A Villain Campaign

[Hammerhead]

My friend and I were discussing about for our next game, we don't want to be the heroes who save the world, rescue the princess, and make everything right again. We want to be a team of villains who want to overthrow the kingdom to set up their own repressive dictatorships and conquer the world. Bwahahahaha! Or something like that

Anyway, we were thinking about what actually needs to be different to run a successful villain game.

Trust-in most games, the party is a group of good people. Villains, on the other hand, will generally stab each other in the back to get ahead. There needs to be some way or some reason to get the party to work together, without one guy murdering everyone else in their dreamless sleep.

-Proactivity-villains, by nature, are inherently proactive. They generally force changes in the acceptable status quo. This will mean that the character's plans are the most important thing in creating an adventure.

-"Style"-the party shouldn't just be a band of murdering thugs who rape the countryside, who concoct fiendish tortures to use on victims. They should be people with a plan, and with at least some scruples (or at least not sadistic bastards).

Any other thoughts?

 

[Hypersmurf]

Trust-in most games, the party is a group of good people. Villains, on the other hand, will generally stab each other in the back to get ahead. There needs to be some way or some reason to get the party to work together, without one guy murdering everyone else in their dreamless sleep.

-"Style"-the party shouldn't just be a band of murdering thugs who rape the countryside, who concoct fiendish tortures to use on victims. They should be people with a plan, and with at least some scruples (or at least not sadistic bastards).

The last Evil game I played in, I tried to come up with a realistically evil character - he had goals, and he wasn't above hurting people to achieve them, but he also didn't draw attention to that fact. I get the impression that was what the DM was looking for - subtle, because if you go around with 'EVIL' tattooed on your forehead, you attract paladins, y'know?

All the other PCs were cartoony villains who murdered innocent bystanders for amusement, bathe in the blood of their victims, and who would cross the street for the chance to kick a puppy.

My character got his throat cut because the others didn't trust him, and the DM ended the game in disgust.

So I'm in full agreement with your 'Style' point, 'cos I've seen what the other way can result in.

-Hyp.

 

[Sound of Azure]

Trust-in most games, the party is a group of good people. Villains, on the other hand, will generally stab each other in the back to get ahead. There needs to be some way or some reason to get the party to work together, without one guy murdering everyone else in their dreamless sleep.

-"Style"-the party shouldn't just be a band of murdering thugs who rape the countryside, who concoct fiendish tortures to use on victims. They should be people with a plan, and with at least some scruples (or at least not sadistic bastards).

Any other thoughts?

I agree with Hypersmurf, and have had nearly the same situation that he described.

Subtlety is important, as is behaving like a real person would. Having your character be related, part of the same organisation or faith, or even just long-term friends can go a long way toward bringing more trust. As Hyp mentioned, goals are an important part of a successful villain group, and is an essential part of the planning you want to incorporate.

Evil can still have friends, have family, and have convictions (scruples, even). It's something some players forget in their rush to be "mwuhahaha!!!" villains.

It might also be useful to have some kind of social contract to prevent overt PvP, if that would be unwelcome in your evil game.

 

[hong]

Mind you, it's almost required in the genre that if you have a group of selfish, murderous badasses, at least one of them will be working against the others. Bonus points if they're all doing it. Reservoir Dogs, Infernal Affairs, Kill Bill, The Usual Suspects, etc.

An evil-aligned game like this would be awesome as a one-shot. Doesn't really lend itself to an extended campaign, though.

 

[phindar]

I think the important distinction is between evil characters, anc evil players. The characters can work against each other, violently even, as long as the players are all on the same page. If they aren't, you have the players working against each other and that can lead to frustration and bad blood. (Though, that can happen even in games where everybody is playing heroes, so that's not really an alignment-specific problem.)

My only advice is to make sure everybody is on the same page starting out. Make sure the players are solving the player-level problems, and the characters are solving the character-level problems. You don't want a player to get frustrated at something and say, "Well, my character is going to murder everyone in their sleep."

One of the things I like about evil games is that ironically, sometimes the bond between the characters is even stronger than in classic, good-guy games. Because the bad guys rarely have people they can fall back on; if you're good, other goodly people will help you out of the kindness of their hearts. Bad people don't have this luxury, even the people they are "allied" with would turn on them in a second if there was a percentage involved. So all the party has is each other (and its not even guaranteed they have that). Those that live outside the law no longer have the protection of the law.

