I was prompted by Gears of Madness' recent post to post some thoughts that may be helpful with regard to the topics of aesethetics and antagonism. I've found that throughout my years of playing on Thain there are two main reasons for or interests in playing evil characters, namely the two aforementioned.
What is asethetics in this context? Playing a character with a particular style; whether that is appearance, attitude, internal motivation, conversational tone and personal relationships that fall in the realm of evil. An example of such a character would be a Zhentarim warrior who is on a quest for personal power and to glorify his organization. He might have dark, menacing armor, a red-glowing sword, a hardened heart towards the suffering of others, and a general air of badassery.
To be a villain or antagonist on the other hand is not a matter of asethetics. It is to play a role opposed to that of the protaginst(s) which is not dependant on alignment or asethetics. Internally it comes down to finding a difference with an Other so meaningful that you are willing to curse his name, beat him over the head with a stick, take his gold, burn his home town etcetera. This motivaction can be as simple as belong to an antagonistic faction.
I have played evil for more than 50% of my time on the player client and 95% of the time it has only been a matter of asethetics. The actions of the character vs other characters and whatever adventure is going on is functionally identical to the good characters. It's a matter of acting a part to your taste within the overall framework of the cooperative play.
Being a villain on the other hand is hard. The two above are naturally often combined, but not always - in case of a non-evil villain/antagonist. I will illustrate why with an example - and here is where I was tangentially inspired by what Gears of Madness brought up.
Gharos, my 15 (!!!) year old character raided and briefly captured Hammersong during my first year, I think, of playing him. This event was really cool and set the tone for him as one of the most feared villains of Thain, perhaps only superceded by Amel at the time.
The "RP high" lasted for about 2 weeks, then things on Thain kinda started getting back to normal except Gharos was the enemy of an entire race and locked out of Hammersong. It made playing the protagonist role along with others pretty hard. If I'm not entirely wrong it took 10 years before his relation with Hammersong was back to neutral.
The thing I'm trying to say is that it's a good idea, when you are playing an evil character, to figure out if its the aesthetic, the antagonism or both that you want to play out. If it's just the aesthetic - which I learned was the case for me after a few years when I analyzed it critically - then becoming a villain will make that complicated.
If you want to be a villain, a good villain is a very appreciated character because its so hard to do. They cant go around the crossroads and socialize. Whoever they victimize will 99.9% of the time remember it and want revenge, or at least spread the word of their misdeeds. It's an easy role to play on the DM client, because you can build up and throw away a character in 1-5 sessions. It's much harder on the player client.
I should clarify what I mean by "build up and throw away" at the end of my post. I mean you can have the heroes permanently defeat and kill the character created in the DM client and thus both have an epic story then and there, and give the heroes a sense of closure and finality of victory.
You can do that with your player character as a villain but you'll have to reroll and start building up a new character afterwards.
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I'd like to offer some of my own thoughts on this subject as well, as it's something I think about quite a bit with my own characters. I'd like to build off of Mike's post and put forth my own distinction between types of evil, focusing on the kind of personality these characters have, and why you might want to play one of them. I generally think of evil characters as one of two broad archetypes: the Antihero and the Monster. I'll use two of my own characters to illustrate how I see each of these roles.
The antihero is someone for whom evil is a lifestyle choice. There are of course many paths that lead a character to that, whether it be revenge, lust for power or wealth, or even just dissatisfaction with the state of things and the desire to change it by whatever means necessary. To use one of my own characters as an example, Mors is a necromancer because he feels it is the only way to achieve his ultimate character goal, and he is willing to go to great and terrible lengths to achieve it. However, as with many antiheroes on Thain, Mors is not a pariah (to most people) and is generally welcome in most settlements, because the worst of his evil acts are committed in places where there are no witnesses (or at least, none who are going to run to the guards!). He is quite social and can often be found talking to others at the Crossroads fire, going on adventures with neutral and good-aligned characters, even performing songs from time to time when he can get an audience.
It is this category of evil that I would say the vast majority of "evil" characters on Thain fall into, and there's nothing wrong with that! These characters have the benefit of bringing a different point of view to many events without being so disruptive that they become the focus, and because they are generally not hostile to most of the island, they have many more avenues to pursue RP in. An antihero may even be redeemed and join the forces of good if their RP leads them down that road- remember that for the antihero evil is something they choose, and they can always choose to let it go (though there may be complications of course!) Mors is fun for me to play because while he is objectively evil, he is also a character I have a lot of fun writing for and a lot of fun interacting with other characters on. If he were to become a true "villain", I would likely lose at least some of that ability, and so I would want to OOCly be at peace with that before I pursued a story with him that might make it a possibility.
