How can you actually stop a villain PC? And should you?

[In Sorrow We Trust]

My main ended up dying after a lot of nice plot roleplay, so I rolled her. There are times when taking the plunge benefits the story.

[msterswrdsmn]

As someone whose played both a protagonist and antagonist role on Arelith, my suggestion would be think less about stopping an individual character and more about how to screw with their plans, reputation, or ability to do goodly/evil things.

Sometimes this means ignoring the other party entirely and instigating other people around them. One of my characters would make offensive murals criticizing the other party and leaving the murals in large, obvious areas for dozens of people to see. I did this twice, and, to my knoweldge, both of them actually did what they were supposed to do.

[Berried]

""""Harass"""" lol. I thought we were supposed to learn this in our middle school curriculums. Maybe I’m the only one who did.

The journey into the underworld is the most crucial point in the hero's journey. It is the psychological nadir of his narrative; it is his gruesome revelation. Skywalker discovers Darth Vader was his father. Simba discovers his uncle murdered his father. Hercules descends into Hades.

The hero transforms into his most perfect self, not in SPITE of this figurative or literal descent into the underworld, but BECAUSE of it.

The flawed yet noble guard is dragged, in chains, into the dominion of the ruthless drow. He discovers that she can laugh! She can feel! He thought he was a good person because he tried to protect the people he cared about. And when he went into the underdark, do you know what he saw? People committing atrocities to protect the people they care about. He sees that he is so much like her and this makes him afraid: not of her, but of himself.

They fight, inevitably. The drow dies. The guard dies. His sins die with him. And when he emerges from his grave, tired, impossibly pale from spending years without sunlight, covered in dirt and dried blood, he emerges as a paladin.

The vile necromancer believes in freedom, just like you. The fearsome pirate believes in order, just like you. The sadistic thief believes in family, just like you. This is the horror of the denizens of the upside-down world; they reflect our own beliefs, and allow us to look at ourselves with a critical, unbiased eye. They make it possible to see past our own solipsistic self-righteousness by externalizing our flaws.

You’ve you never noticed that dragons tend to hoard wealth and kidnap beautiful princesses? You’ve not noticed how vampires tend to be aristocrats that prey on young virgins? You don’t think these commonalities in the western anthology’s most iconic monsters reflect on some sort of universal truth? About how normal motivations like money or love can make you do monstrous things? No, you don't! You think antagonists exist to harass you!

Maybe you think a villain's job is to die. I don't know what to say to that. Maybe you think Blood Meridian is a stupid book because a bad guy survives, and therefore wins. But he does lose. The Judge loses because he has to keep on being the Judge. He doesn't get to be something worth being and doesn't get to sleep or die.

I accept with exhausted equanimity that I will not be believed when I say: My drow slaver’s goal was never to ‘’’’’harass’’’’’ other characters. I was trying to rope you into a meaningful narrative that you have intransigently denied because you think I’m an illiterate griefer who gets off on harassing people on the internet.

If you had actually let your character be roped into underdark rp you would have found out that I’m extremely passionate about heroic narratives! I WANTED your character to escape, to win, to change and develop and grow and realize that all the shallow satisfaction provided by the hedonic treadmill is actually poison! But! You didn’t do that! So! I don't know what to tell you!

[Echohawk]

When you've tried all manner of ic measures, if you can find a way to gently speak to them respectfully as a player in OOC sometimes that can help soothe some of the frustration. This cannot always be done, but sometimes reaching out you can form a better story with your opponent character.

Winning or losing or having this inevitable 'no matter what I do they can always just res and shrug it off' is a soul crushing process for storytelling. But if you can get away from the binary completion you can have smaller victories and defeats it can be more rewarding. (No one really cares how many NPCs die and never come back, or that they respawn at alarming rates.) Unlike an NPC you can have a very dynamic and amazing story with your opponent. And if it goes too far you can ask for some DM assistance and mediation.

[Xarge VI]

I think considering returning from death a big taboo IC is a good way to approach it.
Instead of expressing frustration ic about the 7th returning of the villain, it can be considered something non spoken unless there is a plot that resurrects the villain, which happens too.

