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Pathfinder 1E ACTUAL Evil Campaign

I find that your view of the world is fairly inconsistent with the one I think I live in.

I don't want to turn this into a flame war...but that's the point. Several of these replies are based on a world people THINK they live in. I see a lot of confident declarations made straight out of books and media on this thread, rather than experience. Since my world view is based on experience it's not a shock to me that it is inconsistent with yours.
 

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Ryujin

Legend
I've run a couple of evil campaigns, in my time. It's hard to define what evil is, in such a campaign, until you actually have the players interact with the world. They might try to corrupt the entire political structure of a Lawful Good domain, or they might go around punching babies.

The goals of evil characters aren't much different than those of good ones, in a D&D style campaign; kill things and take their stuff. In other words, try to obtain ultimate power. OK, that's a gross generalization, but not to far off for most games. All that they differ in is the methods. Are they puppeteers who work behind the scenes pulling political strings, or are the brutish thugs who subjugate through terror and force of arms?

In one campaign an Assassin liked to fly over mid-sized towns, in the dark, and sprinkle trolls that had been cut into bite-sized cubes into alleyways. It did a pretty good job of weakening the kingdom by pulling soldiers to places he wanted them to be, so that he could make moves where he didn't want them to be. Call him a creative thug.

Another, a chaotic evil Elf, captured a Paladin, stuck a Ring of Regeneration on him, then spiked him to a wall in his keep and used him for archery practise when he was bored. Otherwise he spent his time at political machinations and general outdoor adventuring.

Unless you're going to set specific goals for them, the way that you would for a Good or Neutral/Unaligned party, it's the players who are going to define the goals of Evil. That means creating convoluted systems might not only be premature, but limiting to the scope of your campaign.

But what if it's an evil charity? :uhoh:

GSSF - Greyhawk Save the Succubi Fund
 


Nytmare

David Jose
I don't want to turn this into a flame war...but that's the point. Several of these replies are based on a world people THINK they live in. I see a lot of confident declarations made straight out of books and media on this thread, rather than experience. Since my world view is based on experience it's not a shock to me that it is inconsistent with yours.

That's the thing, I think you've got that backwards. I'd wager that the psychologists and sociologists have a better handle on the hows and whys, and that your personal experiences aren't going to mesh up with the general public's views.
 


S'mon

Legend
Clearly you've never met a bully....

I've met and been bullied by the best of them, mate! :D
I don't think it ever made me want to bully anyone. I recall when I was 12, I did take pleasure in beating up an 11 year old bully I saw bullying a 10 year old, though (vigilantism seems a common emotion - when I was bullied as a child it was often easy to get some other violent thug to beat up the bully who'd just beat me up; righteous violence is the funnest kind of violence).

And after being bullied at work I like to give people advice from what I've learned on how to deal successfully (non-violently!) with would-be workplace bullies.
 

S'mon

Legend
I don't want to turn this into a flame war...but that's the point. Several of these replies are based on a world people THINK they live in. I see a lot of confident declarations made straight out of books and media on this thread, rather than experience. Since my world view is based on experience it's not a shock to me that it is inconsistent with yours.

If you'd care to explain your experience, feel free. I suspect you may have misinterpreted something, as with your equating hazing with bullying.
 

That's the thing, I think you've got that backwards. I'd wager that the psychologists and sociologists have a better handle on the hows and whys, and that your personal experiences aren't going to mesh up with the general public's views.

You can definitely wager on that. I must say that when I was in college choosing classes to fill out my requirements Psychology and Sociology didn't count towards my science credits. That's because there is so much hypothesis and conjecture in those fields. Very little of it leads to solid, provable theories. Not all of it is bunk, but there are some major, major gaps, and what little the general populace knows of the few solid conclusions that are found is usually warped, old or just wrong. So I agree the general public's views will not mesh up with my experiences.
 

Obryn

Hero
You can definitely wager on that. I must say that when I was in college choosing classes to fill out my requirements Psychology and Sociology didn't count towards my science credits. That's because there is so much hypothesis and conjecture in those fields. Very little of it leads to solid, provable theories. Not all of it is bunk, but there are some major, major gaps, and what little the general populace knows of the few solid conclusions that are found is usually warped, old or just wrong. So I agree the general public's views will not mesh up with my experiences.
This is a tangent.

My degree and grad work were both in psychology. It's a mixed field between science that's as hard as they come (neuropsychology) and non-science (counseling). But by and large, its conclusions are solid when backed up with proper methodology; the course placement for distribution requirements just point towards harder sciences, and shouldn't be taken as gospel on a field's categorization. :) In other words, I think you are uninformed.

Back on topic.

I think most of the "evil" posted in this thread is as juvenile as the BoVD. I think "evil campaigns" in general are pretty banal; I think the guy with the Adventure Path posted one of the more interesting ones, and 2/3 of it is just a "heroic" campaign, with "evil" scratched out and "good" written in its place. And some of your peculiars - like addicting the mayor's wife to drugs - is kind of silly in a world with Charm Person and Dominate.
 

Connorsrpg

Adventurer
OK, so back on topic. Kamakaze Midget offered up the exact kind of responses I was going to give and they seem to have been ignored. Were those what you were looking for (and did you look into them).

I don't think this thread really has a lot to do with evil campaigns as it does any rules set have rules for very specific situations. The things you are looking for are very specific. I would think there are not many situations/rules sets that deal with very similar ideas but are not evil.

Egs: You want rules for drug dealing rings? Whay do you need rules? Are there rules for the local churches distributing healing? Isn't this story. To follow KM's advice, just use a rogue's guild for ideas. There are MANY books on that inc 2E Complete Thief.

Prostitution Ring needing its own specific rules? I don't recall there being rules for running taverns only and they appear in almost every adventure. There ARE many versions of running a business in general though. As KM said Cityscape, but I think 3.5E's DMG2 had some of this stuff too.

Torturing a paladin until he is corrupted. I am not sure why any supplement would have such precise rules. What about how many good deeds turn a kobold good? Do we need this sort of stuff? If you do, then I am sure you don't expect this sort of specificity to be out there - for anything - not just b/c there doesn't appear tobe much 'evil' stuff out there. Set it ups as a skill challenge; adapt the torture rules in BVD, etc.

Given where the post is heading it is getting into seedy territory - not what the OP requested, but I also hope not what was underlying in creating a thread to argue the lack of evil stuff out there. It is just a lack of very specific rules that I wouldn't expect any ruleset to have (even ones centered around these supposedly evil situation).
 

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