I almost always lead off my columns by saying "Welcome back," and I'm getting really tired of it, but I can't really think of anything better to say, so... er... welcome back.

This time out, we continue our discussion of heroic archetypes. Last time, we covered "Leading Men," the type of character that frequently becomes the focus of a group in popular fiction. This time we'll round out the group with some of the "Supporting roles." Of course, in an RPG, things are rarely quite that simple. Few of the groups I've played in ever really had a clear-cut "Leader," and generally when they did it wasn't so much because of story focus as because one player was more charismatic, smarter, or louder than the others. But the division of Leading Character/Supporting character is useful enough as a division, and sometimes useful in a more literal sense. For instance, a game of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, played pretty close to the source material, will almost certainly have a leader in the Slayer (and some of the other characters I'm about to cover, too). Pendragon also has a built-in leadership role. In theory, whoever has the highest Glory is in charge. In point of fact, in every game of Pendragon I've played, the guy with the highest glory went around acting like he was in charge, while my character actually came up with all the plans and did all the hard work, but my experiences probably aren't typical.

So, on with the show.

The Wise Elder

Merlin, Obi Wan Kenobi, Teaspoon (let's see who gets that one); the Wise Elder is a classic archetype as old as heroic fiction. He (generally guys) might lack strength, but more than makes up for it in knowledge. Generally, the Elder is not the focus of the group, but an advisor. He often has some past ties to whatever threat the group is facing. Perhaps in younger days he faced it himself, or perhaps he is part of the cause, and now is trying to make amends by aiding a band of young heroes.

Wise Elders come in a variety of packages. Gandalf was an awesomely powerful being. Merlin wielded knowledge from beyond the realm of man. Teaspoon was just an old gunfighter, no better than anybody else, just more experienced. The key factor is wisdom, whether gained through secret knowledge or experience. The Elder offers his wisdom to the rest of the group, who are often too young and impulsive to appreciate it.

In general, his role in the story is not so much to advise, as to offer a measuring stick by which the primary hero's wisdom is gauged. In the classic cycle, the brash young hero begins by frequently ignoring his mentor's advice, and gradually matures until he doesn't need it anymore. Usually, the Elder dies then, symbolically showing that the Hero has matured.

The Wise Elder is often a mystic of some kind, which fits into his role as the provider of wisdom and insight. He can also be a fading master of a discipline that a younger hero seeks to master, an elder swordsman passing on his techniques to one last apprentice, for instance.

The Wise Elder can be a little tricky to bring off in an RPG. First of all, in general it's hard to start off with a character who is significantly more skillful than his companions. There are a few solutions to this hurdle. I believe there was a "grizzled veteran" option, or something along those lines, in one of the Silhouette games (Jovian Chronicles?). The Unisystem games have the Age and Past Life Qualities, both of which allow for a character with a lot of skills, but maybe not so much raw power. I'm also fond of the GM Cooperation method, wherein the GM just lets you break the rules to make a better character. Obviously that needs to be kept in check, though.

A second hurdle is that it's often hard to have one player with a lot of otherwise secret knowledge. It requires the GM to present all that knowledge to the player in question, and to make sure he knows what he can reveal and what he can't. The player then has to work at proper pacing and timing, and probably to cede a certain amount of control over his character to the GM. And there are grounds for charges of favoritism from the other players. (And, of course, if the GM is like me, he may not have a lot of secret knowledge to share anyway since he makes most of it up as he goes along).

These are all hurdles that can be overcome through a number of means. A mature group isn't going to complain about one player getting extra resources that are designed to be shared. A good player should be able to play his role well. The most difficult problem might be that the younger characters are too willing to take the Elder's advice. In literature, the brash young Hero often ignores his mentor's warnings, but in a game the players will have to be careful about separating their characters' perceptions from their own. Remember, the characters just see some old coot who talks a lot. They don't see that the old coot's player gets to read through the GM's notes before each session.

The Reluctant Hero

Bilbo Baggins, Philipe the Mouse, Roger Murtaugh; the Reluctant Heroes of literature are a relatively recent phenomenon. I could probably think up a few older examples if I really wanted to. The Reluctant Hero, in general, doesn't want to be a hero. He'd much rather be at home, where it's safe and comfortable, but something forces him into action, and as long as he's in action, he'll do the best he can. He's just likely to complain the whole way.

He's often not motivated by the same things as the rest of the group. Instead of going on the noble quest to save the world from the clutches of evil, he might be there in hopes of looting the evil overlord's treasury to pay off his gambling debts. Or instead, maybe he's got a perverse sense of loyalty to one of the other characters in the group, and is determined to follow his friend on whatever "damn fool quest" he's undertaking.

The Reluctant Hero can fill a lot of roles, but some of the more charming ones tend to be roguish types. Part of their reluctance comes from a lack of heroic traits like big muscles and magic swords and ancient destines. The Reluctant Hero usually approaches the whole business of heroics from something of a right angle. He's not here to save the world. Saving the world just happens to be the only way to save his own life (or whatever) so he'll do it. But he'll do it in the easiest, safest way he can find. Why fight the guards when you can trick them? Why fight the Guardian of the Magic Dingus when you can sneak past him? Why fight the bounty hunters when you can run from them?

But once the chips are down, if he can't figure out a way to scoop them into his pockets and hide, he'll usually come through. In fact, one common course is to take an unlikely Reluctant Hero type and have him gradually mature into a more gallant, noble hero. Some never do, of course, and even those that do often retain a sort of charming recalcitrance.

The Reluctant Hero can be a little difficult to play without some cooperation from the other players. If you're going to try it, be sure to clue the GM in. He'll need to know that when your character keeps trying to weasel out of adventure hooks that you're really planning to play along. It'll help if the other players are in on it, too. And you should probably keep an eye on their reactions. Like any character played for comic effect, it's easy to cross the line from "funny" to "bloody annoying."

The Love Interest

Gwenivere, Dale Arden, Ilsa Laszlo, the love interest can be every bit as noble and heroic as the next person, but her role in the story is usually defined by her relationship to another character. Most of them are women, but the type works for men, too, with a sufficiently active female lead. And hey, I don't want to offend the homosexuals, either. But pronoun use is going to get really confusing here if I don't limit some options, so for the most part we'll be talking about ladies here.

The classic Love Interest goes along on the hero's quest or gets involved in his continuing struggle more out of interest in the hero than out of dedication to the quest. The two aren't necessarily in conflict, of course, but the dynamic lends an interesting cast to the hero's actions. When the hero goes off to sacrifice himself, she's the one who wishes he wouldn't go. When the rest of the world's against him, she's the one who he can turn to. When he can't see any reason to go on, she provides his inspiration. While his presence motivates her, her presence also motivates him.

Beyond that, the Love Interest can take a lot of roles in the story. In classic pulp and many a comic book, she was mainly there to get captured and rescued from time to time. But incompetence isn't really a necessity. Princess Leia was a Love Interest, more or less, and she was as good at shooting stormtroopers as any of the boys, and she only ever got captured and had to be rescued that one time. A Love Interest can even have a somewhat adversarial relationship to the hero and the rest of the group. A Catwoman/Batman cycle of attraction and betrayal has been part of the Batman mythos for years.

There's nothing too hard about building stats for a Love Interest. Since the only necessity for the job is a romantic relationship with another PC, I can't think of any game system that would make that difficult. (Well, technically a too-strict interpretation of the Cyberpunk 20.xx rules could, since your character's romantic life is determined randomly) What can be difficult is establishing the social dynamic of the role. If you're going to play a romance with another PC, it's very important that the player of that PC be onboard with it. And if you're making that a major focus for your character, then it's really important. The rest of the group might have something to say about it, too. Something like "ick" or "get a room" if you get out of hand.

You're making your character very dependent on another PC, so you need to consider the other PC's background and personality. Your character needs to fall in love with the other character at some point (maybe during backstory). And her personality (once again, I'm just using pronouns for convenience here, ok) needs to mesh with his in such a way as to get the relationship dynamic you want.

That dynamic doesn't have to be a happy love. In fact, that's kind of boring. An unrequited love could be fun, either played for humor, or for eventual tragedy. (or hey, maybe you'll finally win him over) An adversarial relationship can be very interesting, but kind of hard to arrange in a typical RPG group. A mostly-friendly rivalry might be a better choice.

Playing the Love Interest isn't too hard, assuming you can do the romantic side well enough. Her development path will depend on a lot of outside factors, and there are several ways you can go. Do you want to play the faithful lover who's always there for her man, right or wrong? Or how about the initially somewhat misguided child who gets in over her head and learns that there are more important things at stake? A "Benidict and Beatrice" type relationship where two characters seem to hate each other, but fall in love, is lots of fun if you can make it work. And, of course, your character's romantic plot doesn't have to be the core of her existence. I've used them much more often as just one hook for a more well-rounded character.

