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  • How to support interesting antagonists?
  • This city devours its villains...

How to support interesting antagonists?
This city devours its villains...

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We've seen this pattern time and time again. An interesting PC antagonist steps into a necessary and game-enriching role that puts them at odds with other PC's. Characters who dare to step outside the norm of "Be nice to everyone all the time" will sometimes face a long, painful social alienation at the hands of other players. Groups of people might dogpile an opponent for playing into the theme; people could go after antagonists relentlessly and plot to perm them. This applies to both higher-level and lowbie antagonists. Sometimes these "heroes" even succeed at perming the antagonist, or they make life for the antagonist so miserable that the antagonist just decides to stop playing their character.

This is NOT A VICTORY. Pushing someone to quit the game due to being ganged up on is not a victory. Getting rid of an antagonist character definitively is not a victory. It doesn't just hurt the antagonists, it hurts their opponents as well who actually cared about the themely conflict that was going on, and wanted to continue it because it was fun and engaging. The game is stagnant without "baddies", villains, and antagonists to plot against and to react to your actions. I always enjoy RP'ing with my IC enemies the most because that tension and conflict is what makes this game so exciting for me.

Think of this scene from Megamind after MetroMan was defeated in the beginning of the movie. That's how it feels to lose an engaging opponent forever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmA5XrsEaTs



I have seen this pattern way too many times and I am tired of losing great RP partners because they are dogpiled and alienated. How can we better support antagonist characters and not cut them down?

(Edited by svetlana at 12:05 am on 4/18/2026)

(Edited by svetlana at 10:45 am on 4/18/2026)

By svetlana 11
I think a big part of this is cliques versus individuals. Even a very skilled antagonist by themselves, or with just hired help, is never a match for a group of motivated characters acting together. So, when the antagonist targets one member of the group now they're contending constantly with multiple people all motivated by entirely legit IC reasons to hit back at them. For the antagonist this is very frustrating, because even with a 'play to lose' mentality it should at least be a loss after a struggle rather than a dogpile after a relatively very light shove.

The solution, I believe, is to further incentivize grouping up. This is crime fiction and cyberpunk fiction we're collaborating on and yet despite the near ubiquitous inclusion therein of crews, cabals, gangs, etc. everyone seems deadset on being professional loners while fiercely guarding their personal relationships / friend groups. I think this needs to be flipped. Get out of your love nests, leave the bar group, and crew up to -accomplish- things. This way, when a fight happens the hits are spread out among several people, preventing that dogpile that leads to perming (either self or inflicted). You can make plans, plot and push stories that involve a lot of people with the give and take of conflict. Everyone can have a moment in the spotlight.

By Thrillimanjaro 8
It's knowing when to pull your punches. If you've been around a while then you likely already have a network: people who will fight for you, and the resources to either pay them or keep yourself armed if you take a loss. You might not even have to pay them if you're close enough.

Time and time again these larger, and more established groups, have gone out of their way to demolish characters who are just starting off. You don't need to resort to the nuclear option over someone who stands no chance against you. It's okay to have a back and forth with them, and to only escalate if they keep pushing it. You don't have to treat every act of hostility against you like and it's an unforgivable, and final offense.

Most players who do antag stuff aren't gonna be skilled enough, or have the UE to fend off even one max UE character who wants them gone. Sindome has had a problem probably since its inception where instead of one max UE character, it's five of them dogpiling on one dip who made the mistake of working the wrong bar. Just as one example.

If you want these characters to last then you have to string conflicts out even if there might be more risk to you that way. The cyberpunk genre being gritty doesn't need to extend to us being that gritty to each other. At least not all the time. It's a matter of adjusting the level of violence to suit the target. Maybe hire out instead of doing it yourself if you know they're a pushover. Or maybe just ignore them.

By Necronex666 3

I believe that the issue is no one is playing an interesting antagonist really. It tends to be kicking down and literal bullying with no way to make it stop. Add into it Once you do pay your dues, and get to where you can defend yourself. you see the real meta game. Always Shrouded, always in a car or AV, never in public, never throw events.

Think about it. How are you supposed to have fun fighting someone that never does shit?

