I know I'm already flirting with cringe because the whole Batman/Joker thing has been played out for like a decade now but I've been kicking around the idea of a Demiplane of Dread for D&D loosely based on Gotham (But probably more Victorian), Batman and Joker. Before you roll your eyes too hard, I've been kicking around the idea that the Not-Batman is a Straud-esque Dread Lord of the Plane. Why would a hero be a dread lord? Because he actively subjects the world the horrifying freaks of the domain by refusing to do anything to stop them permanently. He's well aware of the death and destruction, and he likes to wax poetic about the virtue of not killing, but there are inhabitants of this domain who have been almost murdered multiple times and have entire graveyards full of family members because he passively let them die. He will actively fight people trying to end villains harder than the villains themselves because they justify his existence.
>>96467317For Joker this might work, but for Batman I dunno. The Dark Powers only make someone a lord if they're truly evil, so if there is an actual altruistic belief that every person can be redeemed and the sacredness of life then he can't be one. In a different way of looking at it, the logic is Batman is getting blamed as a greater evil for the evil act of others which he himself did not commit, which at best isn't a stable foundation. He might be foolish, but he's not evil IMO.The freaks that he saves probably can be a Dark Lord eventually though.
>>96467690I'm working on the idea that Batman isn't altruistic. He just says altruistic things. I know this is getting into kinda stupid "What if Superman were le-evil?" and it runs the risk of being a gimmick, but this character knows whats being done and ultimately doesn't really care all that much. The inhabitants of the town are little more than "Protect this NPC!" props in game. If they die, he gets to melodramatically moan about what a tragedy it is, but he ultimately doesn't care in the long run. This leads to some really mixed NPC opinions on him. Some think he's an actual hero, some absolutely hate him because they've lost everyone they care about and monsters still roam free.The Joker is a little too chaotic for me to figure out how to make him work as an interesting Dark Lord. He cares too little about anything to have a really hinge to work with.
>>96467317>>96467690It also wouldn't work if, much like the real Batman, he tied up the unconscious villain, delivered him into the hands of the proper authorities, and then those authorities put the low-security prison because the villain was insane.If the populace is upset about not!Batman capturing the villains alive before leaving them in front of the courthouse, they can just sentence those villains to death. Or one of the guards can just stab the unconscious villain as soon as not!Batman pulls his disappearing act. The entire logic breaks down as soon as you remember that Batman is not the only person in Gotham in a position to finish these people off permanently. Plenty of bad writers have already made this mistake, and that's no reason to add to it.
This broken minstrel was once bright-eyed bard of the College of Blades, a street performer whose whirling steel and wicked tongue drew crowds as easily as coin; but a cruel prank of fate left him cursed. A renowned adulterer and shameless libertine, the bard made enemies as easily as he made lovers. Eventually, he crossed the wrong heart: a spurned lover who was also a rival mage. Their quarrel escalated to a duel, and in the heat of it he was struck with Tasha’s Hideous Laughter. Though the spell is normally fleeting, it reacted violently with a bardic charm he carried (some trinket likely meant to amplify his performances) and the enchantment became permanent. Now laughter wracks his every breath, bubbling through words, songs, and even screams.
>>96467768I think this kind of Batman deconstruction needs more than inaction. It hits harder to emphasize how he actively punishes those who upset status quo, which is based on canon with how many times he unnecessarily saves joker's life from lethal vigilantes. Or maybe take a page from mystery men, so he secretly busts his villains out of prison to stage heroics and assuage his boredom.
>>96467857Basically If batman or !NotBatman was the main boss full stop he’d just make sure that people CANT escape Arkham or it’s equivalent. But a dread plane is basically a personal hell so maybe the dark powers made him a lord but torment him by constantly breaking his villains out. He’s not the warden guarding over a prison, he’s the circus clown that the powers are bullying. He could put his villain in a fucking adimantium coffin with the imprisonment spell on top and the dark powers would pluck the !NotJoker or !NotBane right out to cause shenanigans again. The reason he stops people from killing the villains might be one accidentally died (like penny pincher or some shit) and it made everything MUCH worse. So he’s in a damned if you do damned if you don’t situation that while he waxes poetics it’s just to mask the fact that he’s just on a Sisyphean crusade that he can’t escape
>>96467768If he doesn't have an ounce of belief in altruism, then you could use a reason given in Punisher/Batman. In a way Joker analyzes the difference between the Punisher and Batman is that they got their trauma as an adult or as a child. From that point of view, Batman is playing a game of pretend with more risks. However, would that make him evil? Eh...Not too sure.
