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[Aria Jenneth]

The hard way (without pvp): lowball it, hard. Do Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade or Harrison Ford as Deckard. Avoid the likes of Vin Diesel and Bruce Willis like plague. Have a background as someone interesting but not super-awesome before becoming a capsuleer.

The easy way (with pvp): play more or less what you please and expect to be taken as seriously as your K/Dr. Ethan Verone gets to be a badass in game because he IS a badass in game. It's smart to still keep it low key, anyway-- let your reputation speak for you.

In other words: being loud will get you laughed at unless you really are that good. If you want to come off as a badass without having to actually be one, the key is to let it come through almost entirely in terms of personality (hardened, cool, collected) and not to let your mouth write checks your ass can't cash.

That last is probably the #1 most common single fatal mistake in all of Eve, IC or OOC. If you put yourself forth as somebody who should be feared, there are plenty of other would-be badasses who will be eager to put you to the test.

[Ciarente]

In my experience, people who are genuinely capable of being dangerous are, in everyday life, the least aggressive: they walk away from fights because not only do they have absolutely nothing to prove but they know that if they start throwing punches someone is likely to end up in hospital or dead; they back down from arguments because they know that if the argument escalates to a fight, see above.

They also tend not to talk about their experiences with "civilians", not because they think that it will be seen as unacceptable or because they feel guilt or moral ambiguity, but because the aspects of their experience that they find interesting are the technical aspects: like surgeons who will spend hours talking about the details of a particular procedure with other surgeons but be at a loss when asked about the patient's personal history or personality, individuals whose profession is violence can talk endlessly about the performance of a particular force projection platform in different environments but find talk about 'what it was like' incomprehensible.  Some of the more socially adept have rehearsed anecdotes about humorous incidences to bring out to deflect inquiries, but most will simply avoid the topic.

If I was setting out to roll a badass, I'd go counter-intuitive: Jin-Mei or Achura or Khanid; muscular but slim rather than bulky. Then I'd start RPing by saying next to nothing about my character's background ICly, and I would avoid getting into any chest-beating debates. If I wanted to be an in-pod badass, I'd go out and get blown up until I could blow people up (as others have said). If I wanted to be an out of pod badass, I'd play it very, very low key until I had RP relationships with other characters/players and look for opportunities to be a genuine, not wannabe, bad ass in those interactions. 

A good example of how to play a bad ass in Eve is CJ Walker - and not just because of PvP ability. RP-wise, CJ never pressed the 'I could rip your head off' aspect of the character, but in one RP arc I was involved in, kidnapped an innocent scientist and forced him to participate in ethically questionable research to save the life of a friend: without blinking, without angst,  without boasting, and without making a big deal of it afterwards. She did it, and she went home for dinner, and that was that.

[Seriphyn]

I think I actually violated Makkal's stipulations of what not to post in this thread, but regardless, it is interesting to see a consensus here about how it all has to be natural. Certainly one of the few consensuses I can get behind!

[hellgremlin]

I think my character can pull it off very effectively. Almost to excess, really! But I suppose it's not related to the way I act, so much as who I am and what I've done, and by the virtue of those acts being attached to every one of my words and fictional usernames. Seems that every time I open my dumb trap these days, it comes with a certain degree of unintended gravitas.

There's a Klingon fleet in Star Trek Online that prides itself on being some of the best PVPers in game, and some of its most effective smack talkers. I won't specify which fleet, but anyone playing STO is already forming a guess. I play Fed, and I use "Istvaan Shogaatsu" as my STO username. Couldn't think of anything more creative. Anyway.

One of its members took to smack talking at me in Ker'rat, STO's equivalent to Eve's null sec systems on the borders of empire. Real effective, demoralizing stuff; the same sort of smack talk I'd employ. I smack talked back, we had a good time, until...

... he stopped.

Didn't say a word for a week, then apologized for being a meanie in private, and started acting kid-gloves nice to me from that point onward. I was stunned by the change of attitude so I got to talking to him in turn, and eventually goaded out the reason for the attitude adjustment. Apparently, his STO fleet's leaders had a sit-down chat with him.

They told him I was Istvaan Shogaatsu, one of Eve Online's bigger griefers. They told him that if I got on his case, it would be the end of him everywhere. They told him I was the one person in all of gaming he shouldn't mouth off to, even though every fiber of his being told him to mouth off. They did all this even though I sincerely believed no-one in STO knew who I was, or cared. It was an extremely pleasant ego refill.