At the risk of echoing words above.
Instead of aiming to hunt down the evil necomancer and end their foul existance the holy paladin should focus on figuring out what their next dastardly plot is and undo it. Focus on saving the day.

[Berried]

The best you can do is find some other way to interfere with their goals.

Rather than focusing on the real life survival instinct premise of extinguishing the character to end their threat, find a way to ruin their goal.

my suggestion would be think less about stopping an individual character and more about how to screw with their plans, reputation, or ability to do goodly/evil things.

Instead of aiming to hunt down the evil necomancer and end their foul existance the holy paladin should focus on figuring out what their next dastardly plot is and undo it.

This keeps being reiterated despite the fact that it's vapid and monotonous.

"Blue Team tries to move object A to location B. Red Team destroys object A before it gets there. Red Team wins." That's your idea of a poignant narrative? People taking turns losing, ad infinitum? No dialogue, no motivation, no character development? Just goalposts?

A year ago I asked Arelith they wanted out of an antagonist. You told me you wanted a character with motivation, and layers, and substance. A villain who could surprise you with a consistent internal reasoning that actually made sense. You assured me that if I made a character with actual depth and substance, you would be willing to engage with me on a meaningful level! You'd play along!

And here you are, after a year of letting me waste my time, admitting that you just wanted a cardboard cutout that would just lose incessantly, never getting to say absolutely anything to absolutely anyone.

Recently (past year or two IG) there's been a rash of attacks from Underdarkers on the surface looking to enslave people.

We were trying to bring you to the UD so we could roleplay with you.

But they keep coming back.

We kept coming back because you kept not roleplaying with us. It was literally that simple. Monsters can't rp ouside the underdark so we tried to bring you to the place where we could roleplay. I cannot believe this is so hard to understand.

[Royal Blood]

I think this thread loops back to an easier idea that requires less philosophical debate:

Be the best player you yourself can be. Everyone is at a different place. I think there are some ideas touched on in this thread that are good to adopt but getting angry or dis-satisfied because the actions of others seem inadequate isn't going to go well. It's a lot easier to focus on improving yourself and being the example you want to be rather than trying to change a community. You'll change more peoples minds if at the end of an interaction with your character they go "Hey that was really fun, I am going to try to do that to." Then can be accomplished by becoming angry.

In my opinion some of the general highlights are:
A: Engage in more interesting ways. Don't focus your enjoyment of RP on objective based accomplishments. "Our mission is to kill X". The fact characters -can- come back means by default finding an RP way to more soundly defeat and adversary makes more sense than PVP. Plus, in my opinion whatever creates the most drama or stirs the pot the most is the best course of action to take. Be dramatic and bold the build up is what makes it fun.

B: I think maybe we need to add more imagination? I know that seems a bit obtuse considering the circumstances XD. But for example, don't look at your characters weapon as "Just another adamantine blade" something I frequently do is I -will not- use items until I find someone who can make it for my character. She's avid about -only- using gear forged by Lolthite loyalists or -atleast- people who are not complete heretics.

If you were a Weapon master or an extremely powerful mage would you be using some staff you found in a shop? Or forging something epic that draws people into a story? Maybe you're a paladin and you won't wield your blade until you get it blessed by a cleric of your faith. Or an arcanist who draws together multiple magi to infuse your staff with their mutual magics.

You can add so much more depth to mundane objects by simply deciding that to your character it's not mundane. In my opinion, thinking out side of the box and adding value to things makes a lot of sense. I mean for you as a player maybe getting another admantine blade is 2-3 days of effort. For your character IC this takes weeks/months.

Conclusion:

This all ties back into the original thread I think where the base issue seems to be we're struggling to create conflict story lines. But the only tool for conflict we're finding is PVP and raiding. By creating these sub stories you open up more avenues for conflict RP That -does not- have to be rooted in PVP. You as a good guy offer bad guys more opportunities to RP With you in deep ways. And the same goes for Villains.