I deleted a lot here because I don't wanna go to IC. But shit is boring lately. And i think the player numbers show that. it's like 15-ish of our most active players have BARELY logged on since easter. And a handful of them were complaining about this issue a while before that.

(Edited by SmokePotion at 6:23 am on 4/18/2026)

By SmokePotion 3
The entire game is kind of set up to encourage punch-down dogpiling.

If you lack the UE or gear to deal with someone yourself, you bring more friends. If you lack the friends to deal with other people dogpiling you, you start to shrink up and calcify into the forever-disguised, sleeps-in-their-AV-on-a-rooftop entity that only ever emerges in to the gameworld to sneak five rooms into a bar and use the 'kill' verb on someone.

From top to bottom, the whole setup is seemingly designed to strangle people out of having meaningful interactions with one another in conflict. It isn't really that surprising that things've gotten quiet lately and people have stopped logging on very often, because what fun is there in either turtling up for months to become competitive or just straight up immediately and viscerally losing if you set out to try?

There's also a very real thing where a lot of the antagonist characters around recently just haven't been that interesting. They're not really villains as much as stage hazards - people who treat other PCs like NPCs to farm for gear and loot. You can see this especially with how many ancient characters are still gangers. People are stepping out and trying to do things and just being essentially treated like a level 2 goblin mob and either waking up in the vats sans weeks worth of time and investment or hobbling back home to apartment-RP for hours/days while they heal.

Big, big issue. No idea how to fix it, either.

By Ameliorative 5
"Don't fight a war on multiple fronts".

Or, to put it a little less vaguely… pacing and subtlety can have a massive effect on the longevity of an antagonist.

If Antagonist A rolls through the gate and in the course of one day spray paints insults on someone else's territory and mugs someone for their chy and vats someone else because they found an easy mark with big gains... that's not one "group" they've pissed off, it's three. Three potential groups all with legitimate IC reasons to come after the antagonist that might not even know about the others and certainly aren't guaranteed to be working together.

They make a big splash and stir things up, but it's very likely that they're going to die not because of some coordinated effort, but the cumulative 'effect' of the responses from multiple parties.

Like burning the candle at both ends, it's going to blaze brighter but half as long as someone that only mugs one person on day 1 and waits a bit before vatting someone and basically, paces things out. Or manages to convince people that it was someone else who did the crime.

Yeh, people need to not go overboard with their responses, but maybe keep in mind when racking up those crimes that each PC targeted is probably going to want to get their own back and plan accordingly, too.

By Huntresskai 2
It's not just a punching down or UE issue I feel, although that certainly plays the the biggest especially for 'mix' antagonists. I haven't been nearly as long as other players but we've recentley seen a successful topside antagonist with definetly an amount of resources required to help push the narrative forward, still leave the game.

It's a combination of the OOC players mentality and the environment around them. I do think sometimes people blur the lines of ooc and ic treatment, perhaps not on purpose. But this is how it may seem to people who roleplay antagonists. But just because someone does horrible things icly, or even says horrible stuff on pubsic. This doesn't mean that the player behind said character actually thinks this or is some psycho on a power fantasy. Simmilarly, if a character does bad things to you, it doesn't mean they OOCLY hate you. Although it seems obvious, I do think alot of people don't understand that.

When you play the role of a dome-wide villain, characters will of course hate you. And some people who might not be that good at separating IC and OOC feelings may end up not liking you oocly because of how you play your character, although it's not always the case. You can sometimes tell with how people interact on BGBB and such.

In such cases even the most equipped villain who's actually succeeding at moving the plot forward might actually stop enjoying themselves, because they feel like everyone oocly hates them or is secretly judging them, even staff (which is probably never the case).

Since the inception of my character, they have constantly been antagonizing people and pissing people off. And I do also realize that while their vat numbers are much higher compared to others characters and i've certainly lost alot, I have had an extremely fun time roleplaying with characters that ICLY hate mines guts. Rarely I am shown lenience when I fuck up and get caught, other times not. That will always be how the game is I think.

TL;DR You will always die and lose gear. And even if you're successful, the feeling of having OOC animosity towards you may still be enough to drive you out. It's important we teach each other that this is just a roleplaying game in the end and we dont wish any ill towards others behind the screen. This can be by roleplaying with the people you intend to kill, sometimes speaking in accents can help feed into the immersion. I think that rampage event helped with the OOC/IC divide for example. I also think if we encourage such an environment, where we realize that the other character is just a player trying to have a good time and we aren't in an OOC competition to see who can win the most, co-operative competition will naturally follow.

