Tib’s OW 101 | Benefits of the Bad Guy, When The Hero Is Too Much #BadGuysWithBenefits

Bad guys, the antagonist, the villain, the creep, always the loser. No matter what it may be a super hero or hero in general always has a bad guy to fight. We all love playing the hero, the guy who gets the girl or the girl who gets the guys because we love to feel good. A bad guy is a major part in roleplaying but sometimes we forget that and we just want to play the good guy.  We hate Mary Sue’s and Gary Stu’s right? Now imagine if there was no Lex Luthor, no Joker, no Green Goblin. A story of a hero would be pointless, the hero would have no bad to fight and everything would be just hunky dory, putting that super hero out of a job. You see that picture of Batman? On the outside, he hates the Joker. But, on the inside, he knows he needs him. This will give you a couple of tips and insight on a good balance with good and evil and why the bad guy is important.

There Is A Limit

Let’s speak hypothetically. You’ve created a new super hero game, you wait a bit and a member joins, yipee! He makes a nice hero, little rough around the edges but it’s ok! Then another member joins, he creates a hero, this is great because now you can create an alliance! Then another hero joins, and another, and another. Let’s say there are six heroes in a city of over a million. Now… what do you do? Sure you can fight petty low time criminals but when that get’s boring. Who else do we fight? In a city full of heroes there is good everywhere! Great right? WRONG… [on some levels] In real life if this was real it’s okay but in a story if a city is full of heroes where is the evil? The heroes will have no real bad guys to fight and that’s boring. Another thing is not everyone can be the hero, an over abundance can lead to fighting and petty arguing so it’s best to have a limit.

A Good Balance is a Happy Balance

Now let’s say that your members have cooperated and decided they will make a bad guy. One member follows through and becomes a villain, you’re happy with this and you leave it. There’s finally an element to the story! Or is there? One bad guy out of 5 heroes is not enough. Using the same bad guy over and over again can get very old and will make the storyline stale, plain, and boring. So you want to make sure you have a good balance of both good and bad. Ying always needs a Yang.

The Anti-Hero

Now is it possible to be good and bad? Of course there is! I will use another example, the Marvel character Deadpool. Deadpool is known as an Anti-Hero, he’s a hero but he’s not a hero. An Anti-Hero is someone who lacks traditional heroic qualities such as nobility, altrusim, and moral goodness. To expand, Deadpool is not your average hero. He is rude, he’s an idiot, and he’s very repulsive. However, he still fights crime even though he does not get along with the other Marvel heroes.

There are a lot of ideas for good bad guys [that’s so not a double negative] and they just need to be used. The moral of this is that Ying needs Yang, Good needs Bad, Chocolate needs Vanilla and so on and so forth. So next time you’re joining a game look to see how many heroes there are. You’ll be surprised how far you can get as a bad guy.

Well that’s all I have time for. Be sure to tweet about this post, #BadGuysWithBenefits, and follow me on twitter @TiberiusStudios.

As usual Ongoing Worlds, Keep Calm and Keep Ongoing! Tib out!