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[Arnulf Ogunkoya]

Got to admit, conversations with Nauplius are a highlights of The Summit for me.

Watching these is entertaining; I've only engaged with him once in direct conversation and it was fun.

As someone who's played an extremely despicable villain, I fully understand how difficult it can be sometimes to stay consistent, to not break character no matter how funny a thing would be to say, or how good an argument is available just because the character would not say that thing.

This question might be worth a thread of it's own but let's see what we make of it here first.

What is the attraction of playing an out & out villain rather than a person who is does bad things because of their circumstances? This is not a criticism of doing so, I'm just curious as to the appeal of it.

[Havohej]

Hm...  I'm going to split the topic before I answer, because I can think of several characters whose players might provide good answers to that question, myself included, and I don't wanna jack Naup's thread.

Done.
For me, the choice to play an outright villain stemmed from my love of the Minmatar Tribes and their underdog position among the 4 Empires.  When I was starting to get into the RP scene finally, I'd already been doing solo and small gang (what would now be called micro-gang) piracy in the traditional sense (hunt, catch, ransom, destroy only if ransom declined).  At that time, there were several minmatar RP corps, but almost all of them were in one of two alliances: Electus Matari or Ushra'khan.  Ushra'khan's corps that were recruiting, I seem to recall, wanted 10m SP or more.  I was at like 6-7m.  And of course, Electus Matari required that you follow their NRDS RoE (which, as a young and eager mystified by the gloried and storied antics of pirate bloggers like flashfresh and Kane Rizzel and every contributor at http://eve-pirate.com, NRDS just wasn't going to work for me).

So here I was, Minmatar pvper wanting to RP, not a fan of Gallente lore, Caldari seemed okay but were allied with Amarr, and there was Amarr...  I could've gone for one of the Pirate factions, and I thought about it, but most of those active corps that pvp'd (not like there were many to begin with) had the SP requirement thing going on as well.  Nature of the game.  So I decided to do something a little different.  Minmatar Tribal Terrorist.  There was support for it in PF with the Defiants and I think a group called Bloody Hand of Matar (or something similar?).

So I thought about how to do that.  One of the things I hated about the Amarr RP players back then (still do) was how many of them seemed to cleave to a belief in their characters as 'the good guy'.

John Q Amarrian > /emote waves dismissive hand at slave #94 after having slave #28 taste for poison.  "You may go."

See, I didn't beat my slave, my character is a good person doing God's Great Work hurrdurr.

I'm like, "No, your character's a fucking slaver, I don't care if he cures cancer, he's a bloody villain."  Minmatar and Amarr are unique in Eve, in my opinion, as they are the only clear-cut 'good' and 'bad' factions taken at face value.  Obviously, the Minmatar aren't 'all good', and it doesn't take much digging through the PF to find evidence of this.  And I'm certainly not saying the Amarr are 'all bad' - there's plenty of room for Oskar Schindler in the Empire.

Then I considered the essense of what a terrorist is.  DMX has a line in one of his songs, "There's a difference between doing wrong and being wrong."  Those are the words Havo more or less lived by.  He's mad, I've drawn from lots of inspirational sources from comic book villains, movie villains, even a soap opera anti-hero.  The objective was to play a character who adamantly believed that he was good, that he was right, that he was doing the right thing, making the 'hard choices' that others were afraid or unwilling to make, breaking the eggs to make the omelette while your Electus Mataris and Ushra'khans would let the People starve.  Who knew and understood that the actions themselves were terrible, that he would be universally hated for them, but who believed that strongly in their necessity.

Another facet of the contemporary terrorist is that they seek to attract as much attention as possible by attempting to outdo the last major terror attack if at all possible.  And then they claim responsibility and use the moment of international notoriety to push a bit of their propaganda and attempt to attract followers/supporters/recruits.  At that point, it was pretty much decided for me that Havohej couldn't be any sort of moderate.  He had to be the extremist, there could be no compromising his views, no wavering from the "Let My People Go" agenda.  I was going to play a Chaotic Evil against the Lawful Evil of the Amarr Empire and the Neutral Good of the Minmatar Republic, and I was going to attract as much attention as possible while doing so.

As I mentioned to begin with, I think that every player whose fashioned an outright villain of their character would have an entirely different answer, but there it was for me.  TL;DR - I wanted to do something none of the other Minmatar were doing at the time and play the Minmatar bad guy.

[Arnulf Ogunkoya]

Hm...  I'm going to split the topic before I answer, because I can think of several characters whose players might provide good answers to that question, myself included, and I don't wanna jack Naup's thread.

Done.
<snip>
And of course, Electus Matari required that you follow their NRDS RoE (which, as a young and eager mystified by the gloried and storied antics of pirate bloggers like flashfresh and Kane Rizzel and every contributor at http://eve-pirate.com, NRDS just wasn't going to work for me).
</snip>

Fair enough, that seems like a well thought out idea. I'm snipping that one bit because EM used to have a policy that we only required NRDS within Minmatar space (we preferred that people include the Great Wildlands in that but could be flexible). If you wanted to go full pirate in enemy space we'd cheerfully be a source of cheap ammunition & kit.

So, opportunity lost there. Pity.

[Nauplius]

Advantages of an evil character:

Potentially large amount of attention per unit of effort expended.  The natural way of interacting with an evil character (that is, attacking him) is one well supported by the game mechanics.  Opportunity to explore some way-out-there ideas or activities that interest you but cannot be expressed in real life (for example, my own family religious tradition is Calvinism and I've been exploring the fringes of that intellectual movement, so-called hyper or extreme Calvinism in Nauplius's cult).