We're cool now. He shoots me, I shoot him, we gg each other after a good kill. He's never rude anymore, though. Tacitly he understands.

But if I wasn't nicknamed Istvaan Shogaatsu in STO, I don't think any of this would have happened.

So I guess the trick to acting like a badass, is to be an actual badass. If you're an actual badass, everything you say comes off as badass, without you even trying. Your name becomes known, without you trying to make it known. If you try to fake it, people will smell it. Since I am a shameless self-promoter, I have learned to temper my disgusting self-promotion with occasional acts of atrocity known to only a few, whom despite being asked to maintain confidence will merrily blab it to everyone they know, further perpetuating the legend.

No-one in Eve Online has been willing to fuck with me for about five years now, because they understand the consequence, because I've enforced the consequence every time someone tried. It seems the effect spreads to other games quite easily.

edit: well, no, there has been one guy. puppetmaster. he runs a big multibox setup, y'all might know him as krall amarr. anyway, a while ago, he sent a threat to us. we responded by destroying his bot net. he's rebuilt it since, but he no longer sends threats. I wonder if he believes that stopped us. it will pretty much take a personal apology at this point. or we'll cost him a lot of money. (and by personal apology I mean a lot of money.)

[Ollie]

I tell them to get a copy of either 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly' or 'Once Upon a Time in The West' and take note of the three main characters in each. Between the six of them, there's just about every trope for playing a hard-nosed, kick-it-when-it's-down-and-move-right-along bad-ass effectively.

But as others have said or implied, that's just getting the attitude right and usually it's not enough to just talk the talk. If you want to actually be bad-ass you have to do it in game too, usually through game mechanics and occasionally through the metagame aspects of the sandbox.

[Aria Jenneth]

But as others have said or implied, that's just getting the attitude right and usually it's not enough to just talk the talk. If you want to actually be bad-ass you have to do it in game too, usually through game mechanics and occasionally through the metagame aspects of the sandbox.

It is possible (or so I believe)-- just not at any very high level. You can come across as tough-minded and so on without firing a shot; a well carried-off attitude can result in a surprising amount of respect.

However, Istvaanian levels of awe and dread (and even the intermediate levels occupied by, for example, hard-nosed characters who have fought a very public war and won) definitely require deeds.

[Anslol]

My pieces of advice for "a young badass"...

* Less conversation is better.  A truly dangerous person gives away little information, but takes in a lot.
* Accept your limitations as a young pilot - don't threaten to destroy someone's alliance, you can't.
* Being rich helps compensate for the lack of ship-flying ability.
* Don't let people talk down to you, even if you're new.  Don't take bullshit.
* Don't be a cliched hardass in your portrait, with the folded arms, sunglasses, and smirk.

All of this. The weakness stuff is DEFINITELY important. Anslo's willing and able to punch someone's face off, but he's really not mentally stable and sucks hard at ship combat (because I suck hard at it). If you're just some invincible Adonis, then it looks too :tryhard: and just spoils the RP. IMO, people who do bad ass well that I had seen were Gottii, Verone, Kors, Veik, Tibs, Silas to an extent, and these are just a few. It's all about subtlety.

I derped with Anslo initially before learning how not to derp too hard. I know I ride a fine line, but I don't push it with him in terms of :tryhard:. I have him threaten people and such so that he looks yappy because that's what I want to come across. He's not some cold, calculating killing machine. He's basically a randomly swinging big spikey hammer with occasional lucid moments. Strength=/=badass. So now, he has some kind of history, he's known to be a bit dangerous (though I doubt a bad ass), but he clearly has his flaws and they're big flaws.

It's all about balance in the end.

[Desiderya]

Largely it's not really about balance. I'd say it's about the impact your character has on other people. If they see you as a badass (See Istvaans reputation as a player in other games), they'll treat you according to that. If they think you're a joke or loudmouth, they'll treat you like that despite all your written emotes, bios and backstories.

[Sepherim]

I don't usually play badasses, so don't take my suggestions too seriously as I haven't put them to practice much (Catillah can be a bit of a badass at times, but not on most days), but to add to what others have said: emote.

It has been said you have to say little, hear more. Problem with that in channels is that people will easily forget you are there, and consider you afk. So they won't perceive you are listening and not saying, they won't take you into account. So you can emote, proving you are there and listening and, yet, not saying anything.

