of death, or because he's trying to re-unite with someone he lost by bringing them back, those are things you can try to address. If its because bullies disrespected him as a youth and he wants revenge, that's harder - but not necessarily impossible, if you can track down those bullies and show him how one was left by his wife and spends most of his days passed out in a bar covered in his own vomit, while another is working under the world's most annoying boss and has to constantly apologize every day for things that aren't his fault.

[Sith_Happens]

I think one of the major issues that hasn't been brought up yet is that redeeming a villain generally requires being in communication with them repeatedly and/or for extended periods of time, which is rather difficult when they're trying to kill you. Which, given the nature of gaming, they usually are.

Sure, you can knock the villain out and make them a (literally) captive audience to your lectures on the meaning of good and evil, but I'm sure not going to blame 99% of protagonists for not thinking of that option in the middle of pitched, lethal combat.


I had a character in one game whose hobby was to collect over-the-hill villains. It actually became somewhat sinister since he would tend to take villains who were extremely powerful, proactive, and ambitious individuals and convince them it was in their best interest to hang out with the rising stars of the PCs because due to the rate we were growing in power, just tapping into that would do more to fulfill their ambitions than whatever apocalyptic scheme they were cooking up. But as a result they'd become sort of passive, so they actually lost a lot of their identity in the process. By the end of the campaign it was close to him having a philosophical change of heart that redemption was actually cruel because it amounted to him consuming the potential legends-that-could-have-been of others for sake of his hobby. And in a couple of eons, what would be left of people but their stories anyhow? So by doing this, he was killing them more surely than a sword.

So yeah, it can definitely happen.


From my character's point of view, they were embraced as allies and full members of the society we were building. I didn't really care if they held different beliefs from before (nor did I even really want them to), because the main point was that previously they were being dangerously crazy and irrational about pursuing those beliefs - or manipulated by others, or misinformed in general.

But then, the scale of things was such that the standards would probably look completely alien to a normal human. This was a game where the characters were the last survivors from their respective universes after something had extinguished all the stars. So we had gods, demons, etc in the party, and planet-wide apocalypses were generally a minor event compared to other crud that could happen. So (to my character at least), if you kill a bunch of people and send them to a nice, stable afterlife then that's bad but its not as bad as, say, creating a spiritual corruption that spreads by sight and causes ever-increasing suffering to the individual without ever letting their existence come to an end - so that burning them to ash would mean that they forever feel the heat of those flames, and scattering those ashes to the wind would mean they forever feel being torn into pieces.

That guy we didn't quite manage to redeem.

I strongly desire to hear more about this campaign.

[Yora]

Sure, you can knock the villain out and make them a (literally) captive audience to your lectures on the meaning of good and evil, but I'm sure not going to blame 99% of protagonists for not thinking of that option in the middle of pitched, lethal combat.
Even if they do. Suppose the villain says "yes, I will renounce my evil ways if you don't kill me". Then what? Is he free to go? What do you do with him after he has surrendered?

I think much better chances are when it comes to mercenaries and conscripts. Which can even be a minor lord who was put on his throne after the big villain defeated his predecessor because the new conquests don't run themselves. Vassals are good candidates to take over to your side. They had to follow the villain because the villains army kept him and his troops in line. After the PCs kicked out or severely weakened the villains soldiers in the region, the local lord might be quite willing to join the villains enemies to win his independence or simply seeking an alliance with a more benign major power in the region.
Mercenaries might not even know who the people who hired them are working for, and who ultimately benefits from the things they do. When the PCs expose the villains plan, mercenaries might be willing to switch sides.

[Trevortni]

I had a character try to redeem a low-level villain once.

My character was actually built on this theme from the get-go, though: She was a former prostitute-turned-Paladin, who had a life goal to build a "plantation" of sorts to rescue prostitutes and teach them new careers, to help enable them to escape the lifestyle and produce something they could be proud of. (I always loathed the stories I've heard about paladins with sticks in various orifices walking around killing prostitutes for being "evil", you see.)

Anyway, we brought our ship into a port and were promptly extorted and attempted to be murdered. We caught the slimy ba...d guy.... (The group would have killed them, but I think I actually eliminated all the threats too fast and insisted the ringleader be detained for the proper authorities instead of just killed) and took him to town to be tried.

As it turns out, he was the son of the local governor. Things were headed for an execution, but....

The way the governor talked about his son was simply - not right. He was putting him down, calling him worthless, basically treating him the opposite you would expect a father to treat his son, criminal or not. So..... I had a Talk with the governor.

By the time we left the port, I had my first Follower, who I would be responsible for seeing that he would become a productive member of society. If I were to ever decide that he could not or would not be redeemed, I had the legal and moral authority/responsibility to Do What Had To Be Done. But until then, I had an opportunity do what could be done to repair the obvious errors in his upbringing.

Unfortunately, that was either the last or second-to-last session of that game, so I never got to see what was going to come of my efforts. :smallannoyed:

[NichG]

I strongly desire to hear more about this campaign.

Unfortunately, the campaign wiki expired or I'd just send you that direction. Going into the details of the campaign would really be outside the scope of this thread :smallsmile:

[Beta Centauri]

I tend not to like it, because it's too easy to do.

Villains rarely have a good reason to do what they're doing, the way they're doing it. Their plans are elaborate and unnecessarily harmful, they've overlooked some fact that's easily pointed out to them, or they just needed someone to listen to them. This is the reason that so many villains are just utterly deranged: it obviates the need for the writer to come up with a reason for the villainy that will withstand the protagonist's protests.

I guess if my players wanted to redeem someone, I'd tell them exactly what they would have to do to accomplish it. All Luke Skywalker really had to do was be almost tortured to death by the Emperor in front of his father. Even if he'd known that in advance (and who says he didn't, since he's precognitive) it's still a challenge spanning several cool scenes to bring it about, and even then it's not a sure thing.

Maybe there was even a way Luke could have convinced Jabba to go straight, but he wasn't willing to do that.

So, set a requirement that's more than just words or bribes, but something cool the characters have to bring about so the enemy can really see the error of their ways. Tell the players what that requirement is (or, better yet, work with them to come up with it) and have fun.

[goto124]

I would also warn the players beforehand, that the game had grey morality. Heck, I might just tell them the villian is redemable, since that sort of thing is really rare already.