Villainous Douchebag Threshold

>>51925811
This depends on your group. That's not a terribly helpful answer I know, but truthfully the line isn't about specific actions as much as what violates the mood your group is going for.

>>51926237
Think about it like a movie, what genre is your campaign? You said intrigue, but are we talking classical literature, where a love interest to a main character dying due to that characters own failure fits the themes and is an excellent opportunity for brooding? Or are we talking something more like say, the Winter Soldier (MCU) where the intrigue is more about threatening the main characters than actually harming them? Could we we are talking Game of Thrones level brutality, where the players are lucky if the princess inst horribly rape-murdered and her whole family burned to death?

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>>51925811
I hate to say this, but you should already kind of know by now.

One of the benefits of doing a session zero before a campaign is so that everyone talks about what they want to see, and expect from a game. Topics such as realism, tone, difficulty, grimdarkness, horror, etc, should have come up.

When everyone is on the same page for expectations, there's no disappointments and a lot less arguments, and you know in which direction to drive the campaign, because you know what your players want to see.

Personally, I think what you're doing is cool, and if you play a villain right it's perfectly fine for the players to hate you a little bit because of how douchey you presented that villain. Eventually they'll appreciate it, and learn to love to hate the guy, and understand it was just all part of the game and your job to present them an intelligent, capable, and hopefully memorable antagonist.

Go forth and be brutal.

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On the Douchebag scale how retarded on every level is trying to ban fire?

>>51925811
When bad stuff happens, the players want to feel like they had a fair chance at stopping it. If they feel like you didn't give them a shot at getting things right, they'll hold it against you as a DM.

>>51927302
>trying to ban fire?

what

>>51927488
The least retarded thing in the series.

>>51927488
I remember reading it up to the 12 volume a few years ago. I don't remember this, can you remind me what is up with that?
>>51928345
There are a lot of stupid thing in the series
>BDSM fetish girl with pain dildos weapons
>evil chicken
>rape rape rape, if there is a bad guy he is automatically a rapist
>every girl is drooling over the protagonist
>Richard and his gal are the most perfect being in the settings

>>51928935
First book. Original Magic Hitler's dad died in a wizard fireball attack and he got caught in the blast radius, burning half his dick off. So he decided to ban fire. All fires now had to be strictly licensed.

At the time I just remember it being retarded as all fucking hell. Looking back it was probably the authors views on gun control.

>>51929277
I think it's coming back to me now, I don't reckon the burned dick part though

>>51929307
It was why he kept licking his fingers and touching his dick. Also he tortured a courtesan to death because when he dropped his trousers she giggled.

Subtlety was not Goodkind's strong suit. Although exactly what his strong suit was is anyone's guess. Except soapboxing, obviously.

>>51927176
this

>>51927360
and this

>>51931596
he gets that shit published so he's got that going for him.

>>51932118
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_Came_the_Stranger

>>51925811
> Dick move, this enrages the party.
Perfect motivation to take the guy down. May only work once, maybe twice.
Definitely risks them never getting into anything ever again because you'll just snatch it away from them.
> Standard villain move
Relies on murderhobos having compassion.
> Jerk around character and player
This risks pissing off the player, possibly the entire group. DO NOT DO THIS UNLESS YOU'RE SURE SOMEONE WON'T TAKE IT PERSONALLY OOC.

Also, try not to giggle to yourself while the party does all the work you're going to fuck them out of.

>>51929277
Fuck, I remember that now. I ended up skipping an entire chapter that was basically banging on about someone's BDSM training at length. What could have been a paragraph or two was an ENTIRE GODDAMN CHAPTER.
I don't think I ever finished the book. It's one of the few I've given up on in disgust.
Seeing as the other notable one was an inch and a half of explaining meditation and hare krishna philosophy, that's how bad that shit was.