>>96467972Thing about Dark Lords is that their personal Hell is 100% deserved. They're just as much wardens as they are prisoners. If it was altruism, he wouldn't be a Dark Lord. Strahd legitimately cares nothing for anybody whatsoever. Strahd doesn't even 'love' Tatyana, he just feels entitled to her. So the horrors being the villain Dark Lords who keep escaping, and him being a major obstacle could maybe work. That allows him to keep his altruism, while also being a threat.
>>96467972Yeah. In that sort of setup, any villains he did kill would probably just come back as vengeful undead, or some random citizen would suddenly decide to become their successor. In the context of a Dread Plane, what >>96468022 said is also true though. Which means that this not!Batman needs a more malicious motive or to have done something wrong. It could work if rather than simply not killing, this not!Batman thought that the current legal system was insufficient. Jailing someone wasn't enough, killing them made it over too soon.So instead he tortures people. Cuts off fingers and limbs. Sets up overly elaborate Saw-traps in order to try and inflict additional vengeance and make them suffer like their victims did. Which in some cases might work for petty criminals to scare them into obedience, but in other cases it just results in a crazy person getting even more crazy and wanting revenge. Basically, make it so that the cycle of villains actually is directly his fault, because rather than not killing them for a positive reason, he's doing it so that he can torment and punish them even more.
>>96468078HuhThat might be interesting if your “villains” are also multifacetedLike sure maybe 1000 years ago a bad man came to this dread plane, but after 1000 years of a cat and mouse game where the punishment for failure is torture one could change who they are to be more humanizing. Like an orc war chief who raided and pillaged now being the head of a faction that rebels against !notBatman. Making the “monsters” complex is a bit gay at times but for this type of set up it makes narrative sense for the PCs to interact with the victims/perps much more than the BatOr you could make his folly pride, he cares A LOT about what people think of him, and he keeps the cycle going for both admiration when he does well and punishing the populace with the villains return when he’s not happy with the attention he’s getting
Honestly I kinda like the idea of just playing it straight at first before the players realize that the biggest body guard they're going to have to get through to stop all this is Not-Batman>Introduce players to Not-Gotham Demiplane>Players find out evil Jester is the Dark Lord>Approached by cowl wearing hero, so they think it's gonna be played pretty straight>They quickly find out that he's gonna be they're biggest obstacle because he won't let him die, and he might actually kill you to keep it from happening.
I think heroes should set a good moral example onto others. You can't fault someone for not killing. If it possible to stop someone without having to kill, that is only a good thing. After that it is up to the judicial system.
>>96468157Yeah. I think the thing to keep in mind is that like Strahd, not!Batman's way of operating isn't good for anyone in the dreadplane. Some of the villains should just be crazed spree-killers covered in scars and with knives and blades replacing some of their limbs, so that there is a clear harmful feedback, and there are examples of villains that not!Batman really should just put down instead of reasoning with. But if some of the villains are just disgruntled inventors or mob bosses, they'll seem downright sympathetic in comparison. Or indeed, any villains who did lose some fingers and a hand a while ago, were scared straight, but still have to deal with not!Batman deciding to kick down their door every so often to make sure they're not up to anything.And yeah, he could still be putting on a prideful veneer of doing the right thing. He'll claim that he's doing all this so that nobody has to die, and that plenty of criminals he's brought to his special prison have been redeemed. And he can't trust the populace to decide punishments either, because obviously only he knows best.He's caught in the worst middle ground between simply killing the villains to protect people, or showing mercy and letting the courts do the work. He's made himself judge and jury, but explicitly not executioner.
>>96467317>Why would a hero be a dread lord?The trouble with your concept anon is that what you go on to describe isn't heroism, it's villainy.
I don't think an evil Darklord Batman would torture people, per say.I think he'd just beat the everloving shit out of them. Imagine if every crook from a starving pickpocket to a panicked swindler was given the mud pit treatment. It's a small difference, but I think it changes the dynamic from a detached sadism in the name of punishment to a more brutal style in the name of fear.
>>96468022>100% deserved.Daily reminder than 5E is non-canon trash.The dark powers are not 100% evil. That's retarded. So if OP wants to out batman as a dark lord he can do it as long as it justified. I don't know how he would insert the super hero aspect tho.
>>96469849I mostly suggested the torture as a way that you could justify the guy actually being in a domain of dread. And at a certain point Evil Darklord Batman stops resembling Batman and all and pretty much just becomes Konrad Curze instead. Having it be torture instead of outright murder just maintains the no-killing rule with a darker twist.
