After seeing yet another of those stupid "smack the celeb" banner ads, I started fantasizing about if someone would actually start going around following those stupid ads. This immediately made me think of psyochotropic conditioning.

So, I'm sure you can guess:

An antogonist who was conditioned to do everything (insert megacorp of choice) says in their ads. Initialy, this conditioning just meant that they had one certain sale for anything they advertised on the matrix. Since then, the marketing department changed and started adding some "shoot the monkey and win" ads. No one thought to remove the standard background script, so the individual(s) scorched to be perma-buyers are now running loose, punching celebrities and shooting monkeys.


So, anyone else have any ideas of antagonists that will make players wince once they understand?

Well, first of all, with your villain there, perhaps it was someone who was infected by psychotropic IC, or depending on your view maybe the corporate feeds (in the arcologies, at least) subliminally try to get the watcher to 'trust the corp. The corp is good' and so forth.

One villain I mentioned in another thread was Vinnie Gregarino from Gargoyles. First, one of the Gargoyles stole his motorcycle and trashed it. The authorities didn't believe him when he reported it as they thought he was drunk and thus took his license away. Then he was working security at a floating airship when the gargoyles invaded and then destroyed the airship, thus putting him out of a job. At his next job, working security for a company, he was the guard at the parking lot the night the gargoyles kidnapped a scientist thus getting Vinnie fired.

He had it out for the Gargoyles and got a huge gun built so he could cream the Gargoyles. He then found Goliath in the middle of fighting with an enemy (Vinnie was the comic relief of the episode as he kept having things happen to him to prevent him from getting the shot off until the very end). Approaching Goliath after his fight, he aims the huge bazooka at him and fire, creaming Goliath with Banana Cream and then just walking away whistling. Goliath is left there to ponder who that man was.

Now, to adapt this to Shadowrun, have the effects of your player's runs cause things to lead up to that. Like an example; the runners are blowing a building up because the people who 'live' there don't pay protection to the right people. Maybe some debris from that falls and destroys the guy's car. Next (to borrow from a 'commercial' in one of the Robocop movies), the guy is in charge of securing a contract at work. However, the runners take out some installation that is also a relay station for communications or something, thus he loses the contract. Things like that, and now this guy is out to hunt the players down because they ruined his life.

The problem with that is, while it is hilarious for the GM or another omniscient observer, by the time you explain it all to the players it just won't be funny anymore.

Depends on how complex you make it. Yes, you could do the "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die," and have someone striking back for the fact that your team killed off a guard who was this guy's father or some such. (Or if you want to be truly evil, maybe this guy is a clone or something like that).

As for ways to build it up; Have some references appear in the news if your player's watch it, for example. Like after the explosion at the building they took down, have a few people interviewed for their view of things and he has his piece where he comments on his car. Maybe they see him later as a guard working somewhere and remember that piece or whatever. Various stupid things like that, but yes, I suppose it'funny for the third party instead of them.

Horrible villians? How about a vengeful ex-girlfriend who is either an active mage, a latent mage who's power is revealed after the break up (see Street Magic about that), or is a hacker. Or perhaps her new beau is one of the above and acts on her behalf.

The vengeful corper who the PCs cost his job is a good one too.

If your mage abuses the spirits they summon, how about a free spirit that takes exception and works against the mage and his friends. All kinds of possibilities there.

Another one I used was shortly before Bug City happened. The team was a bountyhunter outfit that had some idea about bugs, but mainly they focussed on ghouls, toxics and things like that. They were after a bunch of ghouls in Atlanta only to find that there was a crazy mage leading a large pack of ghouls. They were kidnapping street people for the ghouls to infect and turn into more ghouls, only the best ones of course, the others were food. Turned out that the mage had some idea about the bugs and thought that ghouls would be the only ones to have a change since bugs don't try to invest them with new spirits. The team ended up fighting a lot of ghouls, associated gangs, and the mage himself.

This one might be interesting as a villain. Not sure if he'd really be considered a villain though so much since it's not exactly violent, but I suppose it could be.

