As I have said before, the best antagonists have to be human for players to care about them. When the players investigate their backstory, they should find torment that would make them think that they, too, could have wound up like the bad guy in similar circumstances.
Take, for example, Lug’s Clockwork, a Kafkaesque organization I created for a LARP where the players embody the rare humans fighting to be freed of the influence of an Orwellian society. If the main leaders of Lug’s Clockwork are just faceless men in black, the players are going to grow bored fast with them.
That is why I created Julie.
Julie was a bright kid. Her mother took good care of her until she started to go to school. Her mother taught her everything she knew, from home. Protected her from the local bully a few times. Then school started.
Julie wasn’t good with other kids. They bullied her pretty much from day one, and life soon got miserable for her. Her only respite was always with her mother. She came to learn that anything she did well was thanks to her mother, and everything she did wrong was because she tried anything by herself.
By the time she became a teenager, she was grounded most evenings for reasons that had become more and more pointless. Then her mother saw a boy try to flirt with her and, to protect her daughter, sequestered Julie in her basement. The imprisonment lasted a whole summer and ended in November when the school authorities alerted the police about Julie’s disappearance.
Julie was at first traumatized by these faceless policemen who came to take her mother away and send her to a foster home away from all she knew. With time and therapy, she ended up understanding how her mother wronged her, and how much society had failed in protecting her. She knew how much society needed to be more informed, and more in control, about the actions of its people.
Julie was indicted into Lug’s Clockwork because she believed that humans cannot hurt humans if society watches everything all the time, everywhere. “Freedom” is nothing but an excuse to let the bastards and criminals ruin the world for their own ends. The chaos that the players cause in their fight for freedom is nothing but a self-interested fight for anarchy and the world’s end.
This character is right to act as she does when she attacks those things that the players’ characters cherish the most. Some players will even agree with her. At that point, you get real conflict in your event. Dramatic conflicts like this one create the best stories.
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