[X] My Assistant

[Socinus]

Some friends and I were discussing this the other night and we've been kicking around the idea of an evil campaign...but we've found a slight problem.

If you try to play an evil character in D&D, it seems like it would be hard to be evil without venturing into the "Dude....what the fuck?" territory or just being comic book evil and becoming ridiculous. It seems like it would be difficult to find a middle ground between Batman villans circa 1950 and Ed Gein.

[Critias]

On the occasions I've played Evil characters in D&D (because I think every group tries it, at least once), I've mostly just been selfish. I've never been a Blackguard or other motivated-to-do-Evil-by-an-otherworldly-power type, just generally a sellsword, assassin, or thief type -- but it's just been a matter of caring about yourself more than others. Someone's gonna offer my mercenary more money fighting for Zhentil Keep than the Dales? Sign me up. Someone wants a goodly noble ruler killed, and is paying me a lot of money to do it? Okay. That temple has magical treasures squirreled away that are supposed to be used to defend the faith, but I'm good enough to steal them? Yay, treasures!

Being evil doesn't necessarily mean being Evil. Just like in real life, half the time being "a bad guy" just means ignoring common decency and giving in to the uglier parts of human nature.

[Bull]

I dunno. I think that if you're just a "bad guy" or selfish... That's Chaotic Neutral, most of the time.

The thing most people don't understand about D&D these days (Or don't want to understand) is that Good and Evil exist as a Force, as a Entity (In many cases, literally, with the gods and their personifications). Evil simply is Evil, because it's Evil. Much like Fire is hot, because it's fire.

Humanity traditionally traditionally represents Neutrality in D&D worlds because humans have a fluid nature. They may veer into evil, or veer into good, but mostly, we're selfish.

Of course, I'm also an old school D&Der. I like my D&D to be classic Good vs Evil, stomp the monsters and loot the bodies type of gaming. If I want to play a game that examines the human condition, or to play fantasy world politics, or any number of other ideas... There are better games out there than D&D.

Plus...

D20 causes cancer. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Bull

[klinktastic]

Plus...

D20 causes cancer. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Bull

QFTW

[Critias]

I think it partially just comes down to what you mean by "an evil campaign." Small e-evil is...well...everyday selfishness, greed, and lack of empathy. Viking raiders torching monasteries after murdering and looting, then running off with all the young women from a nearby fishing village, is small-e evil. Those Viking raiders doing so while beating human-skin drums, eating the flesh of the dead priests, and being led by a CE cleric of their storm god...gets a little closer to big-E Evil.

It all depends on how "D&D" your setting is. If you're going for epic good guy versus bad guy action, or focusing more on the grittier, lower-fantasy, aspects. Artemis Entreri is (early on, at least, I have no idea what shenanigans Salvatore's been putting him through more recently) a cutthroat, killer, assassin, and businessman, who's every bit as "Lawful Evil" in alignment as, I dunno, Fzoul Chembryl, the high priest to Bane, the dark god of Tyranny and hatred and stuff.

Artemis is what I'd consider small-e, Chembryl more big-E...but in the end, they're both considered Lawful Evil by D&D's alignment system. A Paladin will hit Entreri just as hard as he will Chembryl, despite the scope and scale of their evil.

[capt.pantsless]

In order to play evil characters, you really need to actually role-play. Most gamers tend to be a mix of altruistic and selfish. Rescue the princess, kill the dragon and loot the sweet sword? Sure! Sign me up! The characters are after fame, glory, and phat loots. Things that the players tend to want as well.

If you want to play evil, you need to think evil, and really get some characterization going. You still need goals and motivation, you can't just go around kicking cute kittens are calling it evil. You need to understand WHY you're evil. The easy way is get angry. Angry at the benevolent king who cast you out of his kingdom for loving his daughter. Angry at your father who beat you as a child. Angry at that other hero who always steals your glory. Then you subtract the whole 'rules and morality' thing, and go from there.

[fistandantilus4....]

Most Evil are simply people without morals. Neutral being more indifferent, out for themselves types. Where Neutral might be Bull's idea of selfish, Neutral can and does choose to go the other way just as much. They act without regard to good or evil. Evil folk are just as at ease going against moral norms. Where a Good character might kill someone in defense (self or something) a Neutral will kill if there's reason, and an Evil will simply kill. It doesn't have to be a motive or an end in and of it's self. But they have no compunctions against it.

