Good/Best Supervillain Games?

[Morithias]

Alright, a lot of stuff in my path of evil campaign is going swimmingly, so swimmingly in fact that I think it needs some more reworking before I redo it, or possibly needs a whole new system/setting.

I came across the "savage worlds - necessary evil" book....but I don't really understand the system, I think I might be missing a core book, but that's besides the point.

Do you know any roleplaying games that make for good supervillain campaigns? Preferable ones that have actual rules for doing this kind of stuff. I've heard of Champion, Hero, Marvel, and so on, but I can't find any evidence that any of them have their version of the "Book of Vile Darkness" or "Exemplars of Evil" so to speak.

Basically I'm looking for rule systems that I can either a. Reverse engineer to use for my own evil campaigns, or b. Just study and actually DM.

Games with simulation rules (Lair rules, Minion rules, and all that other evil genius, supervillain stuff), will be highly appreciated. As most of my rules are jury-rigged versions of D&D rules that no one ever uses.

I'm just curious if there's actually a game out there for the supervillain in all of us that I could run instead of having to experiment and beta test a bunch of house rules.

[nweismuller]

Mutants and Masterminds 3E has minion and headquarters rules in by default. It's not explicitly focusing on villains, but the mechanical distance between a superhero with minions and a headquarters and a supervillain with minions and a headquarters is pretty small.

[Morithias]

Mutants and Masterminds 3E has minion and headquarters rules in by default. It's not explicitly focusing on villains, but the mechanical distance between a superhero with minions and a headquarters and a supervillain with minions and a headquarters is pretty small.

Then I will start my research here. Thank you, any other info would be helpful.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Mutants and Masterminds 3E has minion and headquarters rules in by default. It's not explicitly focusing on villains, but the mechanical distance between a superhero with minions and a headquarters and a supervillain with minions and a headquarters is pretty small.

Mutants and Masterminds is a wonderful, versatile system, and I kind of recommend its use for any and all high-power settings. It should work well for supervillains, even if the material is written for heroes. Minions, vehicles, and hideouts can be obtained without any sort of contortion, and even shared among players.

I ran a one-shot with a villain player, and it worked fine. It's almost somewhat easier to run a supervillain game if you're coming in from a system like D&D, where the players are expected to be the active party. The players, as villains, would be coming up with plans, working towards goals, and so on, with cops, SWAT, army, and heroes working to stop them.

(It's also, in my opinion, an incredibly fun system to play, run, and build characters with. Basically, I really like M&M, and can't recommend it enough)

A few more detailed suggestions that require some system knowledge:

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The Minion advantage gives 15 points worth of minions, with a generic thug-type being written up at the back of the book at PL 2 and 37 points, meaning that players can either buy two generic goons with 5 points worth of the advantage, one slightly crappier goon for 2 points, or maybe one bigger super-science mook for 3 ranks. You might toy with the idea of giving all players a few free points of minion, so they have their own cannon fodder. (Minions are easy to KO, and aren't regained for the rest of the session-- it's not too unbalanced)

For renewable mooks, the Summon power works well, especially with modifiers like Active, Multiple Minions, Horde, and something along the lines of Limited: must travel to the battlefield on their own.

You can also play around with the Variable power for a more flexible gang: Slow Variable 1 or 2, Limited to the Minion and Sidekick advantages, for 5 or 10 points, gives you a regular supply of well-varied cannon fodder-- though it can be slow until your players learn the system well enough to stat mooks up quickly.

Headquarters can be shared among a team-- everyone spends points on the Equipment advantage, and the base is built using the sum of everyone's points.

The Inventor advantage is great for letting players build death-traps, though it tends to require some ad-hocking of check DC's and construction times (RAW, it's easier and faster to build a time machine than an assault rifle)

[prufock]

The core rules are also available online. It isn't complete, but it contains everything you need to build a character and run a game.

[Diskhotep]

I really enjoyed the Savage Worlds Necessary Evil campaign. The only books you need to run it are the campaign book and the Savage Worlds rule book (which you should be able to pick up at a reasonable price). If you don't care for Savage Worlds, you can certainly use the Necessary Evil setting with any other supers game system. M&M is a good choice, as are ICONS, Champions, Wild Talents, Truth & Justice, or the classic Marvel FASERIP system.

I have run that particular campaign twice, and we wound up with great characters each time. My personal favorites were the grandson of the Soviet Union's version of Iron Man, who only inherited the repulsion gauntlets and boots due to the rest of the armor being sold by the Russian mafia during the 90's, and a cursed Egyptologist who could transform into a swarm of voracious locusts.

