d20 Cryptosnark Games Deeds Not Words - Bold Costumes, Black Hearts.pdf - Cryptosnark Games - R5700

C ONTENTS

Cirrus

The Grandmaster

120

Introduction 3

Making the Best of the Bad Guys 4

Creating Story Antagonists 7

The Classically Quotable Villain 9

100 Random Villainous Plots 12

Villain-Specific Complications 14

Villain NPC Classes 15

The Assassin 16

The Miscreant 18

The Strongarm 20

The Tyrant 22

Ten Classic Villain Archetypes 24

The Bruiser: Bulkington 25

The Idealist: The Rana 29

The Trusted Lieutenant: Malice 33

The Megalomaniac: Baron Azathoth 37

Azathoth’s Array of Extraordinary Devices 41

Castle Silence and Its Inhabitants

Dreadknight

Madame Guillotine

120

Thornwolf

Scythe

121

Agrippa

Reshaper

122

Reciprocity

The Angel of Wrath

123

Punchline

Konstantin Stragos

123

The Midnight League

Otto Skorzeny

124

The Voice of Fear

Lutetia Malachi

125

The Preserver

Coriolis

126

Airship Tempest

Patches

126

Madame Absinthe

Coldsteel

127

Commodore Blood

Deathknell

128

Plenty More to Watch Out For

Prime-8

129

Caledon Magister

129

Whipsaw

Doktor Chronos

130

Demure

Shadow Vanguard

131

Shiver

Omega Null

132

Nox

The Twilight General

132

Ilse Jager

Autonomous Destruction Device 13

133

The Know-it-All

The Tragic Figure: Aleksandr Korsakov

Goon Gear and Minion Machinery

134

Verge

Sierra-Class Submarine Barracuda

The Exhibitionist

100

The Goonmaker

139

The Enigma: Oddsmaster

Nepenthe

101

The Random Ninja Generator

143

The Fun-Loving Felon: The Motley Minx

Mindwraith

102

Appendix: Items of Note

147

The Minx’s Nefarious Tool Kit

Acheron

102

Appendix: OGL Legalese

148

The Threat From Beyond: Zharadak

Kid Napalm

103

The Lunatic: Dr. Deadline

Harrow

104

Dr. Deadline’s Dangerous Distractions

Viridian

105

The Unknowing: Lady Belial

Bloodybones

105

Villain Teams

Irradiator

106

The New York Dolls

The Sand Fox

107

Carla

Temperance

108

Donna

The Constrainer

108

Gwen

Tiburon

109

The Zero-Sum Gang

Morgan Sharpe

110

Glass

The White Torch

111

No-See-Um

Azathoth Zwei

111

Darklighter

DJ Subsume

112

The Nocturne

Incantatrix

113

Belladonna

Nightcloak

114

Apparition

Wavefront

114

Malaise

Ghostwind

115

Gabrielle

The Master Imprint

116

Mordant

Wellspring

117

The War Saints

Pincushion

117

The Marquess

Pythagoras

118

Thumper

Shock Jock

119

I NTRODUCTION: MEANS OF EVIL

“To do aught good never will be our task,

But ever to do ill our sole delight,

As being the contrary to his high will

Whom we resist. If then his providence

Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,

Our labor must be to pervert that end,

And out of good still to find means of evil.”

playing games.

I’m more than a mere appreciator of villains. It’s safe to say that I’m a con-

noisseur of villains, a flag-waver for the black hats, the bad guys’ Number One

Fan. Not because I approve of chaos, murder, and lawlessness, mind you, but

because a good villain, a truly memorable antagonist, is solid gold when it

comes to telling a good story. Boring heroes can occasionally be forgiven, but

boring villains are a crime, a crime that an audience will never forgive. The job

of a Deeds Not Words GM is to deliver his or her players from boredom, so it

stands to reason that only the freshest, neatest, thorniest, Grade-A 100% USDA

choice super-villains should ever be allowed anywhere near a Deeds Not Words

game. With that laudable philosophy in mind, here’s a whole damn book about

“bad guys”– how to make them dangerous, memorable, colorful, sexy, sympa-

thetic, and ultimately worthy of equal degrees of respect and loathing from your

players.

