[UA] The Villain Archetype (was: various topics)

[Allen Smith]

On Dec 11,  6:05pm, Gregory Paul Stolze wrote:
> At 05:09 PM 12/11/2000 EST, you wrote:
> >In a message dated 12/11/2000 3:46:29 PM Central Standard Time, 
> >holycrow at mindspring.com writes:
> >
> >> 
> >>  Ehhh... I really shy away from all good or all bad archetypes.  (The Dark
> >>  Stalker kind of snuck in under the radar in the early days.  Tricky
> >>  bastard.  Maybe if we ever do 2ed I'll write up the GOOD side of the Dark
> >>  Stalker...)  
> >
> >
> >Wouldn't the good side of the Dark Stalker be evident in all those shadowy 
> >pulp heroes? The Shadow, The Spider (Master of Men!), Captain Midnight to a 
> >lesser extent.
> 
> And in the real world you've got...?
> 
> The rule of thumb I use is "If the examples are all historical, it's an
> archetype.  If the examples are all fictional, it's a stereotype."  Keeps
> me from getting lazy.  ("'The Large Breasted Chick With The Guns'?  What
> the heck, it's in every RPG I've seen, and if I write it up fast I can hit
> my quota in time for MST3K!")  
> 
> Now, there are plenty of dark-side Dark Stalkers in history.  Jack the
> Ripper may have been the original.  Jeffrey Dahmer.  Ed Gein.  But shadowy
> vigilantes?  A rarer bunch, for damn sure.  And the argument that "you
> never heard of them because they never got caught" doesn't cut it for me.
> Dahmer and Gein weren't trying to get caught, and Jack never was.  So our
> hypothetical Benevolent Stalker would have (1) had some inept would-be
> Avatars* get caught and (2) would have a few clever ones who never got
> caught, but whose deeds were historically known.

If one changes the Dark Stalker's "cannot kill for an ulterior motive"
restriction (which does kind of limit its ability to be a good
archetype...) to something like "cannot have personal, named fame as a
Dark Stalker" (and similarly changes the "not a hireling" limit to
"can't be achnowledged as legitimate in the area they are active in"),
then historical ninjas fit quite nicely. They originated as,
essentially, people defending themselves, their families, and their
communities against Samurai, particularly mercenary/freelance Samurai
(ronin - thus the origins of the Masterless Man conflict), in a time
in which they weren't allowed to have normal weapons or armor. Under
those circumstances, you don't go into open combat with the samurai -
you sneak up behind him (preferably while he's distracted) and stab
him in a kidney. Being known as ninja would have earned them the death
penalty. (One page that I just found via a search engine is
http://www.winjutsu.com/ninjakids/nk_history.html. It accords with
what I learned from talking with modern-day students & teachers of
Taijutsu (the martial arts portion of Ninjitsu).)

In more modern times, espionage and special ops groups will have a lot 
of these. I'm not sure whether to put the long-range assasin/sniper
in the "Dark Stalker" archetype or not, but at least in more modern
times the guy who uses a silenced gun and/or a soon-discarded
"Saturday Night Special" at close range surely fits. Unlike the
Executioner, it isn't an open killing, even at the last; also unlike
the Executioner, it isn't necessarily done at the behest of
another. Some Guerillas may fall into this category (or in the
Assasin/Sniper one, whatever that turns out to be); others will be
Rebels (the rabble-rouser types) or, potentially, the positive side of
the Terrorist.

	-Allen

P.S. If the GM felt that the above restriction removals were too
generous to the Dark Stalker, then some additional restrictions
regarding engaging in open/"fair" combat (namely avoiding it whenever
possible and the 71-90 channel not helping on wounds sustained due to
it) would also fit.

-- 
Allen Smith				easmith at beatrice.rutgers.edu
	

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