Heard the song 'The Real Slim Shady' when I was out today and I got thinking about with all the rootkits and so forth already on CDs these days, just imagine what you might get buying a record from corporations. The record studio is basically releasing personafixes to create people to consume more of its music and buy its products. Now, there's a couple different ways I could see playing this, depending on what you want to go for:

A) One of the personafixed fans actually believes that they are the star and decide to eliminate the imposter.

B)A rival corporation hires you to stop the music from being produced since it is hurting their bottom line and the army of loyal fans tries to stop them.

C)This army is used by the musician to do his bidding, commit various crimes and deliver the goods to him, take over the city, whatever he wants.

All this because we got rid of the RIAA who, while pissing people off with the filesharing issues, were also dealing with the production of music as well.

I don't recall ever making any too-awful characters in SR, but I did write up Kirby in a superhero game once.

Reminds me of the CP2020 article Blackhammer did in Jack Attack, called The Perfect CP2020 Villain. I would post a link to it, but right now I'm getting a 500 Server Error. You can find it cached in Google or on the Wayback machine most likely, or if they fix it. Anyway, it talks about how to create a good bad guy.

It uses Keyser Soze as the villain model, but that's because he was cool, he was powerful, he was evil, but most importantly, he was hidden. You didn't know who he was until it was too late.

One of my favorite ideas it talks about is making it so the villain isn't who the players think it is. Like at one point, they think it is some Xanatos-like richer than God himself schemer and after starting to piss him off, they find out it's actually another guy in another city.

Or, like one of the GMs did in a game... Robotic 'clones' of a person. They picked one of the PCs in the game, had them get kidnapped and have the team come rescue them. However, that had been enough time for the bad guys to get the information needed and make three robotic images of the character and when the players attacked these clones were set free on the world. Maybe at some point, your group finds out that one of them is the evil villain, oh wait, it's just his clone. Or maybe it 'is' actually the PC.

Edit: was going to add this to another thread, but decided it fit best here:

I just finished watching 'Upgrade', an episode of Disney's Gargoyles and it had me thinking about something similar to this thread. One group of people, The Pack, once big time action TV stars whose lives were ruined by the Gargoyles (though ironically they were made famous in a plot to fight the Gargoyles anyway, but that's not here nor there). So, the Pack is sick of losing every time they fight and thus gets upgraded.

I love the pitch he uses, it even screams to be used in Shadowrun: Have you ever considered the bounties of Genetic Engineering? Or maybe Cybernetics is more your style? And they say clothes make the man (a video clip of someone taking off power armor, in case it wasn't obvious). And my personal favorite, the glory of robotics.

However, what this fight turns out to be as you see through clips of the episode is that it is a chess game being played by the scheming Xanatos and his wife Fox (who used to be a member of the Pack). Xanatos is playing with the Pack, and Fox is 'manipulating' the Gargoyles, since her only associated maneuver was to use a Public Service Announcement to direct the second group of Gargoyles to where they needed to go.

Now, it might be interesting to play a game like that. I once had a D&D campaign where once my players beat the dragon, they found a Risk-like board in his den. It was the dragon tracking its manipulations.

I don't know, personally I've always felt that the best villians were the ones that could have been the hero if the story was told from a slightly different point-of-perspective.

Well theres no real best. And you dont allways want to be using the same type of villan every time.

It's nice to throw in the 'hero gone bad' now and then, or even the not really a villan when you look at his actual reasons for doing something.

Like.. maybe at one point some nobody NPC warns one or more of the PCs of some dire thing unless they (the PC or PCs) dont do/do X or what ever. And make it something.. really stupid, or something thats unlikely to be done/not done.

This then sets off some chain of events that leads to some great tragedy that will only get worse unless they PC(s) is/are stopped! So to accomplish this the NPC sets out to take down the PCs. Maybe not even necessarily death involved, could be to just lock them up till a certain event is past or something but make it look like he's actually out to kill the PCs. Maybe his henchmen decide to hell with taking them alive or something.