Another example, when I played the Coronal of Myon, she was adamant about the sanctity of Lesser Moon Blades. OOC Did I know it was -entirely- unrealistic to pursue this goal since any elf can make a blade? Yes... But IC we'd go on hunts to find people creating Lesser Moon Blades and then engage in diplomacy to make sure these things weren't sold without the consent of Myon.

The Coronal's determination to preserve the sanctity of her culture lead to -a lot- of conflict RP that was not rooted in PVP. It led to diplomatic fights and chasing down elves selling Moonblades on the open market etc. Was she evil? Was she good? That's up to the character to decide but it created RP simply because my character chose to care about that. It provided villains and others the opportunity to engage my character without having to PVP her. There was a tangible way to get her to react other than PVP

And as a result, for example, an elf with the drow purposefully had Corrupted Lesser Moonblades made. This created a -whole- conflict sub plot. And the premise wasn't PVP. And it uad -huge- ramifications. In fact, one shady criminal even got pardoned by the Coronal because they recovered three of those blades which were then re-forged and given to Myonic champions. Like alllllll that story simply because OOC I decided that to my character, Lesser Moon Blades were more than just a crafting menu option.

TLDR: Create Opportunities for people to engage you.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

Villainry, antagonism, and evil characters are all different things. So let us make sure we do not confuse them.

Playing a good villain is actually really, really hard. Because a villain, I think, to a lot of people has a server-wide reputation or image.

One of the narrative problems with Arelith is that it is a land of plenty. This cuts a lot of really strong narrative themes out of a villain's playbook - scarcity, desperation, security, power. Why do you need to control settlements if you can farm demons and have a million gold?

To an extent, there is narrative dissonance.

Why really do the Underdark need to enslave PCs? Is there society on the brink of collapse? Sure, drow have their eternal war... but really, trying to take a slave is way more risky than just going writ hunting. With arguably lesser reward.

A lot of the times this steers players of villains down well-tread roads:
- fanaticism
- psychosis/insanity
- planar threats
- obsession with power (more so obsession with control and narcissism)

Maybe there are more, please correct me. But I think it is super hard to be a compelling villain.

A part of me wonders if it is a silly exercise to go out about making one from them onset rather than grow organically.

But villainry is no different than any other character arc and should be treated as such. I think they should win more than the good guys. The server is in a bad spot, narratively, if the heroes/villains distribution ever gets more egregrious than a 40/60 split.

We should be spending less time on making new Greater Award races, and more time focusing on giving tools to characters to interact with another. I do not know what they look like, but yeah.

"Stopping a villain" is bad form. "Telling a story with a villain" is probably a better angle. But you know, semantics.

[Zavandar]

the tools for good storytelling are there. extra reward races dont conflict with that, and in fact, open new avenues. moreover, the addition of new races doesn't take away time from DMs and players. I think that slight was unnecessary.

anyway, I find that writing a character like a real person with personality and ambitions is a better approach than "this will be a villain". you will naturally become a protagonist/antagonist/supporting character from there. Your character is part of a world, not just a single story

[Xarge VI]

This keeps being reiterated despite the fact that it's vapid and monotonous.

"Blue Team tries to move object A to location B. Red Team destroys object A before it gets there. Red Team wins." That's your idea of a poignant narrative? People taking turns losing, ad infinitum? No dialogue, no motivation, no character development? Just goalposts?

A year ago I asked Arelith they wanted out of an antagonist. You told me you wanted a character with motivation, and layers, and substance. A villain who could surprise you with a consistent internal reasoning that actually made sense. You assured me that if I made a character with actual depth and substance, you would be willing to engage with me on a meaningful level! You'd play along!

And here you are, after a year of letting me waste my time, admitting that you just wanted a cardboard cutout that would just lose incessantly, never getting to say absolutely anything to absolutely anyone.

Any story can be deconstructed down to "Blue vs Red" if you really want to.

There are a lot of helpful tips to give to create a meaningful conflict, best might be simply to read a lot of stories.

Eventually Roleplaying is a creative process that we practise in Arelith's framework. Part of that framework is that characters are likely to come back because of practical reasons and we as players need to adapt to it.