Conclusions

Well, we're not done quite yet. I have three more "Supporting Heroes" to discuss next time: The Protector, The Jester, and The Quisling. See you then. (I hope I can come up with yet another good title with "Hero" in it by then.)

Welcome back. Sorry for the delay. I moved last month, and found out I had a lot more stuff than I thought I did. Things were crazy, but now they're more or less back to normal.

So, last time we discussed various villainous archetypes. This time out, we'll talk about heroes. Like last time, I'm breaking my discussion of heroes into two parts. The similarities end there, though. I'm not so concerned with "realistic" heroic archetypes. They aren't so easy to pin down as the villainous ones, since most people can be heroes in the right circumstances, and there aren't really obvious psychological traits to distinguish them. I'm going to concentrate for now on more literary Heroic archetypes.

Heroes tend to be a lot different than villains. "Well, duh," you say. But the big difference might not be the one you expect. What really tends to separate the heroes from the villains in practical terms is that villains tend to be pro-active, while heroes tend to be reactive. This is one of the enduring conventions of storytelling. In general, the "good guy" is the Protagonist of a story. That leaves the role of the Antagonist to the "bad guy." And all it takes to be an Antagonist, when you get right down to it, is to cause the conflict that drives the plot.

So, like villains, heroes are defined by their motivations, but those motivations are often imposed from outside. The ultimate villain wants to destroy the world, which he can start doing any time it strikes his fancy. The ultimate hero wants to save the world, which he can only really do once someone has started to try to destroy it.

My first offering of Heroic Archetypes is going to be the "Leading Men." Leading Ladies are fine, too. And, in fact, any of these archetypes might just as easily fill a supporting role in the party. Gaming tends to be a lot more ensemble driven than some genre fiction, since each player probably wants his chance for center stage. In the literature from which gaming takes its inspiration, though, these heroes will tend to be the leaders or central figures:

The Chosen One

The Chosen One has a destiny thrust upon him, usually accompanied by some sort of special abilities to allow him to face it. Often, his destiny is also a doom, and even with his new power, he can fulfill it only in his own death.

A Chosen One is intimately tied to the plot of his story. He's generally Chosen to defeat the primary antagonist. How he was Chosen can vary. Luke Skywalker was Chosen because of his heritage. The force was strong in the Skywalker line, and he was its scion. Buffy Summers was just chosen pretty much at random. Only the "Earnest" movies present a less likely hero than Buffy at the beginning of her career as a hero. Hal Jordan (Green Lantern for those of you who aren't comics geeks) was Chosen because of his personality.

One interesting variant of the Chosen One is a character I like to call the Nexus. They're very common in Anime. The Nexus is usually a fairly weak character, surrounded by much more competent ones, but is possessed of a power that is absolutely crucial to the team's success. Unfortunately, most of the time this power isn't very useful in day-to-day activities.

The Chosen One usually begins the game fairly inexperienced. It's his destiny, not his training or skills, that make him important. But he grows in power quickly. This can be hard to simulate in an RPG where advancement is more or less the same for everybody. If your GM is up for it, it's possible to just ignore normal character advancement rules. I've done that a couple of times, and it works great if all the players are onboard. If not, you can usually do a decent job by taking high level powers with relatively low skills.

To play the Chosen One, you're going to have to have the GM on your side anyway. There has to be room for a Chosen One in his game. Some games just aren't appropriate. A Chosen One is almost mandatory in a Buffy: the Vampire Slayer game. A Chosen One in a Delta Green game might be a little odd.

The Nexus variation is easier to work around, and can be a really fun challenge to play. You need to have a somewhat forgiving system, and be ready to deal creatively with dangerous situations. It's easy to smite Stormtroopers with the Force. It's harder to figure out how you'll fight off a horde of demons when you have the power to either do nothing in particular, or open all the barriers to all the dimensions surrounding earth.

In general, Chosen Ones are warrior types. They almost always have mystical abilities of some kind, and in general what those abilities are good for is smiting Evil. Beyond their mystical powers, many Chosen Ones are fairly limited. Some aren't, though. As they grow in power, they can grow in a lot of areas as easily as in just one.

A Chosen One usually has a fairly predictable path of personality development, not unlike the classic stages of grief. There's usually some disbelief, some resistance, then an embracing of the destiny and a gradual growth in wisdom and power. A Chosen One frequently has a mentor, and that mentor's death often marks a turning point.

The Chosen One is almost certainly the central character in the group. His destiny is probably what brings the group together, and none of them can succeed without him. In a game, this can be a little of a problem, unless everyone is on board. The characters can believe or not believe as they choose, but it's important that the players are willing to take supporting roles.

Of course, one easy solution is to have a group of "Chosen Ones." If every character is visited by fickle destiny, then everyone is on equal footing again.

The one big problem with a Chosen One is that eventually he's going to get around to doing what he was Chosen to do, unless his destiny is ongoing, like "fighting the demons and the vampires and stopping the spread of their numbers." After that, he either needs to find something else to do, or he's just going to sit on his hands for the rest of the game. In a close-ended campaign, that's no problem. In a long-running game, you've got to make some preparations. The Star Wars Expanded Universe material dealt with this pretty well. Luke was Chosen to defeat the Emperor. After that, he had to find a new purpose, and found it in rebuilding the Jedi order. The skills he'd learned as a warrior didn't always serve him, and he had to learn new ones.

There are lots of Chosen Ones in literature to use as examples: Luke Skywalker, Neo, Buffy. Moving into some older material, King Arthur could claim the title, as could the judge Gideon from the Book of Judges. A pretty good example of the Nexus (even though she's not the main hero) is Melfina from Outlaw Star. She's the navigation module of the ship, which allows the other characters to fly the ship, but isn't too useful elsewhere. Dawn from Buffy: the Vampire Slayer is another good example. As the Key, she was the most powerful being on the planet, but her power didn't really help her.

The Questing Hero

Where the Chosen One was chosen passively, the Questing Hero chose his role himself. He has a driving goal that makes him walk the path of a Hero. His Quest is the focus of his life, and possibly his death.

The first question for the Questing Hero is "What?" What is his Quest? What does he have to do? That will almost certainly be up to the GM, and will quite likely be a driving force in the game. Quests come in two main flavors: close-ended and open-ended. "Avenge the death of my father at the hands of the Six-fingered Man" is close-ended. Even if the player decides to keep the Six-fingered Man alive through healing magic and torture him for decades, the quest is pretty well over after the first half-hour or so of screaming. "Fight crime in Gotham" is open-ended, particularly since the GM is likely to come up with a string of increasingly bizarre bad guys to commit crimes, and have old ones break out of prison every so often.

The nature of the Quest presents the same problems a Chosen One's destiny might. If it's close-ended, it needs to be worked into the game's timeframe. If the game will last longer than the Quest, the player needs to figure out what he'll do when it's over. Lots of Questing Heroes want to retire after they do their great deed. Retired PCs aren't much fun, though.

The second question is "Why?" The Chosen One's motivation is usually to reconcile with a destiny he never asked for. But usually a Questing Hero did ask for his, or at least had it thrust upon him as a direct consequence of his actions. He may have decided to pay a blood debt, or he may have to accomplish his quest to atone for a crime. Or he might just really want whatever he's Questing for. This last kind of Questing Hero can easily become a villain, depending on how far he'll go in pursuit of his goals.

Those two questions will lead to the "How" that is pretty much what the game is all about.

Questing Heroes are more likely to be seasoned and competent than Chosen Ones. Young, inexperienced heroes can take up Quests, but so can experienced adventurers. Since the Quest is usually a choice, even inexperienced Heroes usually have time to train and prepare for their roles.

Again, warriors are typical. That's largely because warriors are the traditional heroes of genre fiction. But a warrior makes a good lynchpin for a group anyway. Combat is something exciting that everyone can participate in, and a dedicated warrior needs help from a lot of other adventurers with varied skills, giving everyone else a good chance to shine. Besides, most Quests come down to the simple instructions of "go somewhere and kill someone."

A Questing Hero could have special powers, but he could just as easily have none. Sometimes, one aspect of his quest is to acquire a power he needs to defeat some enemy. Usually, the Questing Hero doesn't present the same advancement problems that the Chosen One does. He's less tied to the supernatural, and the ties he has aren't usually as prodigious.

Like the Chosen One, a Questing Hero can easily be the focus of a group. He's likely to deliberately hire or ally with the other PCs, rather than meeting them through chance or being found by them. He's a little easier to put into a secondary role, though.

The Questing Hero can develop in a number of ways. Unlike the Chosen One, the Questing Hero has nothing really holding him to his Quest but his own will. There might be negative consequences if he fails or quits, but he can choose to suffer those consequences. The Quest is likely to be difficult, arduous, and dangerous. In pursuit of it, the Questing Hero will have to risk other things. You're a lot freer to play with the consequences of the Quest than you are with a Chosen One.

