How My Worldview Influences My Storytelling

I’ve always had a very Black and White view of the world. There’s what’s right, there’s what’s wrong, and anything else is just excuses we tell ourselves to try to justify the wrong we do or see in the world. Seeing those gray areas has always been difficult for me. One of the reasons why Grey from A Place to Belong is the way he is. I keep choosing Tremere for a reason; we have that shared compulsion of perfection: something is either perfect or it's not, it’s either right or it’s not. 

And there are a lot of imperfections in the world. 

I framed the villains in the campaign around the evils I’ve seen in the world. Self-righteous religions, cruel organizations, horrors beyond our comprehension, and the corrupted nature lashing back at us for all we’ve done to it. To me, there was really only one side of the story: these evils needed to be stopped. Nature needs to be cared for, zealots need to be stopped regardless of the source of their zeal, and understanding makes things that are horrifying less so. 

The gaming world allows me the opportunity to right the wrongs of the world, even if they don’t get to be righted permanently in our actual world. It was an opportunity to lay them before a group of heroes I wished existed and destroy them, one by one, like dominos. They gain power as time goes on and they’re left unchecked, but so do my little group of heroes. I cause them to suffer at the hands of these evils, develop the resentment that I’ve felt billowing up inside me, and direct it at those who deserve it. While many names are still unknown to you as an audience, one thing you can take away from this is that the villains I produce are all worthy of disdain. 

Now, that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few sympathetic villains thrown in there, however they are never what is called the BBEG in gaming. The BBEG (or Big Bad Evil Guy) can never and should never be sympathetic. If you look at the Avengers movie, Loki was a villain, but he wasn’t even close to the BBEG, he was a lesser villain who was being manipulated into actions he may have agreed with on some level, but never would have conceived of on his own. He was capable of change, and with the proper development, became a character that audiences rooted for. 

That’s the difference between a villain and a sympathetic villain. We rooted for Darth Vader when he turned from the dark side to save his son, but we would never root for the Emperor (and if you do, get out, we don’t need that kind of negativity in our lives). Vader turned to the dark side because he saw the corruption of the light and wanted to change the world, learning too late that the changes he made, the ‘law and order’ he was establishing, was worse than the chaos of war he was raised in. 

Is every Druid of the Wastes or Brotherhood foot soldier an irremediable villain? 

Of course not. 

Are each of them worth trying to save? 

Please don’t… They have no name or back story. 

There will be characters to humanize the enemy in the books. I promise you that not every battle is going to be between our heroes and Nameless/Faceless Stormtroopers. There are smaller villains who can be saved, some that don’t want to be, and some that don’t deserve the energy spent to save them. And there are people like that in real life too. 

There are people in my life that are good people, but fail to see the evil in the world either because they don’t want to see it, and can afford to ignore it. Can afford to look at their own problems and say “I can’t do anything about that because I have to deal with this.” The idea that we should see these people as just as evil as the monsters is now suddenly so laughable to me as I’ve been growing as a person. They’re not evil, they’re overwhelmed. Their minds are so beaten down by other problems how can I be surprised when they look at another problem being thrust at them and reject it?

There are nameless, faceless villains goose-stepping their way through the streets who deserve to be treated like the Stormtroopers or Orcs that they are. Fodder for the heroes to carve through and mocked as they Wilhelm Scream their way off screen and into an endless abyss to the sound of cheers and laughter. 

Then there are named villains. The dragons that heroes must go and slay. These are obvious to anyone with eyes. These are true monsters, and unfortunately I’m learning that many of them are given the Crocodile treatment (again, another One Piece reference) where they’re given hero status or a pass because of some meager benefits something they own provides, despite the deplorable circumstances around how it was developed and is run. 

I was raised on a steady diet of Good versus Evil. I’ve been shown a world of unreliable narrators and imperfect heroes who don’t want such lofty titles despite the fact that they are the living embodiments of heroes, not because they choose to be so, but because they can’t act in any way but as heroes. Their own personal compass won’t allow anything else. My friends, who play the heroes of my fictional world, sometimes struggle to pick the mean dialogue option in video games because they don’t want to treat an NPC unfairly or with cruelty. 

So what part of my worldview truly influences my storytelling? It isn’t what the world is but what I want the world to be.

I want to live in a kind world. 

I want to live in a just world. 

I want to live in a safe world. 

A fed world. 

A hopeful world. 

A happy world.

More than anything, a free world. 

No matter what I throw at my heroes, I know I can trust them, despite interpersonal conflicts and party dynamics, to choose the path toward a better world, because their sense of justice, kindness, and freedom won’t allow them to choose anything else. And no matter how many times I tell myself that I am not a good person, that I can be just as cruel and ruthless as anyone else, I find myself choosing those same options. 

Because that’s what heroes do. Whether they want to or not.