A Villain Campaign

[GoodKingJayIII]

I've never run or played in an "evil" game. As much as I'd like to, I have problems wrapping my brain around the concept. Here's why:

In a group of four or five or six evil characters, there's bound to be someone who's trying to assert Alpha status on the rest of the group. This may be through sheer physical might and presence, outside contacts, networking, etc. Either someone's going to come out on top, or there's going to be a constant power struggle between two or more players.

This can be interesting, but ultimately this is just a game and I've seen people get frustrated and annoyed with this kind of infighting. I think it'd be cool as a sort of "mini-series" but I have trouble imagining this lasting for an extended period of time.

Hmmm... I just had a thought. What if every PC has a Secret? Not really a stretch, I know. But imagine that each PC knows another's secret, but they don't know whose it is, nor do they know who knows. That could be really interesting

 

[DonTadow]

I've ran an evil campaign one shot last summer. I ran it once with my normal group and once at a con. With both groups, we were lucky enough to have mature players whom understand the dynamics of evil characters.

My advice would be make sure you talk to the players before hand about the definition of evil and how evil does not mean psychopathic killer. Evil also is in the eye of the beholder. One of the groups went with the backstory that they believed that they were doing what was right for their kingdom, despite that their faction is opposed by almost every other faction because of their...way of doing things.

I advised both groups to throw away the cookie cutter alignments in the PHB and think of your favorite villians from tv and movies. The best villians are dynamic.

 

[Stormborn]

Trust, Style, and Proactivity can all beachieved with a simple solution: Mob them up. IOW have them be affiliated with a larger, long established, and powerful organization with its own rules and traditions of conduct. The party is beholden to someone above them, who is in turn answerable to a higher authority. This is not an organization in which crazies advance very far. The organization doesn't want to attract undue attention and doesnt tolerate personal conflicts that screwup the organizations goals. You may not be loyal to each other, but you had better be loyal to the bosses or you wind up up someone's zombie slave. Save your betrayals for peopel outside the group, cause if you start crossing other members of the oragnization you will need the back up. And if you do betray someone, you better have a very good reason (or be able to covince the bosses that you do) and the organization as a whole better be improved or everyone else is coming after you. Not just the paladins and do-gooders but the liches, mindflayers, and vampire lords who run the organization. The players dont have to be all LE (They could be N, CN, LN, LE, NE, but unlikely that they would be CE unless they were kept on a tight leash) but the organization would be strongly Lawful and strongly Evil.

Communicate this to the players. Perhaps even suggest that they have ties to one another of friendship or a common patron that has them work together. While they are getting used to the idea of being the villains you can have someone else "run" them. Give them assignements until they have carved out a "territory" (either physcial or based on certain types of crime) and they can start being proactive and planning their own capers. These early missions will help them get an idea of what to do and how to do it. Later, once they are established, they might have to get approval on certain jobs if it crosses outside their territory, or they might be given assignments to deal with other groups causeing trouble - be it temples of good gods, adventurers, or rogue members of the organization. Eventaully they start to get enough power, and likely followers as well, that they might be able to make a bid to move against some of their superiors for a bigger piece of the pie. But it wouldnt be as simple as "we can beat him in a fight", they would have to have worked the social and organization aspects of the situation as well.