I'd suggest, especially with an evil party, to keep in mind that Evil characters can and do still have ethics. The order in which they live their lives and interact with the world. To use Critias' examples, you could have The Joker or Darth Vader as Chaotic and Lawful Evil. Or on a smaller scale, you could have somone like Kaiser Soyze or the british captain from The Patriot.

We could run around all day with "who's evil in the movies". A better idea is "who's evil in the world?" They don't all have to be Hitlers to be valid examples. Think about how , for example, criminal organizations work. Too often, people confuse alignment with common sense, and turn on each other at the slightest provocation.

Easiest way to run an evil game is to find some sort of uniting cause. Sometimes it's just money, a religion, political motivation, things of that nature. But with an evil game it is more important to have something to unite them. Also, you should have a good understanding of who's the power in the area. More than likely ,they'll consider over throwing them/ robbing/ killing / rising up in rebellion. In my experience, Evil characters are much more proactive than Good, as Good tends to be more reactionary.

[KarmaInferno]

Well, for Evil to work in an extended campaign, it needs a plan.

You need to figure out early on what your character wants out of life.

"Taking over the world" is a common plan. If a bit cliched.

"Becoming a god" is another.

Really, most variations of "I want power!" are pretty decent.

Otherwise without a plan, you end up just doing random petty evil and it gets silly and boring.

(as opposed to silly and awesome, which a plan can give you)




-k

[StealthSigma]

Play a character that constantly raises the hopes of children, then drops those hopes from the top of a cliff onto some jagged rocks.

<Insert your name here> the Hope Ender.

Also, I tend to feel that the "Means justify the ends" is a far more acceptable reason for Evil characters than Good characters.

[deek]

I think as soon as you get a "plan" or group together with other like minds, that having a Chaotic Evil campaign falls apart. The way I see it, if you are a group, you might band together for short bits of time, doing "evil" acts for fun, or to create more chaos or because something rubs you the wrong way, but you also are going to worry about the next strongest guy in your party and if he gets a little too strong, you want to kill him.

I see an evil campaign having each player going through a lot of character sheets and maybe having other party members band together to take the top dog out when he is too strong and then just rinse and repeat. I could see that being okay with a certain group of guys for a short-term campaign, but I'd see a lot of in-fighting and backstabbing going on as well.

[Tanegar]

Evil, ironically, is not always Chaotic Evil. Just ask the Red Wizards of Thay, or Zhentil Keep, or the priesthood of Cyric, or any of the other Lawful Evil organizations in D&D lore. Yes, there's a certain amount of infighting even there, but it's perfectly possible to have a group of lawful or neutral evil people united behind a common goal (usually world domination or some variation thereof).

[StealthSigma]

Evil, ironically, is not always Chaotic Evil. Just ask the Red Wizards of Thay, or Zhentil Keep, or the priesthood of Cyric, or any of the other Lawful Evil organizations in D&D lore. Yes, there's a certain amount of infighting even there, but it's perfectly possible to have a group of lawful or neutral evil people united behind a common goal (usually world domination or some variation thereof).

Of course, and the destruction of hope, over and over and over and over, is a very good way to keep your slaves down. Let them get a little hope, then crush it beneath the heel of your steel greaves.

[deek]

True, Evil doesn't have to be CE, by any means, but I think most other types of evil just end up being a normal campaign with semantical differences. I mean, there is not much difference between banding together to rid the land of all evil and become powerful demi-gods and banding together to rid the land of all things good and rule the world...in gameplay, I mean. You are still playing the same game, doing the same things, wanting to get more power and do it again.

Now, in between, you may go into a happy town and burn it to the ground killing all the women and children after raping them, but that's not too much different, besides the words being used, then going into a town of undead and slaughtering them, maybe collecting their ears or wearing their skulls as hats. I mean, the only difference at the table is that you have a party killing stuff that is supposed to be "good". That may be fun for a while, and some players may end up acting out some more evil acts for fun, because they are trying to be evil, but the overall gameplay is pretty much the same. And if you wanted to switch things up, then I think this would be a short-lived way to do it.

[fistandantilus4....]

You can have some fun turning the "usual" on its head. Things like interacting with "good" characters who the Evil leadership appreciates because they've done things like slaughtered orc tribes in the name of goodness.

