scrape_r_rational/data/cache2/2u6hw9.md

[BST] Help with writing a Rational Villain

• Author: u/Undercover_Infant *

• URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2u6hw9/bst_help_with_writing_a_rational_villain/

• Score: 6

• Created: 2015-01-30T08:33:43

Post:

Hi guys and gals.

I need your help with writing a Villainous organization who's motivations are rational and, ideally, morally "Good" (in the definiton of True Moral Conflict written by Eliezer Yudkowsky in his "Intelligent characters" essays - http://yudkowsky.tumblr.com/writing).

IMPORTANT - The story is a part of online RPG community project and therefore most of it wasn't made by me. Even though I could change it, I hate retconning and see it as a suboptimal solution. Instead, I enjoy solving problems with the story by finding new contexts in which to frame them (something doesn't make sense? Maybe it's because it actually works differently than it seems).

Also english isn't my first language, so feel free to correct me.

I've tried writing this post many times and always ended up with 3 pages of lore without getting to the point. So this time, near to no lore. Though I'll gladly provide it in the comments if anyone is interested.

BASIC INFORMATION

• The world is Potter-like (wizarding society is small and hidden)
• The organization is mainly scientific and focuses on the part of magic that deals with Demons, magic symbols and parallel worlds
• The existence of this organization is mostly secret
• There is a kinda SHIELDxHydra dynamic, meaning majority of it's members think it's just a VIP science club and aren't aware of it's villainous actions.
• In the past, this organization has arranged for a number of important scientific experts (which mostly weren't it's members) to die during a dangerous exorcism. This incident is infamous and widely known in the society, but the involvement of the organization is a secret. Everyone, including the majority of members, thinks it was just a tragic accident.

I'm planning to make this organization into an important antagonist for the "heroes" and would like to use this opportunity to introduce more rational plot points into the story. I have plenty of ideas for what could be it's end goal motivation, but none of them would come even close to passing the "True moral conflict" test (spoilers for Worm)

Feel free to ask for details. I'll try to edit this post to add more information.

Thanks in advance for your help!

EDIT: Big thanks to everyone who posted their suggestions! I was blown away by your creativity and I think I will try to combine some of your ideas together. You simply amazing, all of you.

Sidenote - Finding a rational and morally Good motivation for an (at least seemingly) evil action is hard. Most people seem to automatically go for Greater Good, Bigger Then You scenarios, but these (for me personally) don't feel like a real moral conflict. I can't actually imagine myself in a situation where I have to kill one person to save 1000 people. I can think about it, but it's an abstract concept that doesn't actually trigger any strong feelings in me. Because of this, I tend to prefer more simple dilemas that I can actually imagine happening and therefore am able to feel conflicted about.

Another popular suggestion seems to be "There is this important fact you don't know about" (eg. we had to kill these people because magic is actually weaker the more wizards there are). This again seems like a bit of a cop out to me, because you have to withdraw an important information about the world from the protagonist just to justify the antagonists actions.

Comments:

u/None [+8] (2 hours later)

Ok. First question: are they publicly seen as "villains" at all? Does anyone actually think they're evil to this extent?

No, right? Because no halfway intelligent villain, particularly not one who believes in their own goals, actually lets themselves wind up with bad publicity.

Also, VIP science club? Shield-vs-Hydra sort of deal? This organization sounds like the SCP Foundation to me. They don't just prevent apocalypse, they keep the public safe and sane until such time as your local Phlebotinum can be understood without snapping the untrained human mind and comforting sense of reality into little itty-bitty pieces. It's an important job, you know, and if organization members occasionally engage in small graft, take an Item home every now and then... well, people take things home from work everywhere. No helping it, is there?

u/Undercover_Infant [+3] (3 hours later)

1. No, they aren't seen as villains. First of all, the general public doesn't even know they exist and those who do think they are just this bunch of snobbish scientists who work in a rather obscure field. Second of all, majority of the organizations members doesn't know either and live in a blissful ignorance, focusing instead on their research.

2. I knew I have seen this kind of thing somewhere! I totally forgot about SCP Foundation. It's kinda like The Foundation but without all the Warehouse 13-ish stuff. They mostly just deal with a part of magic that isn't that widely used and/or understood because of its sheer complexity, while also being XK end-of-the-world level dangerous.

u/None [+4] (3 hours later)

No, they aren't seen as villains. First of all, the general public doesn't even know they exist and those who do think they are just this bunch of snobbish scientists who work in a rather obscure field. Second of all, majority of the organizations members doesn't know either and live in a blissful ignorance, focusing instead on their research.

Just as it should be.

u/scruiser [+5] CYOA (6 hours later)

Is the division between magical person and nonmagical person absolute, like in Harry Potter? Or can anyone learn magic? Or can anyone learn magic, but some people or naturally gifted at using it?