There are plenty of examples of Questing Heroes. I've already alluded to Batman and his crusade on Gotham's criminals. Robin Hood had his Quest to restore King Richard. Aurealeus Pendragon, with his quest to unite Britain, is a very proactive Questing Hero. Perseus, of Greek myth, could be argued either way.

The Sympathetic Monster

The Sympathetic Monster is a traditionally evil character in the service of good, or one thought to be evil even though he's not. He's nobler for his isolation, and for the fact that few of those he helps will ever appreciate it.

Of the three types I list here, the Sympathetic Monster could be the most varied, and the one most easily shifted to a supporting role. There are three main types, with plenty of room for customization. The first is the truly reformed bad guy. Vampires are very popular these days. Through his own choice, or otherwise, he has done terrible things, and now he wants to atone for his sins. Perhaps he has a true chance for redemption, a curse that can be lifted. Or perhaps he just plans to live out his days in constant attempts to do good.

The second type is a character who looks like a monster, but is noble within his soul. His inner goodness is contrasted with an outwardly evil form. The world expects him to be evil, and he does good anyway.

The third is a normal character with a curse that turns him into a monster temporarily, like a werewolf. His greatest adversary is himself, and he has to either defeat it, or somehow reconcile with it. Often, he quests for a cure, or simply travels, forced to move from place to place as his curse destroys one home after another.

No matter what, the monster has a hard road ahead. He'll be met with distrust, fear, and violence by the very people he's trying to protect. The forces of evil will treat him more viciously still, or else constantly try to tempt him to embrace his dark side. And after he suffers betrayal upon betrayal, he'll start to think they have a point.

Like the other two archetypes in this column, most of the Sympathetic Monsters I can think of are fighter types. They often have supernatural abilities as a result of their monstrous natures. Frequently, these abilities come at a cost. A vampire has supernatural strength and senses, and other powers besides, but only because he's a bloodthirsty predator. And often, he courts the chance that he'll lose control over his thirst by using his powers.

If the game has a place for Sympathetic Monsters, they don't usually present any mechanical difficulties. They can be expensive characters, though. Usually what sets the monster apart is a hefty chunk of powers beyond mortal ken.

The Sympathetic Monster is one of my favorite characters to play. He has to struggle to do things the other heroes take for granted. Every relationship he has is infinitely precious because it's so fragile, and was so hard-won. His moral decisions all seem more important, too. He might have vicious animal instincts, or sadistic urges. When he fights, is he fighting too viciously? When he intimidates enemies, is he stepping over the line into cruelty? How long will he be able to keep up the good fight in a world that will never appreciate him?

Examples abound in our age of tragically hip anti-heroes. Angel, and before him Nick Knight, represent the reformed monster. Vincent, from Beauty and the Beast, and the Fantastic Four's Thing are good examples of the second type. The Hulk, or almost any werewolf, are good examples of the third. The classics don't have as many examples, as the idea of looking for the good within evil is comparatively new.

Conclusion

That's it for this installment. There's still plenty of room for more. Next time out, I'll discuss some "Supporting Cast" roles. If I think of some more, this series might get stretched out to three columns.

See you next time.

Welcome back to my little wretched hive of scum and villainy. This will probably be the last installment in my Evil series, and this month's topic is a bit more serious than last month's. Last month we covered melodramatic, over-the-top evil. This month, we're going to delve into much more realistic evil. The label "evil" gets very hazy here. There's a very thin line separating a religious fanatic from a simply faithful person. If you'd asked either side fighting the Crusades, the other side was the bad guys.

So, to provide a common basis of comparison, I'm defining "evil" for the purposes of this column, to mean "profoundly antisocial, or tending to act in a harmful way toward others." It becomes more a matter of degree and focus than kind, since even the "good guys" can be pretty harmful. For our purposes, "evil" is a label that's going to be imposed from the outside, and largely by popular opinion.

If you want to argue comparative morality, you'll have to find another columnist.

The Fanatic

The Fanatic is a man with a mission. Fundamentalist Islamic terrorists are a very topical example. Indeed, religion has inspired Fanatics throughout history. But religion isn't alone. Patriotism, and even simple loyalty to a single person has also served as the focus of many fanatics' zeal.

A Fanatic is, in his own mind, a paragon of virtue. He is so dedicated to his cause that he'd lay down his life for it. This, in itself, is laudable except that he is also all too willing to lay down the lives of others. A fanatic is frequently a warrior of some kind. Those who become destructive hold an unshakable belief that their cause requires bloodshed. Perhaps the Fanatic is a crusader who sees his faith as under attack from all sides, and he's moved to acts of destruction to preserve it. Or possibly he's an inquisitor who sees corruption within, and is willing to do anything to root it out. After all, while removing a cancer is painful, leaving it is much worse. And besides, those who have fallen to corruption must be saved from themselves. So much better to save the soul, even at the cost of the body.

Political fanatics are basically the same. The ideology might be different, but the methods are similar.

What marks the Fanatic, and qualifies him for inclusion in my list of evil character types, is a blinding lack of perspective. He takes what might otherwise be admirable qualities (faith, loyalty) and warps them to the point of destructiveness. Along the way, the ideals of his belief system may be warped as well. A righteous Crusader striking down the infidel has likely forgotten that his Savior preached forgiveness, and may well forget that he stood against murder and rapine as well. A loyal, patriotic counterinsurgent charged with rooting out the Communist Threat can be blinded to the fact that his greater charge is to defend the liberties of Americans. As he hunts for Commies, he becomes a fascist, which is every bit as damaging to the spirit of America.

Playing the Fanatic is a bit of a thorny problem. If everyone in the group is a Fanatic dedicated to the same cause, then there's no contrast. The group is, as far as any member knows, the "good guys." I have seen many arguments that say this is exactly the case in a "brave humans vs. the Ork Hoards" game.

Playing a Fanatic in a group of non-fanatics holds more possibilities. I find it makes a better starting place than a permanent state of affairs, though. In an otherwise "good guy" group, a die-hard zealot who will never change is just going to be a constant disruption. But a character who gradually learns that he's been wrong and comes to terms with that could be really fun.

The closest I've come to that was when playing a D&D Ranger who had Goblins as his favored enemy. Goblins were a constant threat. The local lord paid a bounty for goblin ears. There were seasonal goblin raids that could destroy communities if not checked. In general, goblins were a scourge on the land. And Snow thought they were barely a step up from animals.

Until he got to know one, and went on a journey through goblin lands. That game came to an early end because we didn't like the way D&D was working at higher levels. We're thinking about switching it to a GURPS game one of these days, if we can get the right players back together. I kinda hope we manage it, because Snow coming to terms with his racism was a lot of fun. It was even better since he was a half-elf, and had been a victim of racism his whole life.

To portray a Fanatic, first, pick your fanaticism. That should be pretty easy. I'd be best if you picked one that didn't immediately put your character at another PC's throat. A destructive Fanatic is going to have a world-view that leads him to acts of destruction. His version of his religion, political affiliation, or whatever will be a harsh and unforgiving one. It may even be skewed from the "truth." For instance, all those Crusaders probably missed the bits about "blessed are the peacemakers," and the part about not storing up treasures on earth.

As you play him, the Fanatic interprets almost everything in light of his obsession. He sees the world in harsh black and white, them and us. And he holds everyone to the same standard. Allies can become enemies simply by not being as obsessed. Enemies have a hard time becoming allies, though. Fanatics don't tend to be very big on forgiveness.

A Fanatic's views probably don't stand up to much scrutiny. He'll tend to react to people poking holes in his arguments violently. His obsessive beliefs shield him from the guilt he'd otherwise feel, so he defends them viciously.

This isn't to say he has to be stupid, though. A fanatic warrior infiltrating the enemy stronghold to kill the "prince of darkness" isn't going to start preaching on street corners along the way. He can be clever, sneaky, and outwardly perfectly normal if it fits his goals. In the long run, though, the truth will be revealed. The Fanatic's beliefs drive almost every aspect of his behavior, and he'll have a hard time suppressing that for very long.

The Sociopath

The term "sociopath" has moved out of vogue these days. I think "destructive narcissist" is the current replacement. (On an aside, I wonder why people keep coming up with longer words for things. Didn't they read Romeo & Juliet in high school? A sociopath by any other name is still a scary person.) I hesitate to boil down a complex psychological condition to a single sentence, but in essence a sociopath lacks a conscience. Sociopathy emerges through a combination of heredity and early childhood trauma and other factors.

The result is a person who doesn't feel guilt. That makes him a good liar, and potentially a very dangerous person. He's by no means a raving mad man. Indeed, he could be quite charming. But he lacks the empathy that stops most of us from hurting other people. The only thing he cares about is himself, and the only thing that might keep him in check is fear. Generally, a sociopathy is also marked by a sense of superiority. Sociopaths think other people are "weak" or "sheeplike."

The nature of the disorder means that most sociopaths in modern society will eventually become criminals. Without conscience, there's not much reason for the sociopath to refrain from doing whatever he wants. Without empathy, there's nothing to stop him from hurting someone, just because he wants to. With his superior attitude, he likely thinks he can get away with it.