John Milton, Paradise Lost , Book I

Scholars (well-meaning or otherwise) will tell you that Joseph Campbell’s

“monomyth” is the heart of all human artifice and the most compelling structure

possible for the construction of a fantastic narrative. I, on the other hand, will tell

you that the most compelling structure possible for the construction of a fantas-

tic narrative is clearly two guys beating the living crap out of each other.

No, seriously.

In addition to my (no doubt) erudite and occasionally smart-alecky advice,

you’ll find a great variety of pre-created villains and villain teams presented for

your amusement, modification, or direct use. When creating the teams in par-

ticular, those fraternities and sororities of ill-will, I tried very hard to give them all

a bit more of a twist of lemon than your standard villain cocktail. Any harried GM

driving home from work can slam together a few generic miscreants in his mind

and stamp them, “The Legion of Evil-Doers” or the “Union of Terror.” Why the

heck should you need me to shove a few boring stereotypes into costume? I

therefore solemnly swear that villain teams presented here all have distinct per-

sonalities, modes of operation, and motivations above and beyond, “Hey! We’re

evil!” After all, you already knew that, since they’re in the book.

While a great volume of human mythlore is comprised of death-and-resurrec-

tion cycles and thresholds of adventure and all that foofarah, a similarly impres-

sive volume deals with the relatively simple subject of two equally fascinating

sides getting into a fight.

Many of our best popular entertainments are built upon this simple duality, the

contest between two extraordinary and formidable talents. Bond had his Blofeld,

Holmes his Moriarty, the Scarlet Pimpernel his Citizen Chauvelin, the

Gunslinger his Man in Black.

Van Helsing and Dracula. Peter Pan and Captain Hook. Arthur and Mordred.

Merlin and Morgan le Fay. Dantes and Villefort. Beowulf and Grendel. Dig deep

into the strata of myth, legend, and entertainment and you’ll find such match-ups

time and time again. Mental titans, physical powerhouses, stolid survivors,

heroes and scoundrels, pitted against one another in battles of wits, muscles,

and spirits. In a very real sense, a villain is a fictional hero’s best friend, because

the more dangerous and determined the villain, the better the hero looks when

the fight is over.

Oh, yes. One last important thing before I let you loose in this. Pay close atten-

tion, this is vital:

BAD GUYS CHEAT.

No, seriously. They do. Because they’re the bad guys. Not only do they cheat

during the game, they cheat beyond it as well. You’ll notice that some villains

have unique powers or abilities which aren’t fully explained in a fashion that

makes them useful for heroic player-characters. This is because there are some

dark and deadly little secrets the good guys simply don’t get to have, and

because there are some challenges they should face, from time to time, that

aren’t clearly described in any other Deeds Not Words sourcebook.

Comic books (which every right-thinking man, woman, and child surely loves,

and if you don’t love them too, what the heck are you doing reading this?) are a

study in hero-villain relationships. I think it’s fair to say that super-villains have

been as responsible for their popularity as super-heroes, if not even more so. A

super-hero is a fascinating thing the first few dozen times he leaps a tall build-

ing with a single bound or lets a bullet bounce off his chest, but he’s bound to

get boring if all he ever does is stick it to two-bit crooks not fit to carry his shoes.

Super-villains aren’t a comic-book luxury... they’re a necessity. Without them,

super-heroes might stand a pretty good chance of curing many of the world’s

woes, and a happy, peaceful world rarely makes for good comics or good role-

Cheers and best, with thanks to Jayson Stevens!

St. Paul, Minnesota

December 1, 2003

M AKING THE MOST OF THE BAD GUYS

“A villain must be a thing of power, handled with delicacy and grace. He must

be wicked enough to excite our aversion, strong enough to arouse our fear,

human enough to awaken some transient gleam of sympathy. We must triumph

in his downfall, yet not barbarously nor with contempt, and the close of his

career must be in harmony with all its previous development.”

• Agnes Repplier

TR (Threat Rating) scores exist for just this purpose, but a good GM will

remember that TR scores are the beginning of the balance process, not the end.

