Thread by @alexflagg

On today's #ttrpg docket - rebuilding 20 year old villains for modern day audiences. #spycraft3 @craftygames

This has been a fun project, but a challenging one. @BryanCPSteele and I have been diving into the Spycraft lore deep, looking for ways to bind the game's past to its new incarnation. This process has crystalized how I think about effective worldbuilding in existing properties.

(BTW Bry has been a real trooper in this process, as I've swatted away a lot of drafts trying to sort this out for myself. I'm sharing in the hopes maybe you all can dodge some of our collective pain)

The process is a bit different from narrative #worldbuilding, because #ttrpgs are both a shared platform for storytelling, and a method of executing the brand's themes.

Thus, we are starting from both ends - how the villain will support the game's preferred playstyle on one end, and what the villain's role is in the overall brand framework on the other - then working the villain details into the middle.

Throw into the mix that #Spycraft is an existing game brand with 2 editions, and #Spycraft3 is working explicitly to build a strongly-themed espionage game world that aligns *mostly* with the world outside your window, and it gets tricky.

There's a nice analogy about the two approaches to #gamedesign that apply here - you either sculpt (building a big chunk, and carve away), or you paint (sketch in and build up in layers). This is definitely a paint-then-sculpt process - build up many extra layers, then carve down

That may seem like of lot of work to build a world. It is! But it is also crucial, especially for a modern day #ttrpg. The diff between fantasy/sci-fi and modern settings being, the players have a definite frame of reference, since, y'know, the live in the modern world.

So you have do the additional work of not only making your world coherent, but also that mostly aligns with the reality the players perceive away from the game table. You can slot in the fun stuff in the spaces where shared reality is "soft" - conspiracies, secret programs, etc

So. We have two objectives - the way the game needs to play, and the way the world/villain must support the brand - plus a bunch of existing but rusty canon, and the inherent restrictions of working in a modern setting. Where do we start?

The first thing we did was go after the biggest obstacle first - the canon itself. Our canonical element, Dr. Kholera, is #Spycraft's first and most notorious villain, but has changed a lot over the years, including dying in Spycraft 2.0. We want to turn him into our Blofeld.

In past versions, Kholera was both a political theorist and advisor to the Vatican and CNN, as well as a German scientific genius. He's been married, but his wife disappeared in later versions. None of it is necessary contradictory, but it is confusing.

The one throughpoint - though never explicitly pointed out - is that Kholera is a homicidal maniac who wants to cull humanity, using a virus with a lethal efficiency of 99%. This was named the Nightfall Virus in Spycraft 2.0 and the Spycraft CCG. So we started with that.

We did likewise with the few remaining shared details between the two Kholeras - the Zero Sum zombie-like minions, a few henchmen, the awesome hair - then looked for the *best* parts of that character.

This part was about themes: what makes this dude tick? What would possibly motivate a guy who invents a hyper-lethal virus explicitly to extinguish humanity? Beyond that, what makes him *compelling* as a character - what's cool, what's tragic, what can we empathize with?

We ultimately decided to run with the "viral" theme, as well as the strong eco-terrorism/anti-humanity agenda as the core. This is something we'd wind through Kholera's life, objectives, and even as a frame for how we describe him. It's the bow on the core concept and history

With the core theme of the character blocked in, we started adding layers. This was cherry-picking from the existing canon when we felt right, and also starting to look at real world history to see where any obvious or fun connections could come in.

@BryanCPSteele picked up and ran with Janet (I won't spoil it here, but I LUV his take), and we set down other noted Kholera attacks like Green Vale, NE (from the #Spycraft espionage handbook) and few other choice details.

Being a bit of a history nerd, we also had to confront a question we'd never considered: how old is this guy? That's where those two end points were key anchors - he needed to be vital enough in 2020 to still challenge our spies, perhaps physically. So we put him in his 60s.

At that age, we looked for potential moments for radicalization. The easiest and most obvious for his themes - the war in Vietnam, made doubly useful since American science was deployed to brutal effect. It's an event which will make anyone question human decency, so empathy too.

To further drive it home, and to tie it in, we made Kholera's parents Luxombourgian expats, academics who were WWII refugees who later supported American war efforts through their work at M.I.T. (a true fact). We're building K's motivation in reverse, starting from the ends.

With motivations and pivotal points in his history in place, we start laying in texture - details, historical anchors, aligning him as a person of his time - all of which makes him believable and grounds him.

We had to excuse why he was a brilliant scientist, so we aligned him with the Human Genome Project (he was using it to learn about gene sequencing for his...second career). To explain how he would have a secret base, we tied him to the rise of Big Pharma in the 80s (and its $$$)

He's starting to take shape. Now, we had to start justifying his canonical actions - the 2002 attack on Greenvale, and the 2005 Nightfall Virus.

Running with our viral theme, and his history as scientist, we figured this character would make staged field tests, building up methodically. Then, because he's a homicidal psychopath, we put those "experiments" in the context of a serial killer's pattern of escalation.

He starts small, harming individuals in isolated, seemingly-random incidents, gradually moving to bolder, more-harmful attacks as he refines his method and gets a taste for it. This is never explicitly stated, but readers will unconsciously recognize the pattern.

The set points in the canon then take care of the rest, Kholera "dies" and from there we can build him into the #Spycraft3 version we want him to be - an evolution into our archetype of the Mad Scientist Mastermind.

This thread is getting way way long, but the work is not done. I'm continuing to layer in with each additional element added - the supporting cast, the new plots, and so on all change K's history and so affect his character. But now we've flipped back to a "standard" worldbuild.

Once this is done, and I'm settled, I'm going to save this draft, then start cutting. Expecting to literally lose 80% of the word count for what people see the first time they learn about this guy. Why?

Because without knowing the full breadth of this pivotal character - his history, his motivation, the way he fits into the world around him - he will not feel "real" to the setting we're creating. Without a strong foundation, you cannot infer or make and toss away references.

...and that level of depth and texture is what you really want in a game world, from the jump. The villains are in effect primordial forces, shaping the actions and character of the Agency the players work for.

Adding the level of historical knicks and scars to the Agency, wrought by and in reaction to the events caused by the villains, is what makes it feel lived-in and "real." And by feeling real, we can create the context we want players to play in.

/thread

@threadreaderapp please unroll