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Jbr208
2015-09-01, 06:13 PM
Hey folks. I've been putting together a character for Mutants and Masterminds 3rd Edition that prompted this question, but it's more of a general roleplaying question than something specific to the setting. The character in question uses darkness based powers (channeling energy from the shadow realm to use in a similar fashion as Green Lantern uses the power of his ring, plus the ability to do things like teleport by going through the shadow realm and summon shadow wraiths to do his bidding). Generally a pretty scary guy to be around, and his highest skill is intimidate to help reflect that.

The problem I have, is actually being a scary person while sticking to the motif of darkness and shadows. Menacing posture and acts are pretty easy to come up with, but the dialogue is difficult to figure out. I'm mostly concerned about sounding like Castiel from Supernatural when he learns how to curse.

So far I've been thinking up things like this:
Uses power to create a darkened environment, "You have stared too long into the Abyss, and now it comes for you."
Before summoning shadow wraith (should that be hyphenated?), "Nietzsche said (loosely) to be wary of becoming a monster when fighting them. You should be more afraid of losing to one."

They don't seem to flow very well, and they're a little cerebral. Any advice on that front?

druid91
2015-09-01, 07:19 PM
Perhaps try for less of a philosophers approach and more have them describe things. Scary things. That is half the reason why the dark is scary because we don't know what's out there.

Use that. Talk up every little thing. Make them scared of the monsters popping out of the walls that aren't really there.

ArcanaFire
2015-09-01, 07:40 PM
Never underestimate the power of a quiet presence.

To me, someone comes off as far more intimidating when they don't have to flag it all the time. He doesn't have to say much at all. In fact, my advice would be that if you speak, speak softly, matter of factly.

You don't have to dress it up too much to give the appearance of being in control. Appear in your miasma of shadow and instead of giving a one liner, just kill the target.

Instead of standing around talking about what to do, if you see something that should be done, do it. Don't explain.

Stare unblinkingly. Stand perfectly still. When you smile, make it mean something.

Understated, in control characters have always been far more intimidating to me than people that are trying too hard.

Red Fel
2015-09-01, 08:09 PM
Never underestimate the power of a quiet presence.

To me, someone comes off as far more intimidating when they don't have to flag it all the time. He doesn't have to say much at all. In fact, my advice would be that if you speak, speak softly, matter of factly.

You don't have to dress it up too much to give the appearance of being in control. Appear in your miasma of shadow and instead of giving a one liner, just kill the target.

Instead of standing around talking about what to do, if you see something that should be done, do it. Don't explain.

Stare unblinkingly. Stand perfectly still. When you smile, make it mean something.

Understated, in control characters have always been far more intimidating to me than people that are trying too hard.

So much these.

Many character concepts do well being boisterous, witty, or dry. Some others do well being entirely understated, and simply there. This is particularly true of character concepts associated with shadows, darkness, or fear.

Look at Batman, in his more modern incarnations (e.g. since TAS). He's an archetype of being dark and scary. He rarely speaks, and when he does, it counts. He doesn't quip. He never emotes; his face is stone.

You want to be scary? Step one is simply to be there. You want people to think, "He's right behind me, isn't he?" And you want them to be right.

When you do speak, do it from a place of untouchability. In a pitch black room, with your voice seeming to echo from all directions. In a hall of mirrors, with every reflection a false one. And when you do speak, you don't do it for amusement. You do it specifically to inspire fear. And you do it by being inevitable.

Consider a scene in which your character is hunting down a member of a gang. The gang was involved in a kidnapping, and your character wants to know where the victim is. Your character chases the guy into a darkened warehouse, guy pulls out a gun. Just keeps repeating the same phrase, over and over. "Tell me where she is." Guy shoots, hits nothing. "Tell me where she is." Guy screams. "Tell me where she is." Guy tries to hide. "Tell me where she is." Guy finally reaches a door - and you're there. Silent. Staring. Waiting.

It's like zombies, but with words - they just keep coming, shambling, inevitably, unstoppably. No screaming, no witty banter, no inflection. No humanity.

Jbr208
2015-09-01, 09:19 PM
Very helpful, I'll be sure to utilize this. I usually just need a direction to start thinking, and this has been quite a bit to think about in terms of implementation.

TeChameleon
2015-09-01, 09:25 PM
There are other ways to pull off intimidating, too.

Find out if you (you personally, that is) have any behaviours that your fellow players/DM find unsettling. A while back, I discovered (and was a little nonplussed by the fact) that my gaming group tends to find my slightly weird non-sequitirs to be a hair short of psychotic a lot of the time.