Literary examples of sociopathy fill the landscape of the psychological thriller genre. Those examples are probably more useful to gamers than any amount of dry psychological description. Hanibal Lector, of [I]Silence of the Lambs[/I], is perhaps the most prominent. His combination of charm, charisma, devastating intellect, and vicious cunning made him far scarier than any number of horror movie revenants.

Playing a sociopath in a game is a challenge I have so far been unwilling to undertake. I think doing so would take my mind down paths best avoided. From what I understand, sociopathy is pretty much untreatable, so there's no real chance that a sociopath would ever be "redeemed." Generally, when I play darker characters, I want to play through the path to redemption.

I've given it some thought, though. A sociopath could have breaks on his behavior. In a science fiction game, he could have mental conditioning, or just a cortex bomb that someone with authority over the sociopath will set off if he steps out of line. In a fantasy game, the same sort of thing could be accomplished with spells. Even without resorting to magic, someone might find a way to turn the screws on a sociopath by getting control over something he wants or needs.

With the right breaks, a sociopath might be fun to play. He could be more or less on the "good" side, but it would be an uneasy alliance at best. The sociopath would constantly test whatever limits had been placed on him. He might share goals with the rest of the group, or at least be following those goals for reasons of his own, but how he'd pursue them would be a constant source of friction. And with his intelligence and charisma, he'd constantly challenge the "weak" party members' methods. "It only makes sense to kill every guard you come across. Which member of the team are you willing to sacrifice if one wakes up?" "Of course I'm going to torture him. He knows what we need to know. Aren't you the one who's doing this to save one million people's lives? What's one life, an enemy's life, compared to that?"

What might make him most disturbing is the sense of genuine curiosity that would come with those questions, and the utter inability to comprehend the answers.

Portraying a Sociopath could be frighteningly easy. Essentially, if you can completely divorce yourself from the social aspects of the game, you're most of the way there. Don't think about any character but your own as "real." The rest are just playing pieces. They're either resources or obstacles, to be used or destroyed as necessary. There is no good or evil, only consequences.

Pay attention to the consequences, though. Going to jail is no fun, so if you decide to kill someone, do it in a way you won't get caught. Or better yet, trick someone else into killing them for you. Then kill the patsy "for justice." That way he can't talk. Physical consequences are pretty clear. Social consequences are also important. Emotioinal consequences don't bother the Sociopath much, though. If someone is so weak that their heart is torn out when you use and discard them, they deserve the pain. If they get over it, great. If they become a liability, well, sometimes people just die.

The Relativist

Of my three "realistic" evil characters, I can't decide if the Relativist is the least evil, or the most. Like the fanatic, he's very dedicated to a cause and willing to do almost anything in its service. But his drive is different, less made of wild-eyed faith and more of cold calculation. He differs also in that he realizes what he's doing is bad, and doesn't expect anyone else to join him. In fact, he sees himself as the one who does the dirty jobs so someone else won't have to.

Many Relativists can be found in the pages of spy thriller novels. In fact, the tired, old Cold Warrior is my inspiration for this archetype. He may have started off as an idealist, a good guy. His goal was to make the world a better place, to serve a greater cause. But something got in the way. The cause he undertook ran counter to the ideals that led him to undertake it. And little by little, his idealism was worn away until all that was left was the job, and there was nothing to stop him from doing whatever he had to do to complete it.

The Relativist may still think he's a good guy, or he may realize that he's not really worthy of the ideals he defends. His moral compass may be twisted beyond recognition, to the point that he thinks his pragmatism is laudable, that it's good for him to take the steps others hesitate to take. Unlike either the fanatic or the sociopath, he does have a sense of right and wrong that's relatively in line with that of modern society. He's just decided to go beyond it, perhaps in pursuit of a "greater good."

That makes the Relativist really interesting to me. Somewhere, buried inside, is the good person he used to be. In a group of hardcore types like himself, he fits in, but can play through a gradual, creeping disgust with what the group is doing. In a group of good guys, he's the darker voice they sometimes need, and he can be inspired by their example of "a better way."

To portray the Relativist, you have to come up with some accomidation with the fact that what he's going to do isn't very nice, and he knows it. He could be grim and careworn, or he could wear a mask of total unconcern. If you go with the latter, find a way to play out the pain he sublimates. Maybe he drinks too much, or has a lot of torrid relationships. Somehow, he probably punishes himself subconsciously for what he pretends doesn't bother him.

When it's time to act, he acts. He does what needs to be done, no matter how much it turns his stomach. Only afterwards does he feel any pain. And he probably worries if he doesn't feel the pain. But when it's time to act again, he does what needs to be done. Again.

Conclusions

So anyway, that's it for this time. I think I'm done with the topic of evil for a while. I had a hard time writing this column, and I'm not totally happy with it. To do a really good job, I would have needed to do a lot more reading than I had time for. I'm looking forward to the forum discussions on this one.

There wasn't as much advice about what roles these characters would fill, because they can really fill almost any. They're not literary niches, but psychological ones. The roles they'd be drawn to are more a matter of personal history and campaign background, so you're kind of on your own there.

Since my evil archetypes were well received, maybe next time out I'll do some heroic archetypes.

Welcome back. Last time, I gave an overview of Evil roleplaying. For the next few columns, we'll delve into the depths of the evil psyche, staring into the abyss until the abyss blinks.
Well, maybe not.

But what we will do is look at some ways of portraying evil characters in RPGs. This is a bit of a departure for me, since playing evil characters isn't something I do very often. Rather than practical examples, I'm going to have to rely on theory. Right at this moment, I'm planning on two more columns on this subject. The one you're reading now will cover some fairly exaggerated archetypes. Next time, I'll tackle some more "realistic" ones.

Before we begin, let's go over a few generalities. Most of the characters I'm about to describe wouldn't think of themselves as "evil." Some would consider the concepts of good and evil to be superfluous. Some would actually think of themselves as "good." The ultimate difference between a "good" hero of faith and an "evil" terrorist may come down to who's life he's willing to sacrifice in the name of his god.

I think most of these characters work best in a group of similarly minded PCs. The idea of one ruthless, evil person in a group of high-minded idealists is interesting, but the dynamics of a typical RPG player group make it hard to pull off. The line between friend and foe gets blurry. The need for secrecy causes logistical problems. And, ultimately, there's a lot of chance for hard feelings.

Only you can decide what's right for you and your group, of course. My friend Chris has played the "token evil guy." He loves to tell the story about how his necromancer convinced the party's paladin that he needed to kill the party's priest. That would have been something to see.

So, now that all the disclaimer stuff is out of the way, on with the show:

The Rat-Bastard

Let's start with a fun one. The Rat-Bastard is a nice, simple, stereotypical evil character. He's ruthless, immoral, and only out for himself. He's willing to lie, cheat, steal, and even kill if he can do so with no risk to himself. In fact, he considers these to be his first choices in dealing with people.

And yet, he has a strict code of honor, mandating terrible punishment for treachery and dishonorable behavior. This code, unfortunately, only applies to other people. While the Rat-Bastard won't think twice about stealing a widow's last two mites, he'll plot bloody vengeance against anyone who slights him.

The defining characteristic of the Rat-Bastard is usually some form of weakness. If he were big and strong, he wouldn't need to sneak around. If he were really smart, his plots would both work better, and be more grandiose. He's more likely to be a sneaky-type than a straight-out warrior or wraith-of-god spellslinger.

The Rat-Bastard is not a very good team player. He'll ally with stronger characters for protection, but screw them later if he sees a chance for gain. He might try to bully weaker characters, but he's not going to be a very good leader.

The classic Rat-Bastard is pretty shortsighted. He's looking for the next score, rather than planning out a long campaign. His goals tend to be simple: survive, make some money, live in comfort. It's like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, just with booze and strippers at the top. And he tends to have very myopic hindsight, too. Nothing is ever his fault. His history is a trail of betrayals and outrageous misfortunes. When he left his partner to die, that was just logic. No sense in both of them dying, right? But when his new partner pulled the same stunt, that was totally unfair, an unforgivable perversion of trust and brotherhood. If people weren't always doing that, the Rat-Bastard would be better than he is, or so he thinks.

And yet, he probably has a certain internal charm. In fact, he'd pretty much have to. There has to be some little shred of charisma (or something) that keeps people from just killing him out of hand. Maybe he's got a knack for knowing just what buttons to push. Maybe he's lucky enough to just barely escape with his skin. Maybe he's got sad puppydog eyes, and looks so pathetic that even though you know better, you let him live.

So what drove the Rat-Bastard to a life of Rat-Bastardhood? If you asked him, he'd tell you none of it was his fault. And, indeed, there are certain backgrounds that seem to lead one down that path. He was probably always the underdog, and he probably always felt weak, and deprived. Someone who always felt like he was on the top of the world and always got what he wanted usually turns into a completely different type of rat-bastard. No one path creates Rat-Bastards, and it's far from inevitable. The Rat-Bastard reacted to a world of injustice by becoming every bet as unjust. He could have just as easily decided to rise above it instead, but he didn't. The Rat-Bastard's path is something of a downward spiral, because down is easier than up.