[Morithias]

I really enjoyed the Savage Worlds Necessary Evil campaign.

I personally dislike the concept of it. You're supervillains fighting evil aliens. Let me put it bluntly in case any videogame designers come across this. I DO NOT PLAY VILLAINS IN ORDER TO FIGHT GREATER EVILS. When I play a VILLAIN I want to fight the GOOD guys.

[DontEatRawHagis]

We did pretty well with a Homebrewed Progression system that worked outside the system.

• What is your supervillain power?
• What is your goal?
• What is your weakness?

My first character was just bonkers insane. My second character was too sane for his own good. The DM would give us a continuation of our powers every few sessions in. For example, I had a large group of faceless minions who would die for me. At my second tier one of them graduated to my Second in Command. I had to skip the third tier because I was killed.

Weakness ranged from must always accept duels to damaged by holy objects to can't stand to see women hurt(guy had chivalrous code of honor).

So simple that it works with any system.

[Diskhotep]

I personally dislike the concept of it. You're supervillains fighting evil aliens. Let me put it bluntly in case any videogame designers come across this. I DO NOT PLAY VILLAINS IN ORDER TO FIGHT GREATER EVILS. When I play a VILLAIN I want to fight the GOOD guys.

That is a fair distinction, which I failed to discern from your original post. I will say that while there is a theme of redemption in the NE setting, it is not necessary to play it that way. At least one player in each campaign I ran completely rejected the notion, choosing to join the resistance with the express purpose of getting "his" planet back so he could rule it properly.

Regardless of setting, though, I enjoyed playing in and running super powered campaigns in all of the game systems I mentioned. I don't know of any that expressly focus on playing villain campaigns (as you pointed out, Necessary Evil is one of villains as heroes in spite of themselves). You will probably have to do most of that work yourself. As far as games with extensive minion/lair rules, your best go-tos will probably be Mutants & Masterminds, Champions, and Savage Worlds (the Super Powers Companion has all the rules from Necessary Evil and more, with the setting stripped out to make room for more generic supers stuff).

[Morithias]

That is a fair distinction, which I failed to discern from your original post. I will say that while there is a theme of redemption in the NE setting, it is not necessary to play it that way. At least one player in each campaign I ran completely rejected the notion, choosing to join the resistance with the express purpose of getting "his" planet back so he could rule it properly.

Regardless of setting, though, I enjoyed playing in and running super powered campaigns in all of the game systems I mentioned. I don't know of any that expressly focus on playing villain campaigns (as you pointed out, Necessary Evil is one of villains as heroes in spite of themselves). You will probably have to do most of that work yourself. As far as games with extensive minion/lair rules, your best go-tos will probably be Mutants & Masterminds, Champions, and Savage Worlds (the Super Powers Companion has all the rules from Necessary Evil and more, with the setting stripped out to make room for more generic supers stuff).

Well to be fair, I didn't actually say I disliked the setting in the opening post, just that I didn't understand the system. Nothing is forcing me to use their plot.

Thanks for all the suggestions though.

[Hopeless]

I personally dislike the concept of it. You're supervillains fighting evil aliens. Let me put it bluntly in case any videogame designers come across this. I DO NOT PLAY VILLAINS IN ORDER TO FIGHT GREATER EVILS. When I play a VILLAIN I want to fight the GOOD guys.

You're overlooking one important detail, these meaningless and worthless alien spawn are stealing not only your glory, but also your property and reputation demands you make examples of each and every one of them, whilst of course rebuilding your dominion whilst you're doing so!

They aren't greater evils... thats your job!

Me i'd run a villain whose eradicating the aliens pest problem purely because they're just in the way and if anyone is going to destroy the world it isn't going to be just any extra-terrestrial/planar entity if he has anything to say about it!

And the best supervillain teams are not those that backstab each other over anything, they became a team for a reason and unlike Owlman they're far more dangerous because of that!

[Morithias]

You're overlooking one important detail, these meaningless and worthless alien spawn are stealing not only your glory, but also your property and reputation demands you make examples of each and every one of them, whilst of course rebuilding your dominion whilst you're doing so!

The aren't greater evil... thats your job!

Alright, and why shouldn't I just play a hero if all I'm doing if defending my property and the human race?

I play the villain, I expect people to suffer, I expect to be causing pain and misery. I want to make the world a worse place for everyone except me and my minors.

