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View Full Version : Keeping Villains Alive (in interesting ways)



Kami2awa
2008-12-13, 08:49 AM
In my last two Call of Cthulhu games, the villains have both been ordinary humans - one a German spy in a WWII era game, and one a sorcerer - and in both cases, they have died instantly in the final climactic encounter before saying more than a sentence. In the next campaign, I really want to keep the villain around a bit longer than that. There are a couple of obvious ways:

- Make the villain indestructible apart from a given weakness (e.g. a vampire).
- Make the villain vanish as soon as he's attacked (he teleports away etc.)

However, these are clichéd and I'd like it to be a bit more interesting. Anyone here have any thought?

Bayar
2008-12-13, 08:51 AM
Give him plot armor until he finishes his monologue of evilness.

Grail
2008-12-13, 08:58 AM
Or run CoC without the characters having any weapon/combat skills, and have any possible weapons that they find be stuff that they might be able to find anyway.

Last time I ran CoC, the characters didn't have any weapons except for the one cop (off duty). They found a couple knives, some things that could be used as clubs, a spear gun and a wood axe. That was it.

Having little or no combat skills and virtually no weapons makes the characters less likely to treat CoC like a splat-fest, and allows villains like the ones you describe more of a chance to become recurring antagonists.

JeminiZero
2008-12-13, 09:04 AM
Have the villain be nothing more than a monolouging holographic image. Its also cliche'd but still believable. It also means that the climatic final battle, was in fact a giant trap.

Have the villain in the final showdown be a robotic copy, so that the real villain is still out there (*cough Dr Mcninja*).

Steal plot from some bad movies. Have the villain die, and then have his identical twin/contingent clone come in, pretending to be the resurrected villain.

Or you could actually resurrect the villain via magic or science of some sort.

Johel
2008-12-13, 09:21 AM
Capture the PCs first, monologue second ("-Now that you are helpless, I can tell you my whole plan...then kill you. Not smart but I'm enjoying it.)
Hordes of low-level mooks ready to slow the PCs down ("-Hey !!!") (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0105.html)
Bullet-proof window ("-Save your ammos, gentlemen")
The Dragon ("-...They don't want to talk ? That's unexpected. Mr Kill, I let you solve the problem.")
Bluff ("-Listen, I'm the only one who know where Little Milly is locked...and she only has 24hours oxygen left. You can't kill me !!")

allonym
2008-12-13, 10:08 AM
If you have a single human mortal big bad who you encounter in a climactic battle, then you should expect him to die. Humans go squish.

It's call of cthulhu - the final encounter should be more than that.

Your spellcasting villain should be going around in disguise, mindblasting a random player from a telephone box. If you have a one-on-one, you vs. me showdown with a human enemy, then unless it's very interesting you might be caught in the trap of playing fantasy, not horror.

Grail
2008-12-13, 10:11 AM
Your spellcasting villain should be going around in disguise, mindblasting a random player from a telephone box. If you have a one-on-one, you vs. me showdown with a human enemy, then unless it's very interesting you might be caught in the trap of playing fantasy, not horror.

Horror doesn't need a big bad mind-shattering reality breaking entity to be Horror. Indeed, the most terrifying of monsters can be mankind. I've had great success using human vilains as the main BBG in Horror RPGs

allonym
2008-12-13, 10:30 AM
I'm not debating that, but a single human who the players have an easy chance to shoot? Not so much.

The scenario The Hills Rise Wild is interesting. Not the finest, I'll grant you, but there's a rather brutal combat showdown near the end, where the villain hunts the players. When they finally kill him, his blood releases the real evil.

Having the villain be in a fair fight with the investigators, where his death ends the adventure, is obviously going to end quickly and unsatisfyingly, but making the bad guy arbitrarily hard or difficult to kill negates the 'human' horror.

Which is why you should avoid showdowns with human villains in the first place until you want him to go down.

Knaight
2008-12-13, 01:32 PM
A technological advantage with preparation can usually end that. If the enemy has an infra-red or ultrasonic vision system, and a few fog or smoke machines they they are going to be able to retain a huge advantage.

Ridureyu
2008-12-13, 04:06 PM
"Rocks fall, everybody lives. Including him."

Raum
2008-12-13, 04:41 PM
However, these are clichéd and I'd like it to be a bit more interesting. Anyone here have any thought?The best method is to give the PCs an in-character reason for leaving him alive. Anything else is simply a 'deus ex machina' contrivance.

There are lots of potential reasons spanning from the obvious (law, hostages, etc) to the subtle (uncertainty of guilt, PC promise, prevent loss of unique knowledge, etc). Use the reason(s) which fit your campaign.

Bayar
2008-12-13, 05:39 PM
You could make an evil council of BBG's and use those as an end encounter. They stab one while he is talking, 4 more are there to shoot them back to hell.

infinitypanda
2008-12-13, 06:00 PM
The best method is to give the PCs an in-character reason for leaving him alive. Anything else is simply a 'deus ex machina' contrivance.

