![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(Don't ask. It just came to me. Probably too similar to the Evil Overlord list and/or If I Am Ever The Evil Overlord, but... *shrug*)
Success.
It's every villain's worst nightmare. The chance that, this time, your evil plot might actually work. Then where would you be?
Ruling the Earth? No one wants to deal with that kind of paperwork. Not to mention that people will actually be trying to kill you, rather than coming after you with plucky sidekicks and carefully-designed non-lethal ordinance.
Or, worse yet, you might actually end up destroying the Earth. No more fast food. No more cool toys to play with. No more heroes to guide through your plots like rats in a maze. No more comfy jail cells where you can relax at the government's expense, resting and plotting until you're ready to escape again.
No, you're doing an important job with these flamboyant schemes. Without people like you to distract them, the "good guys" might actually start paying attention to our more critical plans. Starbucks. Microsoft. Dick Cheney and his "undisclosed location." The whole thing with Corn Flakes. We can't have that. But no one, least of all you, wants your evil plot to come to fruition.
That's why we at the Villain's Guild have assembled this guide. We'll teach you, step by step, how to ensure that your plot ends properly - with you safe and sound (in jail, your back-up lair, the local Guild HQ, or whatever suits your needs), the world secure from whatever it is you were doing, and the "heroes" tired but happy, headed for home in the belief that they've done some real good.
The key to the whole thing is balance. You have to create a challenge tough enough to be interesting and plausible, but not so difficult that it can't be overcome. It's not an easy trick to learn, but don't worry - we'll walk you through it as best we can. And remember... if you're not sure, check with your local Guild house. It's what they're there for.
The second most important thing is to learn to think ahead. You have to plant the seeds of your failure at the very beginning. Again, easier said than done. It takes careful planning, and even then, it can be all too easy to overestimate your adversary.
The first thing you'll want to do is hire some really incompetent help. Round up whoever you can from the seediest bars in town. The real dregs. The idiots. If you find anyone competent in the mix, have him fired. If you can, arrange it so that he escapes. That will make it easier to bring a hero in.
By surrounding yourself with idiots, you give the hero an advantage. Thanks to the Mythos, the heroes will accept this unquestioned. At this point, they pretty much expect to wade through your outer ranks without much effort. We've dedicated a lot of time and effort to making sure this was the case.
By hiring them from lowlife bars, you'll be giving some of the more enterprising heroes a head start. They think going down to the usual dives and beating people up for answers is a clever and useful tactic. We find it to be an effective means of getting the information we want to the heroes in a way that they'll accept. The bars find it strangely good for business, and the thugs... Well, who cares what they think, if one can truly call it "thinking" in the first place.
Once you have your help, you're going to want a motif. This, too, is part of the Mythos, and it has some advantages. First of all, it gives you an excuse for giving your thugs really bad equipment. (And again, if any of your henchpeople is clever and motivated enough to question that, fire him.) Try to find clever ways of reducing their visibility, restricting their movements, and generally hindering their offensive capabilities (giving them ineffective and non-lethal weaponry, for example). Heroes need all the help they can get.
A motif also gives you a reason to choose targets with a predictable pattern. If the hero fails to pick up on the leads in the bar, he may yet be able to understand the link between your motif and your actions.
When you've chosen your motif, be certain to register it with the Guild. Having two villains with similar motifs operating in the same general area can lead to embarrassing problems, and can needlessly befuddle the hero, throwing him off both your trails. Registration helps avoid these issues.
Sometimes, even when you've left a clear trail of disaffected thugs and established a painfully obvious motif, the hero can still remain confused about or completely oblivious to your plans. (We're not sure why, but we suspect it may have something to do with being knocked unconscious on a semi-regular basis.) In that case, you'll have to take more direct action. Start leaving clues for your hero to find. The Mythos allows for a great deal of hubris. A desire to taunt the hero, give him a "sporting chance," prove yourself his better, or something along those lines. Take advantage of that.
As always, you're aiming for that careful balance - clues that are tough enough to be challenging, but easy enough for him to understand in time. Be careful of making the clues too easy or direct. If you come out and tell him what you're doing, he may not believe you. He may dismiss you as a crackpot and/or decide to leave you to the police.