All powers, resources, and abilities possessed by a Deeds Not Words char-

acter are factored into the TR rating, but in a quantitative sense rather than a

qualitative sense. That is, all other things being equal, the Threat Rating scale

assumes that any ten super-powers applied to a character will be a rough

match for any other ten super-powers, or that any 5th level human vigilante will

be a match for any other 5th level human vigilante. Due to the vagaries of char-

acter construction and the differing degrees of player skill, this is not always the

case. A canny GM will sometimes find it easy to stymie some player-character

teams with a single antagonist quite beneath their TR scale, while an unfortu-

nate GM might find his world-shaking demigod of an antagonist going down in

flames after a few brief rounds against his supposed inferiors.

Sooner or later, super-villains are going to be a necessity in just about every

super-heroic campaign. The players can have a great deal of fun pitting their

characters against ordinary crooks, but the novelty is sure to wear off if mun-

dane challenges aren’t interspersed with more demanding adventures. After all,

as Deeds Not Words characters gain levels, they acquire the ability to flatten

squads of ordinary criminal goons, and then platoons, and eventually perhaps

companies or regiments.

Super-villains are antagonism concentrated in its purest form, dark reflections

of the heroic PCs, an elite class of being with a license to break the rules in the

same way the heroes do. A super-villain represents a challenge to be feared, an

enemy worth testing one’s skills against, a conquest worth bragging about.

Super-villains, in all their color and menace, are as essential as the super-

heroes they oppose.

There are three questions any GM should ask himself when creating an antag-

onist:

1. What’s the most extreme thing the player-characters are capable of

doing?

It’s important to make a note of the most dangerous, powerful, or reality-bend-

ing things the heroes can do, and note as well how likely they are to use those

powers. Heroes that can teleport to Mars and back in the blink of an eye are

unlikely to be fazed by a villain that keeps a shark-filled moat as the primary

obstacle against entrance to his lair. Furthermore, if a hero can generate an

energy attack that does 5d8 damage with one shot, it’s possible he might com-

pletely incinerate an unprotected villain with only 20 hit points in the first round

of combat.

Making Villains Memorable

The ideal super-villain will excite two mingled and seemingly contradictory

emotions in the minds of the players–fascination and loathing. If the GM has

done his job and created a classy, memorable, dangerous antagonist, his play-

ers will fervently strive for the moment when their characters upset that villain’s

plans, foil his ambitions, and beat the ever-loving snot out of him. They’ll also

want to see him pop up in a campaign world again and again. A good villain is

a joy to fight, a joy to defeat, and a joy to contemplate when he returns, by some

improbable scheme or dirty trick, for a re-match.

2. What obvious strengths and weaknesses do the player-characters

possess?

As obvious as it sounds, don’t forget to take an accounting of the nitty-gritty

details regarding what the player-characters do well and what they do poorly. If

none of the heroes can fly, an airborne antagonist might be just the thing to

annoy them for a game session or two. If none of them are particularly skilled at

melee combat, a high-powered martial artist might be just the thing to set them

quaking in their boots. On the other hand, if every player-character hero has a

potent fire-based attack, a battle against an opponent with a fatal vulnerability

to fire might be laughably anticlimactic.

A good villain gets under the player-characters’ skins, earning their admiration

even as he earns their undying enmity. Presented here, in broad terms, are a

few of the easiest ways to ensure that happens.

• Balance the Antagonist Smartly Against the

Collective Powers of the Heroes

The victory of the heroes against a super-villain shouldn’t be a painfully fore-

gone conclusion, nor should it be an obvious impossibility. In the first instance,

a too-weak villain will quickly grow boring. In the latter, a too-powerful villain will

quickly grow frustrating. Carefully balancing a villain’s power (not only his num-

ber of class levels, but his special abilities, allies, and resources) against that

available to the heroes is essential.

3. How are the player-characters inclined to act together as a team?

Team dynamics are an important consideration when designing an antagonist.

If the player-characters are tight-knit, loyal, tactically proficient, and skillfully

played, the GM should expect their effectiveness to be significantly greater than

their TR scores would suggest. On the other hand, if they fight poorly as a team,

bickering constantly and refusing to support one another, a cannily-played villain

can pick them off one by one and prevent them from using their abilities in an

optimal fashion.

ensure that the heroes must deal with regret and temptation every time they

face a certain antagonist?