By Mikael 6
You can't play an antagonist because too many people take things super personally and lack the ability to separate themselves from their characters.

You also have a hard time antagonizing because rarely does anyone ever seem to be antagonized the way they want to be so they just cope with things like "oh this is not good antagonistic behavior!" Or pretend they know everything their enemy is doing and complain amongst them and their friend groups about it in the echo chamber.

Can you blame anyone for not wanting to continue putting much effort into it?

By Mindhunter 6
If most people subscribed to the mind your business mentality, it'd help grow conflict between characters a lot.

Doesn't involve you or you aren't being paid? Mind your business.

By crashdown 3
I know this is mainly focused on lower end antags but one thing I think is also relevant is that a lot of players don't understand the roles they have chosen to put their characters in when it comes to dealing with higher level antags.

One example I like to use is the highest tiers of organized crime, and I think that is obvious enough without needing to name names. The antagonists in these fields are typically running entire ecosystems and parts of the economy. There is a lot of plot and action by proxy going on. They are not required to lease a night club and running a night club might not be their playstyle or something they even enjoy, ten fold if it isn't even profitable to do so. "They sit in their car! They don't have parties!" "They're bullying." Is such a wild complaint with all of these things considered. If you don't enter into this realm you typically don't have to deal with it.

I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect characters with different levels of power and backing to engage on equal terms. That hierarchy is part of the setting. But I do think conflict works best when people feel like they have something to push back against, even if it’s indirect. I think where you run into a brick wall on pushing back is that your expectations are not lining up with what you can actually do, or what you are willing to do.

By Mindhunter 3
In all honesty my post was about higher level characters being driven away by the player base but I didn't want to get too specific.

It's no fun trying to push engaging plots on a high level when there's no one to react to it. Feels like shouting into the void and it's discouraging.



I long for characters to step into an opposing role but in the current state of things, higher level antags are so often dogpiled en masse and alienated that I'm not surprised people don't choose those archetypes.

(Edited by svetlana at 10:56 am on 4/18/2026)

By svetlana 3
Mindhunter:

I'de like to make the flip side of this debate:

If you've reached the level where you are controlling swaths of the economy, and leases. Then it is literally your job to have parties thrown in your clubs. Even if you don't throw them. And yes. Even if they are unprofitable. In fact, them being unprofitable is kinda the point. Organized crime makes bank. You are supposed to be showing off what the top of the top is. Show off that money, show off that influence. You can make more money. Not hard to shit out 25-40k a week in profits.

By SmokePotion 1
"Mindhunter:

I'de like to make the flip side of this debate:

If you've reached the level where you are controlling swaths of the economy, and leases. Then it is literally your job to have parties thrown in your clubs. Even if you don't throw them. And yes. Even if they are unprofitable. In fact, them being unprofitable is kinda the point. Organized crime makes bank. You are supposed to be showing off what the top of the top is. Show off that money, show off that influence. You can make more money. Not hard to shit out 25-40k a week in profits."

I don't believe in needing leases, as you don't quite need one to throw some kind of event. If you have a lease to a business the sure. Otherwise that's not really a debate, it's just an opinion. There is zero requirement for anyone who plays in the organized crime realm to lease a business.

(Edited by Mindhunter at 3:01 pm on 4/20/2026)

By Mindhunter 2
I didn't say there was.

Nor is there a requirement for you to do more then your role requirements of developing assets.

But we are talking about supporting interesting antagonists here. And lemme ask you. How fun is it to fight something you cant do anything against, because they just… I dunno. Sit in an AV on top of a building, only moving to catch more sicnal?

Does that sound like an interesting antagonist to you? Like honestly. Sit back and think about it.

Wouldn't you rather have an antagonist that throws an occasional event to mess with? One that goes to other peoples events and openly shows off their factions wealth and influence? An enemy you can engage with somehow?

Or would you rather one that sits in a cube all day, occasionally throwing shade on pubsic but not really doing much more?

By SmokePotion 3
"I didn't say there was.