The Rat-Bastard works OK in a typical game, so long as the other PCs aren't particularly morally upright folks. He's not a great PC to just pull on a group with no warning, though. If the rest of the players are up for the challenge, he can be fun to have around. If they're not, then you just have to accept that if you were just playing in character when your Chaotic Evil Halfling Thief stole the Half-Ork Barbarian's magic dagger, then he was just playing in character when he gutted your character with it.

To play the Rat-Bastard in a typical game, you need to make some compromises. You should probably make him smart enough to refrain from stealing from other PCs when he has to hang out with them all the time. You should also work with the GM so that his little treacheries benefit the game, rather than just causing chaos.

In an all-evil game, the Rat-Bastard is in more trouble than in a mostly-good one. Evil characters won't feel bad about killing him the way good ones will. In that case, he should probably attach himself to a more powerful character. Then he should betray that character when a stronger one comes along. Then he should sell that one down the river when his original master comes back, saying he planned to do so all along. Then... Well, you get the idea. It's a little like spinning plates, only instead of plates, they're landmines.

The Monster

The Monster is just scary. He enjoys causing pain, invoking fear, and spilling blood. After that, he probably enjoys a few beers, and maybe spilling some more blood. In fact, he's pretty much most of the characters I played in Jr. High and part of High School.

He reacts to any threat or slight with as much violence as is available. Someone backtalks him? Kill them. Someone has something he wants? Kill them and take it. Someone threatens him? Kill them, and then kill some other people just to make sure. The only reason not to resort to violence is when doing so will obviously get him killed. Then the Monster waits and resorts to violence later.

I sleep better at night thinking there aren't really people like this. People might temporarily become Monsters in the midst of a war, or a riot. Or possibly they act that way because of severe mental problems, but that's something we'll cover later in the article.

The Monster really doesn't make much of a character at all. He's completely focused on destruction, so he doesn't have a lot to do unless there's fighting. And if your game is always about fighting, you're probably not too worried about his personality.

The Monster is generally a hand-to-hand fighter. The further he gets from the violence, the less personal it is, and he really likes the personal touch. For him, the violence is the end, rather than the means, though he might be fighting under the auspices of one cause or another. In fact, he could be very zealous in pursuit of his cause, but ultimately that's because it gives him the chance to hurt people.

There are some variants on the Monster that I'll lump in here. The Stone Cold Killer (generally a mafia assassin in a black leather overcoat) is similar enough, but with better manners. The Savage Hunter type (think "Wolverine") can be played as either good or evil. The evil ones tend to for a scary cat & mouse routine instead of straight-up violence. If getting on your character's bad side is more dangerous than living in the same town as Jessica Fletcher but not getting your name in the credits, then there's a good chance your character is a Monster. Especially if he doesn't have a good side.

In a typical group made up of PCs with the most remote shred of conscience, the Monster doesn't make a very good PC. However, having an otherwise normal PC with Monster-ish tendencies can be kind of cool. A classic Werewolf is a pretty good example. The character struggles against himself. It's particularly cool if the game is set up in such a way that the Monster side of the PC's personality has access to something that the "civilized" side needs.

In an evil group, the Monster could ally himself with other PCs who offer him more chances for violence. The Dark Necromancer needs his chief enforcer, after all. And as long as the body count keeps rising, the Monster will probably remain loyal. If he starts to have goals besides "maim, kill, destroy," he's turning into another sort of villain.

The Prince

Ah, the Prince, who may not be a member of the nobility at all, mind you. This is the cold, ruthless manipulator who will do anything necessary for power. Power may be a means to an end, or an end in itself. Usually, it's an end in itself. The Prince may have started out as a noble idealist, devoted to a cause and willing to sacrifice anything for it. But somewhere along the way, he gets caught up in the rush of power. Eventually, his cause is nothing more than a facade, an excuse to continue his rise in power, and a tool to manipulate fanatics.

The Prince is rather like the Rat-Bastard, but with better press. And more vision. The Prince is all about vision. He's a man with a plan. And a contingency plan. And his plan actually factors in someone messing with it, so just when you think you've foiled him; you're really helping him out.

And that's just if you've somehow actually figured out that he's the bad guy. If the Prince is really on the ball, you'll think he's on your side.

He's the master manipulator. He knows all the buttons to push to get exactly the effect he wants. He has servants who are functionally loyal. They may all hate him, and probably all hate each other, but he's so deft at playing them against each other that they get the job done anyway. His servants' main job is to bring him information. He's like a spider sitting at the center of a web. When you touch it, he knows about you, and then you're trapped.

So how does a man become a Prince? (Or a woman, for that matter? Foolish is the man who doesn't realize that women can be sneaky, too.) In a way, the Prince is like the Rat-Bastard. He sees himself in a hostile world. But unlike the Rat-Bastard, he thinks he has the power to change it, or at least to rise to the top of it.

The Prince probably comes from a privileged background, one that makes him accustomed to seeing people as tools. Or perhaps he was one of the tools, forced to live in a world that tries to make him unworthy. But whatever the case, he needs the chance to see real power at work. He also needs education. The Prince is a smart guy, both clever and, in some ways, wise. As I said before, he needs vision. He needs to see a much wider world than others see.

The Prince is one of the easiest evil characters to integrate into an otherwise mostly good party. Whether he's really even "evil" can be hard to determine. If he plays his cards right, the rest of the group may never see just how far astray he's led them. And he's going to be the leader, or better still the leader's trusted advisor, the one who really makes all the decisions.

Putting a Prince into the game is not a decision to make lightly, though. Aside from the purely practical concerns like whether you're personally smart enough to pull it off, there's the fact that if you do succeed, you're going to really change the tone of the game. Somewhere down the line, either the group is going to shift from idealistic and noble to ruthless and arrogant, or there's going to be a huge intraparty conflict. Either can be fun, but at the least it would be nice to give the GM a heads up.

The Prince works beautifully in an all-evil game. He can provide leadership for a party of less visionary characters, welding the ragtag band into a force of true and magnificent power. Or, if everybody's up for it, it can be fun to pit a bunch of scary, manipulative Prince types against each other, with the GM barely doing more than being the referee. Amber Diceless games, and lots of Vampire LARPs are essentially just that.

The Evil Genius

The Evil Genius is, perhaps, a shading of the Prince. He's smart, ruthless, and charismatic enough to have a large group of fanatically loyal followers. He probably quotes Machiavelli and Sun Tzu, unless he's so egotistical that he thinks both of them were morons. And he lives in a world of morons. That may be the reason he feels the need to take over the place: to provide some decent management.

The Evil Genius is a man with a plan. It's a very unlikely plan, involving a lot of difficult to control factors, and yet it hangs together with a sort of awful certainty. Somehow, the Evil Genius can really pull it off.

Or at least he could if he didn't always spill the whole thing to his arch-nemesis, then leave that nemesis alive.

But the plan remains. The Evil Genius is a driven man. He has a goal (to rule the world, or sometimes to destroy it and build a new one out of the ashes). With his intellectual superiority to everyone on earth, he's obviously within his rights to pursue this plan. It might even be that he believes he's doing a good thing, and that if all the lesser mortals could only understand, they'd support him. (The ones who survived the plagues, anyway) His goal can only be achieved with some sort of grandiose scheme, and he's the one to pull it off. So he gathers his secret minions, consolidates his power, establishes a huge conspiracy, and starts putting his plan into motion. But three people can only keep a secret if two of them are dead, and in some fantasy games, not even then. So sooner or later, someone finds out.

This someone is a Hero. He is, in some ways, the Evil Genius' reason to live. The Hero is clever (if not quite so clever as the Genius), capable (much more so than all the incompetent henchmen the Genius has), and cursedly lucky. It's that luck that always seems to turn the tide, snatching away the Genius's certain victory.

Obviously, the Evil Genius has a few blind spots. He's not as practical as the Prince. He's something of a romantic, really. An idealist. He often has a strict code of honor. Of course, equally often, it's similar to the Rat Bastard's code of honor, in that it only seems to apply to other people. But sometimes the Evil Genius does really seem to follow some sort of rules of engagement. He sees his struggle with the Hero as an epic duel of wits, and even provides hints and clues to help the Hero keep up.

The path leading someone to the role of Evil Genius is marked by arrogance. The Genius might have legitimate grievances with the world. Some of them are environmental crusaders, or champions of the rights of the downtrodden. Others are just megalomanicial sociopaths. In either case, the Evil Genius came to believe that he was better, smarter, and wiser than anyone else, and that what he wants is sufficiently important that the death of untold hundreds of innocents is an acceptable loss.