... of course, shortly after that, I proved them right when I asked if they'd tried just flat-out killing everything as a solution to a game problem they'd mentioned, because of course "Enough murder solves everything!" >.>

If you want to go more cerebral and less unhinged :smalltongue:, don't worry about attributing your quotes, especially the really well known ones like the abyss staring back, etc.

For example-

In a pitch-black room that had been brightly lit a second ago- "The abyss is looking back."

When summoning wraith-whatevers- "They say that to fight monsters is to risk becoming one. The risk they don't mention is becoming one's dinner."

When grabbing someone and teleporting them out, or something like that- "The night reclaims its own."

Keep it short, and use language that would be scary even if the thug being terrorized isn't up on his German philosophers :smallamused:

Draconium
2015-09-01, 10:58 PM
I agree with ArcanaFire and Red Fel. The truly memorable, terrifying players and villains aren't those that are loud, in-your-face, and actively trying to frighten you. They're the ones that are naturally unsettling, the ones that are quiet and mysterious, giving off a malevolent aura simply by being there.

Of course, there are other ways to pull it off, and I'm sure many others have their own opinions to add. The only other way I've seen that's usually effective is when the character in question is noticeably unstable, mentally, but I would warn you against doing that, as it can be a... touchy subject, to say the absolute least.

Steampunkette
2015-09-02, 01:06 AM
It's very hard to play an unstable character well without bein seen as goofy. Here are some hints.

Mime unintentionally. While discussing a course of action, pick up a pencil without looking and make stabbing motions with it that don't puncuate your statements. Notice it a few seconds later and use your other hand to take the pencil away, casually. Act as if nothing happened.

Inappropriate expressions. Smile when saying something sad. Look unimaginably angry over irrelevant things. Be close to tears when delighted. In all cases, make sure your voice doesn't synch with your face.

And, of course, blindly write or doodle on a sheet of paper you're not looking at. Even a dark spiral can be unsettling.

goto124
2015-09-02, 05:03 AM
Have high Charisma.

No, not your char. Your RL self.

Thisguy_
2015-09-02, 08:34 AM
For the record, I appreciate this thread as well. I was a little to quick on the draw, and a little loquacious on my first run of a scary character.

That said, those townspeople were being total dickholes to the dead dude, and I felt I needed to say something.

So there's something. What if you feel a burning need to speak, based on your character concept, but cannot find just the right words? (Sorry if that's mildly tangential.)

Jbr208
2015-09-02, 08:52 AM
Have high Charisma.

No, not your char. Your RL self.

Just to get this out of the way, because I'm reading this shortly after waking up and don't roll well on either my wisdom-based checks or saves at this hour. I can be quite charming, I am fairly skillful at several types of interaction when I have a mind to be. Doesn't mean I know anything about being scary or intimidating in a way befitting this particular character. Social interaction is much more a skill than it is anything else, and what we chalk up to Charisma (the stat) is most often attributable to a large amount of experience with a particular set of social skills far more nuanced than the usual broad categories of diplomacy, deceit, and intimidate. This is notable particularly given that typical people will have a high stat that confers a +2, something which I'd much rather have in Intelligence, and the sort of modifier I'm looking for is in the +10 area.

I spent a great deal of my teenage years around smart alecks who loved nothing more than to be technically right but utterly unhelpful, so I recognize that you're (probably) just having some fun and my being annoyed only serves to further amuse you. Congratulations, you've achieved your goal. Your statement was indeed limitedly accurate by virtue of capitalizing Charisma to link it to a game mechanic, but it is utterly useless since cultivating attributes and skills doesn't really work that way. Even if it did, the skill is the more relevant modifier for the majority of people trying to do just about anything.

Abbreviated Version: Ha. Very funny/cute/original/helpful. Attributes, while versatile, are limitedly impactful and largely immutable as most RPGs understand them. Acquiring more skill ranks is the more viable option in this case.

Re: Thisguy. That hardly seems tangential and fits in nicely with the intent of the thread. I'm sure the peasants had it coming :p

SkipSandwich
2015-09-02, 10:40 AM
I second the notion that the most important part of selling "I am a scary guy and you want no part of this" is the No Sell (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NoSell). Anything they try to do to resist or escape you either have a counter for or are unaffected by. Most imporantly, when someone does manage a lucky shot that gets through your defenses, you still keep coming.

See the following clip for a golden example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTCNwL032GY The villain pictured is a Reality Warper who can make pretty much anything happen just by believing it, and has just cut off the protagonist's right arm, which happens to be the source of all his supernatural power. It does not go well for the villain.