 

[Nyaricus]

I DMed an evil campaign, but it fell apart due to one reason: we doubled the party size with noobie players. Due to this, my competent, well-versed players were paired up with new ones which had no idea how to roll to attack, never mind play an evil character.

For the love of the gods, don't play an evil alignment campaign with new(er) players. They will far exceed the expectation of, "PCs.. (who are) cartoony villains who... (would murder) innocent bystanders for amusement, bathe in the blood of their victims, and who would cross the street for the chance to kick a puppy." Just my experience, but YMMV, of course.

For my other two coppers, just run a game with no alignments, but say the PCs have to be badasses who are not out to save the princess, but to kidnap her and sell her to the highest bidder, et al - and be smart at it

cheers,
--N

 

[airwalkrr]

I've often thought that running a villain campaign would require each PC to have their own network. I have thought that requiring each character to acquire leadership (after all, you aren't a villain without followers) would make for an interesting game. In the event a character gets assassinated by the party, his cohort has arrangements to get him raised, and if those arrangements fall through, that player takes over with his cohort, who is probably seen as less of a threat to the party, and therefore, less of a target. Of course, the cohort would need to take leadership eventually (or use PH2 retraining) to assume his fallen master's position, and of course he would not be as high in level so he would not retain as many followers.

The biggest difficulty I see is from the DM's point of view. Since villains are more proactive than heroes, the DM would have his planning cut out for him and would often need to wing it. If the villains decide they want to raid the keep, the DM will need to detail the keep, and if they abandon that plan and decide to attack a temple instead, the DM will need to switch courses. A crafty DM could weave plots though to ensure that the greatest potential for power gain always leads where he wants it to. And of course, the PCs would occassionally need to defend their lairs from adventurers, which means the PCs would need to have detailed layouts of such lairs.

 

[Nifft]

My PCs have started an evil game, for days when they can't all make it. They're hobgoblin servitors of Mephistopheles and they are in a 60-humanoid longboat with 50 goblinoid minions. They will be raiding coastal cities.

Basically, village = dungeon, and they each get to play a different class than they normally would -- we've got a Warblade, a Warlock, and a Cleric, none of which have featured in the main game very strongly.

I'm looking forward to some BURNINATING of THATCHED ROOF COTTAGES!!! (For Satan... er, Mephistopheles.)

Cheers, -- N

 

[phindar]

The biggest difficulty I see is from the DM's point of view. Since villains are more proactive than heroes, the DM would have his planning cut out for him and would often need to wing it. If the villains decide they want to raid the keep, the DM will need to detail the keep, and if they abandon that plan and decide to attack a temple instead, the DM will need to switch courses.

This is a pretty easy fix, as long as the players understand that D&D takes some prep and they can't just pull a 180 in the middle of a session and expect the Gm to pull another completely prepared scenario out of his hat. Something big, a real scheme like knocking over the palace treasury or kidnapping the king's daughter is going to have some lead time. Anything that will present a real mechanical challenge will have to be statted out.

Winging it and having other stuff prepared is important, but the GM also has to be able to say, "That'll have to wait until next session." If nothing else, if they come up with a really great idea like knocking over the treasury, have them do all the legwork for it that session, winging everything you have to, taking a lot of notes, and then run the actual heist at the start of next session. (The point is less to use their planning to build an impenetrable vault, but to use their plans to make the heist challenging and fun.)

There's nothing like listening to the players scheme to inspire the GM.

 

[Firedancer]

I've played in a number of evil games. A short term, you are goblins, this is your lair, here come the adventurers; it was a WoTC product and was excellent fun and challange.

An orge magi in a Ravenloft game; we were evil and viscious, but mostly stuck together.

A the latest was a very different game where we were the proactive plot makers who advanced our own causes ahead of everyone else. It required the characters to be goal orientated, giving the DM time to work on our goals.

We were evil as we lied, cheated, stole, murdered, set others up for it, bribed, blackmailed and actively corrupted city guards.

Its essential to have a strong group theme or agree to achieve each others goals. You can do the game as the proactive villains, which actually is the most rewarding, IME. Or you can be an adventuring group, just your employer is evil and gets you to do the dirtier jobs.

Problems will arise if you just give players the brief "play and evil character" as then you will different ideas that won't gel. But that's the same for a normal party. The difference is there won't be an attempt to reconcile these differences, just resolve them with blade or spell.