I don't write black-and-white villains myself, sometimes you have to delve into very grey waters to find the villain's motivations and ways of thinking so that it makes logical sense but morally wrong. My way of writing villains is that their actions have to make sense from their point of view, but players see the cruelty of the consequences of such deeds thus making them try to stop whatever villain is doing before the consequences are too severe. Even if the villain's actions might have come from virtuous values, if the consequences are cruel and immoral they have to be stopped for sake of others.
When people say textbooks are dry, they mean this is what's missing. There's no motivation or story, no personal detail or explanation, just a bunch of facts and events and dates we're supposed to remember even tho we care nothing for those involved. We would of course, but we're given no context. And good teachers fill in this gap. It's the same, as you say, with gaming. Without any pc relevance or other reasons to care, it's just info-dumping.
1:04 Congratulations, you've just accurately described real life, as well as sandbox play. "Story" is what you have left after Real Life (TM) has happened. Past tense. When it's Big S "Story", not personal story, we call it History. If you impose "narrative" on a TTRPG, you are *unavoidably* breaking immersion, because NO ONE experiences real life as a "narrative" while in the moment (barring maybe schizophrenia). Only in past-tense. I used to think that this particular conception of TTRPGS was putting the cart before the horse, but it's more like putting the rectum before the esophagus.
I don't write black-and-white villains myself, sometimes you have to delve into very grey waters to find the villain's motivations and ways of thinking so that it makes logical sense but morally wrong. My way of writing villains is that their actions have to make sense from their point of view, but players see the cruelty of the consequences of such deeds thus making them try to stop whatever villain is doing before the consequences are too severe. Even if the villain's actions might have come from virtuous values, if the consequences are cruel and immoral they have to be stopped for sake of others.
When people say textbooks are dry, they mean this is what's missing. There's no motivation or story, no personal detail or explanation, just a bunch of facts and events and dates we're supposed to remember even tho we care nothing for those involved. We would of course, but we're given no context. And good teachers fill in this gap. It's the same, as you say, with gaming. Without any pc relevance or other reasons to care, it's just info-dumping.
1:04 Congratulations, you've just accurately described real life, as well as sandbox play. "Story" is what you have left after Real Life (TM) has happened. Past tense. When it's Big S "Story", not personal story, we call it History. If you impose "narrative" on a TTRPG, you are *unavoidably* breaking immersion, because NO ONE experiences real life as a "narrative" while in the moment (barring maybe schizophrenia). Only in past-tense. I used to think that this particular conception of TTRPGS was putting the cart before the horse, but it's more like putting the rectum before the esophagus.