Pathfinder 1E ACTUAL Evil Campaign

[Nytmare]

You can definitely wager on that. I must say that when I was in college choosing classes to fill out my requirements Psychology and Sociology didn't count towards my science credits. That's because there is so much hypothesis and conjecture in those fields. Very little of it leads to solid, provable theories. Not all of it is bunk, but there are some major, major gaps, and what little the general populace knows of the few solid conclusions that are found is usually warped, old or just wrong. So I agree the general public's views will not mesh up with my experiences.

I'm a "hard" science guy myself, but I'm really hoping that you're not equating the "soft sciences" with "not really sciences."

 

[Libramarian]

If the typical evil D&D character hijinx are not evil enough for you, you could try reading 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade.

(maybe just the Wikipedia article)

(I am not liable for any emetic responses to said book or summary article)

 

[paradox42]

I'm a "hard" science guy myself, but I'm really hoping that you're not equating the "soft sciences" with "not really sciences."

Not to get into the flame war, but this sort of dismissal of peer-reviewed work is nearly always used as an excuse to simply dismiss studies the speaker doesn't like rather than as any sort of legitimate criticism. Methinks you should examine your own motives closely in this regard, though given prior responses in the thread I don't expect that you actually will.

Other responses to the thread's questions have given good advice, I think; treat the Evil campaign as any other sort of "starting up a guild/business" sandboxing thing and just wing it when you need to decide the corner cases for stuff like how addiction affects the revenue from a drug trade. I did similar things when I ran an evil campaign- until I wanted a genuine storyline behind it and sort of roped them into an "antiheroes" campaign through a side door they didn't see opening until it was too late.

Corruption from torture, same deal, but note that torture relies on Intimidation as its motivator- and that doesn't actually motivate everybody. Some people genuinely do not get cooperative when one tries to Intimidate them; presuming you're the one trying corruption, your only options will be to kill them outright, or let them go for later amusement in hunting them down again.

Of course, the latter option carries the danger that Bond villains (and Dr. Evil) always seemed to ignore...

 

[pemerton]

So if you really want an interestingly evil game, what you're going to maybe want rules for, is how you break people.

I think this is a good point. In the D&D context, Intimidation is the obvious skill, but you would need some sort of mechanic for adjudicating it (dare I suggest a skill challenge!).

I'd suggest reading some old tragedies from the Greeks or Shakespeare. Get a handle on what evil is.

I'm less sure about this. People run heroic games relying on TV, movies and a bit of pulp. Can't they do the same for an "evil" game?

Torturing a paladin until he is corrupted. I am not sure why any supplement would have such precise rules. What about how many good deeds turn a kobold good? Do we need this sort of stuff?.

Huh? Of course we do! I mean, we have rules for how many times we have to whack a paladin with a morning star before he's dead, so we can replicate that part of Morgoth's war against the free peoples. Why can't we replicate his torture of Hurin too? It's just a version of social conflict resolution.

evil is banal.

<sip>

It's what you do when you buy a D&D book instead of donating to a charity.

This is highly contentious. Not even Peter Singer or Thomas Pogge asserts this, though both think that there are deep moral issues involved in making that sort of consumer spending decision.

Part of Rai Gaita's attack on Singer in "Good and Evil: An Absolute Conception" takes (more or less) the following form: Singer equates failing to save (eg via donation) with deliberate killing; deliberate killing is evil; therefore Singer is saying that failure to donate is evil; therefore Singer is crazy. But, at least as a superficial diagnosis of Singer, this criticism misfires when it imports into Singer's framework a notion that he does not himself use, namely, "evil". (I'm more sympathetic to Gaita than I used to be as an undergraduate, but I still think his criticism of Singer misfires at a deep level also - but that is a bit off-topic.)

I think the modernist theorists like Neitzsche, Durkheim, Weber etc raise genuine doubts about whether the category of "evil" even has purchase in the sort of context which gives rise to choices like "do I give this money to charity, or use it on a trivial luxury purchase." Notions of structure, agency, power, and (perhaps) justice seem more appropriate for trying to understand what is going on in such situations.

And I don't think they make for very good D&D - which is (like pulp and comic books) essentially romantic, even reactionary, in its core moral outlook. If you read Tolkien and wonder "How come the hobbits have such a high material standard of living given that they seem to have the producitve capacity of thirteenth-century England?" you've missed his point. If you read the X-Men and wonder why Storm is not using her powers to avert famines the world over, you've missed Claremont's point. And if you play D&D and worry about why the PCs don't spend their money on poverty relief rather than magic items, I feel you've missed the game's point - or, rather, are trying to take it into territory where it will probably break down. (Maybe try My Life With Master instead!)

 

[chaochou]

I'm less sure about this. People run heroic games relying on TV, movies and a bit of pulp. Can't they do the same for an "evil" game?