Nor is there a requirement for you to do more then your role requirements of developing assets.

But we are talking about supporting interesting antagonists here. And lemme ask you. How fun is it to fight something you cant do anything against, because they just… I dunno. Sit in an AV on top of a building, only moving to catch more sicnal?

Does that sound like an interesting antagonist to you? Like honestly. Sit back and think about it.

Wouldn't you rather have an antagonist that throws an occasional event to mess with? One that goes to other peoples events and openly shows off their factions wealth and influence? An enemy you can engage with somehow?

Or would you rather one that sits in a cube all day, occasionally throwing shade on pubsic but not really doing much more?"

You’re framing this like the only two options are “untouchable sky ghost” or “party host,” which is kind of not realistic and again, an opinon.

When you reach that level of status you are literally required to loop a bunch of people into your plots, schemes, etc. you can do all of this all day without having a tea party or techno-rave. In fact, someone might even be doing these things on your behalf because you A: don't enjoy running those things or B: you don't have time for those things, either way, you don't have to throw events.

No one is required to come down and host events just to be interactable. The interaction is already there, it just isn’t always face-to-face. What you're framing here seems a lot of like assumptions or echo chamber talk. If someone sits in a cube all day playing on SIC, they are not who we are discussing. They're just someone who sits in a cube all day playing on SIC.

By Mindhunter 4
Every time we have one of these threads, people just get bogged down in discussing technicalities or fixating on frivolous fringe 'what ifs'. The party host stuff doesn't matter.

In fact, these threads probably don't matter either. No amount of finger-wagging vagueposting is going to make people suddenly stop playing the way they've been playing for months and years at this point. Only the staff can really do anything about it.

By Ameliorative 2
The way people react to antagonists is the same as any global chat. It is appropriate, and even extremely understood IC to hate the antagonists and shit on them, run them out, and celebrate when they leave. However, you have a responsibility that extends beyond your character, and if you don't exercise it, I think you're a shitty fucking roleplayer.

Make a character who doesn't need to generate a hostile environment to everyone who does something bad. Find a way to justify it, or just shut the hell up some times. If one person is calling someone out, don't chime in. Two people? Definitely stay out of it. Three? Start telling them to knock it off.

Respond in person not pubsic, or even better, respond in private. Engage with them in public spaces in ways beyond being a nasty shithead. If they are antagonizing you personally? The rules are different, obviously, if they did something bad to someone else? Get it out of your system and move on. Resolve the fucking conflict or let it gooooooooo.

(Edited by Pladdicus at 9:02 am on 4/22/2026)

By Pladdicus 3
"In fact, these threads probably don't matter either. No amount of finger-wagging vagueposting is going to make people suddenly stop playing the way they've been playing for months and years at this point. Only the staff can really do anything about it."

I largely agree with this sentiment. I have hope that offering some vague insight into certain things could perhaps change perspectives but at the end of the day I think you're right and people take these threads as an opportunity to vaguely display their displeasure with others.

By Mindhunter 2
The issue is purely cultural. And it's something Staff can and imo should be helping with. If a player steps into antag role and is doing good work, support them a little more from the shadows. They are helping staff out by providing content for people to engage with, so the least staff can do is back them up!

Sindome is a harsh world, and a harsh game. You should always feel encouraged to fuck someone over. However, when the tools you're using aren't the mechanical ones, when you aren't vatting, interrogating, betraying, or engaging with the game world in these mechanical means with mechanical consequences, but instead, just giving someone shit, or calling them out, trying to ostracize or making fun of them or their private lives, I think you're being an extremely boring player. It has it's place, but when you're the tenth person solely engaging with the same person in purely social ways? What value do you think you're bringing to the conflict?

Just, yanno! USE YOUR HEADS! And maybe so, Mindhunter! But I think one person will read this and go woops! I was participating in a toxic environment that was making Sindome less interesting, I think I'll modify how I engage with antagonism moving forward. That's the dream!

