I'm really looking for some honest critique on the concept behind my current prime for for my runners. The campaign hasn't started yet and I really lack any sort of outline, but this is the basic idea behind the character.

Donovan D. Diablo is a mastermind sort of character. Someone I want to outthink my players. I want him to not be the powerful villain, but the guy who hires powerful villains. A man who owns a corporation only as a front, and instead makes his money by fucking with other businesses. Someone who has his hands in everything. Someone who has all the right ties, all the right friends, and all the most terrible goals. A hard to get to man who never gets his hands dirty. This guy wont stand out like Damien did in his takeovers. He'll die in obscurity, but rich obscurity. A guy who really lives in the shadows behind hundreds of aliases, Not only will you not know who's on his payroll, but you wont know if you are on his payroll.

I want his main goal to be something big. Planning to legally takeover the damn world by buying out the right corps, putting himself in positions where he has real influence over every major government. At the same time, he uses extra funds to build cyberzombies and other ethically questionable minions, slowly replacing who he can. Physically, he's weak. In sheer opposite of most campaigns I play, he has no physical or magical prowess, easily killed if the players get to him, but nearly impossible to get to. Almost feeble, I'm going for sort of a Lex Luther vs Superman concept here, I intend for the team to be more powerful then him, but likely not his henchmen.

Anyway, critique is nice, but I would also love ideas on how to put this man together, and some additional dark goals for him to have. I want something less evil, more greedy however. Also, for him to have all this money from extortion and what not, I'm calling on the Dumpshock community to help me figure out exactly what all he should have his hands on. He needs some serious cash without standing out. I want him to be a real shadow that intends to jump out and take the world in one swoop after obtaining everything he needs. I also want to try to find a way to allow him to often mislead the players, try to get them to join his side, etc etc. I want some real good reasons to try to get my players to defect or betray, I don't really want anyone to trust each other. If anyone has any badguy-swaying-shadowrunner experiences that have worked, please let me know.


I hope I can get some ideas here before my campaign launches in a few weeks.

Sounds like a real badjuy. Sorry I just had to say that.

First off not wild on the name. Someone like this should actually have a very lame name like Elliot Higgenbottoms. While you take that extra second to contemplate how foolish his sounds there is someone sneaking up on your to knife you in the back. Also I don't think this person would be building cyberzombies (not very cost efficient.) If anything I think a subtle mastermind will try and slowly push things to his liking. He might move fast, but after the dust clears people should never be sure what just happened I think should be his kind of planning. Never any direct shootouts and try to keep every job low profile.

Who is the character? I see what you want him to be, but to play out what you want him to be you should look at who he was. The character should have a backstory, nervous ticks, something that can give him away. What made him the way he is today? Does he dress in shabby suits and try to hide his money or does he flaunt his cash? Does he always wear a gold pocket watch suspended on a chain? Does it work or is it broken with the hour and minute hand always stuck at three forty five, maybe because that is when he killed his abusive father who would always beat his mother half to death? Was he forced to kill her when she found out and was going to alert the authorities? Was she killed by his father and so after killing his father realized that the only way he could get what he wanted in life was to gain as much power as he could? Was he born in the gutter or was his family always rich? How has he come into the position he is in today? Will he fold and beg the party to spare his life when the party is able to wipe all of his henchmen away or will he just calmly accept his death? Is he doing it "for the greater good" or does he know what he is doing and is just fine with it? What kind of precautions does he take? How will the party never know if they are working for him or not? You need to set up some kind of structure instead of just saying he is a bad ass mastermind villain.

How will the party find out about him? How will the party know it's him? How will they find out? Will they be working for him the whole time? What is the hook you have that will make the party not just hate him but loath every fiber of this villain? How can he be tracked? If you want him to be destroyed then you will have to create a situation where the party will actively try to kill him instead of helping him take over the world.