"Yes, we killed all the orcs!" could easily include killing all the orcs, including women and children. or watchign a tribe slowly die off, because all the orc women were kept in their village as nothing more than breeding stock , and without their male warriors/hunters, the tribe simply doesn't have enough to survive. Maybe interact with some of their older "good" characters and take a look at where they dip into evil acts simply because the setting says that the guys they fought were "evil" and therefore its ok to slaughter them.

Good times.

[Faraday]

Heh, that orc slaying reminds me of a certain character... (Start around 25 seconds)

[Kliko]

Heh, that orc slaying reminds me of a certain character... (Start around 25 seconds)

lol

[Wounded Ronin]

Some friends and I were discussing this the other night and we've been kicking around the idea of an evil campaign...but we've found a slight problem.

If you try to play an evil character in D&D, it seems like it would be hard to be evil without venturing into the "Dude....what the fuck?" territory or just being comic book evil and becoming ridiculous. It seems like it would be difficult to find a middle ground between Batman villans circa 1950 and Ed Gein.

Undead are pretty much evil by definition. Why not run an undead campaign where the players take over the world while managing the logistics of an undead army?

Also, you could do a Blue Rose parody where the players are the patriarchal bad guys and they have to assasinate the magic deer or what have you.

[Wounded Ronin]

You can have some fun turning the "usual" on its head. Things like interacting with "good" characters who the Evil leadership appreciates because they've done things like slaughtered orc tribes in the name of goodness.

"Yes, we killed all the orcs!" could easily include killing all the orcs, including women and children. or watchign a tribe slowly die off, because all the orc women were kept in their village as nothing more than breeding stock , and without their male warriors/hunters, the tribe simply doesn't have enough to survive. Maybe interact with some of their older "good" characters and take a look at where they dip into evil acts simply because the setting says that the guys they fought were "evil" and therefore its ok to slaughter them.

Good times.

Dances with Orcs!

[pbangarth]

Evil is often caricatured with phrases like, "Up with Evil!", "I revel in my Evil!" "Evil wins again, Mwahahahaha!"

Truly evil characters don't think of themselves as evil. Either they don't give a damn at all about the concept, being either callous or sociopathic, or they feel as if the world has done them wrong, and are owed, big time, no matter the consequences. Such characters are much more delicious than the caricatures like Batman's opponents.

[Glyph]

I think Bull is right about how D&D is set up - the bad guys will actually call themselves "Evil", and run around killing kittens and whatnot.

The trouble is, it makes a pretty lame campaign when you play those kind of bad guys. It turns into a pubescent gross-fest really quickly. So I think the small "e" evil works better in an actual game, even if that goes against the grain of D&D. Not that that's a bad thing - the D&D alignment system is pretty illogical and contrived, and is best chucked to the wayside.

[Ramaloke]

The thing to remember about D&D alignments and RPing in general is playing to the qualities of your character, and keep these 2 (3) points in mind:

A) If your character is intelligent (IE 10 or more in Intelligence) then you should avoid doing stupid evil. Killing people "just cause" and stealing "because you can" and other things are just going to get you in trouble for little gain, doing those things would be stupid, and your character is not a moron.
B) Playing in an all evil campaign does not give you an excuse to go at each other's throats. I've seen it happen over and over and over again.
-B.2) Evil does not equal "Blatant Asshole". If you feel that the only way for you to express you character's evil is to be a dick to everybody else in the group, well, then an evil game probably isn't the best choice for you.

[Critias]

I think Bull is right about how D&D is set up - the bad guys will actually call themselves "Evil", and run around killing kittens and whatnot.

No. Some D&D bad guys will do that, in some settings. Not everyone with evil in their alignment is a crusading anti-Jesus, just like not everyone with good in their alignment is a hardcore Paladin.

[Voran]

I'm old school too. I like the idea of good vs evil, and in general, prefer the game where our entire party is Good or at least oriented towards that. But I've been involved in evil characters in campaigns as well.

From what I've seen, how well the campaign goes is dependent on the Evil-character's player and what type of evil they're playing. In this sense, I'm including CN as 'evil' as invariably in my gaming experience, the guy that plays CN is the guy that's playing it cause he wants to play evil but the GM said "No evil alignments". "I'm just rping my character guys!" as they use their CN alignment, which I eventually renamed Chaotic-Douchebag, to be an attention whore, campaign derailer, saboteur and well...douchebag.