Yeah. The Sopranos and The Wire would be high on my list of sources.

But for true evil you have to watch The Only Way is Essex

 

[pemerton]

I'm a "hard" science guy myself, but I'm really hoping that you're not equating the "soft sciences" with "not really sciences."

I teach a bit of "soft science" - social theory - and I'm not offended by the suggestion that there are methodological distinctions between the "hard" and the "soft" sciences.

there is so much hypothesis and conjecture in those fields. Very little of it leads to solid, provable theories. Not all of it is bunk, but there are some major, major gaps, and what little the general populace knows of the few solid conclusions that are found is usually warped, old or just wrong.

But by and large, its conclusions are solid when backed up with proper methodology

These two claims push in different directions, but aren't inconsistent as such. Solid conclusions can coincide with gaps, even major gaps. And public ignorance is consistent with solid conclusions whether or not their are gaps (eg the public's general ignorance of special and general relativity).

On bullying, I think part of the problem is that bullying is (to a significant extent) a moral phenomenon. A good part of behaviour that is today, in Australia, categorised as bullying (and, by implication, pathological in some fashion), was even 30 years ago (ie in my childhood) accepted as ordinary, tolerable, even desirable (and not only in special contexts such as military discipline).

Whatever one thinks of the change in attitude towards that behaviour, it seems to me hard to talk meaningfully about its prevalance and causes without noting and having some regard to those broader social dynamics. I think Durkheim's discussion, in "The Division of Labour in Society", of "the cult of the individual" and the breakdown of resemblance-based solidarity could be helpful. I also think Zygmant Bauman's "Modernity and the Holocaust" could be interesting, and also Foucault's "Discipline and Punish", and both would give rise to questions about the relationship between bullying, the response to bullying, and various ideological structures that might be in play. (On the latter, and particularly in the workplace context, I also think Scott Veitch's "Law and Irresponsibility" could help shed some light.)

 

[pemerton]

The closest game I ever ran to an "evil" game wasn't deliberately set up that way. It started in a pretty ordinary style, and the PCs were a happy-go-lucky wizard, a happy-go-lucky elf ranger/cleric type, a paladin and a monk.

But over time (and change in player roster) the PCs changed. By the time the game got to the mid-teens the two most important PCs were a power-hungry summoner and a former slave, social climbing warlock who knew few limits in the deployment of magical force and didn't always worry about sparing the innocent.

The PCs accidentally released a powerful ancient wizard from stasis (that campaign's version of Vecna), and the summoner pledged allegiance to him. He even went so far as to allow a fellow PC to be sacrificed to a dark god (the PC was a diviner whose player was happy to have killed off - it turned out that an excess of divination magic was spoiling the game). And the former slave ultimately went along, because he had become addicted to a magic-enhancing herb, gone broke and lost his house as a result, and was promised - in return for allegiance - the money to clear his debts, plus a magistracy in his home city.

So the PCs ended up cooperating with Vecna to restore the glory of an ancient kingdom, which involved supporting the conquest of their formerly independent hometown and its forceful incorporation into the renewed kingdom. And the social climber got clean of drugs, got his house back, and was awarded his magistracy. He even got a girlfriend - a valley-elf enchanter that he met on a mission. But in a tragic demonstration of the motto that crime doesn't pay, she was later killed when one of the summoner's demons ran amuck - plunging the warlock back into sorrow, but also leading him to devote his energies to find a way to have her resurrected. (Sadly, he was killed on another plane before he got a chance to bring her back to life.)

 

[S'mon]

And I don't think they make for very good D&D - which is (like pulp and comic books) essentially romantic, even reactionary, in its core moral outlook. If you read Tolkien and wonder "How come the hobbits have such a high material standard of living given that they seem to have the producitve capacity of thirteenth-century England?" you've missed his point.

I've been reading [ame="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Farewell-Alms-Economic-History-Princeton/dp/0691141282"]A Farewell to Alms[/ame] so I know the answer: low population density!
In the Malthusian world this is the sole determinant of living standards; for much of the middle ages the standard of living in England was higher than in 1800. The question then is, why do hobbits have such a low population density?

Some possible reasons for low population density, high standard of living:

Dirt and disease - hobbits are dirty
Infanticide - hobbits kill their babies
Fertility limitation - hobbits marry late or don't marry.
Warfare & Predation - goblins eat hobbits

Judging by what we see in the books, with all the unmarried male hobbit characters, fertility limitation seems likeliest, with female infanticide a possiblity...

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION], the system won't let me XP you!

 

[Connorsrpg]

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]

You got my point exactly when you said, "It's just a version of social conflict resolution". That is what I meant about the OP situations - they are all very specific egs of greater 'mechanical situations'.