The paper pusher is a villain perfect for games set in the real world, particularly with special powers downplayed. They can be a good background plot for any game, but Paper Pushers shine in police procedurals and games without four color fights.
White collar crime is far more lucrative, less dangerous, and carries lesser criminal penalties than violent crime in the real world. The space for paper pushers is wide–stretching from blatant ponzi schemes, managers shaving their employee’s pay, investors using an “insider edge” to make a killing on the stock market, companies illegally colluding to cripple energy (or materials, or futures, or…) markets and walking away with vast sums, or even “bean counting” and paying off wrongful death suits because it’s cheaper than fixing a known problem.
Paper Pushers
Your villain might commit crimes for many reasons, such as: desperation, “cold logic and a calculator”, a sense of entitlement, laziness, or as a consequence of their former employment. It can be difficult to make paper pushers feel threatening–usually that’s the last thing they want their marks to feel–but Leverage made Paper Pushers interesting for five seasons.
Most of the time, PCs won’t be the target of these criminals–it’ll usually be the people the PCs know, love, depend on, and associate with who suffer their ravages. Sometimes the schemes manifest like a natural disaster, breaking suddenly across a city and leaving only a tide of foreclosures; or entire social circles find themselves impoverished when their investments are revealed as junk bonds.
Some villainy is slower to manifest; one poisoned child at a time resulting from exposure to dumped toxins in the stream (but saving disposal fees), or social circles losing character by dragging friends and communities into the pyramid scheme, member by member.
Manifestations:
- A PCs’ friend starts trying to recruit them into a “great opportunity”, pointing out how much money they’ll make when their recruits pay their percentage in turn. Have you met Arnold? He drives a Maserati after only two years…
- One of the PC’s parents calls them out of the blue and ashamedly beg to crash on their couch until they get back on their feet. Their agent sent fake paperwork and personally cashed their insurance checks… after the fire, they found out they were never insured.
- The troops the PCs are leading in the raid are doing well… until it’s time to reload. They find that the “well connected” arms supplier cut corners, leading to a huge misfire rate and their troops literally being as at risk from their own guns as their foes’.
- A PC’s credit card is declined; investigation shows that someone else has been emptying their funds. Who needs to refill the plane anyway?
- A crooked wrestling promoter fixes matches for the mafia; if you don’t go down when you’re told, you’ll never wrestle again… if you’re allowed to live.
MO: Indirection, legal chicanery, fast talk/high pressure sales tactics, or just a willingness to cut corners or cheat while ignoring the consequences are common approaches to white collar crime. Done right, victims never notice what was done until it’s too late. Or they find they’re powerless to fight the abuse, even if it is illegal.
The approach to crime can be very generic–someone who is good at talking might try their hand at any con–while others use their connections and experience to practice their villainy. The plastics guy who invests in industry stocks has a limited scope, while a CEO might use the company’s PR department to slant coverage of their misdeeds, have his lawyers negotiate a sweetheart settlement with regulators, or even pay restitution… that is trivial, leaving the company culture unchanged.
Traits: Paper Pushers are incredibly common as criminals; if you don’t have people faking IDs, stealing identities, and bilking grandma out of her pension with a “special reverse mortgage,” your world will probably feel less real–just because it’s so common in news stories, and among the people you know.
Paper pushers make good expediters for your main villains. They can launder drug money, provide false identities, identify likely marks, use connections to get rosters and timetables, and provide social connections and lawyers if necessary.
Advantage: These villains come from all walks of life. Complex schemes provide lots of petty criminals–neutralizing one puts the remainder of the network on alert. Because they’re rarely violent, PCs and police don’t fight them with the same urgency as terrorists or vampires. Even if captured, most Paper Pushers will be free for years before their trial makes it to court–if it’s not settled first.
Relative Power: On the other end of the spectrum, successful Paper Pushers often have vast wealth at their disposal; they can afford to hire the best security, both physical and technological. They tend to be defensive–fighting to keep what they’ve stolen, or to hide their misdeeds–which lures the PCs to fight on the villain’s home turf. Even more frustrating, the villain might be tipped off when the PCs are driving over to investigate, or good enough friends with the mayor that the police are reluctant to interfere.