Personally I think his first goal would be media control. Try to hoist various media corporations by blackmail, fraud, replacing managers w/ his crones, and the old double set up (where he makes it seem like his competitor hires a shadowrun team to take out his lackey but sets up the shadowrunning team to take the fall making his lackey look all the better for it,) evidence planting, and every once and a while if they can't be bought out to bury them (and then only the small time independent corps.) Never just stick to one form of manipulation (it also means you can keep things fresh.) Then after the media is under his thumb I would think that he will slowly expand his empire in various regions by first trying to take over the most valuable resources that the area can offer (if its research data, and personnel extractions.) I would think of him more as a leach in the fact that he will try to take everything of value in an area before moving on. It should be about the short term gain with very little investment in the long term future. He starts destroying communities and areas so that later he can take them over and pick apart anything that is still useful or valuable. If it is worth his time to reconstruct what he destroyed then he will do so, but only if he is able to profit from it quickly. He would build his empire by having stakes in various companies and making sure that they are the ones to gain power, but he would never spearhead any single corporation. His face would never be out there and he will never be a chairman on any board in a corp. After the company he is invested in is in power he might try and use his connections to take it over from the inside (the way he might try to do w/ the media companies.) Keep the people at the top as puppets that he never interacts with, but always for some reason has the final say in any decisions that person makes. He might also play both sides of the board in a corporation. The internal struggles he might have both of his lackeys vie for power against each other while they never really realize they are both being manipulated to make it seem like there is actually some kind of power struggle in the company. How does he do this though. Does he give them a folio that he has prepared a month ago that has three years worth of decisions or does he use an intermediary? Does he send coded messages from one lackey to another that talks about how well one of their three year old daughters are which is code to cover up a certain story or hire a team to take out someone? Who does each person think they really work for or do they even think they are working for someone (mind control maybe or possibly some implant that is attached to the persons datajack that has psycotropic ice that will release preset orders that become updated every three months when he touches his home office work terminal?) I think nothing would be the same. There would be no pattern. There would be different ways to control different people. Think it over though.

This is what I think. Don't have him try to "win over" the party. Just have him win over one of the fixers and set the team up on runs. Connecting himself to anyone is a bad move in the world of Shadowrun. He always hires a Johnson, who bribes the fixer, who hires the team. If he is pro about what he is doing the party should never find out about unless they climb up over a river of bodies to find out who is on the top rung. There should only be pieces of the puzzle that get solved event by event, but nothing ever really comes into focus until they meet him for the first time.

He sounds a lot like Art Dankwalther from SR3 (specifically Threats 2) to me...

Um, one of the main thing that makes a good villain is screen time. A villain specifically designed to avoid screen time is probably not going to cut it. Consider Darth Vader; what makes him such a good villain is simply how much screen time he has. You can hate this guy, you know who he is. If you want him to be a villain the players will love to hate, he needs screen time.

Sometimes you can build up to one. It's harder but it can be done. Plus it also involves less fiat or railroadie action.

Real badass post, gonna have to quote it paragraph by paragraph if you don't mind



Although it is your first point, I think the name is the only point we disagree. I wanted to give him a real powerful name so that when the players finally wash through the Aliases, bam, hardcore. Me and another GM of mine worked out a name for several minutes, and we agreed on something that could show power. However, I'm most likely going to have it be a fake or changed name in the end. I think I'll give the guy a real paranoia about looking as weak as he is. I agree with the cyberzombies, I really don't know what I was thinking, I've had an unhealthy obsession with them since third. They're out.



