[Discussion] Fleshing Out Villainous Team

[SubstituteCreature]

Been designing for my Fakemon game for almost a year now (actual coding/spriting/mapping hasn't started since I'm still filling up the Fakedex, sketching routes, and writing NPC dialogue) and I've come across a major creative obstacle: How to make the villainous team interesting? I've come up with the working name of Team Scion, a shadow organization headed by a mysterious masked man.

I want my story to have a sense of danger and peril, but I'd rather stray away from "stopping an evil organization from misusing world-ending Legendaries", a crutch that the main series continues to hobble on. I've outlined the major encounters and have figured out their map locations.

Spoiler:

Town 3:
- 1st gym blocked by long line. Explore rest of town until encounter mysterious man at Museum
- Man mumbles to himself, notices you and leaves
- Gym now clear. Two Scion Grunts exit, saying that the team should be ready for them
- Once gym beat, find that Museum has been raided, note left behind

Before Town 5:
- Rival and you stumble across research facility
- Read logs about what kind of experiments are going on, find that whatever was stolen from museum is being used
- Catch glimpse of mysterious man
- Encounter police when clear out area, join Police Task Force

Town 5, Hub town:
- Tasked with finding a small time criminal
- Encounter your Professor, who warns you about Team Scion

Town 6:
- Some kind of mission, encounter mystery man who = Team Scion leader
- Fight admins as he disappears once again.

Town 7:
- Rival and you are sent to investigate Warehouse, trap set by Scion Leader
- Warns you to stay away, reveals Pokemon hidden in room, threatens to harm you before you can call out your Pokemon
- Disappears

Town 5 return:
- After 8th badge Police HQ calls you to return
- Major corporate building attacked
- Rival rushes ahead, has his starter killed by Scion Leader
- First actual fight with Scion Leader

Evil Tower before Elite 4:
- Identity revealed, enter their lair with friends, Gym Leaders, and your fellow Task Force members
- Final confrontation

What I'm still hung up on is motivation. I've written several iterations for Team Scion, but I still haven't settled on why they are
attacking the region and what they are building. They steal important artifacts/machine parts throughout the story, but what
do they want to accomplish, and how? I'd also like some suggestions how how to keep the scope manageable so I can actually fit it into the game.
Here's some of the ideas I came up with.

General:
- They are an ancient race that seek to restore chaos/order to the region
- Ancient race descendants wanting to go back in time and undo the outcome of the war that caused their civilization to fall
- They are a military organization attempting a hostile takeover of the region, taking out Gym leaders, the Police, and the Elite 4.
- They are a secret society made up of powerful people, planted in various parts of society. Cult dedicated to a Legendary Pokemon.
- Professor/Rival apparently have some past with them?
- Perhaps going through internal struggle with two leaders vying for power
- Hack PC and steal all Pokemon from storage (taken from BW's unused Plasma scheme)

Tech vs. Nature:
- Tech: Genetically modified Pokemon army.
- Nature: Scorn technology and its harm on the environment. Maybe have some psychic link to Pokemon.

Chaos vs. Order:
- Chaos: Use ancient stones that resonate at the same frequency as Pokemon and human brains to create mass panic. Once dust settles, will take over
what's left. Artifact stolen from museum, machine parts stolen from corporation.
- Order: Use technology to control Pokemon and maybe humans. Come in the form of small electrical bands, marketed to trainers and their Pokemon.

Life, Death, Resurrection:
Experiment with Pokemon resurrection by corporation goes wrong, ends up killing the project lead's family. Corporation refuses to fund resurrection process any further. Project lead wants to expand the revival process to work on humans, intending to revive his family. Turns to Team Scion for help, becomes their leader over time. Steals from corporation to complete his life's work.

That's what I have so far. Feel free to point out plot points that work better than the others or plot points that should be added.

 

[Rot8er_ConeX]

Personally, I like the idea of the life and death motivation you have at the end. You could then have a major moral struggle shown in your Rival when the leader's plan is revealed:

Spoiler:

does he let Scion win in order to have a chance at bringing back his starter, or does he do what he originally set out to do?

 

[SubstituteCreature]

Personally, I like the idea of the life and death motivation you have at the end. You could then have a major moral struggle shown in your Rival when the leader's plan is revealed:

Spoiler:

does he let Scion win in order to have a chance at bringing back his starter, or does he do what he originally set out to do?

Hm....That's quite an interesting take! {:3} It fits well with the life and death theme, which I'm currently leaning towards. It could make the player character more of an observer to individuals (the rival and the leader) struggling to accept the pain of loss.

If I were to go with this plot, what motivation would the rest of Team Scion have for following their leader? The leader potentially gets his family (wife and/or child) back, but I'm not sure his thugs/soldiers/henchmen would accept that as their reward.

 

[SaltRoad]

Well, if you're looking for a good motivation, I think in real life most people are motivated by the promise of a better life/world. People join a lot of extreme groups in the hope that they'll be able to change things for the better... even if that means doing 'evil' things. Well Intentioned Extremists and all that...

Like:
- Saving the environment, by eliminating the people that are hurting it.
- Brainwashing people to be completely peaceful, so there's no more war.
- Science will eventually make something horrible, and destroy everything, and so the progression of science has to be stopped.
- Wiping out all government, so that people can be completely free.
- Causing some kind of apocalypse in the hope that humanity will band together to fight it.
- Trying to get humanity to 'evolve', either by replacing them with a better species, or by trying to force 'improvements'.
- Getting rid of the 'evil' people of the world, even if that means a few innocents get caught too.

I don't think Legendary Pokemon are necessary, it just takes more steps to change the world when it's just you and a bunch of passionate followers.

That's at least what I've seen in villains and their stories. Hopefully that helps in some way.

 

[SubstituteCreature]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I'll work some into my next draft.

 

[scotchkorean27]

I can't tell you how happy I am to see a discussion about this. Pokemon's evil organizations have always come of as a bit unorganized. I still have no idea what Team Galactic did or was trying to accomplish.

In any case, I'd start with whether or not this organization is self-serving or ideological. Are they trying to do something super complicated to achieve some lofty goal, or are they just trying to make boatloads of money? Maybe you can work from there.

I'm of the opinion that Cipher is the strongest written organization in the series. Their primary goal was to make a ton of cash, not by using the mythical power of some super legendary pokemon, but by placing Cipher Admins in positions of political and social power and distributing shadow pokemon through shady, but not outright ridiculous, methods. It's not a terrible plan, really.

I also think that whatever motivation your evil organization has, you can think of a believable and engaging way they work toward that goal. Team Plasma had an interesting plan in monopolizing pokemon, but something about how they operated was just unnatural. Like, where the heck did they get all the money to build a giant moving battle castle? Self-serving "villainous" organizations would probably use more down-to earth methods. They're slightly more obvious in their methodologies, but you could have some fun with the situations they create. Ideological or extremist (world dominationy) organizations need to take much larger steps to where they want to be, and so you could really have some fantastic stuff in there.

From the list, I think the following could go in some really fun directions:

- They are a military organization attempting a hostile takeover of the region, taking out Gym leaders, the Police, and the Elite 4.
- They are a secret society made up of powerful people, planted in various parts of society. Cult dedicated to a Legendary Pokemon.
- Hack PC and steal all Pokemon from storage (taken from BW's unused Plasma scheme)
- Chaos: Use ancient stones that resonate at the same frequency as Pokemon and human brains to create mass panic. Once dust settles, will take over
what's left. Artifact stolen from museum, machine parts stolen from corporation.
- Order: Use technology to control Pokemon and maybe humans. Come in the form of small electrical bands, marketed to trainers and their Pokemon.