There are lots of potential reasons spanning from the obvious (law, hostages, etc) to the subtle (uncertainty of guilt, PC promise, prevent loss of unique knowledge, etc). Use the reason(s) which fit your campaign.

I would just like to add that with certain groups, the bolded statement NEVER works.

Grail
2008-12-13, 06:07 PM
Having the villain be in a fair fight with the investigators, where his death ends the adventure, is obviously going to end quickly and unsatisfyingly, but making the bad guy arbitrarily hard or difficult to kill negates the 'human' horror.

Which is why you should avoid showdowns with human villains in the first place until you want him to go down.

See, this I feel is where a lot of DMs stuff up.
Why in hell would it be a 'fair fight'? The guy is a villain. He's going to cheat. He's going to have hostages. Or he's going to shoot first and monologue later. Or he'll have a dupe pretend to be the bad guy. Or he'll ambush the investigators at the end with plenty of cultists. Or he'll be wearing body armour. Or he'll pull out a bigger gun. Or he'll have rigged the place with explosives and have a dead man switch. Or he'll tell them that he's rigged the place with explosives and have a dead man switch. He'll sniper them. He'll drag out one of their wives/mothers/sons/whatever and laugh manically as he pulls the pin on a grenade and holds the loved one close.

Villains don't fight fair. If you're bringing the climatic battle down to a final showdown and they do, then what do you expect to happen?

Also, as I said earlier, CoC works better when the investigators aren't heavily armed. Because then final showdowns become splatfests or shootouts and generally lose focus on the style of the game. Guns in CoC should be heavily limited.

Tsotha-lanti
2008-12-13, 06:21 PM
In my last two Call of Cthulhu games, the villains have both been ordinary humans - one a German spy in a WWII era game, and one a sorcerer - and in both cases, they have died instantly in the final climactic encounter before saying more than a sentence. In the next campaign, I really want to keep the villain around a bit longer than that. There are a couple of obvious ways:

Sounds like the problem is that the players have learned to solve problems with guns. This is probably a result of you creating investigations where this is a viable option.

One easy fix is to inflict sanity costs for killing people, which to me seems like it should be the default. If seeing a body is damaging to sanity, then making one certainly is. (Gangsters, soldiers, etc. remain immune to this loss, but then they do start with less SAN anyway.)

Another easy fix is not allowing players to pick and choose targets that are at the back. There's a whole freaking fight in front of them - unless a PC is hanging back, standing higher ( = better target), and taking longer to aim and shoot, they shouldn't be able to pick off the villain standing behind twenty frenzied cultists.

A more demanding, but probably much better, fix is to come up with "insurance." Why were the PCs free to just kill the German spy? If they have no need to keep him alive, of course they will kill him. If they had needed information from him, they couldn't have killed him. The same goes for the sorcerer.

Stupid human villains with no supernatural powers have unclimactic deaths. (Speaking of which, why was the sorcerer not immortal, invulnerable to organ damage, or otherwise possessed of preternatural vitality? If I was an evil sorcerer who for some reason lets people come within killing distance of him, becoming invulnerable would be number one on my agenda.)


I would just like to add that with certain groups, the bolded statement NEVER works.

Oh yeah, this reminds me.

Killing people is, generally, a crime. The police may not be clued on to the Mythos horror (indeed, all evidence of Mythos horrors tends to evaporate before the cops ever make it there), but they sure can track mundane murderers - like the trigger-happy PCs. Having a party killed in a pointless gunfight with the law, or arrested and tried or put in mental institutions (probably with reason), will teach them that my capture and imprisonment are the better options. If your villains keep escaping, though, you can bet the PCs will just become exceptionally skilled serial killers very soon.

Remember, don't threaten the PCs with this, just respond to their actions without any bluster, sneering, or mocking. Actions evoke reactions, and it's your job to have the world react to the PCs.

Doomsy
2008-12-13, 06:39 PM
You have to untrain your PCs. Shooting the bad guy immediately is a completely viable and attractive option in CoC, more than almost any other game - you do not want to give the bad guy time to summon Mind Raping Horrors From Beyond or anything even close to a fair fight. You have to either remove their guns, or make them less than effective. I've played both classic and DG CoC for a while and while it can be difficult, it is really not as hard as you are making it sound.

The first step is making your villains intelligent. Who the hell monologues when the enemy has a clear, open shot at them? A mid gunfight dialogue from behind cover can work. So can simply walking up to the PCs in public for a friendly little chat from hell. The key is work this intelligently - a spy caught and found out is going to run like hell, not stay and fight. A master wizard caught in his own sanctum is going to be throwing spells, not talking, and he probably has some godawful traps prepared. The final confrontation is not the time to be talking. It's gone beyond that point. Throw out the fantasy conception of the evil mastermind speech unless the heroes are helpless or cannot react. When it gets down to them or you, it is best to keep it strictly brutal. Save any last words for dying ones, the PCs are (slightly, I've had a few PCs who make it a point to finish off even dying enemies quickly) more likely to listen then.

