Character Creation: E.V.I.L.

Add this to the pile of games that I was excited about when I backed them.

The Game: E.V.I.L. - Every Villain Is a Loser
The Publisher: Afterthought Committee
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one 

Love the aesthetic, somewhere between the art-book style of the Mork Borg games and a Seanbaby post. Love the premise, you're playing henchmen of an Evil Villain, but with the understanding that villains are losers and heroes are bastards (more on this in a moment). But the game itself kind falls flat for me, and I wasn't sure why this morning after I read it, but then during the day I reread Misspent Youth (as I'm running it tomorrow) and it kinda clicked. 

Misspent Youth is another game with strong philosophical underpinnings and a solid premise. But where that game succeeds for me and this one fails is that Misspent Youth has a well thought-out game system and a structure. Yes, the premise of the game is "you're playing youthful offenders striking back against an oppressive authority" but you can play that premise in anything - that's such a broad idea that you could use it as the framing device for nearly any RPG I've ever seen. But what makes Misspent Youth special is that the game system supports that premise, and makes it laser-focused. You don't roll for everything, you roll to see if you and your friends can beat the system, and you either do it by holding your innocence and idealism or you do it by selling out. I've run two full games, I'm running a third now, because even without a setting of its own, it's a powerful play experience (see also: Dread, Bluebeard's Bride, and I'd even argue GUMSHOE games generally do a great job of supporting the play experience they want). 

And then there's this fuckin' game. It's GMless...unless you want a GM. You're playing...the henches? But also the villain? There are example villains, and villains have goals and even awards that can give you in-game bonuses, but like, are we playing the villains? Someone actually asked that on the Kickstarter and the answer was this very wibbly "well if it's GMless then yeah you all play the villain" (but at least they answered). 

The game uses percentile dice, but I don't know why. It feels like it really wants to be an OSR game. The sensibility is very much "here's a premise, isn't that cool?! Go play it! We did the hard work!" No, you didn't. You made half a game, and it's kind of a heartbreaker. 

Oh, heroes and bastards and so forth. The game takes the view that superheroes are inherently fascist and supporting of the status quo, which, like, I see where they're going. 

And here is where we're going

Again, I don't necessarily disagree. I do like superhero stories of a more traditional bent, but my favorite ones are the ones where heroes struggle against situations that, if left unchecked, lead the death (or whatever) of innocent people. That isn't necessarily "nationalist". Spider-Man stopping a mugger isn't being a fascist. (Now, you could argue that Spider-Man webbing up the mugger and calling the police plays into this dynamic and that's probably what the author is arguing, but again, I think there's a place for the more hero-centered angles as well as the deeper deconstruction of what "fighting crime" means.)

But if that's the kind of philosophical thing you want to get into in your humor game, OK, sure. Then write a game experience that doesn't rely on telling the players what to think, but instead directs them to think about these things through the game.  

Anyfreakingway. Let's make a hench. 

I have four stats: Energy, Villainy, Influence, and Luck (EVIL, you see). I get 40, 30, 20, and 10 in these stats (remember this is a percentile system, so my stats are all going to suck), and then I roll a d10 and shift points between two stats, twice. Fine. Oh, let's put 40 into Luck, 10 into Influence, 30 into Energy, and 20 into Villainy, how bout. I'll shift points from Energy into Influence (2), and I'll shift points from Villainy to Luck (3).

Next we choose an archetype. This is badly named; it's not really an archetype so much as a "job", because it can change between missions, but since missions are called "jobs" I guess they didn't want to call these things "jobs." Could've said "assignment," that would have made more sense. I'm gonna pick Demolition for my guy, and I think he just kind of got assigned that by accident.

And, finally, I need a name, a personality, and a reason for joining E.V.I.L. (which in this context stands for Enterprising Villains Investment League). 

Sure. My guy's name is Geoff Goomer (he insists his surname is pronounced dʒumɚ). He has this habit of tripping face first into situations that are...not bad, necessarily, but just weird. Like joining EVIL. He thought he was getting in line at the job fair for a temp agency, and by the time he figured out what was happening, he'd already done most of the paperwork, so eh, what the hell. The on-the-job training seems more exciting here. Surely this isn't real C4? 

There, good enough. Blah, wanted to like this.