Folk wisdom tells us that nobody is a villain in his own mind, but in the con-

text of a super-heroic roleplaying game, someone typically has to wear a black

hat and work against the common good. The use of this technique does not

imply the existence of any wishy-washy moral equivalence between the villains

and the heroes– rather, it simply adds a philosophical conundrum to a contest

that otherwise might be rather one-dimensional.

All in all, balancing a villain so that he can be fought (in some fashion) by the

heroes, but not easily defeated, will go a long way toward maximizing player

interest in the outcome of battles involving that villain.

• Present the Antagonist as a Charming or Attractive

Individual

If a villain is pursuing one or more admirable goals, might that not provide an

opening for the heroes to negotiate with him, or even talk him out of his more

reprehensible plans? A dialogue between heroes and villains on the ultimate

morality of their respective actions can be nothing more than a fascinating inter-

lude in the action... or it can be the action that halts the villain’s scheme when

physical force could not.

While this trick obviously can’t be used with every villain the player-characters

encounter, imagine that tangled webs that might result if the heroes find them-

selves charmed by, jealous of, or even attracted to a dangerous opponent.

Imagine a beautiful and mysterious female assassin, impeccably dressed,

invariably escaping from the heroes in expensive and outrageously-equipped

vehicles that put their own equipment to shame. Or perhaps a charismatic mad-

man, capable of throwing the most entertaining dinner party and tossing off the

wittiest lines even while counting down the final hours of his deadly master plan.

Such a villain might arouse emotions of amusement, admiration, resentment, or

covetousness in the player-characters, and those aroused emotions will make

encounters with the villain all the more memorable.

• Give the Antagonist and the Heroes a Point of

Connection

It’s relatively easy for the player-characters to demolish a villain that they can

hate without reservation... but why should the heroes always have such an easy

time of it? What if their heroes and their antagonist are in agreement about

something fundamental, or if they share a common point of origin? Few things

complicate a hero’s life so fully and effectively as the pangs of his own con-

science. A former friend, a fallen brother, or an estranged sister can be an infi-

nitely more compelling villain than any stranger, no matter how evil.

What might a scrupulously honest super-hero without a dollar to his name

think when he confronts a villain living comfortably and expensively thanks to a

life of crime? Might he be forced into a personal struggle against temptation?

It’s something of a cliche, that moment when the villain muses to the hero,

“We’re really not that different, you and I...” but sometimes it really is true. That

moment of reflection can simply add spice to an encounter, or it can be used to

set off a chain of doubt and soul-searching in the heart of a player-character.

What might happen if a super-hero begins to develop romantic feelings for a

villain or villainess? How could his allies depend on him in the middle of a bat-

tle against the object of his affections?

Presenting a villain as a personally charming individual can create a great deal

of dramatic tension between the villain’s outward appearance and his despica-

ble acts. It can also lend the appearance of depth to an otherwise uncomplicat-

ed villain... not everyone needs or wants to keep a sneer on their lips every wak-

ing moment of their day.

This trick can also be used on a temporary basis by providing a villain and the

player-characters with a common enemy. What might happen if the heroes are

forced to team up with one of their arch-enemies to overcome an even greater

threat to everything they hold dear, or to battle a force unleashed by the villain

in his latest ill-considered scheme? How might such an alliance of convenience

come apart when the danger is past, and how might it affect the hero-villain rela-

tionship from that point on?

• Give the Antagonist An Admirable or Debate-Worthy

Motivation

• Make the Antagonist Competent and Dangerous

Closely related to the art of making a villain attractive is the trick of making his

cause attractive, or at least admirable in some fashion.

It’s a a noted truism that it’s easier to fear an enemy that you can respect, so

one of the most important things the GM can do is make an antagonist a credi-

ble danger. The more competent a villain is, the more emotional investment the

player-characters will place in the process of defeating him, and the more seri-

ously they will treat every encounter with him.

Villains acting out of raw malice, hatred, and an uncomplicated thirst for may-

hem can be very colorful, but the heroes don’t have to deal with any philosoph-

ical complications when they take ‘em down. For a richer experience, why not

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