Nevermet Press Debuts with The Desire

December 14, 2009 4 comments

There’s been a sudden spate of “supporting character” PDFs of late. I floated a couple a few months back, with Five Dragons and Damn Fine Pi. Jess Hartley entered the fray with Instant Antagonist: The Selfish Succubus. Those were all systemless forays into creating characters that can be dropped into any setting. With Portrait of a Villain: The Desire, Nevermet Press throws their hat in the ring with a villain specifically for Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition.

Now I have to say, my expectations are high. The guys behind Nevermet Press are extremely talented, and this is their first product. They’ve got a lot riding on this. No pressure, right guys? Add to that the fact that it is a 4E product, and my well-known ambivalence about 4E. The bar is not only set high, but I’m walking into it feeling “meh” about the underlying rules system. But here’s the thing: Michael Brewer wrote the original blog post about The Desire as a system-free thing. Then other authors wrote their own take on the villain, and Nevermet Press stuck 4E statistics on it. That’s what this is: a sort of anthology of viewpoints on a single villain, with stats kind of an afterthough. This I dig. This is the sort of crazy experiment I can get behind.

What we’re given is a sort of Milady Clarick de Winter from The Three Musketeers, as a fantasy character. Abused by a noble, she clawed her way up from the streets to a position of wealth and power. I found The Desire to be a sympathetic character, tragic in many ways, as she’s unable to let go of what was done to her so long ago and enjoy the fruits of her own labors, as she’s still driven only by pain and revenge. Make no mistake; she’s evil. She destroys lives. You can get behind her when she’s ruining people that have it coming, but she’s the type of character who will also wreck families and destroy dynasties simply because she can, because she thinks it might be fun. Yeah, I really dig this character. I like the amount of plot hooks that come naturally out of her description, and of the organizations (there are three listed here) that have arisen with the intention of stopping her. I could run a game where she never even appears, she’s just a name. 4E stats aside, this character could be dropped into a number of places. I’d use her in Houses of the Blooded in a heartbeat. She’s work perfectly in World of Darkness in various iteration; vampire is obvious, but I see her as a great Changeling villain too. I could put her in a supers game as a Lex Luthor type and replace “nobles” with “corporate CEOs” and “trust fund kids”. Call of Cthulhu, the Victorian era or the 1920s, would work. Her story is versatile, and timeless.

I give it a thumb’s up, and look forward to seeing more entries in the Portrait of a Villain series, as well as whatever else Nevermet Press has up their sleeves. For a more traditional review with the nuts and bolts of the PDF, read my article at Examiner.com.

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