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Raiden
So, I was thinking about have a psychotic delusional vampire genius as a recurring "villain" for the PCs, would be a mystic adept and be much stronger (at least karma wise) than a single PC due to well, living long enough as a vampire to go insane (and still think your quite sane). also thought about him having MPD, with one being the insane Doctor/scientist and the other being a more civil, polite, and charming man. I plan to have him "catch" the PCs at one point not sure how to do this without railroading or seem as if I am going on a DM power trip, any tips on that as well would be nice. anyway after catching them the insane doctor would preform experiments and the like. some actually ending up slightly beneficial, some detrimental to PC health but most just puttering out in the end with no real effect. after a time the PCs would somehow manage to escape (not sure how to do this either) and yadadada so on and so forth. now this was a one the spot, lightbulb that I started to run with. any thoughts? ideas? ( its a horroresque game so, terrify me) oh, also the guy is hell bent on causing a new pandemic of the ghoul strain and then using a spell he (and his mentor spirit made specifically for ghouls) to control all or most life left on earth. :3 (of course we all know the best he could do was take over say, the UCAS or some around that hehe) I think I would have the PCs start working for him a run or two getting him things he needs without knowing it. sorry I am rambling as I think. anyways thoughts, ideas, the works :3 thanks guys.
Umidori
I find "scripted" sequences to be very hard to make enjoyable. When your players get captured, they want to feel like it was because of their own actions, not because the plot required it, so you have to be very careful.

If you absolutely have to push your runners into a tight spot, it's best to gradually build up to it, rather than spring an unescapeable trap on them all at once. No one likes walking into a situation they think they can easily handle, then suddenly running straight smack into an unwinnable situation without warning. And even if it works, you'll likely still end up making your Runners extremely paranoid forever after, which can absolutely ruin a campaign.

Give the runners a task. Let them know it'll be doable, but risky, and give them a chance to plan and prepare. When the time is right, have things go slightly ugly, then get uglier, then get really rather ugly, then get worrisomely ugly, then get every-man-for-himself ugly. That way, the players feel like they're given a chance to cope as the situation builds into "Oh Drek!" territory, and can feel good about managing to do things right up until a point where they're simply just in over their heads and they know they probably won't get out. They should have a chance to have a good running firefight, maybe even an extended chase sequence, and should feel good about taking out pursuing enemies and making clever decisions as they attempt to escape. They need to feel like they almost made it out, that if only that final pair of corporate gunship helicoptors or whatever hadn't shown up, they could still have gotten away.

This is typically easiest by having a some major world event or similar motivate one of the big Corporations to just start pouring ever increasing amounts of resources into capturing the players, but if your evil genius is an independant, you might have to devise some clever Xanatos Gambit.

~Umi
DamHawke
Your PCs will cry bloody murder at being cinematically caught without much chance to resist it. We still haven't let our GM live that down (and it's been almost half a year)

Its simpler to just herd them along and make it a situation where its so absurd that any tiny slip up they make will get them caught imho, especially when the situation is escalating to the point where they're not sure they wanna be there anymore spin.gif
Epicedion
First, I'd drop the B-movie-grade insanity. You can have him be charming, but so far detached from his former humanity that he thinks of normal metahumans as insects. I think you can do what you're going for just by giving him some control and superiority issues, some irrational mood swings relating to those, and an overall tendency toward playing the long game. If you start from the basis of "he's insane" you'll probably make a kooky and ineffective villain, or something overly theatrical.

Second, hit the PCs in a place where you really can wield the GM Fiat Mallet -- the Contacts. Do that thing you said about having the PCs do a few jobs for him. Make sure they'll need to access several of their contacts. Don't make a big deal of it, but when someone says "Hmm.. I call up Joe" have the call go to voicemail.

Also don't do this on the first attempt to use contacts, or else the players will catch on quick. Joe never gets back to the PCs. They may try to investigate, they may give up (a little clever misdirection with some time pressure on the run can probably get them to drop it), but it's to put the detail in the back of their minds.

Let the next run happen, but then on the next run when they try to contact Sue, the call goes to voicemail. Now they'll know something is up.

Let them build their own run to find their missing contacts. Let them get paranoid, and warn their other contacts to go to ground. Throw in some red herrings (neighbor saw some gangers prowling nearby, Lone Star was around asking questions about someone in the neighborhood) so they have to cast around a bit. Let them track down enough evidence to finally find their missing contacts, who are no worse for wear and don't know anything useful about their abductors.