The second step is making him aware of the dangers of modern firearms and versed in their use. Use gun proof monsters to whittle down their ammo or maim them pretty well so the last battle is pretty nasty indeed. About half the time I do DG the guns only hinder enemies, and I often mix up 'gun resistant' and 'shootable' enemies so the PCs know that the gun is *never* a sure solution. Secondly, there are spells that can help a CoC cultist absorb gunshots without flinching - Flesh Ward is one of them. So is another that I just completely blanked on but the d-shamblers use it pretty much all the time.

Thirdly, don't ever let the PCs just able to solve it with a gunshot until you're ready to finish things. You're the Keeper. The power is yours. Don't ever let them armed and able to shoot within range of the bad guy unless you're ready to see a lot of them dead or him.

ericgrau
2008-12-13, 08:07 PM
Escape route, naturally.

Noneoyabizzness
2008-12-14, 10:46 AM
have the villian's death fufill a darker prophecy.

a few times of killing the zealot whos dedicated "pure hearts" make it steps closer to fill the escape of (insert destroyer of hope/dreams of your choices name here) at least one player will take tiem to find ways to thwart rather than "bag and tag"

of course the other side is the base coc cliche read nothing-shoot everything-burn all the books and you should be safe. depends which mindset a story wants to reward. a group of snipers who are functionally illiterate or people who could appreciate the horror by going deeper into it.

azalinthegreat
2008-12-14, 11:56 AM
This is kinda a weird one, but I once had a villain that I wanted to show up a lot, be tough, but still beatable. So, I did something where he actually exists in several places at once, you had to kill him like six times in total. That lead to all sorts of interesting things, like fighting two of him at once, having to capture one of him, etc.

The only problem is that my guys stopped seeing him as a real threat, so you need to make sure each time that he's still tough and hard to beat.

AKA_Bait
2008-12-16, 03:07 PM
have the villian's death fufill a darker prophecy.


This. Not only should the PC's know this, the BBEG should too. He should throw it in the PC's faces from time to time.

"Sure. I kill babies. I roast them in a nice lemon glaze and serve with a size of raped poodle. I do those things and I'm going to keep on doing them and you can't kill me. You know, and I know, that if you do, Thelrinsna The Damned will walk the earth again and that's a lot worse than the occasional dead baby."

Edit: Additional idea, have the BBEG have planted the idea of the curse for the PC's to find out about as a backup. I.E., he will still throw it in their face, however it's not actually true. The PCs will only find that out if they drace the source of the rumor back to the BBEG or risk it and off him/her.

Tacoma
2008-12-16, 03:26 PM
Capture the PCs first, monologue second ("-Now that you are helpless, I can tell you my whole plan...then kill you. Not smart but I'm enjoying it.)
Hordes of low-level mooks ready to slow the PCs down ("-Hey !!!") (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0105.html)
Bullet-proof window ("-Save your ammos, gentlemen")
The Dragon ("-...They don't want to talk ? That's unexpected. Mr Kill, I let you solve the problem.")
Bluff ("-Listen, I'm the only one who know where Little Milly is locked...and she only has 24hours oxygen left. You can't kill me !!")


I was going to suggest the bullet-proof window myself. Talking through an intercom.

"I leave you do deal with my little deathtrap on your own. I have important things to attend to. Oh by the way, your two friends I captured? The ones suspended above the glowing green vats? Their ropes are on timers to lower one foot every minute. And if you rescue one, the other will immediately fall! Good luck gentlemen!"

DigoDragon
2008-12-16, 04:48 PM
I've had a villain call one of the PCs up on his Cell phone to monologue. :smallamused: After a couple lines the PC put him to voicemail.

Tacoma
2008-12-16, 04:57 PM
You push the button on your cell phone to end the call, but the button doesn't work. You close the phone. The voice continues its monologue. You frantically pull out the battery and the voice stops.

"You didn't really think that would work, did you?" the phone says. You throw the phone and battery in opposite directions and run down the street.

You hear whispers all around. There's a fog rolling in around the bulbous gaslights. Soon everything looks alien and ominous. You slow to a walk on the slick cobblestones. A crone is on her balcony chopping a chicken with a cleaver. When she sees you, she puts down the cleaver and turns away, closing the balcony doors behind her.

You see a grotesque rat run into the street from a sewer drain. It stops right in front of you. It drops something and runs away. Glistening on the ground is your cell phone. The battery is back inside. It's open.

"Jumpy?" the voice suddenly hollers, laughter resounding in your head. The voice is coming from inside your brain!

You wake up in a cold sweat. The sheets are tangled around your torso. You're back at the hotel. Your revolver rests on the nightstand beside you, under a newspaper. It's so real, so dangerous. And yet you know the horrors you face might be invulnerable to your bullets. But you aren't. That might need to come in handy someday.

Prometheus
2008-12-16, 08:04 PM
Do what real life political leaders who have a good chance of being killed do (everyone from say, MLK Jr. to Sadam Hussein) - have a couple of doubles or triples running around, some that will even make a speech of two. Or in the case of an epic showdown, perhaps a whole room of duplicates.