Contrasted to the antihero is the monster. Where for the antihero evil is something they become, a monster is either born evil or made evil through some traumatic circumstance. For the monster, evil is not a choice- it is something they are, and short of divine intervention it is not something they will ever not be. Monsters generally cannot be redeemed, nor would the idea that they could be ever enter their minds. I should clarify at this point that a monster can be an MPC or not- the term "monster" is not meant as a physical description but rather a mental one. To put it bluntly, monsters are not all that worried about the ramifications of their actions on their victims, unless it is to relish in their suffering. Where Mors would not go out of his way to harm someone who was not bothering him, my character Melphaecto would not think twice about it. For many "monster" characters, good and evil are not really part of the equation- a monster is not worried about becoming more evil than they are, because why would they be? They are already as evil as they ever will be, and everything they do only reinforces that basic fact.
To play a monster is to be isolated. This is not to say that monsters cannot be social, but the vast majority of the island will treat them like, well, monsters, killing them on sight and hunting them down periodically. This is not to say a monster character can't have friends- Melphaecto has a wide web of characters she is allied with, enemies with, etc. This is also not to say a monster has to be completely devoid of humanity- I would argue in fact that it is the things the monstrous character shares with most "regular" characters that helps make them even creepier. It is easy to play a character who hates everything equally, but ultimately loses much of its punch over time (in my opinion, at least). Far more interesting for me to have someone who has likes and dislikes, and have those flavor that character's particular brand of monstrosity.
But think for a moment about a character you would consider a monster by this definition- of someone like Vaurin, Kallista, Melphaecto, Garagnavah, Halla, Rhandum, etc, who have at various times been described as a major villain of the server. When was the last time you can remember one of those characters idly sitting by the Dragon's Watch fire, chatting for hours on end, or even sitting alone, waiting for someone else to come along to RP with? While it does happen every once in a while, especially when more than one of us are online at a time and we are plotting, a good monster is almost always on the move, setting up encounters for people to wander into, showing up in unexpected places to make what you thought was an ordinary trip something more dangerous. Someone like Kallista isn't an effective villain (in my opinion at least) because she is constantly visible- she is feared because more often than not she is hidden, waiting, and has a knack for showing up at just the right (or wrong, depending on your point of view) time for maximum impact. Put simply, if you want to be a villain, you can't have a reliable schedule.
Playing a character who is a monstrous villain like that is hard, I can tell you from experience. I know on Melphaecto probably 50% of the player events I try to set up for people never see the light of day. Either people log out, they take an unexpected route, they teleport back to safety before they find my placeables, they find them but aren't interested and just run onward to the next thing they're wanting to kill, etc. I imagine anyone who plays a villainous character will back me up on this. This is not to mention that even if you're not an MPC, if you act in this way long enough, well over half the settlements of the island will be hostile to you, leaving you with fewer places to buy and sell gear, meet up with other characters, etc.
This can feel stifling, and it can absolutely make it harder to play the character (this is, incidentally, a major factor in why many MPCs burn out in a few short months and why we very rarely approve MPC applications from newer players who are still finding their way around the server.)
So why would anyone want to play a monstrous character like this?
For me at least, there are two main reasons. The first is a realization that comes from knowing that you are already going to be hostile to the majority of NPCs/PCs, and the ability to create plots and situations where it doesn't matter if you wouldn't be welcome in settlement XYZ afterward, because they're already trying to kill you! There is a creative freedom in knowing that there isn't a "mega-hostile" setting you can get to, so you might as well go all-out.
Second, I find a joy in surprising people going about "normal" activities- one of my favorite things to do on the server is pop out of a shadow somewhere unexpectedly and complicate people's plans by offering them a deal with a literal devil. There is a balancing act with this of course- it is certainly possible to be too imposing, especially with a mechanically powerful character, but by and large most true monster/villain players ultimately want to work with you, even if their characters are doing the opposite. It's a different kind of storytelling, one that can sometimes be frustrating and lonely, but for me at least the RP payoff is worth it when you do manage to get it right.
Anyway, I wrote more and said less than I intended to, but such is life. Food for thought at least.
[ The Island of Thain ]
Evil: Aesthetic and villainous