Most Evil Geniuses start off in the privileged class. There's a hefty education requirement, and secret underground bases don't come cheep. Some of them start off as clever, but underprivileged lads and manage to attain their wealth later on, but you never really get a poor Evil Genius. The underprivileged ones are often just a bit sympathetic. Sometimes, their diabolical plans are attempts to avenge a true injustice, or solve a real problem. It's just that the attempts are wildly out of proportion to the problems.

They study a lot. Most Evil Geniuses really are geniuses. They tend to be brilliant strategists, tacticians, and organizers. No few are masters of Science and technology, too. In the right venue, an Evil Genius might supplement or replace science with magic.

The Evil Genius is a difficult character to play in a typical game. Usually, the PCs are supposed to stop the Evil Genius. Even if they're not, the activities of a typical party of adventurers are not conducive to an Evil Genius' typical plans. PCs tend to wander around on missions, having adventures and solving mysteries. All that takes time the Evil Genius needs to design his death ray and recruit followers.

In an all-evil group, the Evil Genius is a humorous alternative to the Prince. He makes the perfect leader, except for his habits of casually killing underlings and telling his plans to the enemy he doesn't kill immediately afterwards. Of course, he doesn't have to be played for laughs. James Bond movies have a sense of humor, but are essentially serious. The villains are presented as really being able to do what they set out to do. In the right campaign world, the only difference between an Evil Genius and a Prince is that the Prince tends to be a little more low-key.

All right, I think that's enough for this time. Next time, we'll continue the series with some less cartoonish characters.

Welcome back. Today's foray into the secret arts of roleplaying concerns evil. While it's not my thing, some people really enjoy playing evil characters. I'm going to explore the topic a little to try to nail down how I think about it. I'll try to cover the various ways players can portray evil characters and offer some advice here and there.

So, without further ado, let's get to it.

Original Sin

When the first protogamers, arising from the primordial ooze with their copies of Dungeons & Dragons, decided that Jack Chick didn't have enough to rant about already, they chose to play evil characters. The heirs to their tradition are still doing so today, in a manner largely unchanged from those ancient beginnings. (And, as an aside, I find it vaguely disturbing to refer to things that happened when I was about ten years old as "ancient.")

I suspect that the vast majority of gamers who want to play evil characters fall into this model. I would be really surprised if many of them read my column, so I feel free to be just a touch judgmental. The stereotypical Evil group is made up of a bunch of Chaotic Evil D&D characters or Diabolical Rifts characters who run around the countryside killing, maiming, stealing, and robbing tombs. Really, there's not a lot of difference between what they do and what nominally Good groups do except that the good guys probably tone down the rapine and don't kill uppity NPCs out of hand.

This is essentially juvenile wish fulfillment. It's irresponsible, selfish, and antisocial. And I would rather have people work it out of their systems with dice and miniatures than in real life. I personally don't find it very appealing, but I can see why some people would. It's hack & slash gaming turned up to 11. Take what you want by main force and destroy all who oppose you.

In my limited experience, the gamers who like to play this way don't really dwell on the psychology, or even morality, of evil. They take the "EVIL" label as a way to just do whatever they want specifically without having to think about it. "Why did you kill the guard?" "I'm Chaotic Evil." "Why did you steal your buddy's magic sword and sell it to buy booze?" "I'm Chaotic Evil."

See, it's easy.

So, since they don't really need my advice and probably aren't reading my column anyway, let's leave those guys alone and move on to the next set. Just to save myself a little grief, though, let me be clear: I don't believe that everyone who plays evil characters in D&D or Rifts does so just so they can be irresponsible. I personally know people who play interesting, well-rendered evil D&D characters. I could probably find people who play the snootiest games in existence in exactly the way I just described, too. D&D and Rifts just happen to be easy examples.

I Am Become Death

Vampire: the Masquerade opened up entire new vistas in the realm of evil roleplaying. It was right there on the faux marble back cover, "A beast I am, lest a beast I become." People had played monsters before, but Vampire made it mainstream. Right there on your character sheet was an ablative chart of your morality. That nasty Blood Pool meter was going to make you do stuff that violated that all-to-fragile Humanity scale, and no matter how hard you tried to avoid it, your character was going to end up as a hideous monster some day. Even before that, he had to do things almost nightly that most humans would consider evil.

Of course, some people didn't try at all, and essentially played Vampire the way they had been playing D&D. Kill the Ventrue, take his treasure. Works for me.

Besides his internal Beast, a Vampire also had to live in a society that would make A Borgia nervous. There was this entire secret society waging a very subtle war. The stakes were life and death. Just to survive, you were probably going to have to do things you didn't want to do.

That's some evil I can sink my teeth into (no pun intended). Vampire ushered in a bunch of other games with similar themes, and some expansions for existing games. Of course, there had been some before. The first edition of Cyberpunk predates Vampire, unless I'm mistaken, and edgerunners could be pretty evil people.

Playing an "evil" character in the Vampire style is an exploration of morality. Is it possible to be a vampire and not be evil? How far will you go to protect your immortal existence? Can anything you do be good when it's done by someone who is a multi-murderer? Does human morality even still apply to you?

How it plays out is up to you. In a lot of ways, your character will act like any other. Presumably something more is going on in the game than your character sitting and brooding about his lot in life and drinking blood. What changes is the focus. All your character's immediate goals play off of his inner struggle. A rival gang is trespassing on his territory. What does he do? Fighting them means giving in to his rage. Bargaining with them means reaching an accord with evil. Blackmailing them means committing treachery? And he can't even really fall back on the justification that he's the good guy here, can he? That would be hypocrisy.

Vampire was the first game I encountered that was really set up to deal with these sorts of questions. Other games were certainly capable of it, though. Somewhere in the middle of my really long Shadow Run game, I started thinking about just how violent Shadowrunners were, and how it was a little odd for someone who thought of himself as a "hero of the people" to casually blow away security guards while he was breaking into someone's office.

Which is a nice segue for my next point...

Whatever You Have to Do

Taking a step back, it's likely that the vast majority of player characters are relatively cutthroat mercenaries. Their alignment boxes might be filled out "Lawful Good," but they probably seldom scruple to cut down hordes of orks or rob tombs. Most gamers don't really care. A lot of the ones who do start playing their characters differently. But there's some potential for good roleplaying in these amoral characters.

I've already mentioned Cyberpunk and Shadow Run, which are both games where the average character is an outlaw with, at best, a morally dubious occupation. It's not a big stretch to say these characters are evil. In fact, the average person living in the worlds they inhabit probably thinks they are. -- Runners are criminals who kill, cheat, and steal. They live beyond the carefully regulated, safe, arms of the corporations and sow anarchy and terror wherever they go.

So why do they do it? Almost every Runner ever would be better off in a safe, corporate job. Why risk your life night after night? Why be a criminal? There are lots of answers, and they all lead in interesting directions.

Here's a few of mine over the years:

• Johnny Amadeus ran the shadows after he got involved in the underworld while looking for the man who killed his brother, who was a shadowrunner. He started with a strong distrust of authority, and added a dose of respect for some of the people he met. He wanted to fight corruption, and thought he could do it better from the shadows. He was also nursing a death wish, and the constant danger fed into that.
• Belladonna ran the shadows because she was physically incapable of leading a normal life. Someone had turned her into a killing machine. When she ran away from her master, the shadows were the only place to hide.
• Eric Zane was a runner because he was an immoral bastard who would do anything for money. I didn't really like him very much, so I quit playing him after a while.
• Pookha (a new character in a Shadowrun game I just started) runs the shadows because he has no SIN, and needs money to pay for a friend's constant medical care. He's a former ganger who would probably end up doing some jail time if he tried to come out of the shadows, and he can't afford that.

My Runner types tend to be fairly good folks, other than all the breaking and entering and shooting people. In fact, most of them have thought of themselves as "the good guys" to one degree or another. Characters I've played with have been a lot different. There are some really cool outlooks, and it's neat to see how they interact. In Johnny's group, there were a couple of runners who were just totally amoral. They didn't think about right and wrong at all, just about strong and weak, smart and stupid. Johnny's tendency to want to leave guards alive when possible bugged them to no end. There was one guy who pretty much believed he was a total bastard, but kept it in check by following a strict code of honor.

The gritty mercenary style of gaming isn't outright evil, necessarily. Just like good ole' hack & slash, it can ignore the issue completely. Or the moral issues can be played up. In a dystopian cyberpunk future, it can be hard to find anything that's definitively good, and there are a lot of evils with no clear source.

Staring into the Abyss

The next style I'm going to touch on bears a superficial resemblance to the first. It is possible to play deep, well rendered characters who are utterly morally despicable. It's a style of play that has no real appeal for me. I play pretty immersively, and depravity isn't something I really want to immerse myself in.

Sabbat packs in Vampire: The Masquerade are the most obvious example that leaps to my mind. I believe Werewolf also had a sourcebook that made provisions for playing Formori, who tend to be pretty evil since they've been dipped in a seething pit of corruption and then flash fried.