Part of being a good roleplayer is the ability to make the interaction interesting rather than to seem like endless loop of "Red vs Blue". You can't control the other character, so responsibility of making the interaction interesting is on you.

Character motivation, layers and substance are tools to make an interaction interesting, but possibly even more so is character growth. So that interactions with other characters shape yours. That gives other players a sense of agency over your story arc.


Also Arelith is part of a video game so you're likely wasting your time anyway.

[Aelryn Bloodmoon]

Stuff

I've never had someone get so upset at me for suggesting people should look for other avenues of RP besides killing them. Yes, I want you to engage and RP- that's why I want them to focus on undoing your goal, so that the two of you can RP around that, which isn't going to happen if they just killbash you because that's what they'd do in real life.

Someone can cooperatively RP with you without making your character's life easy - in fact, it's usually better that way, IMO, but YMMV.

[Berried]

Yes, I want you to engage and RP- that's why I want them to focus on undoing your goal, so that the two of you can RP around that,

You're assuming here that undoing a character's goal involves directly interacting with that character. It usually doesn't. You can steal the evil artifact, close the portal to Baator, or destroy the book of vile darkness without so much as meeting the characters you're foiling. You can do all that with zero growth or development or dialogue.

Someone can cooperatively RP with you without making your character's life easy

You think that's my point? After reading everything I've said, you think I'm telling you to make a fictional character's fictional life easy? I'm saying: my character spent a year trying to get an actual dialogue going with surface characters, and only one of them bothered to engage with me.

I'm sorry if you think I'm upset with you, but I didn't want to see "I foiled your plans! That's the same as interaction, right?" used as an excuse to justify a stringent refusal to rp with certain factions.

No one wants to delete their pc over a one-line kill-bashing from a random stranger. If you want to see a character deleted; provide a fitting, satisfying ending for an antagonist your character has had a conversation with at least once.

[RedGiant]

I get what you are saying berried and I hear your frustration. As a decade plus veteran of Arelith, there are some disturbing trends afoot that are both a opportunity and a challenge.

With EE and Steam and Switch, the server has seen an influx of new life. This is good...and a great opportunity.

Yet, at least from my foxhole, I have seen a massive uptick in players who treat this like just another MMO...and herein lies the challenge.

For example, I cannot tell you how often I have had players/groups simply run past my dumbfounded character INSIDE a dungeon that I was clearly clearing...without nary an interaction...as if they owned it, or had a right. And if things are this egregious out in the field on a simple 101 writ-run, do we really expect said parties to do well on the 301 villain introductions and 401 immersive conflict opportunities you are offering?

There are no easy solutions here. We have to educate an entire new generation of roleplayers. That said, some of us long-termers can become the problem as well...as we have seen in this thread. "Just ignore them" is not really helpful advice and can lead to a clickishness as detrimental to the server as the former ignorance. The best RPers I've seen, and I'm not claiming to be one, play their character and make it interesting, no matter what. This includes introducing meaningful consequence to people who want to log in, but don't want to play, if you get my meaning.

In fact, and I will end on this, I think the next time I get ninja ran on in a dungeon, I'm going to introduce the culprits to some good ole-fashioned conflict RP...which I should have likely been doing all along...but was just too dang nice. (Incidentally, this is one reason why, despite current discussion, PvP rules should most likely NOT change on Arelith.)

Cheers!

[Wuthering]

*Shrugs*I think veteran players who should know better are just as likely to be the ones who ignore unknown characters in town and blow past them while doing writs. I've rarely had issue with new people who seem more likely to take their time and explore and even talk to strangers. It's the people on their twentieth or fiftieth characters who just try to get to epics as fast as possible.

It's not a new problem either though the miniature golf course that is the writ system (which I love, don't get me wrong) has probably made it more visible.

[Dr. B]

The best you can do is find some other way to interfere with their goals.

Rather than focusing on the real life survival instinct premise of extinguishing the character to end their threat, find a way to ruin their goal.

my suggestion would be think less about stopping an individual character and more about how to screw with their plans, reputation, or ability to do goodly/evil things.

Instead of aiming to hunt down the evil necomancer and end their foul existance the holy paladin should focus on figuring out what their next dastardly plot is and undo it.