Police involvement can be a real problem. Cops don't play by the heroes' rules. They carry real guns, and if they catch up to you, they may well shoot you. If you shoot back, you'll have real trouble when it comes to your trial. It's just a no-win situation. If we let the cops deal with things instead of the heroes, we'd be out of business. So, be sure to keep your hero's interest. If you do, he'll reward you by keeping the cops out of the game.
Now, once you've got your hero's attention, however you do the job, you'll need some place to lead him to - your lair. Lair design is very important. We've invested quite a bit of the Mythos in it, in order to help the hero perform his most crucial duty - stopping your plan before it comes to fruition.
First off... air ducts. Heroes love to climb through these things, to try to spy on you, get the drop on you, move around your lair undetected, escape from your cells, etc. Make sure to build a single interconnected system of ducts. Make it simple to navigate, and put vents in all critical locations. Remember the lighting conditions near the vents. The vent openings should be shadowed, concealed if possible, but the rooms they overlook should be well-lit. Give the hero a chance to see without being seen.
The ducts themselves should be large enough for an oversized, muscle-bound adult male to crawl through. Make sure to reinforce the walls and support structure. The last thing you want is to spend all that time and effort luring the hero in, only to have him fall through the ceiling and break his neck. In contrast, the vent covers should be easily removed or destroyed, from inside or outside the ducts.
Moving on... traps. You're going to need a lot of them if you're going to make things convincing, but make sure they're not actually lethal to the hero or heroes you're expecting. Remember - balance. So learn about your hero's capabilities. His strengths and weaknesses. Play to his weakness. He'll expect that. But don't overdo it. Check with your local Guild house to find out just how much he can take and still manage to come through with some fight left in him.
The Death Trap in particular is going to be tricky. The key here is to make it as complicated as possible. The more complex the trap, the more ways it can go "wrong," allowing the hero to escape. Complex traps also reinforce the Mythos. So... go nuts, with our blessing. The more ludicrously complicated you make it, the more he'll be prepared to believe it. We've put a lot of effort into making sure of that.
You're also going to want to include some large, obvious, and necessary controls, so that the hero has a good chance of disarming the trap at a crucial stage.
To make sure that he has time and opportunity to escape, try to find some reason to leave the room. If possible, give him some important information about your plan (and how to foil it) on your way out. In our experience, he'll need all the help he can get. Make sure to let him know that you're only telling him these details because you expect he'll die before ever getting the opportunity to use them. Otherwise, he may not believe your information is genuine.
If, for some reason, you can't find a plausible reason to leave the room, you're going to have to sacrifice your dignity and start monologing. It's the only sure-fire solution. Just make something up. (On the spot if you must, but better if you have it at least sketched out in advance.) Some kind of story to explain who you are and why it is you do what you do. As with the trap itself, the crazier and more complicated you make the story, the more inclined he'll be to believe it. Throw in as many aliens, accidents involving "strange radiation," and dead relatives as you possibly can. Again, make sure to work in some vital information about the plot du jour while you're at it.
Once the hero escapes, he'll need to know where to go. Be clever. If he has X-ray vision, for example, shield the important stuff with lead. That will make it clear to him where he needs to look. You may also wish to consider more explicit forms of reverse psychology. For example, "No, get away from there! If you destroy that, all of my plans will come to nothing!" That should, in most cases, be enough to make things clear to your hero.
Just to be on the safe side, however, an obvious control scheme can help. Some think that a big red button emblazoned with the words "DO NOT PUSH" is a bit much, but we consider it a reasonable measure of insurance against a painfully overestimated hero. You should, by now, have heard of what we refer to as the "Captain Oblivious Incident." Enough said.
That should do it. Check with the appendices for sample trap designs, lair blueprints, motifs, etc. When you’re ready, move on to the next guide: "So Your Plot Has (Finally) Been Foiled". Good luck to you, and may all your carefully-laid plans be spectacular failures.
Success.
It's every villain's worst nightmare. The chance that, this time, your evil plot might actually work. Then where would you be?
Ruling the Earth? No one wants to deal with that kind of paperwork. Not to mention that people will actually be trying to kill you, rather than coming after you with plucky sidekicks and carefully-designed non-lethal ordinance.