The only time I really get into playing utterly evil characters is when I'm the GM. I find it to be one of my major challenges, so it's one I've given a little thought to. Really evil people have a world view that's radically skewed from "normal." There's something that funnels all their actions in a harmful direction. The classic sociopath has no compassion, which allows him to commit atrocities in the pursuit of his desires because he never feels any guilt. The fanatic is so dedicated to a goal that the goal distorts his perceptions of the world. The psychopath, due to mental illness, really can't perceive the world correctly.

Interestingly, none of these characters would call themselves "evil." The sociopath would laugh at the concept. The fanatic might think you were evil for asking. Of course, some fanatics aren't evil. A fanatic pacifist probably isn't going to hurt anybody. The psychopath might consult with the voices in his head or something. Pretty much by nature, "Evil" is a label that has to be applied from outside, and in some cases each side of a conflict is applying it to the other.

So that leaves you, the player, to see what it looks like from the inside. What is it about your character that makes him think it's acceptable, or even desirable, to hurt or kill people in pursuit of his goals? Or to lie, cheat, and steal, which can be plenty harmful by itself.

In a melodramatic game, or a highly symbolic one, the answers can be pretty easy. In Middle Earth, Orcs are evil because they were made to be so by Sauron. In Star Wars, nobody really worries too much about why the Stormtroopers shot up a whole crawler full of Jawas. (They were receiving stolen Imperial military secrets. It was treason. Honest.)

In a more realistic game, the question gets a lot more fuzzy. Some people would argue that there is no "evil" in the real world. That's a debate I have no intention of starting right now. While there may be no true Good and Evil in the real world, there are accepted standards and social mores. Most people follow them, and react badly to people who don't. If you're playing a character who rejects all that, there should be a reason. That reason might make for some interesting roleplaying choices.

A character could be very noble and honorable, and also believe that serfs belong to their lord, and whatever he wants to do to them is fine. He could be empathic and charismatic, and also an anarchist who doesn't bat an eye at a mailbox bomb because he thinks it's the only way to fight an oppressive government. He could be a veteran soldier or inner city policeman who's just so desensitized to violence that he doesn't realize how much of a monster he'd seem like to a normal person.

Playing really socially maladjusted characters isn't something I really recommend as a standard practice, but there are some cool ways to do it. I'd love to play the veteran who's trying to put his past behind him, or the arrogant nobleman who's starting to learn about the inherent worth of humanity.

And, as always, if you really want to play irredeemably evil characters and revel in their cruelty and depravity, fine. I'll make no effort whatsoever to stop you. Please don't LARP, though. The LARPers don't really need your help. Also, I don't particularly want to game with you. That's fine. I have a group I'm very happy with now, even though my Buffy game is on Hiatus because the GM thinks it's more important to find a house for his family than to run my game.

Evil Shall Always Triumph For Good Is Dumb

The last way I can really think of to run evil characters is for laughs. I haven't played many humorous games, so I don't have a lot of advice here.

Playing evil as funny often involves turning genre conventions on their heads. I've heard of games with teams of incompetent supervillians who end up doing more good than harm, or dungeon monsters negotiating labor contracts and scheduling so someone will be ready to meet the next party of adventurers.

In a humorous game, you're probably not going to be exploring the depths of the human psyche. "Evil" is just another humorous shtick. In a sadly defunct game I used to play with some RPG.net regulars, my character was Fiona Gentry. She was a half-faerie, and her father was an Unseelie Lord. Children inherit all kinds of traits from their parents, like eye color, shape of the nose, a tendency toward being overweight... Fiona inherited her father's evil. She was actually a pretty nice person, under all the typical teenage defensiveness, but she was evil. Palpably, tangibly evil. She had to wear Goth style clothes. If she bought un-gothy clothes, they'd turn gothy in her closet while she wasn't looking. She had a scary voice that, if the game was a comic book, would have been written in gothic script with white letters on a black background. When she was angry or distracted, she had a habit of accidentally cursing people to the depths of the abyss.

But at least she had nice hair and a flawless complexion. Congenital evil AND zits would be just too much to bear.

So, that's about enough for this installment. I might decide (particularly if there's any demand for it) to extend my ramblings to cover how to play an evil character amongst other PCs. (Hint: If you're a thief out in the wilderness with three other people, one of whom can cast spells, and the other two of whom get better combat rolls and more hit points than you DON'T STEAL FROM THEM! It's better to wait until you get to town and there are more suspects.)

Bye till then.

Almost every game on the market has some kind of advancement mechanic. In Dungeons & Dragons, it's pretty simple. Going on adventures is rewarded by Experience Points (hereafter referred to as XP no matter what any given game system might call them). XP stack up to buy levels. Levels let you get new Feats, more Skill points, and access to Keweler Ninja Powers (sometimes referred to as Class Abilities and Spells). In Pendragon, it's a little fuzzier. Characters collect Skill Checks, then, at the end of the year, test the Checked Skills to see if they improve. They also get Advancements to represent whatever they might have been studying in their spare time. Marvel Superheroes (as far as I know) started a really brutal trend wherein your Karma (XP) was useful for day-to-day bonuses to rolls, and also for character advancement. Shadow Run did the same thing, as did Deadlands. Castle Falkenstein has no XP system, instead using GM fiat. I'd kind of like to play Castle Falkenstein long enough to know how well that works out.

Most advancement systems do pretty much the same thing, allow a character to gradually become more capable, or capable of new things. Which brings us to the topic of this installment: "How should I spend my XP?"

I can't recall ever being in a situation where I couldn't think of something to buy with my shiny new XPs, but lots of times I've run into not having enough to buy everything I want (which is pretty much everything). I'm guessing here that most of my readership has had similar experiences. So, what follows is mostly some thoughts on how to pare down the shopping list to manageable levels.

Before we Begin

Most XP systems aren't terribly realistic, with "realistic" being defined as "producing results similar to the way people in the real world learn and improve. Most XP systems aren't terribly genre emulative, either. In a lot of the fiction that inspires our hobby, people don't change much at all, or change radically in a very short time.

I don't particularly care. I like going up in levels. (Well, really, I prefer gradually spending XP wherever I want, but you get the idea.)

So, now that we've got that out of our systems, let's move on.

What Have You Been Doing?

This is the most realistic guideline for XP expenditure. If your character has been getting in a lot of fights and living through them, his combat-related abilities are probably increasing. If he's been spending all his time on research and investigation, those skills are probably getting better. Sure, he may really want to become a ninja master, but if he's not spending any time studying martial arts and mystical handsigns, then he's just not going to get there.

If realism is at all your aim, this is the way you should spend most of your XP. It may mean you can't always develop your character the way you'd like, though. That's just life, as they say. If your character doesn't have the chance to learn something, then it starts to hurt the shared illusion of the game if he suddenly knows it anyway. Some genres are more tolerant of this than others, mind you. Rather than feeling totally constrained, think of it as a challenge. A warrior who wants to be the world's best swordsman will have to make a lot of sacrifices to do so. Those sacrifices are roleplaying opportunities. I ran into this a lot with Sir Magnus, my favorite Pendragon character. He was the second-best at just about everything because he never focused on anything. Except Intrigue. Magnus rocked at Intrigue. He knew everything that happened wherever he was. It was those charming Roman manners.

Even so, it was really frustrating to me that I couldn't get his Sword skill quite as high as the guy who spent all his time dueling. Doubly so because I was so close. But in the stillness of my soul, I knew that's the way it should have been.

Most GMs will have no problem what-so-ever with you spending your XP in this way. If they do, it generally comes at the upper levels of skill, where, logically, you might really not be able to improve any more because you haven't reached a situation that challenges your abilities. In those cases, you can either argue with your GM, or pick something related to improve. For example, Ghost (my Tribe 8 character) had a 4 Melee skill for the longest time. The Weaver was really reluctant to let me buy one more point. Eventually I decided it wasn't worth arguing (since she might stop baking fresh cookies for the game session if I made her mad) and that maybe Ghost could use a higher Dodge skill instead. Or hey, maybe some more Weapon-smithing since that was theoretically the way he earned his living. I still held out my dream, though, that in a far future, the legendary God of Death of some distant tribe would look like Ghost holding his funky magic sword.

So, there's realism for you. But sometimes realism isn't your goal. For those times, there are several more philosophies to choose from.

What Do You Wish You'd Been Doing?

Here's the second way, and maybe the most common. Essentially, you just spend your XP however you want and back-justify it by saying that's what your character has been doing in his off-time. This pre-supposes your character has off-time. I've had games where a day where no one was trying to kill my character were rare events to be cherished and held in loving memory for all time. Fortunately, most of those characters really wanted the higher combat skills anyway...

