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Evil Parties - and Evil PC's - A Discussion
- Thread starter Seeten
- Start date
Fantastic discussion.
I disagree with the poster who stated nothing about evil characters is heroic. The character from the original post WAS hailed asa hero in much of the land, first, for her actions in the war, (Personally beheading the BBEG who was an out of control, over the top lunatic), and for her crusade to protect the common folk(women mostly) from the rapacious and horrendous system of laws they lived under. She was flawed, I grant you, but she was certainly a hero in my mind.
In Vampire, I tend to go towards good. I generally like to play against type.
in my second group, currently, we have the following: Necromancer(My character), Assassin, and Knight. We are level 11, the necromancer is 5 nec 6 pale master, and she is also very skilled with illusion. She keeps everything looking above board, and pays the assassin a retainer to work as her "Scout". The Knight is LN, and is already almost completely corrupted by the necromancers suggestions. Again, she is LE(I dont like NE or CE, to random and capricious, I dont like evil thats random and capricious) and she masks her true intentions well. What does she intend? To rule the land with her undead minions, with a powerful general and an assassin to help her run the land. The general is not quite ready yet, but he will be. He will be. Muahaha. Oops.
Still, she doesnt believe in evil for its own sake, when she does take over, assuming she does succeed, she'll run a utopian society where undead do all ignominious and demeaning jobs, fight in the armies, and keep the populace safe, in a very hollowfaustian way. She will encourage law, learning, and safety.
I see it as fun. Call me crazy if you will.
in the other group I am in, I play a CG Barb/Fighter who goes where he is told and does what he is told and kills stuff all day every day, by the hundreds. We call him good, but he has killed millions of innocent asaathi for no more reason than they exist, at the behest of good clerics/etc. It bores me to tears, and I dont feel like a hero, I feel like a thug. I think I am supposed to feel like a hero, but I dont.
I disagree with the poster who stated nothing about evil characters is heroic. The character from the original post WAS hailed asa hero in much of the land, first, for her actions in the war, (Personally beheading the BBEG who was an out of control, over the top lunatic), and for her crusade to protect the common folk(women mostly) from the rapacious and horrendous system of laws they lived under. She was flawed, I grant you, but she was certainly a hero in my mind.
In Vampire, I tend to go towards good. I generally like to play against type.
in my second group, currently, we have the following: Necromancer(My character), Assassin, and Knight. We are level 11, the necromancer is 5 nec 6 pale master, and she is also very skilled with illusion. She keeps everything looking above board, and pays the assassin a retainer to work as her "Scout". The Knight is LN, and is already almost completely corrupted by the necromancers suggestions. Again, she is LE(I dont like NE or CE, to random and capricious, I dont like evil thats random and capricious) and she masks her true intentions well. What does she intend? To rule the land with her undead minions, with a powerful general and an assassin to help her run the land. The general is not quite ready yet, but he will be. He will be. Muahaha. Oops.
Still, she doesnt believe in evil for its own sake, when she does take over, assuming she does succeed, she'll run a utopian society where undead do all ignominious and demeaning jobs, fight in the armies, and keep the populace safe, in a very hollowfaustian way. She will encourage law, learning, and safety.
I see it as fun. Call me crazy if you will.
in the other group I am in, I play a CG Barb/Fighter who goes where he is told and does what he is told and kills stuff all day every day, by the hundreds. We call him good, but he has killed millions of innocent asaathi for no more reason than they exist, at the behest of good clerics/etc. It bores me to tears, and I dont feel like a hero, I feel like a thug. I think I am supposed to feel like a hero, but I dont.
Well, strict lawful neutral is more about judging and supporting laws, not rewriting/controlling the laws, LN seems to me a whole different mindset. LE (and even NE, I guess) doesnt have to be without morals to be evil, I think thats what I am getting at.
I know the character has upside, and isnt pure evil, but I dont think you need to be pure evil to BE evil. Judged on the basis of her actions, over the course of the entire game, if you were running a CRPG style alignment system where each action drove your alignment up or down, it might have ended at the low end of LN.
I dont think thats a good way to judge alignment though. I think the majority of your actions should be compromises to BE a LN character. If you do a lot of bad stuff and some good, I dont think you ought to end up Neutral based on the percentages. This is a philosophical thing, I guess, but if I play a character, they need to be internally consistent, and the Alignment is more of a window on their fundamental nature than anything else. In Melissa's case, she was a Tyrant, if a well intentioned one, and Tyrant is the archetypal LE.
Tyrants, even historically are not all bad, and even the bad ones dont do all "evil" things. I mean, nobody wants to consider THEMSELF to be a bad person. You might say it, but nobody deep down believes it about themself, and so very few people will kill little children, or defenseless women, just because it brands them as obviously evil, even to themselves. Sociopathic monsters and psychopathic monsters excepted. Sociopaths and psychopaths are, of course, by the very nature of this post, excluded.
AEG's book, Evil, has a lot of these same ideas in it, but most are common sense.
I know the character has upside, and isnt pure evil, but I dont think you need to be pure evil to BE evil. Judged on the basis of her actions, over the course of the entire game, if you were running a CRPG style alignment system where each action drove your alignment up or down, it might have ended at the low end of LN.
I dont think thats a good way to judge alignment though. I think the majority of your actions should be compromises to BE a LN character. If you do a lot of bad stuff and some good, I dont think you ought to end up Neutral based on the percentages. This is a philosophical thing, I guess, but if I play a character, they need to be internally consistent, and the Alignment is more of a window on their fundamental nature than anything else. In Melissa's case, she was a Tyrant, if a well intentioned one, and Tyrant is the archetypal LE.