>>96469898I should clarify that when I said "beat the everloving sit out of them" I did also mean "to within an inch of their life (but no further)"
>>96469912Sure. But I think having him running his own dungeon better establishes to the players that he's not really set up as their ally. That he's directly responsible for creating worse villains, and that the people of the plane can blame him for not killing the most dangerous ones when he's carrying them off to a dungeon to "rehabilitate" them. The goal is still fear in both cases, but if Darklord Batman leaves every criminal with every bone in their body broken, it's pretty easy for the citizens around to just...not offer medical assistance and let them bleed out. Assuming that one of them doesn't just decide to finish off a deadly villain and accept their near-death beatdown.It depends on what OP is trying to prioritize though.
>>96468022There doesn't have to be any sort of real altruism here. Just the pure, unmitigated ego of Darklord Batman deciding that his way is the only correct way and refusing to ever consider the possibility that he might be wrong, no matter how many times he fails and no matter how many innocent bystanders suffer as a result. His claims of an altruistic motive are just his delusions, and even if he believes his own propaganda that doesn't make it true.
>>96467317>>96468022For a Dark Lord you want to emphasise the irredeemable aspect, so I'd agree with >>96468411 and >>96470013, a lot of the Not!Batman aspect should be ego - perhaps he says something like > of all the lords of this dark city, only I have refused to kill, that is why only I am fit to judge the scum that stalk the streetsWhere he's put the no-kill policy as why he's better than everyone else, and how he tries to justify what he does to the PCs, but it's just ego, and an excuse for him to act both brutally and self-righteously.Another thing to make Not!Batman a lot worse is to take away any good his place in society sometimes does - there's no Wayne Foundation here, this lives up to the meme of "millionaire beating people up instead of helping anyone" - the Dark Lord is evidently rich, but doesn't improve things, he just bemoans the corruption surrounding him.Another similar part of that could be that while he might put the whole city in fear he doesn't "rule" it effectively, or even at all - and as a Dread domain, the system is set up to keep being as bad as it can be unless he intervenes, and he's too arrogant and self-obsessed to do that
>>96467317If Batman is supernatural mayor, and cruel enough to enforce his will, in what way is that Batman?Or if he is not ruler of the domain, and his wide rogues gallery are each capable of giving him a fair fight, in what way is he a Dread Lord?
Gotham as a Dread Domain, I get.Strahd as not!Bruce Wayne, I get.Van Richten as not!Batman, I get.But:>>96467317>>96470013>>96470170>freaks of not!Gotham cause death and destruction>not!Batman combats them>if he stopped, it would be even worse for the citizens>is not himself a monster terrorizing the citizens>the domain supplies villains for him to play out his personal vanity, and the whole situation just feeds his ego and sense of vindication: I don't think this is how the Dread Lord--Dread Domain thing is supposed to work.
>>96469896>The dark powers are not 100% evilThat's not what he said. "Deserved" was the word used.Soth, for instance, did monstrous things at both a personal level and an impersonal citizens-and-countryside level, as well as make unholy deals with dark gods.
>>96476325Disregard post, missed "jester is the dark lord"
>>96476277My reading of it was the other way around, where not!Batman shows up, treats all crimes extremely harshly, and creates those freaky villains in a very direct fashion by subjecting them to so much pain and fear that they snap. And not!Batman keeps whisking them away to his personal prison to torment them more, but keeps letting them loose either so he can boost his ego by hunting them down again, or so he can pretend that he's successfully rehabilitating people.If he stopped, then the cycle of new villains would also stop, and the populace could either execute or imprison any existing villains properly. The concept is basically the thing that people always accuse Batman of. That his existence creates supervillains, and he endangers lives by refusing to kill those villains. Except unlike the actual Batman, in this case it's very obviously and directly true.
>>96476308>did monstrous things at both a personal level and an impersonal citizens-and-countryside level, as well as make unholy deals with dark godsRegarding especially that last bit about dark gods, your head canon or Lowder's head canon? Certainly didn't happen in Dragonlance where the worst he did was kill his wife and newborn child and then slapped his girlfriend. Getting ragebaited by some lying elves into thinking his girlfriend was cheating on him and not committing suicide isn't monstrous.Soth on the Demi-plane of Dread is head canon.inb4: me saying that is itself my own head canon
>>96477511My memory - from a very long time ago, of the novel where he first enters the Forgotten Realms - was that he'd also lead an Evil army, and that he became undead (prior to entering the realms) in some deal with an otherworldly power. I could be misremembering. Separately, his wikipedia bio mentions something which sounds like a deal with Takhisis.The point is that self-serving performative altruism and brutal response to super villainy, as espoused by OP and those respondants, doesn't make him Lord of the Domain.>>96476649I agree, but, if either not!Bats or not!Bruce are that securely involved in the daily operation of Arkham, there's no point in a secret identity, and how is anything about this guy still Batman?
