How do you handle evil?

[Maxperson]

Evil is fine in my game as long as the players understand that they have to find a way to work with the group and not against it, and aren't just using it to run around and engage in murder and mayhem, because ebil. Basically, don't be a disruption to the game and you're fine.

 

[Scruffy nerf herder]

It's not that weird. Many of us have seen it and seen the justification "Well, I'm just playing my character. That's what he'd do." and players having used an evil or CN alignment to do so. It doesn't have to be that way at all, but it is a thing that's been out there and that leaves a lasting impression.

Yeah there's a term for that kind of player. They're a wangrod. If you play with a wangrod you're going to have a bad time.

Can anyone really expect myself or anyone else to take seriously the idea that anyone or even most people who have played an evil PC are wangrods? Then I'm a wangrod Bill, clearly all I wanted was to spoil the fun of everyone else.

That's exactly what it sounds like and feels like when most public formats I've discussed D&D in, if I even mentioned I'm sometimes pretty non-traditional about what makes a good D&D story, I would get vilified. Basically people saying "I don't understand you and you're different so you're a bad person".

It's fantasy fiction. Tolkien didn't believe in eating people's eyeballs while they were still alive just because he wrote about Sauron and Saruman and Morgoth. It's not real, art is expressive, not scientific.

 

[billd91]

Yeah there's a term for that kind of player. They're a wangrod. If you play with a wangrod you're going to have a bad time.

Can anyone really expect myself or anyone else to take seriously the idea that anyone or even most people who have played an evil PC are wangrods? Then I'm a wangrod Bill, clearly all I wanted was to spoil the fun of everyone else.

You might want to ease up a bit there. Nobody's calling you a wangrod. I even answered the poll with the first option because I let player make PCs of any alignment. I just crack down on them if it becomes disruptive.

But you need to come to terms with the fact that a lot of people have experience with players being disruptive and using alignment to justify it. And that's one of the reasons they look at evil PCs as they do.

 

[Maxperson]

Then I'm a wangrod Bill

A name feared in 12 towns in the Old West.

 

[Scruffy nerf herder]

A name feared in 12 towns in the Old West.

Man I like you already.

 

[Scruffy nerf herder]

You might want to ease up a bit there. Nobody's calling you a wangrod. I even answered the poll with the first option because I let player make PCs of any alignment. I just crack down on them if it becomes disruptive.

But you need to come to terms with the fact that a lot of people have experience with players being disruptive and using alignment to justify it. And that's one of the reasons they look at evil PCs as they do.

Oh, I understood that much. Sorry for being unclear in that respect; I never wanted to indicate to anyone here that I felt someone was putting me down.

While you're right that it's a fact players are going to think that way, it's a well established thing, that hardly makes it moot discussing why it doesn't make sense. And more importantly the main point I was trying to get across: the tropes of the game have evolved to the point where there's often no good sense of "natural evil" and "personal evil" any more.

There's supposed to be a pretty noticeable difference between a genuinely monstrous monster, whose appeal is terror, and a monstrous person. Somewhere along the way it's like interest died off in villains as persons, even person villains are becoming more and more flat and one dimensional. What happened?

 

[Jd Smith1]

So when the DM does evil... Is it silly? Or disturbing? And it just sucks either way?

Does the DM have magical D&D playing powers that allow him to portray villains in a fun way and the players not?

I don't often play D&D. I quit it in the early 80s, and didn't come back until 5e, for a couple brief campaigns.

But as the GM, I don't do anything, I simply portray the events of the world. Whether those events are disturbing or not depends upon how deep the PCs dig into them; they tend not to.

But having dealt with rapists, murderers, pedophiles, abusers of every stripe for my entire working life, I can say with certainty that they don't generate a lot of fun.

 

[Scruffy nerf herder]

I don't often play D&D. I quit it in the early 80s, and didn't come back until 5e, for a couple brief campaigns.

But as the GM, I don't do anything, I simply portray the events of the world. Whether those events are disturbing or not depends upon how deep the PCs dig into them; they tend not to.

But having dealt with rapists, murderers, pedophiles, abusers of every stripe for my entire working life, I can say with certainty that they don't generate a lot of fun.

I'm not sure why you think of fictional villains along the same line as real world social deviants who hurt people.

The real world doesn't have melodrama it just has drama. The real world doesn't have super crazy powerful guys like Darth Vader running around.

In the real world, terrible people aren't all that interesting because for the most part: they're often cowards in the worst sense, and/or pretty childish and just a slave to their desires. They aren't fun to think about because it's so arbitrary and the ways that they think and justify such behavior are so thoroughly stupid. "I was following orders", yada yada you all have heard the tropes.

But Darth Vader isn't like that. He's surprisingly mature and tragic and kind of insane. He is personable. That is a fictional villain. They might make you question what humanity is, but real world villains just plain make you despair about human nature and that's not at all what fiction is about.

 

[Jd Smith1]

I'm not sure why you think of fictional villains along the same line as real world social deviants who hurt people.

I don't see why you would think they would be any different.

The real world doesn't have melodrama it just has drama. The real world doesn't have super crazy powerful guys like Darth Vader running around.

Google 'Hitler', 'Stalin', for starters.

In the real world, terrible people aren't all that interesting because for the most part: they're often cowards in the worst sense, and/or pretty childish and just a slave to their desires. They aren't fun to think about because it's so arbitrary and the ways that they think and justify such behavior are so thoroughly stupid. "I was following orders", yada yada you all have heard the tropes.

I guessing your evil portrayal would fall into the category of 'silly'.

 

[MGibster]

When discussing this subject in different places, I've heard all kinds of responses. But the weirdest of the common responses is that playing evil characters is bad, and if you want to play an evil character you are a bad player.

I don't know if I've heard it in those terms exactly. Despite all the jokes about characters being murder hobos, most D&D groups I know of don't really care to have evil characters. At the end of the day, they want their characters to be heroes. And then there are other games where the PCs are evil. Vampire the Masquerade is a prime example of an extremely popular game where pretty much each PC was a villain. Is it really common for someone tell you playing an evil character makes you a bad player?

We have this weird segment of the D&D culture that appears to think either playing an evil character means you want to cause trouble, e.g. steal from the party, and that PvP is inevitable or your character leaving the party is inevitable. Or, they think that you are interested in playing an evil character because you want to RP a lot about stabbing people's eyeballs or routinely RPing other gruesome or edgy stuff.

It's not so weird when you consider that many of us have heard "It's what's my character would do!" to justify character actions that make the game less fun for others. Including that edgy gruesome stuff. That said, it's rather silly to think that evil characters are automatically going to turn on members of their party. Members of their party whom they depend on for survival and all that.

It's incredible to me how most avid lovers of TTRPGs are big into fantasy fiction, but they don't really seem to like villains (except perhaps when they enjoy hating a villain), and especially hate the idea of a villainous party member. Villains are literally the bread and butter of fantasy and a big part of what sets the genre apart.

When it comes to fantasy most of us are rooting for Arthur and Gandalf not Mordred and Saruman.