Doubt Villains

[Maxus]

I like that.

It also means the characters and find the occasional evidence. Like if a hollow man accidentally knocked something over, that knocked something else over.

I think the rule should be "one step removed". So using a knife to stab someone makes them dead. Using a gun to shoot a bullet into someone doesn't work because that's two steps removed.

[Manxome]

Or to take the issue more head-on: what stops anyone else from killing the PCs with a truck bomb, and simply tolerating the fact that the sleepers will know some terrorist set off a bomb there? A metatron or the agency presumably don't care if their bomber gets caught, and vast world-spanning conspiracies are probably capable of preventing even that if they care to, magical powers or no.

Presumably the PCs are protected by some combination of:

• Obscurity: Most bad guys aren't aware of the PCs, or can't predict their movements well enough to make such a tactic effective.
• Low Stakes: Coordinating that sort of bombing is actually rather hard; it takes planning, technical expertise, and loyal agents. Most of the time, the bad guys who know about the PCs don't consider them a big enough threat to be worth expending those resources on them. (Of course, if you make big enough waves, you need to start taking appropriate precautions.)
• Vigilance: The PCs have Hyper Perception. Maybe they keep a lookout in dangerous areas, so that if someone tries to target them, they have a good chance of seeing it coming so they can do something about it.
• Magic: Which protects the PCs in this game by ways and means that are, as of yet, rather vague.

[Gnyahaha]

Why cant i stop thinking about the Men from NOWHERE and the other weird villains from Grant Morissons doom patrol?

For example the Hollow Men seem to act like the Scissormen from the first story arc and Dorothys imaginary friends. Red Jack is very much a good example for a Doubt supervillain.

The Cult of the Unwritten book make excellent mooks and the men from NOWHERE and Mister Johnson make oh so much sense in this setting.

Not to mention the bugs from Cliffs nightmares and the Candlemaker.

[RobbyPants]

Creepy and evocative but what do they do? how do you fight them? why are they villains instead of a red herring?

In another thread, Frank mentioned scenarios where the registry just "happens" to have rented the only apartment with a good view of the bank heist or the only room next to the person who got murdered by a Night Terror. So, the Registry might not do anything overt, but it can work in conjunction with other villains/threats to do something... well, villainous.

[kzt]

How would they get said bomb? They couldn't "shop" for the bits and pieces, they'd ask for a gasoline can and the man would walk to the back room and forget why the hell he was back there.

I suppose they could steal it, but after assembling the bomb, they'd have to theoretically stay with it, because leaving the bomb behind would mean that their traces would disappear, perhaps even making the bomb vanish.

They are an organization. Presumably they have someone who buys them the glasses, etc, organizes them etc. To make a bomb is easy. You steal a truck, drive to a military base, get the guards to let them in, open the igoos, and have someone load the truck with explosives using a forklift. Then they drive the truck to where they want to blow up.

The records of the truck will vanish, the guards won't remember anything, the guy who loaded the truck won't remember anything, the explosive records won't show that someone removed 4 tons of C4 and everyone will just know that 4th and Central was always a ruin.

This seems like a pretty darn powerful group that can essentially kill anyone who asks questions.

You could take it a step further and say that even bullets might vanish once they left a gun the Hollow Man shot.

Or maybe their "forgetfulness" only works when they are personally involved in an action. A bomb isn't personal enough because it's just a chemical reaction. Guns may not be personal enough. A knife, a garrote wire, or a brick/cudgel is personal enough though.

That approach seem like it might work.

[Manxome]

They are an organization.

I don't think we actually know that. We just know that several of them exist and that they do bad things; they could be a single monolithic organization or just a bunch of wandering monsters.

To make a bomb is easy. You steal a truck, drive to a military base, get the guards to let them in, open the igoos, and have someone load the truck with explosives using a forklift. Then they drive the truck to where they want to blow up.

That's how most terrorists do it, right? Drive up to a military base in a stolen truck and ask the guards to load it up with explosives?

I can't tell if you're assuming that the hollow men have a vast support network of ordinary people in military bases waiting to supply them with whatever equipment they need, or if you're assuming that random strangers will somehow do whatever they ask, but in either case you're assuming they have a resource that is frankly a lot more powerful than the one you're complaining about.