Thisguy_
2015-09-02, 11:26 AM
The bastards were refusing burial to a friend based on RUMORS of necromancy (which I happened to believe vehemently at the time not to be true and which were founded on no evidence), so I (IC) got a little bit angry and... totally fell flat, spouted some line about letting gods judge men before men judge them and rolled a bloody two. Then I rolled another two for initiative.

...Maybe I just THOUGHT what I said wasn't scary because it fell flat so hard (I had a plus twelve to Intimidate and FAILED!), but it still pays to be attentive when a thread happens along which discusses a core bit of fluff for a character of yours.

Lord Torath
2015-09-02, 11:29 AM
Shir Khan (the tiger) in Disney's Jungle Book is another variant of Intimidation. Be polite. Be exquisitely polite. Everyone is afraid of Shir Khan, because he's the biggest, baddest guy around. They know it and he knows they know it, so he can afford to be polite, because everyone knows he can crush them like a grape.

Red Fel
2015-09-02, 12:36 PM
Shir Khan (the tiger) in Disney's Jungle Book is another variant of Intimidation. Be polite. Be exquisitely polite. Everyone is afraid of Shir Khan, because he's the biggest, baddest guy around. They know it and he knows they know it, so he can afford to be polite, because everyone knows he can crush them like a grape.

This is one of my favorites tropes. So much this.

Power and confidence pair very nicely together. When you have one, people assume you have the other. Confidence doesn't mean spouting quips or roaring or throwing your weight around - often, it is reflected in doing the exact opposite. You have so much power that wielding it freely is unnecessary.

One of my favorite images of somebody sinister is the guy who dresses well, speaks eloquently, is never rude, and often smiles. He looks genuinely disappointed when forced to fight - he rarely starts things. But once the fight begins in earnest, he smiles. It's not a friendly smile. It's a smile with too many teeth. And that simple nonverbal gesture is the only real warning that the enemy gets before they discover what a bad idea it was to try to push this guy into a corner.

Another direction in which you can go is reputation. Batman is, again, an iconic example - every member of Gotham City's criminal underworld has heard of The Bat, and while most believe, a few still think he's just the boogeyman. And that's good - he encourages that near-mythic status, because it means that when he confronts them, their first reaction will be Oh god he's real, followed shortly thereafter by Oh god did he see me, followed quite shortly thereafter by Oh god he did oh god oh god oh god and stained trousers.

Another example is James T. Kirk. (What, Kirk? Yes, really.) The Kobayashi Maru test is administered to officer candidates in Starfleet. It's designed to simulate a no-win scenario, and to test the would-be officer's ability to cope. Kirk won by cheating, but how he cheated is important - he had the scenario reprogrammed so that the enemy knew his reputation. When confronted by insurmountable odds, he roared that he was Captain Kirk - yes, the Captain Kirk - and the enemy yielded out of fear. Kirk justified this by pointing out that he actually wanted that kind of a reputation.

That's what reputation can do. Sometimes, simply being known can work to your favor in terms of intimidation. Of course, the downside is that, to build a reputation, you have to leave survivors. But nobody said you had to leave them entirely intact...

Lvl 2 Expert
2015-09-02, 06:27 PM
The silly way is to just say anything in a deep and scary voice.
I WILL EAT YOUR SOULS
THE LEFT PATH LEADS TO THE TREASURE
I LIKE PUPPIES
:smallbiggrin:

Segev
2015-09-03, 02:56 PM
I have a PC in a Rifts game who is utterly off-putting to people, and rather terrifying...but only because he is what he is, and is awful at pretending otherwise.

He uses magic casually, and that terrifies people. He is freakishly strong. And that screams "magical being," which terrifies people. Those who know him moderately well generally have figured out (or outright recognize) that he's able to change his shape at will. And that terrifies people.

He tries to be friendly, but his assumption that people will like him is met with, at best, disdain. At worst, they're suspicious, and then terrified when he doesn't react "right" to their own intimidation (or worse, when he casually uses magic).

It's actually rather frustrating for him (and would be for me, too, but I've learned to live with it), because he's not TRYING to be scary. He likes fighting a bit more than he probably should, but that doesn't actually worry people so much in this setting. He just is...off. And when people realize that he's both "off" and that he's probably magical, it frightens them.

Heaven help him if people figure out for sure what he really is; he can't get people to take him seriously without being pants-wettingly scared and eager to be away as it is.


I may have to figure out an excuse for him to start doing the "supreme politeness" thing. It might work better. He's slowly learning to tone down the magic. Sadly, it seems he can't pull off "respected and feared mage;" he's either "dismissable" or "terrifying loose cannon."