Game Ideas Un limited: Resources

  Several years ago, Eric "Tadeusz" "World-a-Week" Ashley posted some comments in the "Official" Multiverser forum here at Gaming Outpost about how villains must be able to adapt on the fly.  His contention then was that villains were in the main opportunistic, taking advantage of situations that could work in their favor.  His own villains never planned in a more than cursory manner, and it seemed to him that it was implausible to expect a villain to work from a plan.

  I agreed, in the main, at the time.  There are, of course, crimes and schemes that require enormous planning.  If you watch documentaries about famous crimes, there are always elements of careful planning--watching to learn the routines of the security, identifying each step that would have to be taken and what would be needed to make it successful, preparing contingencies for those points most likely to go wrong or most necessary to go right.  These are the exceptions, though, not descriptive of the majority of crimes.  Some of the absurd mistakes criminals make, often caught on camera, can be entertaining, the stuff of television shows and Internet gossip.  Most criminals think that "rob the store" is a plan.  To go beyond that, to put together the sorts of capers about which stories are built, requires what we tend to call a criminal mastermind, a villain of intelligence.  Such a master has already thought through each step of the plan, carefully laid out what each person must do, and provided backup plans to cover anything that goes wrong.

  At the same time, the criminal mastermind has to be able to react and adjust the plan, because something else will go wrong; there will be some glitch that was not anticipated.  At that point, the villain must find a solution quickly.  That is where most master criminals make their mistakes.  Columbo made a career out of catching fictional villains whose plans were perfect but for one little thing they had failed to anticipate, possibly even failed to notice or recognize.  Intuitive improvisation that works is the hallmark of the successful criminal.  Good planning is useful, but the ability to get the fly out of the ointment without leaving fingerprints all over the jar is a difficult and necessary skill for the villain.  He must be able to use what he has at hand to solve the unanticipated complications, or his successes will be short lived.

  The player characters can be those flies, those complications; if the game is well played, they may be.  In this context, of course, we're looking at the villain not so much as a criminal (although he might be that) as an antagonist, the character or characters aligned against the interests of the player characters.  In creating and running these antagonists, the referee will sometimes want one who is superior, able to construct and follow a plan.  If the player characters manage to become complications, that's good; in some cases, those complications must be provided by the referee.  In many of the Sherlock Holmes stories, the complication for the villain was merely that someone, either his intended victim or an unwitting pawn in the venture, came to the detective for advice or assistance.  In most Columbo mysteries, the complication occurred before the hero appeared, and became the chink in the armor which pointed the detective to the solution.  Sometimes the referee has to provide not only the villain, but the complication.

  In addressing these unexpected problems, the villain must work within his resources.  Realistically, he cannot have unlimited resources.  A villain with unlimited resources can fix all of his problems easily enough; if there are limits to what he has available, the villain is forced to adjust when the plan goes awry, to shift his assets from one place to another.  This is a particular challenge to the referee in a role playing game, because the referee has very few limits on his resources, and the temptation is to see the villain as similarly unfettered.  Yet if the villain does not have limitations within which he must work, he ultimately is defeated not because the player has played well, but because the referee has finished toying with him.

  In a forum game of Multiverser, Shawn Kelley was playing Prisoner of Zenda.  The villain, the Duke "Black" Michael, has six henchmen each of whom is extraordinary in his abilities.  One of them is a killing machine, an assassin of sorts who has little fear and less cause for it.  Michael frequently sends them in groups or singly to work for him.  Having six of them gives him the ability to be doing several things at once, while the player character can only be one place at a time.  In the forum game, however, when three of them--including the assassin--came for Shawn's character, he surprised them and, with surprise on his side and some help from the formidable Colonel Sapt, killed all three.  This seriously curtailed the Duke's ability to prosecute his plans.  He had but three men left, of those whom he could trust with his dishonorable and underhanded efforts who had the skill to accomplish them.

  It would not have been impossible to introduce another character or two, whose abilities were something less than the infamous six but whose loyalty to Michael made them dangerous nonetheless.  There is a degree to which it would have been unfair, however.  The player characters do not have unlimited resources; the villains cannot be given such.  If the player has succeeded in crippling the villain's support structure, the villain cannot rebuild a new support structure without significant time, effort, and expense.  Whether it is by careful consideration of the problem or by pulling a rabbit out of a hat unexpectedly, once the player has won and the villain has lost, tampering with this outcome is rarely a good idea.

  To some degree, this is a return to our consideration some time back of Opportunity Costs.  There we were thinking about forcing the players to make character choices based on limited resources.  Here we've returned to the idea, recognizing that villains have limited resources as well.  The referee must remember that his ability to introduce anything into play as long as the player character does not know as a fact that it is not so, does not give him license to raise the challenge merely because the player is winning.  Although the referee may not be limited, his puppets must always be so.  How limited they are may be an issue of practicality and plausibility.  S.P.E.C.T.O.R. (whatever it stood for) had tremendous assets, sometimes seeming to be wealthier and better equipped than the British secret service; but they didn't have James Bond, or anyone who could match him, and there were limits they could not overcome.  Moriarty's fingers were running crimes all over England, but when Holmes interfered he could not easily eliminate the detective or fix the problems he caused.  Most villains do not compare to this, coming short on ideas or ability sooner rather than later.  You can't do everything, you can't think of everything; neither can your villain.  He might be smarter than you, and you might have to use a few tricks of the trade to make him seem so, but ultimately he must be limited, no matter how clever, wealthy, intelligent, or resourceful he is intended to be.

  Next week, something different.

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M. Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc.  His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.