In Transmetropolitan they had this fun stuff called Infopollen. It would be squirted out of the side of buildings onto connsumers infecting them with advertising memes. Every use of it had a high chance of fragging up the victims neural system. I could easily see this working as a kind of nanotech that overrides the pan, uploading to or subscribing the victim to the advertising network of choice. It would not be hard to use this as a gateway for psychotropic Ice.

My favorite villains are a group of hardened mercenaries who kill, steal and destroy, generally focusing on covert industrial espionage, for the highest bidder. Generally they should be a group of 2-6 with a diverse skillset, and it's best if they think they're the heroes.

*chuckles* Aye, and the best part of it all is that you generally have no idea exactly what they are going to do next.

Mahatma Gandhi broke laws, that doesn't make him a villain. Well, except from a british point of view .

It's pretty easy to let the pc heroes in a fantasy rpg appear as villains, at least in the eyes of most other NPCs. I have done it. Has been done in tv series uncounted times.

In SR it's harder, not because the PCs are criminals per definition, but because the crimes they commit are generally commited in secret. I must think about it and try to work into my next campaign .
Probably let them appear as a ruthless anti-meta terrorist cell. That would mean a few runs where metas are killed or pro-meta interests be thwarted. Even if it actually has nothing to do with a racial angle. Throw in one or two runs for real racists, so there is a connection. Some reporter then publishes a conspiracy theorie that meshes facts and rumors together... and there are people out there who know who did one or more of the runs the reporter just referenced.

Like I said, I need to think about it. But I'll definitely try to integrate it.

Runners don't *have* to kill security guards. There are gell rounds, narcojet and other ways to take them down but leave them alive. You can also use, I don't recall the name of it, but it is kind of tape but very strong (not duck tape) that can be used to tape elevator doors shut, stairwell doors shut and, of course, guardroom doors shut. Add in flash-bang grenades, tear and vomit gas grenades and you can often get by without lethal force.

Keep in mind that security guards also have professional ratings. After taking a certain amount of damage, they give up. Most guards won't take a lot before giving up, which means, again, you don't need to kill them. Now, groups like the Red Samurai are going to require lethal force because of their armor and, if they are after you, its kill or be killed, not like some 9 to 5 wage slave.

Not killing everyone is sight can cause corporations to go a little easier on you in terms of paybacks and if they catch you. That was mentioned somewhere in all the material out there. This is also the way I play it with most corporations, except Aztechnology. It also means that a corporation will have less of an axe against you and thus be more likely to hire you in the future, and not screw you over at the same time.

Granted, it isn't always possible to go nonlethal and lethal weapons should always be carried too, just in case being kinder and gentler isn't cutting it. In merc campaigns and destructive raids, lethal force is almost always the rule of the day.

The runners I play tend to not kill someone unless they have no other reason. I do play some of the standard will kill for fun runners because I enjoy that sort of angle and it is nice to blow off steam, however, that's also what most FPS'es are too. Perfect Dark, Deus Ex, Hitman, or even Thief if you're looknig a more medieval setting, are all games that have the option of going stealth or full bore combat and the gaming styles change depending on how you play. Stealth, you're going to face a lot more 'puzzles' likely and work on your timing. Whereas in full combat, it's a matter of quick reflexes and maybe a bit about cover too.

As was mentioned, the thing with killing people gets everyone madder at you than leaving them alive. Corporations lose money when people die in pensions, insurance and costs of cleaning up not to mention hiring new people. If you leave them alive but wounded, sure there's some healing in the hospital or mage healing, but that is likely less expensive. And if they're not wounded at all because the guards fought smart or didn't fight at all because the runners snuck in, then all the corp lost was whatever was taken.

Then we have angles other than corps. Family members, lovers, friends looking for justice. Maybe even another runner/group doesn't like the fact that the runners are killing everything as it is making a bad name for them (meaning that if security forces want to keep their jobs they'll have to crack down because death is high profile on the news circuit. Hard to spin it).