Or, worse yet, you might actually end up destroying the Earth. No more fast food. No more cool toys to play with. No more heroes to guide through your plots like rats in a maze. No more comfy jail cells where you can relax at the government's expense, resting and plotting until you're ready to escape again.
No, you're doing an important job with these flamboyant schemes. Without people like you to distract them, the "good guys" might actually start paying attention to our more critical plans. Starbucks. Microsoft. Dick Cheney and his "undisclosed location." The whole thing with Corn Flakes. We can't have that. But no one, least of all you, wants your evil plot to come to fruition.
That's why we at the Villain's Guild have assembled this guide. We'll teach you, step by step, how to ensure that your plot ends properly - with you safe and sound (in jail, your back-up lair, the local Guild HQ, or whatever suits your needs), the world secure from whatever it is you were doing, and the "heroes" tired but happy, headed for home in the belief that they've done some real good.
The key to the whole thing is balance. You have to create a challenge tough enough to be interesting and plausible, but not so difficult that it can't be overcome. It's not an easy trick to learn, but don't worry - we'll walk you through it as best we can. And remember... if you're not sure, check with your local Guild house. It's what they're there for.
The second most important thing is to learn to think ahead. You have to plant the seeds of your failure at the very beginning. Again, easier said than done. It takes careful planning, and even then, it can be all too easy to overestimate your adversary.
The first thing you'll want to do is hire some really incompetent help. Round up whoever you can from the seediest bars in town. The real dregs. The idiots. If you find anyone competent in the mix, have him fired. If you can, arrange it so that he escapes. That will make it easier to bring a hero in.
By surrounding yourself with idiots, you give the hero an advantage. Thanks to the Mythos, the heroes will accept this unquestioned. At this point, they pretty much expect to wade through your outer ranks without much effort. We've dedicated a lot of time and effort to making sure this was the case.
By hiring them from lowlife bars, you'll be giving some of the more enterprising heroes a head start. They think going down to the usual dives and beating people up for answers is a clever and useful tactic. We find it to be an effective means of getting the information we want to the heroes in a way that they'll accept. The bars find it strangely good for business, and the thugs... Well, who cares what they think, if one can truly call it "thinking" in the first place.
Once you have your help, you're going to want a motif. This, too, is part of the Mythos, and it has some advantages. First of all, it gives you an excuse for giving your thugs really bad equipment. (And again, if any of your henchpeople is clever and motivated enough to question that, fire him.) Try to find clever ways of reducing their visibility, restricting their movements, and generally hindering their offensive capabilities (giving them ineffective and non-lethal weaponry, for example). Heroes need all the help they can get.
A motif also gives you a reason to choose targets with a predictable pattern. If the hero fails to pick up on the leads in the bar, he may yet be able to understand the link between your motif and your actions.
When you've chosen your motif, be certain to register it with the Guild. Having two villains with similar motifs operating in the same general area can lead to embarrassing problems, and can needlessly befuddle the hero, throwing him off both your trails. Registration helps avoid these issues.
Sometimes, even when you've left a clear trail of disaffected thugs and established a painfully obvious motif, the hero can still remain confused about or completely oblivious to your plans. (We're not sure why, but we suspect it may have something to do with being knocked unconscious on a semi-regular basis.) In that case, you'll have to take more direct action. Start leaving clues for your hero to find. The Mythos allows for a great deal of hubris. A desire to taunt the hero, give him a "sporting chance," prove yourself his better, or something along those lines. Take advantage of that.
As always, you're aiming for that careful balance - clues that are tough enough to be challenging, but easy enough for him to understand in time. Be careful of making the clues too easy or direct. If you come out and tell him what you're doing, he may not believe you. He may dismiss you as a crackpot and/or decide to leave you to the police.
Police involvement can be a real problem. Cops don't play by the heroes' rules. They carry real guns, and if they catch up to you, they may well shoot you. If you shoot back, you'll have real trouble when it comes to your trial. It's just a no-win situation. If we let the cops deal with things instead of the heroes, we'd be out of business. So, be sure to keep your hero's interest. If you do, he'll reward you by keeping the cops out of the game.