Emote goes, indeed, along the lines that don't include "how strong your muscles are, which could break a man's neck with no problem" as someone said. Badass, to an extent, is a deal about what he could do, not what they do: they thin, veiled theat. A badass doesn't have to be big or strong, take Habbibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs, for example, he can certainly be threatening, and yet will always be polite and isn't that big.

It's something you can't actually pin in what he says, and how he moves. You can feel the tension, even if he's just smiling at you from the other side of a table. This is harder to do only in text, of course, but a good choice of emotes can help. Each character has different ways to emote, that portray different aspects of him (for example, old Seph smiled often, Catillah usually grins instead, and that came out without me thinking on it, just happened because they're different), and so choosing tough/dangerous gestures and emotes can do a lot to convey that threatening feeling. Plus a good portrait, like Korsavius'.

If you have friends in that know what you want to RP and can help (hopefully, also, friends with a certain recognition among the community you want to join), let them tell bits of your story. In a way, it's the same that happened to Istvaan, though in a easier way and (unfortunately) also a less powerful one. But there can't be many Istvaans in the world.

And, game wise, you have to be willing to step up. When problems come, issues arise, etc. you have to be willing to take the responsibility on your shoulder and live up to the test. Doesn't matter if you succeed (which would be better) or not, but you have to do it. You may RP a reluctant badass that does it even if he doesn't want to (like the Bruce Willis kind) or one that jumps right into it without hesitation (more like a Schwartzenegger kind), but in any case he has to jump into it. And, hopefully, be in the center of it, one way or another. That's a story that will be told, afterall, and will build up to your reputation and position even when you're not interacting or even in the scene (which joins to what Desideya just said).

[Gottii]

If you want to play a character raised in martial arts from childhood, who is physically robust and intimidates everyone else they meet, play a Brutor, its our PF! \o/ 

On a serious note...

In my experience, people who are genuinely capable of being dangerous are, in everyday life, the least aggressive: they walk away from fights because not only do they have absolutely nothing to prove but they know that if they start throwing punches someone is likely to end up in hospital or dead; they back down from arguments because they know that if the argument escalates to a fight, see above.

They also tend not to talk about their experiences with "civilians", not because they think that it will be seen as unacceptable or because they feel guilt or moral ambiguity, but because the aspects of their experience that they find interesting are the technical aspects: like surgeons who will spend hours talking about the details of a particular procedure with other surgeons but be at a loss when asked about the patient's personal history or personality, individuals whose profession is violence can talk endlessly about the performance of a particular force projection platform in different environments but find talk about 'what it was like' incomprehensible.  Some of the more socially adept have rehearsed anecdotes about humorous incidences to bring out to deflect inquiries, but most will simply avoid the topic.

Seconding all of this.

The problem with trying to play a "badass" is that the public at large is actually pretty poor at identifying what makes someone dangerous in the first place, or how those individuals would act. 

The surgeon analogy is a good one.  For most people, cutting open a person is OMG IM CUTTING OPEN ANOTHER LIVING, BREATHING HUMAN BEING.  THEYRE BLEEDING!   Whereas a surgeon is "I made an incision along the chest, into the thoracic cavity, and blah blah blah"
Its a non-emotional event for the surgeon. An event carried out every day, an event that for most people is horrible and arduous, but by the stint of the surgeon's training and nature, everyday and mundane.

Now, applying that to say a military operator, whereas most civilians would be OMG IM BEING ASKED TO SNEAK INTO A MILITARY COMPOUND AND PLANT DEMOLITION CHARGES!  say, a US Navy SEAL or Brit SAS operator is "we waited until night during their shift change at 0200 and infiltrated along the dried creek bed up to the primary target, blah blah blah".  Just like the surgeon, for them what most people think of as an emotional event, as exciting, was a mundane and everyday event.  Do they get a adrenaline rush from it?  Sure, but so does the surgeon.  Its just how they respond to it.

Most characters who are poorly played badasses fail because they miss this.  They come off as OMG LOOK UPON ME, I AM DEATH CUS I CAN SNEAK INTO ANY SECURE LOCATION AND KILL EVERYONE THERE!  Nevermind the inherent silliness and godmoddery of it all, the reason they come off poorly is because theyre approaching it from the mindset of an emotive civilian, not as a skilled professional merely honing and carrying out their chosen craft.

