Zubuum!

Marco ...

Notes.  Notes, notes, notes.

For every guild NPC, pen down a character sheet, with persona, drive, goals and outlook on life.  Make it a seperate thread, for each NPC, on the boards.  Every time someone interacts with said NPC (it shouldn't happen too often, you write it down).

I'm going to use the thieves guild I was - without much success - trying to set up and establish during my time as a GDM as an example, to explain the template I'm suggesting.  Depending on how it's set up, a system like this can either be a great boon or a great detriment.  

In essence, it was a crime family working out of Luskan, who were trying to establish a branch of operations in Neverwinter.  The cell would've been largely independant, with its own leadership (whatever PC stepped up to the task); they would've been left to rule the guild as they saw fit, recruit whoever they wanted, do whatever they wanted, as long as they met certain critera.  In this case, the head of the crime family, Augustino de Luca, was demanding that a certain amount of cash be delivered to a certain spot, at a regular interval; this along with a steady stream of information, regarding this and that.

As long as the requirements were met, and the cell in Neverwinter performed adequately without attracting too much attention, they were free to do whatever they wanted with their time.  Whether they chose to extort rich people, rob banks or whore themselves out for money - the de Luca family couldn't care less, as long as they delivered.  

This way, you can afford the players a great amount of freedom; they can still make their own fortune, and drive their own plotlines - they're forced to be creative, and think outside the box.  They still have their own guild to run.  But at the same time, you have a legit explanation for a deus ex machina mechanism, should something go wrong.  People quit, people fight, people grow bored.  At the same time, it assures that the players do something with the opportunity that has been given them.  If they just choose to sit around, and admire eachother, because they're in a DM-supported guild - you can easily clean the slate, and start all over again.

X

Closure is something that's always important in a character's life and story.  But it's even moreso, if you choose to mantle the role of a server-wide antagonist.  What that closure is depends on the character, and the story you weave for yourself and your friends — but it has to come, and it should usually come sooner rather than later.  An evil character, a villain or any given antagonist, is not only remembered and immortalized by what he did, but how he fell, or how his reign of terror — whether small or large — ended.  Was he shown the light?  Did he meet his end at the sharp end of a spear?

The main concern with playing a evil character, and why it is hard, is usually a perceived lack of dynamism.  Something that I can attest usually is not the case.  Though I am not active at the moment, it's always been the spirit of the server that you can affect the course of the story, and the face of the server.  But to do so, you need to pull strings; you need to speak up, approach the DMs; you need to take the initiative yourself.  And, after all, that's one of the biggest differences, between playing 'good' and playing 'evil'.  As an antagonist, you yourself always need to make things happen; you yourself always need to drive your story forward, and set up new goals, because nobody else will do it for you.

Oh.  Hi, by the way. <.<

Poke me on MSN when it happens, and I'll gatecrash the party with Fucking Seshene.