Book of Vile Darkness: A Morality Play?

[GSHamster]

Better yet, have a mixed outcome. If they free the prisoners, maybe most of the orcs go back to their pillaging ways eventually, and the PCs have to deal with them, but one 'sees the light', so to speak, and becomes a recurring allied NPC (or henchman, squire, &c). That's how things tend to turn out in real life; morally interesting actions have mixed consequences, rather than being purely good or purely bad in their outcomes.

I rather like this idea. I wonder if it would be worthwhile to have it as a general rule of thumb when DMing:

Every major action that the PCs take has three consequences: one good, one bad, and one unexpected.

 

[haakon1]

And just because one has the class name Assassin does it necessarily mean that they are killing for hire.

In AD&D, my half-orc assassin viewed being an assassin as a special orcish martial art. He never had a contract, but liked to "get the job done" as an adventurer with ambushes and stealth. He was LE, emphasis on the "L", and part of a party of each race who were the "Chosen Ones", for what fate they never did figure out.

 

[LurkAway]

First off, it sounds like you have a pretty simplistic view of evil here. Not all evil creatures kidnap, extort, rape or murder any more than all good creatures run around healing strangers and sacrificing themselves for heroic lost causes.

Or perhaps you incorrectly assumed that I was generalizing, instead of throwing out some examples?

Do you feel bad when you shoot some innocent bystander while playing Grand Theft Auto, or when you play MacBeth in your high school play, or when you write the villain's part in a story you're working on?

No, because Grand Theft Auto is not an immersive experience for me (mind you, my wife thinks that kind of violence in video games is awful and asks 'how can you play that?' so...). If a D&D evil PC was roleplayed with the tragic eloquence of a Shakespearean play, it would make for a far more compelling character than the standard D&D fare. I don't identify with villains as a DM. However, as a player, it's different. Now I don't think I'm some sort of pretentiously hardcore deep immersionist actor roleplayer by any stretch, but I do automatically identify with my PCs to the extent that I'd feel uncomfortable roleplaying some evil PCs.

 

[Terraism]

Put another way, if a player should feel bad for playing an evil pc, shouldn't the dm then feel bad all the time when dming?

I'm not going to be replying as eloquently as Celebrim, but my thought on this one is a resounding "no", for a simple reason.

The PCs of a campaign are, at least in my mind, designed to be the protagonists. The people that you root for around the table. The DM runs both bystanders and antagonists - the NPCs controlled by a DM aren't the focus of the game.

I guess it boils down to when the DM presents evil, it's as a force to be vanquished, whereas as opposed to players playing evil as a thing to reward and prosper.

 

[pemerton]

A good DM (even in an Evil campaign) shouldn't include such situations without providing the Right Answer to the dilemma, *in regards to the campaign world*.

An alternative approach, which I prefer, is to allow the players to provide a solution.

For example, in my current game, one of the players suggested that the PCs require the hobgoblins whom they had taken prisoner to swear oaths foreswearing warfare, and also accepting exile from the lands that they had been raiding. The other players went along with this, and in game the oaths were duly extracted.

If the PCs are willing to Do The Right Thing, the DM shouldn't be looking for ways to screw them up later.

I agree with this. I've not had any reason, as GM, to have those hobgoblin NPCs break their oaths.

I see this as similar to the standard GM response to PC victory in combat - most of the time, the opponents don't come back to life to harass the PCs.

if there are disagreements among the players, because the DM never determined what is customary in the campaign world, then hours will be lost in pointless argument

Hours of argument are rare in my game, but part of what playing the game invovles is the players debating what should be done, and why.

Sometimes they don't agree. This has resulted in unilateral decisions to execute prisoners, or in prisoners being handed over to the authorities when other PCs would have liked them dead.

Otherwise he's just setting up the campaign to watch the world burn.

At least with the right group, a campaign can survive the occasional disagreement between the players over what should be done.

In my view, the GM asserting authority over this doesn't actually solve the problem, because if the players don't all agree with the GM's moral judgement, the same issues will arise.

Better, if a particular moral question is likely to provoke game-breaking disagreements, for the GM and players all to work together to avoid introducing such situations into the game.

 

[the Jester]

Re: My comment about "then shouldn't the dm feel bad?"

I'm not sure that the two are really comparable.

As a DM, I'm not self-identifying in any way with an NPC.

I get where you're coming from, but what about the long-term campaign villain whose actions have informed the game over three years, real time, with multiple nonlethal confrontations and showdowns with lackeys and such?

I guess my own playstyle is influencing me a lot here. In my campaign, relationships with npcs are often complex, weaving from hostility to detente to alliance to adversity again over time. Today's villain might be tomorrow's npc ally for an adventure.

I'm not saying that there is something inherently wrong with playing an evil PC, but I do find something bizarre about playing for team evil exclusively or enjoying without reservation characterizing an evil PC. Even the most empathetic, charming, evil character tends to make you feel sick inside after enough time passes if his evil is anything more than a hat he wears.

I agree that an evil pc who fits the stereotype of Eeeevil can get old quick when played straight, but even stereotypical Eeeevil can be fun for extended periods if the player's tongue is in his cheek. And nonstereotypical evil pcs can be fun played straight- for example, I played a character whose personality was strongly based on Dr. Doom. He was arrogant and haughty and out to better himself without much caring what happened to anyone else, but recognized that his allies were a great resource for him and had his own code of honor. He was a lot of fun.

But again, it's all a matter of playstyle; if evil pcs ick you out or annoy you or bore you, then they do.

In my experience, most people neither play particularly evil nor particularly good characters in the long run. Most players make considerations based on 'winning' the game, a very little else. This tends to produce a sort of casual brutality that most players don't dwell on much, and which doesn't really hit them much because they don't spend much time thinking of the characters in the game as more than game peices to move around. That is to say, you aren't killing orcs, you are 'killing' a miniature, or reducing down a pile of numbers. So conversely, most people playing 'evil' are not engaging the world at a level deeper than that either. It takes quite a bit to shock your average player - especially an experienced one - out of this mode of thought.

That's some astute analysis there.

I'm not going to be replying as eloquently as Celebrim, but my thought on this one is a resounding "no", for a simple reason.

The PCs of a campaign are, at least in my mind, designed to be the protagonists. The people that you root for around the table. The DM runs both bystanders and antagonists - the NPCs controlled by a DM aren't the focus of the game.

I guess it boils down to when the DM presents evil, it's as a force to be vanquished, whereas as opposed to players playing evil as a thing to reward and prosper.

A good point, albeit one at variance with my playstyle. (When I populate an area's map with goblin tribes and roving bands of gnolls, those populations aren't there just to be exterminated by the pcs. They're also there to exist in the world, if that makes sense. But then, I've been using the same homebrewed campaign setting for a good 15 years or so, which I'm sure impacts this particular attitude.)