Disadvantages of an evil character:

Most normal corporation/alliance membership is closed off to you (this alone prevents most non-alts from playing a really evil character).  Most "social RP" is closed off to you (who would go on a date with Nauplius or marry him or invite him to a ball).  If too repulsive, you might lose almost all interaction (I tend to err on the side of being a bit silly or at worst "derpy" as someone put it rather than, say, RP'ing ripping someone's face off and wearing it; that said, I make errors and the prominence of Nauplius has probably driven out some players who have a lower tolerance for evil fiction).

[Havohej]

Fair enough, that seems like a well thought out idea. I'm snipping that one bit because EM used to have a policy that we only required NRDS within Minmatar space (we preferred that people include the Great Wildlands in that but could be flexible). If you wanted to go full pirate in enemy space we'd cheerfully be a source of cheap ammunition & kit.

So, opportunity lost there. Pity.

I think someone hit us up about a deal like that at some point, actually, when we were doing the highsec extortion wardecs in Amarr space.  We weren't able to finalize anything, and for the life of me I can't remember who I was talking to =/

[Jaling]

Disadvantages of an evil character:

Most normal corporation/alliance membership is closed off to you (this alone prevents most non-alts from playing a really evil character).  Most "social RP" is closed off to you (who would go on a date with Nauplius or marry him or invite him to a ball).  If too repulsive, you might lose almost all interaction...

Are we only thinking evil villain who's known to all for what he is then? The Skeletor of EVE? Personally I've found that the best villains are the ones who smile at you in social gatherings to give them an alibi while their machinations make your life hell in the background. The ones who are your best friends purely because they want to get close enough to see the chinks in your armor.

I know this is already a thing in EVE using metagaming alts, but the same thing could still apply and make you a villain without proclaiming you're evil.

[Arista Shahni]

Arista always sort of coughs and changes the subject when Naup comes up, as she imagines him a bit like the odd uncle at the holiday party that everyone knows will arrive, but no one wants to kick out.  As his background is eerily similar to Ari's (ex-Navy, etc), I imagine her as seeing 'possibly how the chips happened to fall that way', though IC or OOC, I have no idea how it did actually happen.  Hence why she never says much of anything about him, good or ill.

[ValentinaDLM]

I have never really defined  Val as evil because I have a hard time thinking on my feet like that, she has done many, many evil things of course, but she always just tried to do the right thing at the time.

I feel however there is a disconnect with some players always wanting their character to be a hero, because in 90% of the RP Val has been involved with she was the Villian from most people's perspective. Until Khushakor Clan she fell right Into the sympathetic ineffectual Villian trope.

I notice lots of people don't like to call thier character a Villian even if they are for example a rampant slaver even though they know that might make them a reasonable and polite Villian but still a Villian. The issue is people have very good reason to try and potray their characters in a more good person bad deeds light in that RP interaction dimishes greatly if you don't.

If John Q. Amarrian talks down to their slaves and pulls them around the summit of whatnot and looks at it from an economic or power perspective then even other Amarrians tend to shun them, everyone calls them an edge lord and their RP drops off.

As a former Nation loyalist I can say opportunities for interaction get a lot thinner when you fervently support your cause and aren't super polite about it.

[Ulphus]

As a former Nation loyalist I can say opportunities for interaction get a lot thinner when you fervently support your cause and aren't super polite about it.

I'd also suggest that if you're moderately strict about not hanging out with evil people (y'know, slavers and such) then you run short of opportunities for interaction as well, except inside your very own bubble.

"Yes, they kidnap people for slavery and sell their children for spare parts, but they're so polite" is one of those justifications I think people make to get RP. I don't really begrudge that, and indeed, it's one of the things I've consciously considered when coming back.

[Utari Onzo]

My character is what people think he is. Utari doesn't see himself as a hero, and neither do I, and nor does he see himself as strictly good or bad, he simply is.

It seems he's charming enough to people to be considered polite company, and does have a strong sense of martial honour, but he's an Amarrian who's now deeply involved in a Holder's business interests.

[Ria Nieyli]

Ria is a simple woman. She wants to make profit.

Anyway, I can't help but feel that threads like these diminish character depth. I could come here and say "my character is x and y" or you could interact with her and possibly find out.

[Jev North]

It's a trade-off between an extra topic to talk about during IC interaction, and a little self-promotion and chance to brainstorm with others about your character, sure.

[Ria Nieyli]

It's not so much the extra topic, it's about how you approach the topic when interacting.
As for brainstorming, why would I let anyone tell me how my character should be? If people do that enough, it'll be attack of the clones all over again. Not that it isn't to an extent already.

[Utari Onzo]

I don't think anyone is implying you specifically want advice/brainstorming for your character, but some others might, or be inspired by the posts here to look at/come up with their own ideas. The use of "your" in Jev's post was likely the general "your" as in addressing anyone reading, and not just the one person.

Some people don't want advice/input and that's cool, others might.

[Silas Vitalia]

The more edgelord your character wanders, the more of a corner you back yourselves into... with diminishing results.

A difficult tightrope to walk doing 'evil' things and still maintaining IC social contacts within RP circles.

The more 'generalist' characters have a great benefit of being able to move within the social groups, attend a large cross section of events, interact with all sorts of different folks.

I had to try extremely hard (often failing), to at least try to be somewhat charming and polite and a good conversationalist to maintain chit-chat friendships and cordial conversations with a wide RP circle and everyone doing their cognitive dissonance that S wasn't off slitting throats and drinking virgin blood a few minutes after summit cameras were off, etc.   

I always thought if you kept more of that sort of outright 'evil' stuff more insinuated, hinted, but rarely shown, it made things easier for the other players to not have to completely shun you all the time.

But having an 'evil' character is just more fun, I'd say? Who doesn't want to be the bad guy now and then?