Blind evil campaign

[haakon1]

I like it when the players are "in on it".

I played in a Star Wars RPG where we were scout troopers for the Imperial Star Ship Hornet. Basically, like the evil Enterprise in the "Mirror Universe" episodes of Star Trek, our mission was to seek out new new civilizations and enslave them to the will of the emperor, in the name of human rights -- that is the human manifest destiny to dominate all other inferior life forms!

It was fun for a while, but we didn't restart after the TPK.

Anyhow, in general, I like the idea of cogs in an evil machine, who think their cause is good -- when the players know the cause is evil.

No shades of gray are needed (strictly optional) and there's no tricking or railroading of players.

It also opens up the possibility for conversion to good guys when evil gets boring (which usually doesn't take long), and for dramatic tension until they decide to go good. Great, great start for a hero. I'm thinking Han Solo (once of the Imperial star fleet, then a mercenary, and finally a hero), Te'alq (once First Prime of Apothis, turns to join Stargate Command, eventually leads his species to freedom), Saint Paul (once a Roman official, then a convert helping the poor Christians), etc.

 

[Terwox]

As above -- please be sure that your players will enjoy this as part of a game.

They are possibly signed up to play a game, not learn a lesson about inhumanity.

If you'd like to portray characters slowly turning more and more monstrous and evil, you might want to hit up White Wolf. If your players shy away from playing Vampire et al, they might not like this game!

If they're down for it though, sounds like it could be really fun.


As for how to do it, you could always tell them that they are an order of paladins who have been sent on a holy mission to another country to stop a war before it starts. In order to do this, they have to root out corruption and expose it, and they're expressly supposed to murder the leader of the country. Even further, after this happens, their own country could turn on them, and they could try to "go back" to actual goodness by working as renegades against the country that sent them on their mission.

 

[blacksheepcannibal]

It is quite possible to ask your players if they are interested in this sort of thing without ever really asking them directly.

Lots of DMs (myself included) take a brief survey as they are working on a new campaign, just a brief tumble of questions that get an idea of what the players want and expect in the new campaign.

I've seen lots of questions asked, such as "what is your favorite and least favorite monster" and such things like

"Which would you rather see: A good guy doing bad things, or a bad guy doing good things?"

Loaded questions like that would give you a really good idea (especially if dropped amid other less-loaded questions) of whether or not your players would enjoy something like that.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I would do some research on Exalted. As I understand it, each type of character (Solar, Lunar, etc) thinks that they're the good guys and those opposing them are bad guys. The game never takes a stand on who is actually right. Sounds like what you're looking for - not Exalted per se, but its approach.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Consider simply flipping the LotR model (I swear I've posted this somewhere else on this board, but I can't remember where).

The PCs are either mercs or ordinary soldiery of some kind in the service of a charismatic mage-king, and have been repeatedly sent out to deal with incursions and raids from neighboring countries. The raiders are always rabidly opposed to the mage-king, calling him all kinds of evil.

After some successes dealing with the invaders, the party is sent across the borders to deal with enemy bases or particularly outspoken or dangerous enemies of the state.

With some missions seeming more than morally ambiguous, the PCs may start feeling that there may be some justification to what their foes are saying about their beloved leader.

Then finally, after many, many adventures, they find irrefutable evidence that the charismatic mage-king they've served with so much devotion is indeed an incarnation of evil, and whose sole goal is to dominate and enslave the entire world.

Do they continue to work for him, or do they rebel?

I also posted a scaled down version of this as post#65 in this thread:
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=102706&page=5&pp=15

Both are based on the premise that someone may be in the service of evil and not be evil themselves, and that they may not be aware of the problem until they are deeply involved in it.

Its a common enough trope out there- it was even one of the subplots of the game Escape Velocity Nova.