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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 402719" data-attributes="member: 3146">Interesting discussion so far--I hope my small contribution doesn't ruin it. . . .I played in a game a year and a half or so ago which started out with the DM saying he didn't care whether we played good or evil--paladins or antipaladins or anything in between.It was a futuristic cyberpunk/shadowrun style game and started out with just three players. One of the other players and I chose to play morally ambiguous characters (the moral concept of my character was that he was a shallow thinker whose vague, culturally absorbed relativism offered him no real reason to be moral or immoral but who at least had an instinctive sense that he shouldn't murder or rape people) because we knew we were playing a cyberpunk style game and good characters don't work in such a setting. The other player decided to play a psychotic (although it wasn't immediately apparent). It went on for a couple months and the other guy playing a decent character left and a few more players joined. The new characters with forceful personalities were also of the rabid anti-human psychotic bent. When the inevitable "break into the evil corporation" scenario showed up, they started killing indiscriminately--primarily for the fun of it (they could have hidden and the guards would probably have assumed it to be a false alarm).When that was done, the other players decided to spend the next session role-playing out their wasting of the reward money on ale and whores.I didn't come back.That experience taught me several things. First, I don't enjoy playing characters who go along with and accomodate evil. I don't enjoy hanging around with players who are playing evil characters. And I don't enjoy role-playing the ale-and-whores evening.What's more, I'm glad I don't enjoy that. I'm glad I'm not the kind of person who enjoys that. The reason I can't enjoy such things is because I abhor them. If I could enjoy role-playing such things, it would mean that I, at best was largely indifferent to them. And I ought to be ashamed if I ever become indifferent to evil.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------My take on DMing is that the way a DM roleplays evil characters is qualitatively different from the way a player would have to.A DM has to adopt a much more clinical approach to NPCs than a player does to a PC. 95% of the things the DM does with the kind of NPC that can be really evil in himself (rather than acting as an extension of the main villain's evil like the Storm Troopers in Star Wars) are never role-played out. They consist of things like: "Things are getting a little hot for the Vecnaites at the moment and Cordwellyn only associated with them for the power he could have in an alliance so he won't be at the meeting when the PCs arrive. Knowing that the cult is illegal, he would also have taken care to attend the rituals properly masked. But even his disguise probably betrays its expensive cut and materials. So, if the PCs question the cultists/speak with dead, they'll find out that a tall man with a greatsword was a member of the cult but hasn't attended the rituals for a month. He must be rich because he wore a velvet coat with lace ruffles. . . . No-one ever saw his face, but he did have a short beard."Even when the villains are on stage, the DM is usually running several people at once so there is the additional level of separation in "villain X says '. . . .'" instead of simply saying ". . . ." Well, it's either that or combat.Still, for me, the most important difference is that when I DM, I want to see my villains fail. I want to see the PCs unravel their foul plots and punish them properly for their deeds. And that's what usually happens. As a player, I not only have to act out the villainy directly and in first rather than third person, I have to want my character to get away with it and not be brought to justice. And that rankles more than anything else.</blockquote>

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