I still try to maintain a little bit of narrative justification, even when game events don't completely back me up. As much as I might want her to, and despite the fact that the rules technically allow it, I would never have bought Sorcery for Juri (my Potential Slayer in a Buffy game). It completely didn't fit the character, and she had never shown the slightest inclination toward magic. I wouldn't have bought Gun Fu (generic Firearms skill, for the Buffy-impaired) either. Juri doesn't like guns, and would have been very unlikely to spend any time training with them.

On the other hand, I'd have no problem buying up Knowledge, Computers, Science, or Sports even though I haven't made any issue of those skills. They're all things she could logically have picked up here and there even though it didn't come up in the game. Juri's a high school student. Presumably, they still teach things in school. That's plenty of justification for a point or two. (But I'll probably buy more Kung Fu and Get Medieval instead...)

Oh, I Always Knew That

Here, we're stretching a little bit. Sometimes, that's OK, though. The rationalization here is that you're buying up an ability retroactively. Your character always spoke French, or knew how to disarm a bomb, or whatever. It just never came up before. Feng Shui (another game I'd like to get to play some day) actively encourages this. Other games tolerate it fairly well. It's not something you want to necessarily make a habit of, though. Sooner or later, you'll hit a continuity error.

GM approval is a much bigger deal here. There's a temptation to ret-con abilities that would come in really handy now, but that you really don't have any justification for. Some GMs like their continuity to be more sacrosanct than others, too.

I most often find myself buying retroactive abilities when the starting characters aren't quite as tough or skilled as I'd like them to be. If I'm playing an esoteric character (which is frequently) I might have to fudge some abilities. In those cases, I talk to the GM first to make my case. Then I buy up the abilities that will really matter first to the appropriate levels, and buy at least a little of whatever strange thing I want to work on later. This only stretches so far, and doesn't work for everything. Before the Revised Edition, if I wanted to play someone who spoke five or six languages in Vampire, that was going to be a big chunk of my starting points. If I was making up a Linguist, I'd probably have bought a good level in the Linguistics ability and one or two languages, then donated a large chunk of my XP to buying the other ones I wanted as rapidly as possible. Otherwise, a starting character might be severely crippled in other areas that didn't make s ense. On the other hand, if I wanted to play a fighter-type, but never picked up Melee, it wouldn't make a lot of sense for me to dump a lot of points into it later on and say he'd just never bothered to pick up a sword before now.

That, by the way, is the guiding rule. In all but the loosest of realities (Toon, Feng Shui, Amber...) this is only a good philosophy as long as it makes sense. If it doesn't make sense, you've moved into the next philosophy...

Because I Really Want To

Sometimes there's no justification for what you want to do. This can really be the case with any games with supernatural powers. How do you practice flying? (Throw yourself at the ground until you miss) Sometimes it doesn't really matter much. If you're playing a hack & slash D&D game with minimal roleplaying and no particular overarching plot, you can probably take whatever new abilities you want and no one will bat an eye. Of course, you are probably not a big fan of my column, either, so the rest of this section is aimed at other people.

Generally, I try to advance my characters logically, with minimal back-justification. Sometimes, though, I want something totally new, usually because I came to regret decisions I made when I made the character in the first place. For example, Ghost started the game with no Synthesis abilities (magic, basically). I did that intentionally since I originally wanted Ghost to be the "big, dumb fighter," but as the game progressed I realized that without Synthesis, he'd never be as effective as a character who had Synthesis, even if that character had lower skills and stats. So eventually I saved up some points and bought some Synthesis. The Weaver worked an opportunity for him to learn into the story, and we went on from there. It actually took quite a while, because part of Ghost's personality was his rejection of the Fatimas, who were the source of Synthesis.

If you can't justify something in the backstory, you should try to justify it in the future, and work with the GM to make it happen. I'm in the process of this right now with Juri, though I'm on the fence about whether or not to go through with it. This is a pretty good example, and it's fresh on my mind, so let's take a look.

Juri began as a Slayer in Training. For about the past ten years of her life, she'd been raised by the Watchers' Council, studying and training so that if she were called as the next Slayer, she'd be ready. At the end of our first Season, she was Chosen, just in time to beat up our Big Bad for the season and survive the beating she got in return. (Handy, that. It's almost like the GM planned it that way...)

Which brings us to the present. Implicit, instinctive trust in the Watchers is a huge part of Juri's character. She sees them as her parents since they pretty much raised her. She sees herself as a Vassal of the Council since she was brought up in the Samurai tradition. But, the Watchers don't really have her best interests at heart, and aren't necessarily worthy of her respect. They've already misled her and betrayed her friends a couple of times, and are likely to do so again.

Originally, I thought I'd follow the path laid out by the Buffy TV show, wherein the Slayer gradually becomes disillusioned with the Watchers and rejects them. That would be really easy to do. In Buffy, it only costs as many XP to buy off a Drawback as you originally paid in Character Points. I could buy off Juri's Obligation: Watcher's Council, and be done with it. There would be a somewhat more substantial effect on the game, though. Juri is a foreign national living in America. If she ticks off the Watchers, they could easily get her visa revoked. She also has no particular job skills or means of income. She's completely reliant on the Council. If she told them to kiss off, she'd have to find another way to get by, and would shake up the lives of some of the other characters.

All that would be fun to play, and still may be the route I take, but I recently thought of another one. The Watchers have always tried to control the Slayer even as they say they're trying to assist her. What if a Slayer found some way to turn the tables, to gain a significant amount of control over the Council? In mechanical terms, that would be buying a 5 point Contact: Watcher's Council, and maybe a few points of Resources (3 at the absolute most, probably only 1, if that).

In game terms, it's a major shift, even bigger than abandonment of the Council. It's also not something I can do on my own. For this to work at all, I have to have the GM behind me. (I love you, Stone).

It would have to start with Juri getting the chance to get influence with some members of the Council, at which point I might buy Contacts: Watchers (1). Then time would pass, and Juri would have to get more involved in Council politics somehow. This would probably culminate in a major story-arc in which she either made it to the top, or lost everything.

At that point, I'd either spend whatever XP I needed to spend to buy the Watchers Contact up to 5 points, or I might lose the points I'd already spent up to this point and have to buy off the Obligation. (Actually, the whole Obligation thing is a little hazy due to a fuzzy spot in the rules)

Now, this example would have a pretty significant effect on the game's tone. If the GM doesn't want the Watchers to be a big part of the story, he's probably not going to let me turn them into one of Juri's most significant advantages. (Did I mention that I love you, Stone?)

A better example from Buffy is the Werewolf Quality. Oz picked up the Drawback version, and eventually kind of maybe the Quality version later on. Being a Werewolf is cool. You get to be strong and fast and tough, and have claws. Claws are very useful. Just ask Juri, who has 4 points of natural armor against blunt damage, which never seems to matter since everyone who tries to kill her has claws. (But I love you anyway, Stone)

There's not really any way to foreshadow your character becoming a Werewolf. He gets bit, then about a month later, things get a little hairy. If you wanted to do it, you'd need to have the GM on your side. In fact, you'd better be prepared to suffer for it for a while. If it came up in my game, you'd start off with the Drawback version and have to go through at least one story where your character got loose accidentally and might have killed someone. I'd also try to sneak in someone you bit, but who survived without you knowing about it, so I could smite you with a nemesis later. Then, after a while, you'd get to buy off the Drawback and buy the Quality, but only after something had happened in the game to explain your control over your condition.

The key to "Because I really want to" is thinking ahead. In its way, it's no different than improving the abilities you're using in game. You're just actively trying to improve the ones you want, and going a bit beyond that by asking the GM to help you engineer situations that produce the results you want.

Closing Thoughts

Is it that time already? I suppose so.

Like just about everything in gaming, spending XP is part of the story, and it's one of the parts where the players have a lot of power. (Please don't make me go all GNS here. By "story" I just mean "the collective narrative of the game's events, from inception to end.")

The GM can keep your character from being able to talk to the people he wants to find, and he can make sure his big uber-pet-NPC nemesis guy who's really his old PC from a D&D game he played back in high school never sticks around long enough for you to stick your magic sword through his spleen. Heck, he can keep you from getting a magic sword in the first place in most games. But in general, he can't keep your character from studying swordplay, or trying to make new contacts.

While your deciding where to spend your XP, you should think about how your decisions will develop the story. The decisions you make will say a lot about your character's personality. Does he say he's a pacifist, but you keep buying more Melee? Why? There could be a really neat reason. Once he's the best swordsman in the city, what's going to happen? The other Best Swordsman in the City may have something to say about it. And all those Second Best Swordsmen who want to be the new Best Swordsman will probably also take an interest.

Then there's the GM. He almost certainly has something up his sleeve. If the group is headed off to investigate the ancient ruins over the next hill, being the best swordsman in the city may not be quite as useful as being the guy who knows how to light a torch from flint and steel in the dark, or the guy who knows how to bind someone's wounds when the cleric is unconscious. It helps everyone if you develop your character along lines that don't diverge too far from the overall plot of the game. If you want to play the world's greatest detective, you're going to be pretty bored unless the GM has som