[virgil]

Don't forget this antagonist faction...

The Sheep
"I won't destroy you, I have lawyers for that."

Potentially the most insidious and powerful agent to the players. No dark motives, they are the collective mass of Sleepers trying to go about their lives, unaware of the Conspiracy's machinations. Their police will crack down on you breaking into the home of the Registry. Their business managers will chase you out of their stores for ranting about this 'Jimmy' who has definitely never worked here. You interact with them, but you must do your best to avoid riling them up too much; especially those in positions of authority.

---

Something like Doubt needs a mechanic similar to GTA's star system, because unless every PC has Avoidance, they need to worry about the heat or witnesses bringing down said heat. The same goes making sure your cards stay valid (presuming you're not an Asynch).

[OgreBattle]

The registry is interesting, but I'm not sure how they'd work as villains.

I could see them as a resource that heroes/villains can cap into though, like getting money and documents from registry nonpersons, or using one of the registered identities as a disguise.

Are the Agency and Registry related? One is a paper trail of nonexistant people, the other is an organization of people with no paper trail.

[Grek]

As an antagonist, the Registry...

• ...attacks through bureaucracy. Your driver's license suddenly becomes invalid, your address is changed without you being informed, your money vanishes as it orders a bunch of furniture in your name. You can usually contest this sort of thing and get mostly back what your lost, but in the mean time you find yourself inconvenienced.
• ...is "fought" almost exclusively through hyperperception. Unlike the other antagonists, there's nobody who you can talk to or threaten to get the Registry to back down. All you can do is try to figure out what the Registry is after and then camp out there watching it until the Registry either gives up or runs out of time. Sometimes that means stealing a bunch of files. Sometimes that means camping out in an empty warehouse. Either way, its more King of the Hill than Hide and Seek or Cops and Robbers.
• ...desires personal property. The other factions are either have no ability to spend money (Night Terrors), already have it (the Agency) or can get by without it (Hollow Men, Metatron). The Registry is the only enemy who cares about that sort of thing in the same way the PCs do.
• ...has loot. As the flip side to the Registry wanting property, it has food, water, shelter and even entertainment which the PCs can freely avail themselves to if they successfully track down a Registry hideout and claim it for their own.
• ...cannot be interrogated. There's noone actually there, so you can't just drive the Registry's minions outside of town and beat them with a lead pipe until they explain what's going on. You have to use actual clues and detective work.

The basic Registry plot is for it to declare that it owns the Mystery Machine and for Mystery Inc. to track ownership back to an apartment downtown where the car deed is sitting in a shoebox in the closet. They sneak in, steal the deed, go down to the DMV to have it transferred back to their name and then try to figure out where the Registry would have parked based on clues found in the apartment.

[Red_Rob]

A few random thoughts I had after re-reading the thread:

Would Hyper-Perception work if you just combined it to Hyperception? Is that too gimmicky?

The Agency and the Registry seem awfully similar. Both are shadowy organisations that work through other people and paper trails and seemingly have no ultimate grounding in reality (Or at least, in this reality). Should they be combined?

There seems to be a common thread running through the fiction regarding intelligent observers (Night Terrors, probability control, some of the talk around Hollow Men etc). That instantly gets you thinking about quantum theory and from there you have all sorts of weird sci-fi angles you can introduce. Maybe Night Terrors are some sort of Quantum Entity and viewing them collapses the waveform and deletes them from existence.

Regarding the Hollow Men, perhaps reality attempts to delete the evidence of their existence in the least obtrusive way possible? As long as there have only been a limited number of observers it is easier to remove the evidence, but if a Hollow Man attempts to kill someone in a crowded place reality will simply delete the Hollow Man instead...

[RobbyPants]

The Agency and the Registry seem awfully similar. Both are shadowy organisations that work through other people and paper trails and seemingly have no ultimate grounding in reality (Or at least, in this reality). Should they be combined?

It's possible they could be combined, but the biggest difference is that the Registry is passive and the Agency is active. What I mean is the Registry is just records that someone could act upon. It seems mostly for moving and holding recourses for when "the time is right". The Agency actually gives people orders and has them do things. The two could work in tandem quite well (and maybe they do?), but I can see them as being distinct.