[Shintoko Akahoshi]

Chiming in to agree with Gotti.

Shin's not a particular badass, but there was a moment of supreme badassery once for her during her JF days: Some mid-sized alliance had announced that they were going to deny us travel rights through their space - keeping in mind that JF didn't recognize any closed borders. Travelling through this area was important to us for some reason, so we announced that they had something like 72 hours to reconsider, or we'd go to war with them. They laughed.

At the time, Shin was flying cruise missile Breachers pretty much exclusively. I started flying into their space before the 72 hours was up and simply anchoring cans of cruise missiles in deep space, with names like "Ammo 4". I did this despite their hurried attempts to camp me out. Throughout the entire time, I maintained comm silence. They capitulated within 6 hours.

[Makkal]

It's a thread about how to portray fictional badassery, an 'archetype.'

As with most character types, there's a range of possible expressions, though any given community or critical group might have specific preferences.

I appreciate that real world details can provide a good jumping off point for how to develop and portray the character, I would like to avoid discussion of 'real world badasses.'

[Silas Vitalia]

In a spaceship game, the bad-ass-ness that matters happens in space. If they are new and want badass cred I recommend jumping right into PVP and getting a record to back up their claims of being combat experienced. A great example would be someone like Sid.  He showed up with smirk and sunglasses, but because he was out there ruining lives with his rifter, people didn't treat him like a joke.

+1 for Sid.


The problem with mutually-constructed RP is that there are very few unbiased and agreed RP metrics for determining 'badassery.'

In the sense that most anyone can create a character and 'write' them into being 'badass' without having to walk the walk so to speak.

Unfortunately for people who delve into the more 'badass' aspects of physicality and such, the only real metrics we can rely on involve PVP and forcing other players to respond to your in game actions.

Blowing up their stuff, embarrassing them IC, or influencing other people to do those things through money, bribery, lies, or convincing.

Example A "Influence":  Your badass character never lifts a finger themselves, but has a hotline to call in a big alliance to reign death on a target of their choosing with the snap of a finger. 

Example B "Space Rich": Your badass character never shoots anyone directly, but has enough financial backing to pay any number of people to make their enemies lives miserable.

Example C "Intimidation": Your badass character might or might not actually have influence and ability to do ANYTHING, but if other RPers THINK they do, then your badassery is real.

Example D "PVP":  Nothing demonstrates your being a killer by having a publicly verifiable combat record of shredding people with impunity.


I want to point out as well, that its been my experience that probably 75-80% of RPers are incredibly risk-averse.  Losing status, reputation (or ships) in public for many RPers brings down the 'written' level of badassery to a verifiable level and doesn't happen too often. 

Use this to your advantage, as you can push your 'badassery' on risk-averse RPers fairly easily even if you don't think you are up to it. 

Be careful though, as there are still plenty of people who will call you out and want to test you



EDIT:  THE most important thing, ever, is having a reputation for doing what you say you will do.  If you say I will shoot you if you do 'x' then you better shoot them or no one will ever take you seriously. 

[Gottii]

Yeah, if you want to come off as a badass of some kind, youre pretty much gonna have to put in the PVP work of some kind.  The badass super space warrior afraid to lose a rifter in combat isnt all that compelling.

You dont have to be some solo-pwn machine, just be willing to x-up and do what the FC tells you. (one of EVE's secrets is that being a rank-and-file pilot in a fairly large PVP fleet isnt really all that challenging, just point and click for the most part) If youre willing to get into fights, take loses, and ruin someones day, you gain a bit more credibility as someone who knows his or her way around combat.

Winning the respect of Gottii's non-RP pirate opponents helped give the character a bit of street cred about being a former hardened soldier.

That said, can always be an influence peddler, a super spy, a cut throat merchant, or whatever.  But, again, you have to have at least some deeds to back up who you say you are.

An RPG without game elements and actual opposition and risk is just an exercise in consensual make believe. 

[Morwen Lagann]

Winning the respect of Gottii's non-RP pirate opponents helped give the character a bit of street cred about being a former hardened soldier.

No respect from Morwen, though. Jacob is a terrible killmail whore.

(Kidding, of course.)

I think most of what I would add to the discussion has been said already, but not really summed up succinctly:

It doesn't matter how much of a 'badass' you were before you got your capsule license. To your fellow capsuleers, your actions as a capsuleer are all that matter as far as your 'badass' level goes.