By Pladdicus 3
accidental double post

(Edited by Veleth at 9:59 am on 4/22/2026)

By Veleth 0
sometimes ive wanted to quit the game bcuz the SIC dogpiling feels extremely OOC motivated at times, to the point where i feel more like i'm being bullied rather than my character being bullied. i can separate IC and OOC and i can usually tell when people can/can't. it makes it extremely hard to play anyone remotely antagonizing because some people seem to act the same way IC/OOC and it starts feeling personal.

in no other RP game i've ever played have i experienced social anxiety or any great level of bleed. just in Sindome, which is insane. but there's something perhaps about the player culture. it's also usually what causes me to drop characters because the fun of a well-thought out character is watered down or ruined by OOC-fueled toxicity.

(Edited by Veleth at 10:10 am on 4/22/2026)

By Veleth 1
honestly sindome gives me the least because of the lack of ooc communication. i just get to assume they don't know who i am and are purely responding to my rp and character! which is great! I think, honestly, everyone is doing this stuff in good faith, just, I think when you play a game like a sim for multiple hours a day you can get a little lazy about your intentionality when engaging with certain things.

it's very human and correct to respond to antags and want to destroy them for your character, it's just bad for the game and we should put some effort in to improving these interactions or very simply choosing not to engage.

By Pladdicus 3
see i tend to assume that people are RPing until everything starts feeling like a shitpost forum or people are making vague insinuations about you that are borderline smallworlding or metagaming based on having figured out who they player is, et cetera. ive even seen oldbies do this.

and in my personal experience, tho this is derailing it a bit, in games where OOC communication has been less limited i've actually seen less toxicity, personally, tho it still existed, there was more of an understanding of "this is just my character".

(Edited by Veleth at 10:07 am on 4/22/2026)

By Veleth 1
I think there is a place for SIC calling out that doesn't necessarily lead to in person conflict and that's when it's enforcing theme; corpies vs mixers, gang vs gang, syndie vs syndie, etc. Should these lead to conflict eventually? Sure, but there shouldn't be an onus to rush it.

When a Mixer and a Corpie spar on SIC or corpies make fun of a Mixer's misfortune everyone should be aware of what's going on intuitively IC. The dismissal of the plight of Mixers is something MORE topside characters should be doing IMO. Do some go hard? Yes, those are antagonists and I'll speak from personal experience that when it's done it's an invitation to engage antagonistically. You can't really advertise 'looking for enemies' so you start shit on SIC and, ideally, it develops from there in a myriad of ways.

By Thrillimanjaro 6
i do wanna see more anti-mixer corpies. so many corpies were former mixers and they seem to hate acting anti-mix. as if it's too hateful a theme to RP. but i enjoy the class divide.
By Veleth 3
I get the feeling a lot of people are reluctant to slide towards playing up either end of the class divide because of how binary conflict tends to end up as a general rule. It doesn't take a lot of people to mismanage the antagonist beat to pivot people's perceptions about the idea generally speaking from 'this person is playing a fun and engaging villain' to 'this person is playing a power-tripping murderhobo'.

You leave more doors open, have a higher chance of actually getting interesting interactions and survive significantly longer for not polarizing yourself, so why would you bother in the first place? So people don't. And they haven't.

By Ameliorative 1
I was reading this thread while feeling a bit burnt out myself lately, and I remembered that it had a lot of interesting points being raised. One thing I did not think about that I think about now, is how we conduct ourselves on SIC.

To be blunt, I HATE SIC. I hate global communication in most forms. I believe it serves as a massive distraction, but it is a part of the game and not going anywhere, so instead of advocating for its demise I think it would instead be more constructive to examine how we as players, not as characters, make use of the SIC.

The SIC gives you immediate access to people you otherwise would have not much business having access too. Without SIC, it would be very difficult for an immigrant to walk into town and start interacting with a mob boss without a chance encounter. It would be difficult to spread misinformation without much thought, it would be difficult to call for help, it would be difficult to smallworld, it would be difficult to do a lot of things.

Am I saying the SIC is the biggest problem to stifling antagonists as it pertains to the topic? I don't know. I really don't. I think though that when we get into those modes where we are not engaged in doing something and just sitting around bored, doing the SIC banter, which we ALL are guilty of, we open ourselves up into engaging with players we don't really need to engage with in that manner, or inviting ourselves into the business of others, or vice versa. Dog piling, the Victory Bleed, the need to be involved, and just general access I think are elements that stifle antagonism and help contribute to bad feelings and bleed. I think all of these things are blending together lately too.
By Mindhunter 5
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