Alright, I'm going to try to really work out some aspects of his personality and past here, lemme know what you think, since you have the biggest grasp on what I want so far in this this thread. Grew up straight from a rich family, but not quite rich enough. Think the poorest kid in the rich school. In spite of this, he was an academic genius, graduating highschool at sixteen and receiving his masters at 19. Those from earlier school years hold a grudge on him for succeeding so much easier, and it always seems his parents were against him. Taunted because of his weak physical stature, silly name, and allergies, he began to form a real hatred for weakness. He was living alone by 21, but his family still worked together to maintain their fortune. When his dad made a bad move and they ended up with crashed stocks, he had the man disappear. When his mother went crazy shopping at the age of 22, she didn't even get back to the store before she was gone, and all the items refunded. Soon without a family, he took his fortune, changed his name, and started a business that thrived on cutting in to those too weak to keep their money safe. No interest in fame, only fortune, and cloaking himself in obscurity to go there. Donovan D. Diablo, the best name he could think of. Other aliases varied, from suave to weak to even stronger, but that was the name he fell in love with. Deep down(though the players wont know until he dies, or possible never)He doesn't expect his plans to work, he honestly believes that the world itself wont allow him to change it like that, and as such he is ready and accepting of his possible death. Until then, his main goal is to buyout a huge corp. Personality wise, he's calm, but spiteful. If he's mad at you, or you have disappointed him, you wont know until you get the beating meant to teach you a lessen. He tries to speak philosophically, but doesn't do that good a job at it, one of the only fields that his genius doesn't grasp very well. He loves piano, fine arts, and generally snooty rich people things, so to speak. Despite what he did to his family, he doesn't buy in to the "You have failed me so you will die" mentality when it comes to henchmen unless it's apparent they will make the same mistake again. Cold, harsh, calculating.



This is what I'm still working on, and introduction. I think the best way is to have one of the players be the many people he's stepped on for his fame, and of course a well placed Johnson. Get the players to realize D.D.D exists even before the general public does. A break-in gone wrong perhaps, or the runners getting lucky and catching his main building on a day when it's not guarded enough. A rare slipup on DDDs part that allows the players to become familiar with him juuust slightly. It's a work in progress though/



I love the idea, and will probably use it, so I owe you for this one. When it comes to how he will control the corps, I came up with a short idea last night, let me run it through you. We've established he's a man of many aliases and a lot of control. What if whenever he took control of a corp like this, he simply "did away" with the previous CEO and took on his identity. With the tech in Shadowrun we can certainly find a way for him top change his appearance, voice, and etc. It'd give him that air of everywhere, but no where. When ever anyone gets anywhere nearly even feesibly close to tieing things together, he'll hand it off to one of the few people he trusts. Never any face to face meetings unless he has to of course, in spite of his changing abilities. Phone's, messages, video, as long as he can keep it short. It's another person's identity after all, he can't risk people catching through the personality.



I really do want to convince one of the team to betray the rest if I can, and I've considered many options, including asking one of them to be a double agent. If anyone takes the unknown wear or memory loss qualities, I'm going to have a fucking field-day with it. Why? I've done it before, or almost, had one player consider switching teams and it felt good knowing it was the second to last session, these guys were supposed to be tight. Also, his attempt to be manipulative and force them to switch sides would give them an avenue to eventually grab at him. He needs a weak moment after all. I need to open up ways for the team to get to him in the end.

I disagree, this guy is meant to be deep in the shadows. I don't want the players to ever figure out who they are really up against until things get close. He wants to take the world by obscurity, and he wont let his real name get out until he has to. A puppet that no one knows, to me, is the perfect kind of mastermind villain. The players will get an early glimpse of the real him, but even they will still be kept left out of many things. I'm so tired of the typical villain, it's a lot like what I am trying to avoid.

And there's nothing to say that the Arch Villain can't have a number of memorable Lts. Think the Emporer to your Vader. You didn't get a face to face with the guy until Return, but everybody was scared of him and knew he was just going to be a badass, eventhough all it took was being picked up and tossed to his death.

A good way to really play up this guys power is to make his Lts extra memorable, when they finally get to them. The game I currently am playing in has this angle. We are so focused on the Lt right now that when we find out about the boss it will be too late. It has me on the edge of my seat just thinking about how it might progress. Also, don't give it away by discussing it with your players. Just keep a few scattered hints in game as they are able to take down key Lts. That can really add to the drama and sense of accomplishment when the players finally find out about this guy.

Read "The Night Manager" by John le Carré. The 'badguy' in the background, Richard Onslow Roper is just amazing. As the Wikipedia synopsis suggests, you kinda like the guy, despite who he is and what he does.

Peter

I'd have the guy appear on screen, but in a harmless guise. Maybe he is an eccentric writer or artist, of mediocre talents, the runners can bump into, never knowing he is behind the latest plot that shook their lives. And you can add subtle clues through the runs that hint at his eccentrics.