Tyrants, even historically are not all bad, and even the bad ones dont do all "evil" things. I mean, nobody wants to consider THEMSELF to be a bad person. You might say it, but nobody deep down believes it about themself, and so very few people will kill little children, or defenseless women, just because it brands them as obviously evil, even to themselves. Sociopathic monsters and psychopathic monsters excepted. Sociopaths and psychopaths are, of course, by the very nature of this post, excluded.
AEG's book, Evil, has a lot of these same ideas in it, but most are common sense.
Elder-Basilisk
First Post
I haven't allowed evil characters and I probably never will. I don't enjoy playing most evil characters because I don't like them and don't like their stories. (Except the part at the end where they bite it). That said, I might allow a lawful evil character if he was properly explained and reasoned and I trusted the player. I don't think that the D&D law/chaos axis is consistent enough for "lawful" evil to have a consistent meaning, but I've found that most of the "evil character" concepts that seem like they might work in a game I would actually enjoy are described as lawful evil by their players.
Seeten said:
Most of the tyrants IMC are Neutral. I don't really see eg the Emperor Augustus as Evil in D&D terms, though he did plenty of bad things in his rise to power. I think the desire to rule, the will to power, is so ubiquitous that classing it as Evil in D&D terms, while it might fit with some modern political ideas, is unworkable in a pre-modern setting. I saw a tv show about Oliver Cromwell last night; who became effectively Tyrant (Lord Protector) of England, though he refused to take the title King. He definitely didn't come across as Evil in D&D terms, though the Irish don't like him due to his (at the time, standard) practice of executing surrendering Irish rebel soldiers.
A fantasy example would be Conan seizing the throne of Aquilonia, purely for the perks & jollies of being King. I think your PC's desire to rule in order to make things better, while historically perhaps more dangerous (the utopianists do seem to kill more people), is hardly more Evil in itself.
SuperFlyTNT
First Post
I ran an evil campaign with my friends right after they had retired there good charecters. We made it through three sessions... The whole thing imploded on it self. It was prehistoric and they were out marauding in the dessert and had to kill some neanderthals. They ended up encountering the camp while the warriors were out and about. It was disturbing that one player wanted to slaughter the women and children. Then the other players jumped on the band wagon and we all had a good laugh "ha ha very funny" Then this player decides to describe how hes kiling these women and children and goes on some personal quest to find the healthiest baby and hatches this plan to sell it and kill the rest. I eventually kicked this guy out forever and currently dont allow him in any campagin because he is hell bent on being an ass hat.
Ralts Bloodthorne
First Post
I play a Lawful Evil fighter/rogue (7/4) in a tabletop FR campaign. The rest of the group are good, including a Paladin, which adds some fun to the game.
"I'm going to concentrate and see if I can detect any eminations of evil."-Paladin's player
"You can sense strong evil a few paces away and to the left."-The GM
"Comrades, there is evil nearby!"-Paladin
"That's me again, you idiot."-My character.
What makes my PC evil, but tolerable by the rest of the party, including the Paladin of Torm?
Laws are made to be obeyed. There is no "I don't want to..." or "But I just had to feed my family..." excuses. He never errors on the side of mercy, and in a fight, is fairly brutal.
While the Paladin and he will never get along or be best buds, they do follow the same God, and will work together. The Paladin, however, sees my character as having come a long way from his: "What ever it takes to ensure that the LAW is upheld" days when it was acceptable to him to kill two or three innocent people to take down a pickpocket.
Still, it works, but it's the maturity level of it. There was no doubt in the rest of the party's minds that Artax was CE at first ("The toddler stumbles in front of your horse as you chase the fleeing murderer..." "Too bad for him, his mother should not have been so neglectful, I ride the kid down so as not to lose pace AND to teach the mother a lesson to watch her other brats more close") and the movement to LE has taken about a year of playing. No rapes, but there has been torture, brutality, arson, theft, murder, etc.
It's not so much as I enjoy it though, it just makes it interesting to play the party's darker side, and to try to lure the Paladin to fall from grace.
"He escaped again. You should have killed him."
"But he had not been tried for his crimes."
"Shouldn't that be for Torm to decide, not mortals?"
"I'm going to concentrate and see if I can detect any eminations of evil."-Paladin's player
"You can sense strong evil a few paces away and to the left."-The GM
"Comrades, there is evil nearby!"-Paladin
"That's me again, you idiot."-My character.
What makes my PC evil, but tolerable by the rest of the party, including the Paladin of Torm?
Laws are made to be obeyed. There is no "I don't want to..." or "But I just had to feed my family..." excuses. He never errors on the side of mercy, and in a fight, is fairly brutal.
While the Paladin and he will never get along or be best buds, they do follow the same God, and will work together. The Paladin, however, sees my character as having come a long way from his: "What ever it takes to ensure that the LAW is upheld" days when it was acceptable to him to kill two or three innocent people to take down a pickpocket.
Still, it works, but it's the maturity level of it. There was no doubt in the rest of the party's minds that Artax was CE at first ("The toddler stumbles in front of your horse as you chase the fleeing murderer..." "Too bad for him, his mother should not have been so neglectful, I ride the kid down so as not to lose pace AND to teach the mother a lesson to watch her other brats more close") and the movement to LE has taken about a year of playing. No rapes, but there has been torture, brutality, arson, theft, murder, etc.
It's not so much as I enjoy it though, it just makes it interesting to play the party's darker side, and to try to lure the Paladin to fall from grace.
"He escaped again. You should have killed him."
"But he had not been tried for his crimes."
"Shouldn't that be for Torm to decide, not mortals?"
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