Greetings LOTC. I hope to keep this short and sweet. My goal here is to provide a critique on the current state of villainy on LOTC. As someone who has played a villain for an extended period of time, I have gotten a sense of what both myself as well as fellow players find insufferable with roleplaying as a villain. I have included a TL;DR at the bottom for those who don’t feel like reading through all of my points. Finally, please note that I do not support the generic “minas or die” roleplay, but you’ll understand where this stems from in my post.
The Glass Ceiling on Villainy RP
Perhaps this was intended, but villainy RP in general has a glass ceiling in place against it. The only feasible things you can do while roleplaying as a villain are banditry or kidnapping/ransoming. Personally, I came up with the idea to create a “mafia” with some of my friends. That idea fell flat very quickly, due to the aforementioned glass ceiling. Who wants to spend hours wandering roads for the hope of finding someone to steal 100 minas from, or perhaps to kidnap and contain for 2 hours, in exchange for a subpar ransom? Any other “mafia-esque” RP is basically impossible, since the rules themselves are written to prevent such a thing.
Something that came to mind while formulating my idea were things such as selling narcotics, terrorism, racketerring, and assassination. Each of those have their own issues. Only a small portion of the community roleplays drug use, and most of them decide to omit the fact that drugs are addictive, meaning there is zero market for such a thing. Terrorism is simply impossible. When consulting the possibilities with the moderation team, I was informed that any IRP damage to a region requires PRO permission. Who in their right mind would agree if I approached them and asked if I can set their settlement on fire IRP (not to mention a lack of explosives, but that's another issue)? Racketeering cannot be done, also due to the glass ceiling. When you enter a settlement with malicious intent, it is considered a raid. Unfortunately, approaching a nation leader and demanding “protection” money is considered malicious intent. Why do I require a raiding party, likely a large PvP fight, and multiple hours of gameplay in order to passive-aggressively extort money from someone? Assassinations also have no place on LOTC, mainly because you cannot force a character to PK (which I am fully comfortable with, don’t get me wrong), therefore your efforts of planning and execution are fruitless, at most causing a scene and making the victim forget 30 minutes of roleplay.
OOC Hatred of Villainy RPers
On most, if not all, of the administrator posts, it is explained that LOTC is meant to be an environment free of toxicity, as well as the notion that players must keep their OOC and IRP emotions separate. Well, my villainy had about a 70% success rate. During the remaining 30%, confrontations arose. There is only one time I can remember where I was not berated in OOC chat for my actions on my character during such a confrontation (shoutout to the halfings). The remainder of the confrontations usually resulted in either death or successful escape. Well, according to many players, death is too easy of a way out for someone who roleplays as a villain. Much of the time, I would be berated for simply playing a villain, attempting to kidnap someone and failing, or simply attempting to run. Oftentimes, I was insulted for not providing proper roleplay.
Perhaps I was personally at fault, although I try my best to avoid unjustified and generic villainy roleplay. Usually, it came down to “we are right, and you are wrong”. For those of you who find that this is a select group of players, you’d be surprised to hear that some staff, who will not be mentioned, engaged in the OOC conflicts as the opposing party. The main point being, when you play as a villain, you are forced to deal with OOC hatred simply for the fact that you are a villain IRPly. However, this is an issue of mentality, and I doubt this can be changed.
Events & Villainy In my year and a half on LOTC, I have seen many organized events happen, most recently Athera. Though I have not personally participated, all of them share a common theme; the players are forced to play as protagonists, with no place for villainy roleplay during events. This is more of a suggestion than a point, however, it would be nice to see events having more diversity, perhaps some choice as to whether you wish to roleplay as a villain (antagonist) or a protagonist, or events that add some substance to villainy roleplay.
TL;DR
There is a heavy restriction on how far one can get via villainy RP. Many illicit activities are restricted or simply impossible due to the way the rules are structured.
Playing as a villain oftentimes results in OOC conflict, simply because you are playing as a villain.
Events have no place for villainy RP, and force the player to act as the “protagonist” with no flexibility in that regard.
That will be all. Thank you for taking the time to read my post. Feel free to leave any comments, questions, or concerns. Constructive criticism is appreciated. Hopefully we see some changes to villainy in the future.