This will get the theme of mysterious abduction in their heads. Your villain is of course both pushing them out on jobs and screwing with their lives at the same time. Keep applying pressure -- a rock through the window of their safehouse, a stranger kneeling beside their car, a bum walking up and asking for a nuyen but calling the character by name. Eventually the characters will do something either stupid or crazy. If instead they start to laugh off the weirdness and think it's harmless, escalate it until it's painful (sniper shot from down the block with rubber bullets when the PC exits the nearby Stuffer Shack.. when the PCs go to find the sniper all they find is one expended casing for a gel round and one live Ex-Ex round with "soon" written on it in sharpie).

Once they hit "stupid or crazy," that's when you trap them. They're all going to hole up in a storage rental by the docks, or they'll attack the Johnson giving them the jobs (all the weirdness started up about the time they started getting regular work, after all...), or something else monumentally daft, and that's when the net drops and you nab them. And they'll think it was their own fault for not forseeing the trap.
ShadowDragon8685
QUOTE (Raiden @ Jun 21 2013, 12:26 AM) *
So, I was thinking about have a psychotic delusional vampire genius as a recurring "villain" for the PCs, would be a mystic adept and be much stronger (at least karma wise) than a single PC due to well, living long enough as a vampire to go insane (and still think your quite sane).

Also thought about him having MPD, with one being the insane Doctor/scientist and the other being a more civil, polite, and charming man. I plan to have him "catch" the PCs at one point not sure how to do this without railroading or seem as if I am going on a DM power trip, any tips on that as well would be nice.

Anyway after catching them the insane doctor would perform experiments and the like, some actually ending up slightly beneficial, some detrimental to PC health but most just puttering out in the end with no real effect. After a time the PCs would somehow manage to escape (not sure how to do this either) and yadadada so on and so forth.

Now this was a one the spot, lightbulb that I started to run with, any thoughts? Ideas? (it's a horroresque game so, terrify me)

Oh, also the guy is hell bent on causing a new pandemic of the ghoul strain and then using a spell he (and his mentor spirit made specifically for ghouls) to control all or most life left on earth. :3 (of course we all know the best he could do was take over say, the UCAS or some around that hehe.)

I think I would have the PCs start working for him a run or two getting him things he needs without knowing it. sorry I am rambling as I think. anyways thoughts, ideas, the works :3 thanks guys.


I've got some advice for you.

Firstly: The Shift key. Assuming you're using a full-sized QWERTY keyboard, there's one on the left, between your Capslock button and your left Ctrl button. There's also one on the right, between your Enter/Return key and your right Ctrl button. The two most appropriate times to make use of these buttons is when you are starting a new sentence (IE, after the use of a period,) and when you are starting most proper nouns, as most names begin with capitalized letters.

Secondly: the Enter/Return key. While there are differing schools of thought on when exactly it should be used, how frequently it should be used and how many times it should be used when its use is called for, virtually everyone on the planet agrees that its use is called for, and that same subset of people who agree it should be used also agree that its use makes a given selection of text vastly more readable and comprehensible, and hence, more likely to draw constructive answers.

As you can see, I've taken the liberty of formatting your original post, employing both my Shift key and my Enter/Return key, as well as correcting a minor spelling error that's easily forgivable as you mistakenly spelled another word and hence, your spellchecker wouldn't have picked it up. ("Preform" instead of "Perform.")

Now, on to the topic at hand:

The Madness: Skip the B-movie Doctor Jekyll/Mr. Hyde shit. A guy doesn't have to be pants-on-head insane to be a monster, especially in the Sixth World where there are very brutal monsters out there who are terrifyingly sane. Just give this guy a massive superiority complex hidden by a veneer of polite civility. He's civil and courteous not because he feels the inferior metahumans upon whom he bestows his civility and courtesy are worth it, but because he believes it reflects well on him to offer it; he is, after all, a Gentleman, and such is the way Gentlemen behave. When he's been crossed, though, when he's angry (or hungry,) his facade fails and he lets it be known that he thinks your lives have exactly as much intrinsic value as that of an insect: none whatsoever. You are not ageless, you are not mighty, and if you cross him he won't think twice about grabbing you by the throat and squeezing the life out of your disgusting mortal body, just as you would think little to nothing of stepping on a cockroach.