This keeps being reiterated despite the fact that it's vapid and monotonous.

Forum etiquette prohibits me from giving this the response it deserves, so I'll have to settle for the following line of response.

1. It wouldn't be "monotonous" if people were repeating it to begin with, so that's hardly a basis on which to criticize them for repeating it. It also fails to address the actual substance of what is being said. Furthermore, and on the contrary, the fact that people are repeating it might be because there's a kernel of wisdom in it.

2. To call a point "vapid" is to suggest that it is devoid of substance, i.e., that under analysis, nothing is actually being said. While you take issue with it, the point you are criticizing is not devoid of substance. Perhaps you don't know what "vapid" means, a la that guy in The Princess Bride.

I am also not sure why you are taking issue with it. You write:

"Blue Team tries to move object A to location B. Red Team destroys object A before it gets there. Red Team wins." That's your idea of a poignant narrative? People taking turns losing, ad infinitum? No dialogue, no motivation, no character development? Just goalposts?

You're making several false assumptions here, both about what your interlocutors are saying and about narrative possibilities on Arelith.

First, in my quotation, I state that you need to find another way to interfere with your character's goals besides permanently killing them, since the latter is not possible. You took this to mean that one should not bother trying to stop their opponent permanently, so that the conflict continues indefinitely. However, this is not necessarily the case. In theory you can stop an aggressor permanently by taking away their means, converting their allies, or changing their minds, all of which can be done without perma-killing them.

On the other hand, and second, nothing is in principle wrong with a continuing sequence of conflicts between two parties. Would you believe me if I told you that many *real life* conflicts play out that way? Here's one example! Here is another! If you want an example that is appropriate to fantasy fiction, this guy described two that dragged out for several thousand years. (Incidentally--*gasps*--the antagonists in both conflicts could not die... I guess Sir Tolkien didn't know how to construct a narrative.)

Character development, motivation, and dialogue are plentiful in all of these examples. Are you saying that they aren't? Maybe they are and you just can't discern them.

You're assuming here that undoing a character's goal involves directly interacting with that character. It usually doesn't. You can steal the evil artifact, close the portal to Baator, or destroy the book of vile darkness without so much as meeting the characters you're foiling. You can do all that with zero growth or development or dialogue.

I have never known of a situation on Arelith where dealing with a PC enemy required destroying an artifact or closing a portal. In 100% of cases I've been exposed to, it has always required interaction with other PCs, which is the typical catalyst for character development ("a person is a person through other people", as they say).

This doesn't even address the fact that there can be interesting conflicts between characters who never meet each other, which is (again) a thing that happens in literature. See here--and here (in case you forgot, Frodo, the protagonist, never meets Sauron, the antagonist; all of their conflict takes place through intermediaries).

A year ago I asked Arelith they wanted out of an antagonist. You told me you wanted a character with motivation, and layers, and substance. A villain who could surprise you with a consistent internal reasoning that actually made sense. You assured me that if I made a character with actual depth and substance, you would be willing to engage with me on a meaningful level! You'd play along!

And here you are, after a year of letting me waste my time, admitting that you just wanted a cardboard cutout that would just lose incessantly, never getting to say absolutely anything to absolutely anyone.

Dude, who are you? Was I supposed to know about that post? I didn't even know you existed until a notification popped up in my browser informing me that you called me vapid.

You think that's my point? After reading everything I've said, you think I'm telling you to make a fictional character's fictional life easy?

If the people reading this are missing the point you are trying to make, it's probably because

1. Your ideas are not well delivered. It's largely because your posts all read as angry diatribes instead of thoughtful prose with a coherent line of discussion. Consider "From the Desk of a Crackpot" for your own personal letterhead.

2. Your tone is offputting and people don't feel compelled to listen or take you seriously.

I'm saying: my character spent a year trying to get an actual dialogue going with surface characters, and only one of them bothered to engage with me.

Peppermint/Qirrova Vh'larra was a master of engaging surfacers, and this was greatly helped by the fact that the character and player were fun to interact with. You seem abrasive and difficult to communicate with, and that probably explains why you are having trouble engaging other players.

