"How to Be Good at Being Bad:
or, Playing the Villain in DragonRealms"

by GM Derrey

Coming straight to Dragonrealms from MUDs or table-top games can sometimes be a problem for the new player. In a game like Dungeons & Dragons, the morality of a character is given from the moment of birth: Good, Neutral, or Evil, and that's it -- no returns, no refunds, no exchanges.

But in DragonRealms as in life, you can be Dudley Dooright one day and Sindely Whiplash the next -- it all depends on what you do. And that's where the problem comes in.

The masters of role-playing decide on a consistent character. This doesn't mean you always have to behave the same way, however; you can be sneaky and treacherous as long as you're consistently sneaky and treacherous. The very best players model their characters after real life, and they know that while real people do change, it takes something pretty big to bring about a complete reversal of character.

A famous GemStone player named Harcourt built himself a reputation as the meanest man around (more later about how he did that), fighting, slapping, dragging and generally being a terror to Town Central. He earned such fame that there's even a remembrance of him somewhere in DragonRealms (first person to find it and reply to the magazine gets a prize!). But after a while, he decided it would be fun to do something else and he underwent a conversion, becoming a complete pacifist. This was just before GemStone's famous gladitorial games, and there was some high comedy as he went around the arena, trying to convince the contestants that their dreadful violence was a blemish on the universe and an affront to the gods.

Harcourt had a skill that not many players have, but his technique was really very simple, and it was based on the idea that role-playing games are very much like being in a play. If you were playing the part of Iago in Shakespeare's "Othello," you'd be as nasty a villain as the stage has ever seen. But that nastiness would be in-character, only. The actor playing Iago doesn't give his fellow actors the wrong cues, he doesn't trip the actress playing Desdemona as she's going on- stage, and he doesn't punch the actor playing Othello in the nose. In other words, he helps the drama, he doesn't disrupt it.

Remember that each character in DragonRealms is writing his own script, and to enjoy the game to the fullest, you want to co-operate with the others to improve their play and yours. The player who backstabs another without warning or who threatens to make another walk the starry path isn't helping that player's drama, he's destroying it.

How then do you do it? Very simple. Use Harcourt's method -- talk to the other player beforehand, decide on what you're going to do, and what the limits will be. This planning can be spontaneous, the work of a few whispers:

Snarkum whispers to Zlatch and Sugarcookie: "Want to have some fun?"

Zlatch whispers to Snarkum: "Sure, what's up?"

Snarkum whispers to Zlatch and Sugarcookie: "How about if I pretend to kidnap Sugarcookie?"

Snarkum whispers to Zlatch and Sugarcookie: "I'll drag her off, and she can scream, and you raise a big fuss."

The more elaborate scenarios might well involve a larger number of players and a more detailed outline.

Only your imagination will limit what you can do, no characters get killed, no GMs interfere (especially if you use REPORT to let them know beforehand you're playing a little scene), and who knows? You might end up with a nice rp bonus!