Now, once you've got your hero's attention, however you do the job, you'll need some place to lead him to - your lair. Lair design is very important. We've invested quite a bit of the Mythos in it, in order to help the hero perform his most crucial duty - stopping your plan before it comes to fruition.
First off... air ducts. Heroes love to climb through these things, to try to spy on you, get the drop on you, move around your lair undetected, escape from your cells, etc. Make sure to build a single interconnected system of ducts. Make it simple to navigate, and put vents in all critical locations. Remember the lighting conditions near the vents. The vent openings should be shadowed, concealed if possible, but the rooms they overlook should be well-lit. Give the hero a chance to see without being seen.
The ducts themselves should be large enough for an oversized, muscle-bound adult male to crawl through. Make sure to reinforce the walls and support structure. The last thing you want is to spend all that time and effort luring the hero in, only to have him fall through the ceiling and break his neck. In contrast, the vent covers should be easily removed or destroyed, from inside or outside the ducts.
Moving on... traps. You're going to need a lot of them if you're going to make things convincing, but make sure they're not actually lethal to the hero or heroes you're expecting. Remember - balance. So learn about your hero's capabilities. His strengths and weaknesses. Play to his weakness. He'll expect that. But don't overdo it. Check with your local Guild house to find out just how much he can take and still manage to come through with some fight left in him.
The Death Trap in particular is going to be tricky. The key here is to make it as complicated as possible. The more complex the trap, the more ways it can go "wrong," allowing the hero to escape. Complex traps also reinforce the Mythos. So... go nuts, with our blessing. The more ludicrously complicated you make it, the more he'll be prepared to believe it. We've put a lot of effort into making sure of that.
You're also going to want to include some large, obvious, and necessary controls, so that the hero has a good chance of disarming the trap at a crucial stage.
To make sure that he has time and opportunity to escape, try to find some reason to leave the room. If possible, give him some important information about your plan (and how to foil it) on your way out. In our experience, he'll need all the help he can get. Make sure to let him know that you're only telling him these details because you expect he'll die before ever getting the opportunity to use them. Otherwise, he may not believe your information is genuine.
If, for some reason, you can't find a plausible reason to leave the room, you're going to have to sacrifice your dignity and start monologing. It's the only sure-fire solution. Just make something up. (On the spot if you must, but better if you have it at least sketched out in advance.) Some kind of story to explain who you are and why it is you do what you do. As with the trap itself, the crazier and more complicated you make the story, the more inclined he'll be to believe it. Throw in as many aliens, accidents involving "strange radiation," and dead relatives as you possibly can. Again, make sure to work in some vital information about the plot du jour while you're at it.
Once the hero escapes, he'll need to know where to go. Be clever. If he has X-ray vision, for example, shield the important stuff with lead. That will make it clear to him where he needs to look. You may also wish to consider more explicit forms of reverse psychology. For example, "No, get away from there! If you destroy that, all of my plans will come to nothing!" That should, in most cases, be enough to make things clear to your hero.
Just to be on the safe side, however, an obvious control scheme can help. Some think that a big red button emblazoned with the words "DO NOT PUSH" is a bit much, but we consider it a reasonable measure of insurance against a painfully overestimated hero. You should, by now, have heard of what we refer to as the "Captain Oblivious Incident." Enough said.
That should do it. Check with the appendices for sample trap designs, lair blueprints, motifs, etc. When you’re ready, move on to the next guide: "So Your Plot Has (Finally) Been Foiled". Good luck to you, and may all your carefully-laid plans be spectacular failures.
Tags:
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
See ya,
Anna :D
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
(You have read the Evil Overlord List, though, right?)
From:
no subject
yeah i think i have read it, if i havent i will pretty shortly i'm sure.
From:
no subject
I love the throw-away lines ... Who wants to deal with that kind of paperwork? Be sure to register your motif with the Guild. And, of course, you can always check with them if you have questions; that's what they're there for, after all. *g*
My favorite, though, was the suggestion to reinforce the air-ducts and make sure they all connect. So that's how that keeps happening! *g*
Thanks for sharing!
From:
no subject
I've read parts of the Evil Overlord List, but never the whole thing--this is great! I always wondered why villains worked so hard to destroy/rule the world. Now I know they're told NOT TO! :p
From: (Anonymous)
no subject