So, you can have runners who break laws and don't kill people. Now yes, there are sometimes I have done white hat 'Robin Hood' type runners, doing runs to help out the community or things like that. Other times, it'll be a black hat type who doesn't care what needs to be done, except will not rack up a body count. Instead, they pack splat glue, dart guns, gel rounds, things like that as their weapons.

I seem to remember that nonlethal rounds aren't as effective as regular rounds against any kind of armor. They are certainly less effective than explosive or APDS, which makes them less than ideal, as even Joe Sec-guard has some kind of armor. So you'd be using ammo that isn't as good at taking someone down or going for called shots which isn't ideal for most.

EDIT- I also think the philosophy that using nonlethal means to take down guards means they'll do the same is BS. Who is going to notice in combat that the runners are using gel rounds and to switch to them as well. No they are going to see you shooting their buddies and are going to respond in kind.

As for villains I like those who the players think are friends, whether they were turned, aren't who the players thought they would be, or not being as honest as they could be. Metal Gear Solid has good examples of the last two. Naomi, Liquid Snake impersonating Master, and the Coronel.

The descriptions of Theif 2 and Hitman 2 are basically how you would play a less than lethal game, but using gel rounds, narcojets and magic. If you have to drop a guard, you took aim and dropped with a couple of well placed rounds, then bound and gagged them. Also, unlike those games, you can ambush them and make them surrender. Most guards, when walking their route and finding themselves staring down the barrels of a runner team would surrender rather than draw. Keep in mind the professional rating too: there is a threshold of damage where they will give up, one way or the other.

Its true that gel rounds don't work as well on armor, which is why they are used on the typical sec guard who is probably not outfitted in full combat armor. As I pointed out, when the opposition gets serious, the real bullets start flying. Again, remember the professional rating: those people will have them too and will give up if wounded to a certain degree.

The point is not that the guards will use nonlethals back duing a fight but is more of a strategic plan. No, the guards won't take the time to notice they are being fired at with nonlethals and that they will change to the same loads. Rather it is message to the corporations and the Johnsons that your team is capable of restraint and isn't just a murder machine. Tactically it won't make a difference, but strategically in terms of getting jobs and easing payback from the corps, it would help.

I should also point out that there would be work for boths kinds of teams. Stealthy, restrained teams would be favored for certain kinds of jobs and killers teams for others. There is also no real reason that a team can't switch hats depending on the mission or the target they are against. As I have pointed out, my teams don't use as much restraint against Aztechnology or gangs as they would against others, and they use very little when doing bounty missions like against toxic shaman or other threats.

The question of lethal vs. non-lethal force has been hotly debated elsewhere, and I think Kage has made some excellent points why a professional team who wants to stay out of jail will use lethal force. In short, if you use gel rounds, you will be less effective in combat (since armor resists gel rounds and narcojets generally have limited range and take longer to take effect), more likely to leave witnesses (and I don't think the corp will say 'well, we have full descriptions of them, but they were awfully nice, so we'll let them go), and just as likely to get shot and killed in return. As WR pointed out, even though non-lethal methods are available right now, they're almost never used successfully in crime for good reason. If you're at the point where you need to shoot, shoot to kill.

That said, even if you DO choose to somehow hold human life as valuable (you fool you), the fact remains that you are stealing as a profession. Not as a call to some higher meaning, not to stop some wicked group from doing terrible things, but because some guy you met in a seedy bar paid you cash to go and swipe this thing.

In Sr, there are more ways to leave a trail than just physical witnesses. There are all the security cameras (and not just cameras in the compound, by 2070 they will probably be everywhere), DNA from stray flakes of skin, astral signitures, etc. A team can be followed away by spirits or drones.

We don't really have nonlethal analogs to all the options in SR. There are no gel rounds, aside from the ones for shotguns, tranquilizers darts are avaiable but they take minutes to have effect rather than being instant like Narcojet, and of course we don't have magic. Today, most times when weapons are used in crime they are used to intimidation and casualties are rarely inflicted, street level crime being the exception.

If you look at the real crimes that go down with lethal force, like an armored car robbery where the sec men are killed, it is a sensation in the media and the police go all out to catch the attackers. The backstories in SR show much the same thing. If runners pull a bloody job, the press howls about it and Lone Star and the others turn up the heat and the corps will send hit teams after the runners, or hire them through intermediaries to run a suicide mission.