Turned Tables: Once the PCs know who their mark is, they can start figuring out how to strike back. If they’re direct and violent, they face far worse sentences for their actions than the Paper Pusher ever did. More subtle investigators seek proof of misdeeds–the patent application in the handwriting of their client, tapes of the sordid discussions where criminal deeds were weighed, records of absenteeism in the days after testing their new formula in a crop duster, or the engineer’s calculations of cost for the recall. With that in hand, the PCs should be able to enlist someone beyond the reach of the criminal to begin prosecution.
Paper Pushers in Your Games
I’ve rarely used paper pushers as anything other than low level criminal “helpers”, never really giving them the spotlight. Have you used paper pushers to good advantage in your games? I’d love to hear your stories in comments.
We created a PF prestige class in our Way of the Samurai supplement for the Kaidan setting of Japanese horror called the Bugyo, that is essentially a government official from tax collectors to appointed governors. One of his class features is called Master of the Long Form allows him to add his class level to non-combat intimidation attempts using threats of his legal standing and bureaucratic paperwork to delay legal actions, requests for favors and allowances and other areas that government intervention is required. He gains bonuses to diplomacy, knowledge skills and leadership. He is essentially a paper pushing samurai lord. Ideally this guy makes for a powerful leader of a samurai house protected by house retainer samurai. This guy is the consumate paper pusher for a feudal Japanese environment.
I like that, and it fits my mental tradition of Imperial China-like bureaucratic rule. It sounds like a very verisimilitude building role in your game.
I have never used paper pushers as villains. I have used them as allies for the party. PCs need to clear their name? Paper pusher delays warrant to search their base, giving them time to get illegal items out and keep hunting the real wrong-doer. Paper pushers can also be handy by having contacts- getting the party into areas they don’t have access, forging documents, and other paper related methods of assisting the group.
Although, every time taxes get collected in a game is a good opportunity to use this villain.
True! Just try confiscating the hard won loot, won at perilous cost and the sacrifice of their comrades, and you’ll rile up a party of adventurers more quickly than you can imagine.
I agree, Razjah. The elements of the setting that allow a paper pusher to be a villain allow one to be a valuable ally as well. In my own long-term game the PCs befriended a lawyer/solicitor type in a major city. He’s only a mid-level functionary but his intelligence and familiarity with local law and politics enabled him to help things break well for the party. The party was wise to cultivate his friendship, as his assistance was crucial when a foreign power accused them of serious crimes and attempted to have them extradited– to a country where certain death sentences awaited.
I once used the “Paper Pusher” in a Star Wars campaign. He was an imperial customs official along a major trade route. He was a constant thorn in the side of the PCs, putting them through shiploads of red tape at every opportunity.
Inspector Blackburn was also corrupt. When the PCs figured out that he was giving them an extra hard time due to his affiliation with a rival in the smuggling arena, the PCs took matters into their own hands. They abducted the paper pusher by locking him and his two guards in a cargo container. They then dropped the container off on Kashyyyk and let that planet’s ecosystem clear up the bureaucratic hassles for good. 🙂
Does anyone ever worry that for almost every problem in an rpg, the answer is to kill the enemy? I worry about my group sometimes. Big enemies- those I understand. But someone who was just throwing red tape at the PCs to make their lives difficult-killing seems extreme.
True… but, honestly, most players are looking for some simple relief after a tough week. If you are imagining the supervisors who demand your TPS forms when the bureaucrat goes in the container, it’s probably good for mental health. Right?
Paper pushers work great as villains in Lawful Evil environments. Those are settings where laws are written specifically to keep the powerful up and the rest down, where punishments are severe, and enforcement is unforgiving.
Imagine a mid-level bureaucrat at the tax office who misfiles a party member’s payment. Suddenly huge fines are levied for nonpayment of taxes, a lien is attached to his or her house, sheriffs come to drag the PC away in chains, and the PC struggles to clear his or her name from prison while the property is sold through foreclosure to politically well connected rivals.
