Evil Parties - and Evil PC's - A Discussion

[gleicher27]

Poorly run characters of evil running about to kill and rape is ugly, but that smacks of immaturity, not evils fault. Discuss?

I think that is the issue. Campaign's based only on those issues probably won't last long. My experience is people who build their evil characters to annoy other players are either kicked out, or the entire game group dissolves. Currently I play in Greywolf's Orc lands game (there are posts in the story hour). The characters themselves are evil, but played in such a way the party works as a whole since survival and prestige mean more than petty vile deeds. So in short I belive that evil characters can work, however, it takes a mature intelligent approach to do it.

 

[Arnwyn]

Poorly run characters of evil running about to kill and rape is ugly, but that smacks of immaturity, not evils fault. Discuss?

Sure, I agree with that (yeah, I know, not much of a discussion).

However, I'd still never run a campaign with evil characters, as it's just something that I have no interest in whatsoever. I have no intention nor desire to create the challenges and (especially) hooks for evil parties.

 

[Storminator]

Sure, I agree with that (yeah, I know, not much of a discussion).

However, I'd still never run a campaign with evil characters, as it's just something that I have no interest in whatsoever. I have no intention nor desire to create the challenges and (especially) hooks for evil parties.

In our evil campaign our DM never bothered to make hooks for us. We were so busy plotting and scheming that all he did was make up adventuring heroes and send them to thwart us (or die trying...).

PS

 

[Harlock]

D'oh, I misread the thread title. I thought this was a discussion of the Book of Erotic Fantasy... Evil Panties and Evil PCs, my bad.

As for playing evil characters, I think it can be done well, but just sometimes people miss in the execution. You get people (especially true of socially retarded people) who think that evil means having to be dominant and that only one person can achieve true power. If people wanted to play an evil party well it's a simple matter of knowing even evil people have to depend on others and it's the combined evil that makes them stronger. I mean, even Vader wanted Luke to help him overthrow the Emperor. There is a case of two evils being better than one. It's just so often evil parties devolve into this power struggle than ends up annihalating the entire party. Personally, I imagine a group of great roleplayers playing some lawful evil characters could be a pretty awe-inspiring thing to watch. But, as a DM, I just don't have the heart to run an all evil campaign.

 

[Andre]

The problem I have with evil characters is that I want to play and GM in campaigns in which the characters are HEROES. Evil, no matter how compelling the character, is not heroic.

Consider, being evil means that in some fundamental way the character does not share the same values that we, as a community, feel are important. Maybe the character hates a particular group and acts on that hatred regardless of the other person's rights. Maybe the character believes the end justifies the means. Maybe the character believes might is right. Whatever, the heroic character will view those attitudes as personal flaws and work to better him/herself. The real hero will grow and change.

An evil character, OTOH, will always be played as evil, at some point. Otherwise, the character isn't really evil. Your character killing two men because she didn't like what they said is an example. No matter how compelling your character background, that kind of behavior is unacceptable in a civilized society and cannot be permitted. It's selfish. It makes the object of her hatred a thing, not a person. It's not heroic.

In movies and books, evil characters can sometimes be more interesting than the heroes, but almost always because the medium allows us to see inside the person. To see the internal struggles, or contadictions, or suffering. Motivations can be the primary focus of the story.

Rpg's, OTOH, focus on action. A session that tried to focus on my character's internal thought processes would probably bore me to death, even more so the other players. Play focuses first on what we do, second on why we do it. I suspect that the vast majority of groups do so also. And if the game focuses on action, then playing an evil character means performing evil actions - in game. Which leads me back to my point that I want to adventure with heroes, not villains. YMMV, but I find playing evil characters incredibly un-fun.

 

[Flyspeck23]

I'm just a nice guy I guess, plus I'm a real Tolkienite, and in my fantasy, good ALWAYS triumphs over evil.

Of course it does. That's why it's called fantasy in the first place.

 

[azmodean]

Seeten: That definitely puts her out of the running for good, seems like somewhere on the LN/LE border. If this character were in my game, I'd put her on whichever side of the fence she preferred, but since you say she didn't consider herself to be evil, looks like it's LN.