I don't want a plot where I could literally replace my character with a good-aligned character and change virtually nothing, other than a few lines of dialogue being less jerkass.

Like in many videogames that have screwed this up.

Dungeons: You're raiding hell cause your ex-girlfriend kicked you out of your house. Why can't I just play some badass hero who decided to try and kill the queen of hell cause he's the most awesome hero ever?

Overlord 2: You're fighting an evil anti-magic and racist empire. Why can't I just play some magical knight who commands angelic spirits who aims to end the tyranny?

90% of games with Karma meters. If I'm just going to end up some big hero regardless of my moral choices, why bother giving me the choice?

I want to play EVIL. I want to cause TERROR. I do not WANT TO MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE, BECAUSE THAT DEFEATS THE WHOLE POINT OF PLAYING THE VILLAIN.

Games that got this right.

Dungeon Keeper 2. The maps starts out peaceful, happy, and full of heroes, by the time you're done with it, it's a hellish wasteland.

Evil Genius. 90% of the acts in the game are some form of "annoy the good guys with some comedy gold plot (like clubbing baby seals)", "Steal stuff" and so on. And when the game ends you push a big red button and send a doomsday weapon into space to take over the planet, and the game ends with you sitting in the UN, all of the world leaders in line to bow to you, as your banners deck the halls.

THAT is how you do VILLAIN. The world is a WORSE place because of you. You're not some "Evil in claim only."

Boy: "Hey mr. knight, you're a hero!"
Evil knight: Kid I'm evil, bug off.
Boy: "Evil? But you saved the princess from a dragon, stopped the tyrannical empire from invading us, and stopped a dark god from destroying all of creation! The world is a better place because of you!"
Knight: "....Shut up."

Get it straight videogame and plot writers.

Jerkass =/= Evil

[ThiagoMartell]

Well, all I can say is that just because your idea of "being evil" is not the same as they presented, it does not mean they "got it wrong".
It just means you have different views regarding something highly subjective.

[Morithias]

Well, all I can say is that just because your idea of "being evil" is not the same as they presented, it does not mean they "got it wrong".
It just means you have different views regarding something highly subjective.

I'm just saying, being evil should meant something. It shouldn't be some hipster title you slap on a character cause it sounds cooler than good. If you claim to be evil to the core I expect you to back it up with evil deeds, not good deeds that you just happened to do in a bit of a jerkass anti-hero way.

[ThiagoMartell]

I'm just saying, being evil should meant something. It shouldn't be some hipster title you slap on a character cause it sounds cooler than good. If you claim to be evil to the core I expect you to back it up with evil deeds, not good deeds that you just happened to do in a bit of a jerkass anti-hero way.

One thing does not exclude the other. In the Baldur's Gate games, if you play an evil character, while you fight the bad guys in you can murder people left and right just because, not to mention making armor out of human skin.

[Water_Bear]

I'd say the real problem with running a villain who doesn't feel like a hero with an impulse-control problem and spiky armor is that villains are typically proactive and powerful while heroes are typically reactive underdogs.

To expand on what Morithias mentioned, this is a solvable but rarely addressed issue. The Overlord/Dungeon Keeper/Evil Genius series all have you managing minions and dark fortresses, going out on sorties to kill heroes or just wreck havoc when you feel like it, and you ultimately get to see the world your actions made. Pretty much every game with a Karma Meter has you going through a standard hero plot with the option to be a jerk at seemingly arbitrary points, and leaves you at the ending cinematic with a vague sense that your character is about to start being a real villain (the Star Wars games are particularly bad about this).

Since RPGs tend to assume consequences for actions, the real issue is finding a system with a built-in expectation of player pro-activity and the ability to do classic villain stuff. I'd say any good Superhero system should be able to handle either, though you might want to go for an Aspect based system like PTA or FATE for maximum player input in the plot.

[DJDeMiko]

Mutants and masterminds is great because it forces you to start with a concept and then build stats around it. BUT any stats can be built.

Opposed to DND as an example where you pick a class with set rules.

Want to be an arcane archer? In dnd you are required to pick races, pick X levels of this class and Y levels of that class.

In MnM you just build an arcane archer :)

It's versatility makes it a fun system that lets you focus on your character as a concept and a story instead of mechanical rules.

[Crasical]

Jerkass =/= Evil

Stupid =/= Evil, either. A villain who goes around vaporizing civilians and punting puppies for no reason, 'causing pain and misery and making the world a worse place' doesn't make an interesting character. A villain needs a goal to work towards, too.