The Capturing of the PCs, and the Experimenting thereupon: Don't go out of your way to force this. Just flat-out don't. The mad scientist performing hellish experiments in a basement or mansion laboratory has little place in the Sixth World. Rather, make him a participating partner in some megacorporation's hellish experiments in some kind of black-zone lab in the Barrens. The corp wants to experiment on vampires, he provides them with vampires, and in turn they run the experiments he wants run in addition to the experiments they want run.

Don't have him try to capture the PCs specifically for the purpose of running these tests upon them, either. It doesn't pay to drek where you eat, and if he's using them as deniable assets, betraying them is stupid, especially given that no matter how much Karma you have, a bunch of pissed-off player characters being clever and going all-out can ruin your whole fucking day, no matter how magic you are and how many Karma you have. (Go and ask President Dunkelzahn how well being a Great Dragon worked out for him when someone shot an anti-tank missile at him.)

However, if the PCs do attack the facility for whatever reason... Well, they're attacking a hardened target which is set up to contain angry, enhanced metahumans. The guards and/or researchers may have been turned into vampires as well, depending on how "close" his relationship with the research staff is. If they get themselves captured doing something stupid, though, don't hesitate too much to turn them all into vampires (Banshees/etcetera) - as HMHVV strains go, these are some of the nicest ones you can get.

As for getting them out of there once they get captured, if they do, then just say that a Matrix attack results in a security disruption that lets them out of their cages and gives them the opportunity to jump some guards, hijack their guns and fight their way out while everybody's distracted. The Matrix attack might have been a rally by some of their allies to spring them, it might have been random (a metasapient emerged in the facility's systems and ran amok,) or some third party may have sprung them with the intent of calling the favor in later.

On the pandemic and the spell: That's not going to work, and this guy should be intelligent enough to know that. Even if he somehow managed to spread an HMHVV pandemic that infected people en masse and then cast some spell to take control over them, and being generous to his Plot Power in saying that the spell would only when cast by him, so an even older Vampire (Banshee/Etcetera) or some Immortal Elf/Great Dragon couldn't cast it and usurp control from him, then the Megacorps and the Great Dragons will come down on him with the wrath of a thousand angry gods looking to get their smite on. Thor shots, Great Dragons personally taking the field of battle, air support, hit squads, etcetera. He wouldn't survive, all he'd do is rally the entire world against him.

So he wants power? Power can be arranged: he could probably easily usurp some of the most nasty places on Earth (like a few Carribbean islands or some hell-holes in third-world countries.) He could establish a nice Barrens fiefdom in cooperation with his megacorporate sponsors, or he could have a master plan that involves getting enough blackmail material and enough money to buy his way onto the board of the megacorp he's working with and wield power that way. He might even have a plan to start his own megacorp, and, for what it's worth, a spell/ritual/whatever plot device you like to allow him to exert control over "his" lineage of vampires wouldn't be amiss. Hell, maybe the Vampire who infected JetBlack was one of his, and so he can bring JB and JB's crew onboard, too, which would be a nice tidy way to tie this adventure to On the Run. Of course, the PCs should be immune to this, even if they got infected by him or his lineage, because seriously, fuck that guy. (And mind-controlled players aren't likely to be having much fun.)

On having the PCs work for him: Feel your players out. A vampire's nuyen.gif spends as well as anybody else's. Are they the kind of players/characters who would deliver children to Aztechnology to go right up on the heart-ripping altars? Then they shouldn't have any problem taking this guy's money to do horrible things. They might be perfectly fine with that, and they may feel that if this guy is going powerful places, hitching their wagon to his train is a good idea. They may even volunteer for infection if that's the case.

Alternatively, if they're more principled runners who are fine with doing bad things to bad people but draw the line at being obviously villainous, have him pay them to bounty-hunt obviously bad people for him. He and his corporate pals get some exceptional research subjects - such as if he wants them to start poaching Rusty Stiletto gangbangers to see what happens when you mix HMHVV I with radioactivity or whatever - and gradually reveal to them what he's been using these guys for. Have them decide if they want nothing to do with him, if they're going to oppose him, or if they're absolutely fine delivering horrible people to a horrible person for money.
RHat
First, it should be noted that Dissociative Identity Disorder (which was once referred to as Multiple Personality Disorder) doesn't work like that - there's not just one alternate, fully developed personality, but a variety of "alters" that are decidedly not fully formed personalities - often, they exist for some purpose or another.

Second, don't just decide he's going to "catch" the PC's - decide he's going to attempt it and have him act accordingly.