In Nasuverse (the setting for Fate/Stay Night) the magus association believes that magecraft degrades the more people there are using it. Also, anyone with open magic circuits can use magecraft, however there is an advantage all the old magus families have in the form of artificial magic circuits that the have developed and passed down. Thus, the standard magi is extremely motivated to protect their secrets from both other magi and from the rest of the world. The magus association views any action necessary to keep magecraft secret as justified, hypnotizing people, killing people, covering up events, etc.

In your setting you mentioned they killed off a bunch of scientists. Perhaps the scientific community was getting close to uncovering how some of magic worked, and they killed them to protect that knowledge. How morally ambiguous they are is a direct function of how important it is to keep magic from degrading and how much magic degrades with common usage and usage by more people. If magic is needed to stop demons, and mass scientific examination of magic would completely disrupt or divide or degrade its powers, then killing the scientists can be framed as a cruel but necessary action.

Edit: I just reread your prompt and noticed you said you don't actually want to retcon the setting. The solution I present could still work with reduced retconing, you would just need to restrict the degradation of magic effect to some paticular branch or area of magic that is both important and about to be discovered by that group of scientists.

u/alexanderwales [+5] Time flies like an arrow (6 hours later)

I've always liked Abstergo from the Assassin's Creed franchise as a pretty good example of an "evil" organization. They seek control over the world, because they believe that without that control, humanity is just going to spiral out of control and all the progress of centuries past is going to be lost. It's not even really clear that they're wrong - they've been responsible for the majority of the technological advancements in the past centuries. It's sort of an authoritarian/anarchic dynamic between them and the Assassins, which is a much better dynamic then simply good/evil.

And as with many evil organizations, you will have members ready with "Oh, well that guy was evil, but we've formally distanced ourselves from him" in the same way that a lot of real world organizations do.

u/Undercover_Infant [+1] (15 hours later)

First of all, I'm a big fan of your work.

As for the story, I'm aiming for the the conflict to be as close to "Good x Good" as possible, with the end goal being making myself at least a little bit unsure about which side is right.

Most authors, when looking for a motivation for their antagonists, seem to choose "justifiable" instead of "morally Good". By which I mean, and let's use your definition of Abstergo as an example, trying to control the world because everything is going to go out of control otherwise does make sense, but immediatelly triggers the "Well, ok, but their actions still feel evil to me" reaction in my mind. And I think the reason might be that my mind can't actually properly picture that potential scenario, because it's just too abstract. It's a lot like that one example about how people care more about one bird affected by an oil spill, then 1000 birds, because our mind just can't process big numbers in that context. (I'm paraphrasing of course)

u/Chronophilia [+3] sci-fi ≠ futurology (an hour later)

What are you asking for help with? Just figuring out a reasonable-yet-villainous motivation for them?

My thought: Their mission statement is to look for ways to protect Muggles from magic. Motivations for joining the organisation can vary from person to person: helps make interesting characters.

Some want to integrate wizards into normal society, which makes it necessary to prevent them from doing certain magics at certain times. For example, you have to be able to put them in prison without them fireballing their way out.

Some have seen what wizards do to Muggles (c.f. some important event, ideally one the players participated in, to show that their actions have Consequences), and want to make it possible to remove a wizard's magic, to protect them from their own stupidity.

Some want to give Muggles magic. Magic is great, everyone should have it! Hence the focus on magic symbols and demons: I imagine those don't require innate magic to use.

u/Undercover_Infant [+3] (2 hours later)

Thanks, I've rephrased my plea slightly to make it more clear what I need.

I really like your ideas, mostly because nothing like that has even occured to me! I think I might have a small case of tunnel vision, because I had a really hard time coming up with motivations that were actually Good without the cliché "greater good" bs (like preventing an apocalypse or something).

u/Chronophilia [+5] sci-fi ≠ futurology (2 hours later)

Level 1 Intelligence: If you were a Muggle in this world, what would you do? If you thought you were crazy because you just saw a woman disappear into thin air? If you were childhood friends with a wizard? If this secret organisation already existed and you knew of it? If you were a physicist? A lawyer? A cop? A venture capitalist? A fishmonger? If you were Elon Musk? Douglas Adams? Taylor Herbert? Taylor Swift?

Vary the parameters until you find a course of action that's reasonable and also fits the required role in the story.

u/notentirelyrandom [+6] (16 hours later)

I don't think I've ever seen Taylors Swift and Hebert juxtaposed like that.

u/None [+3] (3 hours later)

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u/Undercover_Infant [+3] (4 hours later)

Ah, I should have explained that better. The villains are supposed to be the "upper management" if you will, the folks who actually know what's really happening behind the scenes. Until now in the story, they were in the background, basically doing evil things just because there needed to be someone doing them. But because I'm now trying to make a whole story arc around them, I'd like them to have an actual rational reasons and motivations for doing those things, so that the protagonist isn't just fighting another Greater Good, Hydra-style villains.