Storminator: My campaign is the same way, my party is far more in control of the campaign than I am, and I'm really enjoying it. They're currently busy recruiting various evil humanoids for their (evil, hobgoblin) patron nation so they can go take over a neighboring human nation and meanwhile trying to establish their headquarters.

In movies and books, evil characters can sometimes be more interesting than the heroes, but almost always because the medium allows us to see inside the person. To see the internal struggles, or contadictions, or suffering. Motivations can be the primary focus of the story.

Actually the medium DOES allow the players to do this. My wife has told me this is one of the things she enjoys most about the campaign. Obviously she gets more out of her character's motivations than the rest of us, but everyone else has their own characters to worry about

 

[Grunk]

I ran an evil campaign (currently on hiatus/over) and thankfully, I had some good rps. I agree with the above post about evil being in motives. The PCs were generally for sale to the highest bidder, which meant at time they would do good for the right price. Their was the party NE assassin who was indescriminate in who he would kill, he prefered humans, but was also greedy and wouldn't kill someone powerful unless their was treasure promised or on the person.

When I was running the game, I tried to avoid describing truly evil actions in vile ways. Despite the partys X-rated actions, I would place the game at a PG-13, this is mostly due to the fact that IRL I am a very nice, peaceful guy. Still, it was a lot of fun (and at times a real challenge) to run.

Someone mentioned their DM throwing droves of good guys at them. That was one of my primary encounters at every session. Essentially, the PCs caused WWI by assassinating an important dwarven archduke and attracted the attention of MECHANUS. Their BBGG (Big Bad Good Guy) was a cleric from Mechanus who wanted to arrest them for throwing the cosmos out of whac. Preety much every session, they'd be on the road, and all of a sudden an inevitable or something would teleport in, attempt to dispense justice and they would battle. Evenutally, they attracted the attention of the forces of good as well and got some justicators and paladins and stuff.

The evil campaign was a challenge because I couldn't acurately plot the characters actions to account for story; they were too unpredictable. This was preety fun to run because it was so open ended. The PCs would come to a town, try and formulate a plan to get some money, usually execute it with a few variables, and move on. It would be possible for the PCs to kill anyone, but generally they would only do this if they had a reason (like they liked the ring the NPC was wearing).
running an evil campaign meant that the hooks had to be much more generalized. Instead of rescuing a princess for good, they might do it for money and then (maybe) return the princess. Also, they had a long list of people (evil,good, and otherwise) that they screwed over or pissed off somehow that were preety much were a constant threat so the party traveled with nondetection spells, undetectable alignment, and were constantly looking out for scrys (on average 3 at all times on them). It was a difficult existence for them, but that's what they got for being evil.

 

[Rae ArdGaoth]

I must play with immature people, because any time somebody ever plays Chaotic Evil, they steal from shops, kill the shop owner, and burn the place down. Once a player went into a house, discovered it was an orphanage, and then killed all the adults and burned the building while the children were still in it. Of course, this rampage was quickly stopped by the law enforcement, and the character was executed. Another thing, CE players playing with even CG players never got along. I guess I just play with... well... retards.

 

[Sir ThornCrest]

Lawful Evil: if your gonna do a evil campaign this is the one...

player unity, goal orientated and they view things like rape (I use this because you mentioned it several times) as an illegal act not to mention against there twisted code....they may kill & torture an enemy...and in our campiagn we did that. Our current LE group found and caught a homicidal CE rapist....we publicly tortured and killed him...and the town cheered us as we did. The LE Cleric took our reward and gave it to the last victims family.

As I said before so many players confuse the word Evil for insanity. If you look into history you will see almost every kingdom was by D&D definition, lawful evil...? why because you couldnt afford to be good. The citizens may have been neutral but the govt's England, France, Russia, Germany Italy.......convert to my religion or die....scotland must of changed religions a dozen times do do English kings. blah blah bl;ah Im sure you all read the same history books I did...we had mostly american produced school books.

Thorncrest