Third, rather then the "don't know what he's having them do" route, have him decide he likes using them - and so he hires them through proxies as is normal for runners.

Fourth, you should be wary of having experiments performed on people's characters - it seems like it could go badly.
Raiden
thanks for all the input guys I had not intended to just say, ok you wake up naked in blank. I understand that never works well. I like the ideas about how to go about it. Also I may have been over the top on the insane part I meant insane in term of speaking of how most meta-humans would think not the straight jacket cook, more like a Hannibal, if you have seen the movies and I probably did not get that across. The him catching them part I had intended on a worst case scenario and I thought maybe giving them a few perks while simultaneously giving some not so good stuff would mellow it out.

@ shadowdragon you are right I probably will drop the spell part, though I like the idea of him wanting to spread his new HMHVV and I will probably take the advice of having him do it in a "hell hole" as it were wink.gif . Also I realize I used poor grammar, but there was no need for your first half of the post, and whether you intend it or not it comes of very condescending and I ask that you please don't do so again. I apologize but I was rather tired and was rambling with the typing as I thought. I was thinking starting out with milk like runs, such as retrieve me this and this, don't look in it. build up to, bring me so many people for various made up reasons. while dropping hints throughout the runs. No him performing experiments would be an added bonus for him, not his main goal in capturing them. The best part is even if the PCs get away they will make plans to attack and take out his place and get back at em. It's just who they are, though they have surprised me before.
Like I said he is a work in progress and the input here helped tremendously, I really like the wrath of gods thing, made me laugh and is probably not far off from what it would feel like.

@ Epicideon I was thinking about something like that or if they keep running for him silly nilly have him trap them in his building/lab then send sec. for them while giving them more chances to escape, or as they might do charge his complex and go for him :3.

@Umidori you are right I had figured I would need to build it up and have a facade slowly crack the more he meets with the PCs and the more they work with him. also the guy has plenty of money saved up from all sorts of, well revenues. plenty even for a corp exe. or CEO that is.

EDIT: the MPD was a way of describing a split personality in game. I don't remember if there was a another quality or something for this. like two-face but either one or the other is -almost- full control and not as much swapping of said control. though it seems that idea may not be good.
cndblank
Capturing PC is like pulling off a bandaide.

You can either do it fast or slow.

These are good suggestions for building up for it and with the right players it can be very dramatic.


On the other hand, some times you are better off just yanking it off and getting it over with depending on the players.
I've found some times you are better off just declaring that they have been captured.
Remotely sealed and gassed rigged van comes to mind if you can force them in to it like in Harlequin.

The point I'm making is if you have to do it fast then make it clear that they are captured. Period.
Don't waste their time with a lot of player activity that is going to be futile.
Just declare that they were captured and it is part of the cyberpunk genre so deal with it.
I even go so far as mention that this will happen once in a while to new players.

Then jump in to the villain monolog and their eventual escape.

RHat
QUOTE (Raiden @ Jun 21 2013, 06:15 AM) *
EDIT: the MPD was a way of describing a split personality in game. I don't remember if there was a another quality or something for this. like two-face but either one or the other is -almost- full control and not as much swapping of said control. though it seems that idea may not be good.


I'm just saying, that's not what actually happens. Using DID correctly can often be far more interesting, too, in part because the guy can completely change on a dime. Maybe one alter is the mad scientist, running his experiments but not equipped to do much else. Another is the manipulator, being able to charm and disarm his way through a lot but, again, not being much good for anything else. Another is the hunter, another might be child-like, another might just be a pure aggressor (think: Hulk), and so on. Running with that takes you into much more interesting territory - and in fact, you can just pull a new alter out as it suits the situation. For even more fun, give him a shapeshift spell or Physical Mask to go with it.
Raiden
perhaps. I had thought about having a episode during a meet with him trying to maintain control as said -personality- while another tries to take over. I may just use some GM power here and say he somewhat lives in harmony with his other selves and during all things all are "present" but not "active" and he can communicate, either mental or speaking with them and they him. This still leaves open plenty of oops moments since they might not get along at all times and the right provocation could cause one to attempt to assume "command" as it were, at an inopportune time.

though I am not sure as of yet. I want him to be extremely memorable and I have a decent amount of time to work on him. Still I don't feel like I have hit the mark so to speak.
RHat
One of the primary treatment courses would be to integrate the disparate parts into a cohesive whole; he might be partway to that. It is possible for some alters to be aware of their condition while others are not, as well.
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