[Berried]

Furthermore, and on the contrary, the fact that people are repeating it might be because there's a kernel of wisdom in it.

Yes, the kernel of wisdom is "there's more to conflict than killbashing".

First, in my quotation, I state that you need to find another way to interfere with your character's goals besides permanently killing them, since the latter is not possible. You took this to mean that one should not bother trying to stop their opponent permanently, so that the conflict continues indefinitely.

No, that's not what I took it to mean. My issue isn't with the "ad infinitum" part, it's with the lack of interaction. Let me give you an example of interfering with someone's goals:

Team Red is planning to collect rune materials by going to Red Dragon Isle. Team Blue finds out. A rogue on Team Blue stealths ahead and steals the rune material while Team Red is fighting.

That's interfering with someone's goal. But is it roleplay? Is it narrative? Is it story?

This doesn't even address the fact that there can be interesting conflicts between characters who never meet each other, which is (again) a thing that happens in literature. See here--and here (in case you forgot, Frodo, the protagonist, never meets Sauron, the antagonist; all of their conflict takes place through intermediaries).

Sauron influences, tempts, interacts with, and challenges Frodo through the One Ring. This interaction is perfectly fine and legitimate to me. If people want to engage each other through letters/books etc, that's still engagement. At least you're not outright ignoring someone because they're an icky UD player.

But I do want to emphasize the difference between ignoring certain factions and engaging with them indirectly. It was the being ignored thing that put UD players in a position to return to the surface, hoping against all odds that maybe this time someone will bite the story hook.

Dude, who are you?

The OP talks about underdark PCs who kept coming back to the surface, allegedly to "harass" other characters. I'm someone who is fully aware that it is was the lack of narrative engagement (rather than a reluctance to delete their PCs) that forced this activity to persist.

Peppermint/Qirrova Vh'larra was a master of engaging surfacers, and this was greatly helped by the fact that the character and player were fun to interact with. You seem abrasive and difficult to communicate with, and that probably explains why you are having trouble engaging other players.

I'm surprised you're citing Peppermint as an example of someone who is always fun and never frustrated when as far as I know she's also been very frustrated with Arelith for a while now.

I wasn't frustrated before the lack of cooperation, so there's no way they could have retroactively been avoiding my current frustration. In fact, if you read the post I linked, from a year ago, it's almost naively optimistic. Brimming with good faith and a sincere, vulnerable excitement.

[ReverentBlade]

A lot of Arelith's good vs bad narrative problems would be solved with more frequent, inclusive DM-ran story arcs that PCs can join both sides of. The few DM events I've seen have been of short duration, low interactivity, and generally poor quality in the story telling and DM client expertise.

Setting stagnation and apathy are not good breeding grounds for particularly engaging player to player stories.

[Aelryn Bloodmoon]

Yes, I want you to engage and RP- that's why I want them to focus on undoing your goal, so that the two of you can RP around that,

You're assuming here that undoing a character's goal involves directly interacting with that character. It usually doesn't. You can steal the evil artifact, close the portal to Baator, or destroy the book of vile darkness without so much as meeting the characters you're foiling. You can do all that with zero growth or development or dialogue.

Someone can cooperatively RP with you without making your character's life easy

You think that's my point? After reading everything I've said, you think I'm telling you to make a fictional character's fictional life easy? I'm saying: my character spent a year trying to get an actual dialogue going with surface characters, and only one of them bothered to engage with me.

I'm sorry if you think I'm upset with you, but I didn't want to see "I foiled your plans! That's the same as interaction, right?" used as an excuse to justify a stringent refusal to rp with certain factions.

No one wants to delete their pc over a one-line kill-bashing from a random stranger. If you want to see a character deleted; provide a fitting, satisfying ending for an antagonist your character has had a conversation with at least once.