As for the protagonists, one of them is a former member of the organization who found out the truth about their involvement in the big exorcistic accident and then got captured by the organization before and spent some time inprisoned before escaping through mysterious means while drugged. Even he doesn't yet fully understand how he did it. As for their moral standing, motivations and such, they are mostly just your everyday wizards trying to beat the big bad, getting revenge and such. (because it's an online RPG, they are basically player characters. By making the antagonists rational and giving them moraly Good motivations, I'd like to force the players to make the characters more rational and interesting in response)

u/None [+5] (5 hours later)

[deleted]

u/Undercover_Infant [+2] (6 hours later)

I think your idea might be a little too complicated (I very quickly went from morally conflicted to just plain confused) but I really like where you are going with it. Maybe if I explained the lore a bit, you could try working with that?

u/what_deleted_said [+1] (4 months later)

mutually contradictory believes about how the world operates

*beliefs

u/MaxDougwell [+3] (3 hours later)

Here's a set-up that I think fulfils all those criteria. Although I suspect it'd have to be altered to work in the setting. Use or discard whatever parts you want.

The organisation is only the latest of several branches established across multiple realities, working in tandem with forces in the home plane/s of the demons to bar demonic entry to their respective worlds. Without this context, any one branch appears to do evil for the sake of it. As their work continues, demons will be barred from entry, saving far more then they harm maintaining the interdictum.

Or, if that's too close to "greater good", make their actions in this reality actually help protect another reality, one which contains their friends and loved ones. They're only doing harm in the eyes of the protagonists, but to them it's truly necessary.

u/Undercover_Infant [+3] (3 hours later)

That's a really interesting angle. The first idea is really a bit too "greater good-y" for my tastes, but the second one could work pretty well. Thank you!

u/ben_sphynx [+3] (6 hours later)

Maybe you need to consider the motivations of the 'demons' that this organisation deals with. Are they things that sway the organisation that controls them? Are they desperately scary and need to be contained at all costs? Do they provide incentives to those who are trying to control them? Are they just inhabitants of another realm?

These could all affect the motivations of those high up in your organisation.

u/Undercover_Infant [+1] (15 hours later)

Thank you, I will think about that. I do know what Demons in this setting are (because most of that area was actually written by me), but I'm still struggling with their true motivations. Fortunately, all the amazing comments in this thread gave me few new ideas, which I will play around with.

u/TimTravel [+3] (7 hours later)

Since you asked: In the spoiler, "it's" should be "its". This is the exception to the apostrophe rule because "it's" means "it is" not it possessive.

u/Undercover_Infant [+1] (15 hours later)

Thank you!

u/what_deleted_said [+1] (4 months later)

So...What'd you end up going with?

u/Empiricist_or_not [+3] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm (8 hours later)

Listen to How to Succeed at Evil, and think about what the villains want. Goal and resource set define potential options for.

u/Nepene [+2] (10 hours later)

For them to be villainous they either need villainous goals or actions.

1. Why did they kill the scientists? Did they believe that they were doing dangerous science? Were they about to spoil some monopoly? Personal hate?

2. What research and actions are they willing to take that are villainous? Mass murder? Torture?

I'd suggest you have them not care about stopping the apocalypse but care about stopping small scale massacres. They want to stop local demon incursions and dangerous magic. There are many different factions in the organization, but at a higher level they are happy to authorize mass murdering every red haired person in a village if the demon grows stronger when they eat a red haired person. They will take this method even if there are easier ways. The higher ups also seek political power and dominance and so a number of their actions will use the excuse of a demon incursion to slaughter political enemies and foes.

u/MugaSofer [+2] (15 hours later)

Hmm. So you need to justify a HYDRA-esque conspiracy keeping Magic (which includes demons and parallel worlds alongside other stuff) a secret, within a larger organization that appears mundane and benign. They've killed famous scientists before.

I've got one word for you: memes.

Spells - not all spells, not even most spells, but some - are infectious. Your average memetic threat is bad enough, jumping from mind to mind and infecting those who try to study it; but this is a universe with magic, and that means thinking the wrong thing can literally summon demons. Messily. Possibly inside the brain that was thinking it at the time.

They can point to other realities that were consumed, in places where this stuff got out.

The scientists, being brilliant and inquisitive, got too close to The Truth, and were killed mid-summoning of something gribbly.

u/Farmerbob1 [+1] Level 1 author (15 hours later)

Is the top leadership aware of the criminal leanings of part of the organization, or is it a hidden splinter group with outside funding?

The social dynamic that you describe would be a lot easier if the organization had lots of separate departments that were highly islanded, very little cross-fertilization of staff or resources. One or two strong outside funding sources could allow a department to have far more resources than the main organization itself even knows about.

This gives the organization itself real innocence, and might throw the heroic types off. Heroes put the CEO under a truth spell, and she knows absolutely nothing. Same with the other organization officers. The government gets upset and tells the heroes to back off.

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