We've had best experience with the LE character, who tended to be played with by a guy who took the Punisher, Judge Dredd, Darth Vader, Dr Doom approach, principled but bent. A character that could plausibly work with a good aligned group towards a common goal without ALWAYS betraying them. Otherwise most of the guys I've seen try to pull off the Lawful Evil at least had the benefit of being decent players that wanted the whole group to have fun. Not saying this always happens, but my lucky experience.

Here's some thoughts on why evil (everybody is evil!) campaigns may not always work.

1. Its hard to be special in an evil group. For some odd reason, being party leader in a 'good party' isn't that big a deal, but I've seen big issues when you try and come up with a party leader in an 'evil party'. Some guy always wants to be the Lex Luthor or Dr Doom. Unfortunately, there's usually more than 1.

2. Some Gms don't really have experience running an evil campaign, consequently you end up with an evil party more or less following the same storylines as a good party.

3. Related to #2, but both with gms and players, it can be hard to gauge consequences. In the good aligned game you usually stroll around smiting evil, and people love you for it. In an evil game, you usually devolve into smiting good populations as well as bad, and theoretically everyone should hate you, and you're only like 8th level so why wouldn't some higher group come around and kick your ass for being evil schmucks? The game can get derailed by metagaming arguments about how consequences aren't fair, or 'how would they know' or various related things.

4. What constitutes an 'end game' for evil campaigns? Usually as #2, its not much different from good ones (forge a kingdom, acquire power, whatever), unless you're playing the annihilation campaign which turns into HEAPS of fun (wheee.) when you've basically killed all the NPCs in a 1000 mile radius. Great, ruler over a barren apocalyptic world.

5. You end up at times with players thinking they can 'out evil' evil powers themselves.

[StealthSigma]

Undead are pretty much evil by definition. Why not run an undead campaign where the players take over the world while managing the logistics of an undead army?

The rule is that undead are evil. There are a few exceptions to this (like that special elven lich) but they're the exceptions that prove the rule.

--

2. Some Gms don't really have experience running an evil campaign, consequently you end up with an evil party more or less following the same storylines as a good party.

3. Related to #2, but both with gms and players, it can be hard to gauge consequences. In the good aligned game you usually stroll around smiting evil, and people love you for it. In an evil game, you usually devolve into smiting good populations as well as bad, and theoretically everyone should hate you, and you're only like 8th level so why wouldn't some higher group come around and kick your ass for being evil schmucks? The game can get derailed by metagaming arguments about how consequences aren't fair, or 'how would they know' or various related things.

5. You end up at times with players thinking they can 'out evil' evil powers themselves.

These three are all related. Look through the monster manuals. How many creatures in it are described as a good/neutral/evil alignment on the Good/Evil scale? The answer is that it's tilted towards the evil side of things. Sure there are good creatures (dragons, celestials, etc) but those are in far fewer quantities than devil, demons, undead, abominations, base race flavors (like drow [fuck you Drizzt])....

What you're kind of forgetting is the rich set of gods that can exist in D&D (this is also why I don't mind using Faerun's deities for non-Faerun settings). You're in a world where the gods interact with the mortal world. Evil vs evil makes sense, especially when you think it might be a LE god vs a CE god. Bane vs Cyric?

[Drace]

I've done more than a few evil games in DnD (lately all I have done is evil games, better RP I find), and for them to really last any longer than a few sessions at most you have to do away with treating your characters like the gm does the bad guys in a normal campaign. One big realization is that just because you are evil doesnt mean you are evil to everyone.

One useful tool is having the gm make it that you aren't the top dog. Have an evil master.
-If you're drow, this could be the house you are in, and trying to either break free from or rise in the ranks and make the house more powerful
-If you need an evil lord, have it either be a Cleric of one of the gods they worship, a cabal of sorcerers, a dragon or anything that is much more powerful than them and can keep them in line can easily be used to give them goals to work towards and to keep them in line so the infighting is at a minimum

Also, if they/you decide to go solo and do the whole take over, remember, evil can hate evil as much as neutral or good, sometimes more so. The whole "this town aint big enough for the both of us" comes to mind. Maybe they clear out the mine of orcs for the miners, not just because they were asked, but maybe so they can manipulate the minors into working for them, or because the mine is theirs now and the orcs were disrupting the mining.

And finally, not all evil leaders are hated by their minions, they could be seen as the strong armed saviours, or the leaders of national pride. They could be the hitlers and stalins of your little DnD game.