Your objection to the mentality is noted, but I'd like you to take a look at the topic of this thread. Someone came in asking a question, and I suggested they do something to the villains other than focus on killing them. Whatever issues you've had interacting with the surface, they have no bearing on the fact that if someone falls for the trap of considering a villain's death the only solution, and the villain doesn't find it a satisfactory death, that no progress will be made- but if you interact with them (which I suggested through tells in the part of my post that you didn't quote while calling those of us suggesting this vapid), and find a way to focus on undermining their goals rather than killing them, there can be interaction.

It's literally a rule that interaction has to stop for 24 hours after death, so my first concern in helping make this topic an interactive narrative is by suggesting people not look to killing someone as their first solution.

I'm sorry you don't understand why, if out of all of that, you focused on the most narrow interpretation possible of a repeated sentiment in a wildly different way than we all intended it, and used it to call us vapid, that I might think you're upset. I don't understand how you could have possibly come into this thread with anything other than an already agitated mindset and assumed the worst about every single thing you read, because none of us were encouraging the kind of behavior you're suggesting, and whatever jade may have been added to your rose-tinted vision doesn't really have anything to do with the suggestion offered, nor justify your rather unpleasant assumptions about the people making it.

[Marsi]

Honestly, the most fun I've ever had on this server has been old-fashioned red v blue plots.

It's no accident that the best remembered villains in Arelith's history have had simple motivations whose players were more concerned with getting things done than curating a faux-patina of "depth" and storybook-like plot structure.

It's not that psychologically complex roleplay is unimportant, but that its narrative throughput is very small, and that it's a fatal error to presume to cast judgement on the kind of "two dimensional" roleplay that in fact keeps the world narrative's lights on and subsidizes middlebrow couch rp everywhere.

[ReverentBlade]

That is the DM's job tbh.

[Royal Blood]

A lot of Arelith's good vs bad narrative problems would be solved with more frequent, inclusive DM-ran story arcs that PCs can join both sides of. The few DM events I've seen have been of short duration, low interactivity, and generally poor quality in the story telling and DM client expertise.

Setting stagnation and apathy are not good breeding grounds for particularly engaging player to player stories.

DMs can't run events because someone always complains then we have -1 DM and no more events. The last DM plot I was in had to be entirely walked back. It -was- a conflict plot, it was really cool too but all of it redacted due to 'unknown' reasons. That's why there is not DM plots and won't be DM plots. One complaint and it's all shut down.

The best DMs stirred the pot. And when you stir the pot you get volleyed with complaints and crazy accusations. Then to just stop the madness the plot is just called off. Then after the community has ravaged their DM team they wonder where they all went.

The community has shot itself in the foot in that regard.

[The GrumpyCat]

That is the DM's job tbh.

That's why we have 40 RPR! And why a large component of it is basicaly, 'Make fun plots for other players!'
And why we try to give you a few tools to go do your own thing with!

So that you guys can be mini DMs, so that when we arn't around you can create wicked cool plots for each other.

Yeah, it is the DMs job. But when players take up that job too? And do it well? Then we give them the highest acolade we can.

[BoredGM]

Okay everyone! Time for the DM class to start! Everyone eventually wants to become a DM now! Get to class get to class.

[Zavandar]

kill 'em all, let the gods sort it out

[The GrumpyCat]

Okay everyone! Time for the DM class to start! Everyone eventually wants to become a DM now! Get to class get to class.

Yeah! Well it's kinda true! One of the very best things about Arelith, the thing I love the most - is that ideally you can just do your own thing and have fantastic plots, but not need a DM to intervene at all. DM stuff is nice, but (and I say this AS A DM!!!!) the very best plots I've come across have often been player plots.

And I know it can be difficult to stir conflict and story up without things flowing over ooc occasioanlly, but it is something I recommend.

The title of this is 'How can you actually stop a Villain PC? and should you?'

To which the answer, theoretically is this:

'The only absolutly sure fire way to stop them by making it so unpleasent for the player to continue their game that they quit.'
Should you do this?
NO OF COURSE NOT!

You should certainly try and combat them In Character yeah! Through whatever means you feel best. And I'd really recommend villain players giving other pcs strong wins ect. But ultimtaly - villain pcs work (or should work) to help make (FUN!) story for other pcs. It doesn't always work out, but that's the aim. And I love it.