Uh, yeah, but that name is less "hardcore" and more Snidely Whiplash. I couldn't even get through the rest of the original post because I was too busy wondering about the all-important question: Does he twirl the tips of his waxed mustache?

Seriously man, to echo everyone else's sentiments, don't go with Donovan D. Diablo if you want your evil mastermind to be taken at all seriously.

The name does not fit the concept. Why? Because a mastermind calling himself Donovan D. Diablo does not makes enough sense. That would be like Dick Chaney calling himself Flaiva D. Kickass. Someone like that is too smart to give themselves a name like that. Remember taking identities instead of controlling people at the top is more risky. Being the head of various corporations means that you are a target. Controlling those CEOs means that if he dies you might already have someone else in line to take his place. Also if he turns on you, you might already have a contingency plan for how to kill him (think a nano hive that will release toxins into his body and kill him if he turns on the man and other various ways.) More to come later.

John Jim Jameson < = perfect name for someone like that . . if they ever figure out he's behind it all, just tell them to look at the Name . . j³ . . He's THE Friggin MR.J for fucks sake O.o
i got pelted with numerus stuff the one time i did something like that ^^

So the screen time thing is pretty important. Read as really really important. There are ways to get that screen time while keeping someone deep in the shadows. First watch/remember "The Usual suspects". Good way to get screen time. The other thing to remember is that you are playing shadow run. Give your players Shadow docs. Short cut scenes of your villain throwing down in a board room. Jack Point logs. Corporate Court Minuets. Logs from Auctions. etc. You can get your NPC "on-stage" with out them being anywhere near the players.

Question: I get the impression that you are stepping up the sophistication of story you are used to telling. Whenever you are stepping up a skill standing on the shoulders of giants is a time honored tradition. Are there books/TV/Movies are you drawing on for mood, characters, and specific cons and machinations?

You can allude to the villain. Take for instance Sherlock Holmes arch nemesis Prof. Moriarty. That guy gets very little screen time, but there is quite a large build up before he is shown. There are a lot of hints and references to his actions and the fact that Sherlock Holmes realizes that he is dealing with a mastermind. Eventually the "party" understands that Prof. Moriarty is a bad ass not for who he is, but for what he has done and how every single crime he commits is a stroke of brilliance (almost an art form.) Now Moriarty has an interesting tie in obviously using part of the word death. However Kaiser Sose in the Usual Suspects as mentioned above is a bad ass and his name is bad assed not because of the name, but the person associated with the name.

In our game some names are just associated with dislike. Lt. Mansfield, and Doc. Steel are the first two that spring to mind.

About his history. Have his father lose everything in one of the crashes (had all his money in digital format so it all went poof.) Have the villain learn caution from that and topple from high society into the gutter for a while. Knowing what he knows and having the intelligence he has now he wants it all. He is aware of how easily society can fall apart and mainly puts his faith in more concrete forms of wealth. He aims for resources and less about nuyen.

"generally snooty rich people things" - This statement I find vague and unappealing. Have him be well versed in various levels of society. He is brilliant and a mastermind as cool as you want him to be should be a social chameleon. Someone who can be anyone, at any time, at any level. He is brilliant and he should be shown as such.

Thanks for all the help guys. Names out, I like the J3 name more, to be honest, it really fits the character. Masterofm really has down what I want, and I think I have it together for the most part. The "Generally snooty" thing wasn't meant to be taken seriously, and I apologize for any offense. Infact, I actually enjoy the things I listed. Hah. Way to insult myself, though I'm far from rich. I know it's vague, but generally I mean really high taste things such as classical music and fencing, which I love and know a good bit about in real life. I'll have him versed in several different interest from many different levels of society though, as per your suggestion.


The Emperor/Prof. Moriarty concept, the vague chameleon existence before he comes out all badass in the end. Thanks for all your help guys. I'd like to add more here, but I'm busy.

I didn't find the comment offensive I found the comment overarching, a little bland, and a bit cliche. If you want anymore feed back you know where I'll be.