D&D 5E How would you conduct an evil campaign?

[Shasarak]

Why dont you just try the Pathfinder Adventure Path Hell's Vengeance or the Way of the Wicked series instead?

 

[transtemporal]

Depends how evil you're talking. There are levels:
* "willing to steal, bribe, manipulate, threaten noncombatants or kill combatants to achieve mission"
* "willing to kill noncombatants either directly or by ommission, willing to torture, rape, imprison combatants to achieve mission"
* "indiscrimate killing, torture, rape, imprisonment of anyone for any reason"

I've played the first two and they're not that different from a "good" campaign but the third I probably couldn't stomach personally. Imagine the most unruly, volatile, disgusting outlaws of the wild west and thats pretty much what that group would be like. Plus, the PC vs PC fighting would get a bit boring.

 

[ccs]

I'd run it much like any other campaign.
The pcs would have a mix of adventures that ranged from assignments from higher ranking NPCs, to jobs for hire, to personal goals, to random events.
I wouldn't be at all concerned about how they chose to acomplish thier goals.
PvP? I don't care. Wether that's a good idea is up to the players....

 

[Rhenny]

I played in an evil campaign in high school and it lasted for about 2 years. We had a great time. The key was that we all felt as if we needed each other to survive even though our characters would posture and intimidate each other at times.

It is really important for the DM and players to get the PCs to have a bond, even with an evil campaign.

Our DM did it by making us fear for our lives against even more evil NPCs, devils/demons, monsters etc. We ended up working for some "god", but after a while we found out that the "god" we worked for was really an arch devil using us with plans to sacrifice us in the end. Eventually we broke away from the entity, but because he was so powerful, we were never truly safe. All of this, and a tacit agreement to not kill each other kept us going.

Ultimately, as we were getting closer to graduation, the DM allowed us to push the envelop and become more belligerent with each other. This divided us into two groups and pit us against each other. It was an end game and it wasn't as satisfying as when we were playing cooperatively against the forces of good and evil.

 

[77IM]

Having done this several times, to great effect, here is my advice. (In fact, I am a player in an evil campaign right now.)

First, there is a difference between someone who is evil and someone who is totally 100% evil all the time towards everyone, no exceptions. Encourage your players to create evil characters who can work with others and who WANT to work with others. Both fiction and history are full of evil people who had friends and allies just like everyone else.

Second, reinforce the above by giving the players a reason to work together. An evil patron is a good reason. But, good-aligned enemies are also a good reason. Or, give them a common evil goal: maybe they are servants of the same evil deity, or members of the same evil family (they want their family to rule the world; individual rulership isn't as important).

Third, aim towards cartoony evil. Rape and torture and mutilation are NOT fun. James Bond-villain death traps are fun. Mind-control is fun. Threats and coercion are fun. Betraying the good guys is fun.

Fourth, make sure they have enemies who are even more evil than they are. In my experience, players enjoy the freedom of playing evil PCs -- but they still crave that sense of righteousness that comes from stomping some into paste.

Fifth, talk to your players about all these things beforehand. Make sure they understand what you are going for and that they are on-board. Some players don't enjoy evil, and others don't understand that playing an evil PC is not an excuse for being a jerk to your fellow players.​

Personally, I think your idea of betraying the party in an "endgame" does not sound fun. The problem with PvP games is that they lead to too many secrets, and secrets can be toxic. I mean secrets between the player and a DM. It can feel very unfair, like the DM and the other player are engaged in a different game entirely, and you are cut out of the loop.

Instead, I'd do something akin to Survivor, where PCs vote each other dead. Or maybe take a note from The Mountain Witch, and have PCs throughout the campaign give each other "trust" points, which they then use at the endgame to stab each other in the back (whoever has the most points, wins). Or, just track Evilness throughout the campaign, and the evilest one rules over the others. It's hard to pull off, because you don't want the "losers" to feel cheated.

 

[Xeviat]

I've ran one evil campaign and here's what I did to have moderate success with it:

1) The player characters are the active party. Let them come up with their plans. Give them roadblocks and challenges to overcome to achieve their plans.

2) The antagonists are the NPCs who are seeking to stop them. Throw heroes at them.

3) Give them enemies. One fun element to evil campaigns is doing things that good characters would balk at. Evil characters will kill their enemies instead of bringing them to justice. They'll lie and cheat and steal.

And most important ...

0) Discuss your and your players' boundaries before hand. What's on the table? What's off the table? This is super important.

0.5) Discuss the tone of the game. Are you going for grim, gritty, dark, and realistic? Or are your players wanting to play mustache twirling cartoon villains?

 

[CTurbo]

I've been very interested in running and/or playing an evil campaign. I think it would be different enough from the norm to be interesting. A lot of people seem to think that an all evil campaign could not work, but I think it could if done correctly. There obviously has to be SOME ground rules going in. Here are two critical things IMO-

1. All players and DM have to agree on what is acceptable and what is not. Typically, rape and detailed grotesque torture are off the table along with other few other obvious things.
2. Players pretty much have to know going in why they are going to be working together for whatever reason and agree to stick with it.

Here are 2 things that would kill the idea.

1. Doing something that's going to offend. You really need to know who you are playing with.
2. Having a CE player in the party probably wouldn't work. I'm assuming that a chaotic evil character would be a chaotic stupid character also known as a complete psychopath. You wouldn't be able to do random evil acts for no other reason than being an evil character. You wouldn't be able to take them anywhere or accomplish anything.

Here are 2 things I would do if I were running an evil campaign.

1. Have npc heroes in pursuit of the party just about at all times. The npcs would be a few levels higher at all times and would likely be an impossible fight causing the party to be "on the run" most of the time.
2. I would severely punish random acts of public obvious evilness... and by punish, I mean I would immediately throw some npc police/heroes at them to arrest or kill the guilty party member. This would hopefully help keep the party in check a little if needed.

Hopefully those to things would force the party to be careful in their actions. It wouldn't be logical for an evil party to just do whatever they want whenever they want without repercussions. The party would still come across and have to fight/run from/deal with other evil characters, beasts, etc... just as a typical hero party would. An all evil party would probably amass more wealth and weapons and such quicker than normal due to the nature of how they would procure them so encounters would probably have to be amped up a little after a few levels.

A quick note about torture. I would allow it in general. There is just no reason to get specific about it. Like, I would allow a player to say "I torture him for information" and have him make a roll with proficiency against the npc's Con score or roll a Con DC check for the npc to see if it succeeded. Again, there is no reason to get graphic about how the torture went down.

 

[pogre]

Lots of good advice here. The "evil" campaign I ran was not intended originally to be so, but became that quickly when we played a "no alignments" campaign. The PCs stuck together because they chose to be a group of family and friends. They had tons of skeletons in the closets and worked every session to keep each other out of trouble. A lot of the adventures ended up feeling a lot like an episode of Shameless.

I think mature players with a mutual level of trust is even more important in a game like this. Being honest about limits is important.

Some of the stuff that group did would not be acceptable at all at my current table.

 

[Corwin]

One of my favorite go-tos for evil campaigns even has a recent super-villain campaign created in the same vein, by Savage Worlds, called "Necessary Evil". The PCs are bad guys. But they must come together to defeat a threat even more terrible than they are. In D&D, I've used stuff like, extra-planer invasion by demons, or whatever. The PCs might be evil, but the world, as it is, is still their home. Do they want it destroyed or taken over (by someone other than themselves)? Heck no. Common goal. Nasty tactics available to accomplish it.

 

[jgsugden]

1.) Give the PCs and objective.
2.) Add an incentive for the PCs not to kill each other.
3.) Otherwise, run as normal.