We all know why I am writing this…

Antagonism! Non-consent! The boogeyman of Haven RPG (besides the rape and pregnancy code for women). You can fuck it up super easily but if you follow these general guidelines. You will be antagonizing your friends, lovers, enemies, and random strangers successfully today!

1) Pacing

If you want to go hard and fast than you need consequences to be minimal and temporary. If you are willing to go progressive and slow than you can increase the severity/impact of your antagonism. What do I mean?

Lets say that I do not know the person I am antagonizing, we walked into the same RP area like Inkwell. If I want to do hard and fast I might walk up to them, get in their personal space, maybe use a knockoutpunch or something. The encounter will be brief, chaotic, confusing, and violent. But you might leave a message about while soandso was out your character did this or that to them or something. This established your antagonist as violent, possibly unhinged, but not OOC a huge issue. You will raise your risk profile of being a fucking ooc lunatic but as long as you go out of your way to RP tough but mechanic gentle people can be into this.

Now lets say that I am antagonizing an angelborn that I know. I am using desires to get them to come somewhere isolated with me. I am bullying them. Maybe taking their stuff. Maybe undressing them. Maybe beating them up in an alley where they cannot escape. I’m physically assaulting/abusing them and using desires to try and make them stay around for it. I am receiving opt in signals from the player on a few fronts… No call for help. Willingly coming to an isolate area. Staying despite my escalating hostility in RP maybe some light code punching. These are signs they are willing to give me some rope or consenting to the antagonism.

The faster you escalate the more respect/trust you need from your victim. This is achieved by keeping the effects in RP and mechanical punishments light for initial encounters with strangers.

The slower you escalate the more you can watch for buy-in or opt-in signals of people willingly putting themselves into scenarios in which you can antagonism them.

Non-consent antagonism. Do it. 100% but keep it short and sweet and make sure your coded penalties have some justification. But don’t listen to me just remember that anyone deemed unhinged and a danger to the broader public will be brutally hunted down and executed however many times it takes for them to bend the knee and simmer down. It happened at the start of H7 and it can happen again.

2) Trust / Respect

I think (hope) most players want a little antagonism in their lives. I think some of the biggest antagonists in H7 enjoy being counter antagonized. At least I have found that to be true as I have personally rumbled with a few of them and it was all in good spirited fun.

The most important thing to antagonism being about the RP and not getting ganksquaded is earning the trust and respect of your victims. As noted above pacing is important but so is doing things that show you have a character beyond rape/murder/maiming.

Normally it is a good idea to demonstrate your deeper traits earlier before you antagonize or at least make it very clear while you are antagonizing people what the motivation is. So for instance lets hypothetically say you have a punk grung 63rd Lieutenant who has a nihilistic view of the world. When he is antagonizing people he has lured to RP with him it will probably have a lot to do with how they deserve it or not to treat him like an idiot or to make them see how shitty people are especially himself.

Telegraphing / big sign / emphasizing / saying the quiet part outloud on an antagonist about why they antagonize is good because it is easier for people to accept bad things happening to them if they don’t think the other player is a low effort RP scrub who just wants to get the Big Ws.

3) Everyone will Assume the Worst

That is right if you are an active antagonist it is human nature to assume the worst. Is it fair? No. Is it going to happen? Yes! If you do not care about your OOC reputation than ignore this truth and do what you like and drink the tears of your victims / rp partners. If you do care about your OOC reputation and want people to be like soandso is a good antagonist just let them cook than you need to be the bigger person 24/7. You gotta let people escape even if they shouldn’t escape. You gotta be ready to surrender/bargain/runaway from the heroes coming to save the day. You have to do your best not to ruin or waste peoples time and if you accidentally do. Bite that bullet, mea culpa, and continue.

The antagonist who can say my bad OOC and let a scene that is going the wrong way just end is the antagonist who will get a little leeway and grace when the shoe is on the other foot and they are the victim.