An Evil party... Troublesome?

Hey guys,
While working on my own campaign and setting I went the go through allot of D&D lore. Since I was working on an evil campaign (players requested) I got a great part of info out of the book of vile darkness, and of course its counter equivalent the Book of exalted deeds. But as I got more familiar with the aspects of good and evil as described in these books I started to worry. How are you going to keep a evil party together and loyal towards each other? The best way to go seemed to make them lawful evil. Since this alignment seems to be the only one that is evil and has no problems with hierarchy and loyalty. But it doesn’t sound right to me to force an alignment upon the PC’s.

Does anyone have experience with evil campaigns? So that he can shed some light on this, or anyone else with ideas about how to fix this of course. Or do you guys think that it’s just is a part of an evil campaign?

Gratz, Zack

IMHO backstabbing and intense power-politics are part of the experience that an "evil campaign" offers. The evil party member should be using their companions to achieve their own personal goals, whatever those may be.

As a GM, I'd suggest a limited and pre-set duration, as dwelling on darkness is something I can only stomach for a limited time, but ymmv.

Good luck.

It totally depends on your players.

Are they basically good guys? If so, they may well work together, only using their evil powers to do the same sorts of things that good parties would do with their good powers -- kill people and take their stuff.

Are they backstabbing weasels? If so, they may not work together so much.

Cheers, -- N

My group rather enjoys playing evil PCs but we don't like inter-party conflict (arguments, yes, killing one another's characters, no) so we agree at the start to make up characters that, though evil, like one another and work well as a team. Just because you're evil doesn't mean you have no friends.

The Angel Gang from 2000AD are a great example of this. A family of murderous psychopaths but they get along pretty well. As Pa Angel says, "The family that slays together, stays together!"

Techniques to keep bad guys working together:

They fear their boss. Their boss will look bad if they fail in their mission. The best way to succeed in their mission is... Alternatively, the boss rewards efficiency and regards those employees that don't waste company resources (like manpower) positively.

Evil isn't stupid. Killing a party member negatively impacts your personal safety in a large number of ways. Think of it as enlightened selfishness.

Who says that evil people can't have friends? Perhaps their friendship with each other is their only redeeming quality....

Killing party members is a waste. It's much more beneficial to get them to do your bidding. They're minions to be...

My girlfriend reminds me of the Deatheaters, who don't kill each other randomly. They work together to squash the greater good. They connive, but they fear their boss lots....

roguerouge said:

Techniques to keep bad guys working together:

They fear their boss. Their boss will look bad if they fail in their mission. The best way to succeed in their mission is... Alternatively, the boss rewards efficiency and regards those employees that don't waste company resources (like manpower) positively.

Evil isn't stupid. Killing a party member negatively impacts your personal safety in a large number of ways. Think of it as enlightened selfishness.

Who says that evil people can't have friends? Perhaps their friendship with each other is their only redeeming quality....

Killing party members is a waste. It's much more beneficial to get them to do your bidding. They're minions to be...

Click to expand...

All good advice.

The notion that evil characters must turn on each other doesn't make much sense, as people can have campaigns full of chaotic characters that don't turn out that way.

Actually, even though I've played in fewer evil games than good or neutral, some of the most party unity I've seen has been amongst evil characters. The two main reasons I've seen for this is that while Good characters tend to serve higher ideals that can bring them into conflict with how a group operates (say, the Paladin and the CG rogue butting heads), evil characters generally don't have such pesky moral compasses. They're all about expediency and effectiveness. And secondly, evil characters have a tendency to stick together because they know that outside the party, no one else in the world is going to help them. Evil npcs are in competition with them, Good npcs will kill them on sight. Whereas the Paladin has his church and the Druid has the forest, a lot of the times, all the Evil characters have are each other. (There is also an X factor where Paladins can be pain in the rear because deep down, they know a good or neutral party isn't going to kill them in their sleep. Evil characters have no such safe zone.)

This is assuming the players want to have characters that are more-or-less aligned together. There's nothing wrong with having characters that oppose one another, as long as the animosity doesn't get up to the player level. Having characters fight and argue can be a cool role-playing experience. Players arguing is just annoying.

I would say its a good idea to set up the ground rules up front, how much pc-on-pc conflict the group is interested in. And I'd also institute a house rule that any player gets docked 4 levels and all their magic items for any permutation of the phrase "I'm only playing my character!"

Thanks for all the feedback. Well I have 3 players, of which one is a bit of a pain in the ass.
He is the most experienced one with D&D (also more then myself), and I expect him to play kind of backstabbing towards the other 2 lesser experienced players. That’s the way he thinks a evil character is suppose to be played. But I am hoping to have a fairly loyal party (toward each other), that is evil in its goals and ways in which they will obtain those.
An option maybe to integrate them into some sort of organized assassins guild. There they will be formed into a party and send on several missions, testing their ability to succeed. The better the missions are completed, the better their rewards will be. The most effective way for them to play will be by loyal teamwork. What do you guys think of something like this.

My experience with evil characters is that someone eventually attacks another party member. If one of them dies then they usually come back with a new character and look to get revenge on the other PC (even if their new PC is in no way related to the old one). This eventually results in the campaign coming to a crashing halt as the PC's spend more time plotting to kill each other rather than anyone else.

Yes, an evil campaign (or even evil characters in a otherwise good party) can work with the right people. I haven't seen it in the games that I've played in though and I ususally disallow evil characters in my game as a result. YMMV.

Olaf the Stout