But again, if one group wants to play a bloody campaign, let them. If someone else wants to play a less brual one, let them.

That's the thing with Shadowrun compared to RL. In Shadowrun they have a large number of ways to be non-lethal and most importantly ways to keep yourselves hidden. Disguise kits to disguise your appearance, some magical aid can help there as well. Then you've got the things other than gel rounds, which include knockout gas, splat glue to keep them trapped in place, not to mention that you can just ambush them and then knock them out with the butt of your gun. Again, magic spells can knock these people out as well or just mess with their brains to not think you were there.

And sure, perhaps your group is out there to steal item X from Corp Y for Person Z, but even then, you don't have to become a killer to get what you want. Think of the ninja of Ancient Japan; you didn't know who was a ninja because they were masters of disguise and by the time you saw one, it was too late.

For DNA traces, there's stuff like Sterilze spells and also the fact that if your fake SIN(s) don't link to your DNA, they don't have anything to go on with that. Being seen, has already been covered some, but let's also include some stage acting like has been done in movies (ie: lifts in your shoes to make you look taller, maybe you walk with a limp or talk with a lisp, or maybe you're just a 'specially challenged' custodial engineer). All those things would leave a false description and make it that much harder to track you as well.

So, sure, you left witnesses, but what are they going to say? It was a five foot eight white guy with red hair and a beard. He looked to be about two hundred pounds. In actuallity, your character is five four, one fourty with black hair and no beard. Or, maybe they were focusing somewhere else (movies like Snake Eyes, where what you see isn't exactly what you got), or there was a distraction (I once read a news article about a purse snatching; all that the victim remembered is that the thief was bare naked).

OMG THAT NEW SECURITY GUARD GUY WE JUST HIRED JUST COLAPSED WE NEED A MEDIC

*PBX re-routed*

Decker: "DocWagon Emergency services..."

Rather than further derailing this thread, I recommend you search for threads on the topic or make your own. The subject of this thread is horrible villain ideas. The subject of lethality could span pages and pages, and has little to do with villains.

Although I haven't had the chance to actually use it yet, I've always been fond of the idea of a serial killer that used BTL chips to make others commit murder/suicide while wearing Simrigs to later 'relive' the experience via BTL.

As an added twist, perhaps both of the victims are equiped with Simrigs whenever possilbe and the 'experience chips' play both BTL tracks at the same time.

Also, if/when I run that idea I'll also use the The Serial Murder Resource Center from an old Pyramid Article.

As far as I can tell, the "The Serial Murder Resource Center" by Pyramid Online is a GURPS supplement of some sort by James Cambias. Not that I'm saying it's not useful, I'd love to see it if you dig it up.

Here's an awful one.

A free spirit with the true name "Schrödinger", and the hidden life power. The subject of the hidden life is a cat, which is kept securely in a small box, in an abandoned building somewhere in the barrens.

Well we could allways 'rescue' little timmy from wells and such you know to be evil.

*Bark Bark!*

What's that Lassie? Timmy fell down a well?

*Bark!*

Lead on!

*Bark Bark Bark!* (Dog runs over to the well with you following)

Hey Timmy you down there?

Timmy: *Sniffle!* Yes! I fell trying to reach the bucket!

Runner: Dont worry Timmy you'll soon be free!

*Runner pulls out silenced pistol, Shoots dog*

Runner:! Help is on the way! *throws the dogs corpse down the well*

Timmy: LASSIE! NOOOOOOOO!!!!

Runner: *Tosses an incidary grenade down the well* Hey Timmy? CATCH!

Timmy: TEH FIRE! I BURRRNNNS! AAAAAAA!!!! *Crispifies*

Runner: *Walks away chuckling evily.*

For years I've been trying to think of a feasible way to convert the Puppetmaster from the movies to Shadowrun. The best I could come up with is have spirits or elementals possess the dolls, but that seems kinda off.