The Lawful Evil nature of the setting is critical to make paper pushers work as significant villains. Without strong rule of law, the challenge simply becomes one of might. Do the PCs have the skill and resources to overcome the villain directly? And without the evil (or uncaringly neutral) moral stance of the setting, the challenge can be solved simply by going over the villain’s head. PCs can simply appealing the bureaucrat’s corrupt or dishonest behavior to his morally straight superiors.
Good points. You’re right; the backing of a paper pusher by the state makes them much more intimidating… and not in a sword measuring way. When your non-compliance means your whole clan is attainted… that’s true misery, at the stroke of a pen.
The Paper Pusher is the most villainous creature of all time and I use them frequently. One man’s “evil” paper pusher is another man’s “advocate”. PC’s have too much wealth? Send a Paper Pusher to drain the accounts, sell their real estate out from under them, levy taxes, and make the PC’s waste money on lawyers. That last combat was a great victory for The World And Life As We Know It, but all those stray bullets went somewhere! Make the PC’s spend favors they have accumulated to beat the latest criminal charges and civil suit (or to stay out of jail for the year while things worm their way through the courts).
That sounds horrible–in a mostly good way. You’ll need to make sure that the players experience it as fun or reasonable; if they think you’re punishing them OOC, or clawing back fairly won rewards, you might have a mutiny on your hands.
One or two paper pushers are spice. Unless you’re building the experience of an evil empire (like Blackjack’s, above), more than those few can feel like an evil GM, not the natural game world.
I think this could be used well in games that allow concessions (i.e. Dresden Files and FATE Core). Sure you mop up the enemies, and they don’t escape. But now you need to spend time, money, and get those aspects invoked to keep the muggles… well muggles.
Paper pushers keeping the party’s resources stretched can be a great way to make a “darkest hour” type situation. Not only did the villain get away, but now the hospital is trying to sue you for destroying the ICU. Oh, and while you deal with the legalities of stopping a demon summoning, the villain is off doing it again.
I like using paper pushers as 230 Therapy suggested, to provide some drag against the party’s forward movement. But yes, players do tend to get irritated with it.
I went through this in a recent adventure where a powerful dragon attacked a major seaport. In the battle quite a bit of property was destroyed– waterfront businesses were flooded, docks were destroyed, ships burned and their cargo sunken. After the battle the duke intimated to the party that the dragon’s treasure hoard should be used to reimburse property losses before being split out as personal booty. The PCs were livid. Ultimately they did it as they are generally Good-aligned and so is the duke, but to this day they still grumble about how they “had to buy off the duke” with “their” treasure.
I love this series.
I don’t typically use paper pushers in my games, since I tend to run more towards high-action fantasy. That said, combining this type of villain with other types can work well.
In my ongoing Deadlands game, I have a villain named Joseph Bearclaw, who runs the Office of Mining Affairs in town on belhaf of the Sioux. He’s actually working for the Order of the Raven, and uses his position to funnel information about strikes and people asking questions to the Ravenites in order to ensure conflict. The party hasn’t caught on to his activities yet, mostly because they’ve been dealing with other matters that haven’t brought them into his sphere of influence. But he’s there, lurking.
For an example of a Paper Pusher as a primary villain, look at Lex Luthor. He wantonly kills people, deliberately experiments on living creatures (many humans in his employ), and generally does every ugly thing a corporation can do, and more or less gets away with it. Every thing is covered somehow, so he can act with impunity. Bodies are hidden, patsies are framed, and Luthor walks away smelling like a rose, but pissed because Superman is still out there, stinking alien scum that he is. 🙂
In a superhero setting I once had an Iron Man-like character, complete with his own company, who ending up loosing it because he had not taken any business related skills and his accountant embezzled a huge amount and fled the country. He eventually got his company back (and purchased a bunch of CEO-type skills) but the look on his face when the IRS showed up to close his company down was priceless.
YOINK. Thank you for reminding me how to mess with players who like to min/max too much. Definitely framing this example in my mental catalogue!