Consequences of playing "EVIL" races

[Nytmare]

I've only ever run two evil D&D games. One in highschool that devolved into sociopathic, backstab, PVP-o-rama before characters had finished being rolled. The other was a laid back Scarred Lands military campaign, where alignment has nothing to do with what the "natural" alignment of your race is, and everything to do with which deity created your race/society/ideals/culture as troops in a century long war.

That being said, the number of NON evil D&D games I've seen over the years that have devolved into versions of that first game is rather shocking, and I think it has a lot more to do with the group going in and deciding ahead of time what they want their game to be about. That first evil game was all about "I want to be mean and assert teenage dominance over my friends and use the game as an excuse" that second game was "let's play a tight knit unit of behind-enemy-lines spies and blackguards trying to steal an artifact from the good guys."

I've been running a ton of Blades in the Dark games over the last handful of years, and all of them have been stocked full of evil, selfish, self serving characters, and those games HUM along and I never have to worry about them self destructing.

 

[uzirath]

Here's what I think will happen: the first few times a PC of an "evil" race encounters the setting appropriate backlash, they'll take it in stride. Probably by the fourth time it happens it won't be fun anymore, for players or GM.

I agree. This is why I prefer having a discussion with the players (including the GM) to decide what we want it to look like.

This can also be partly handled mechanically without taking lots of screen time. In the GURPS dungeon fantasy treatment (including DFRPG), for example, the default racial templates for half-orcs, half-ogres, and other "barbarous" races includes the disadvantage, Social Stigma (Savage). This includes penalties on most social skills with "civilized" folks and there is a chance that you'll be prevented from entering any given community. This can all be roleplayed out, but it's fine just to roll the dice. If they have to sleep outside, they miss out on the benefits of town (getting healed up at the temple, buying/repairing gear, etc.) and use up their rations and whatnot as usual. We find that this provides a fun playable model without having to repeatedly roleplay every encounter with suspicious town guards. (Sometimes we roleplay it anyway, but that depends how often we're passing through towns.) The consequences matter and can be a pain in the butt, but the player doesn't have to worry about having their character burned at the stake. If they voluntarily decide to break into the town, then that becomes an adventure in its own right with all the usual perils and possibilities.

 

[Panda-s1]

Dumb is a strong word. In the pantheon of D&D, gods decided who would be fair and unjust. They decided who would align (or have a great chance) of being evil. Meaning, they committed evil acts because that was their inherent nature due to the gods, not because of culture. What you describe is culture. And if that's your campaign setting, awesome. But to call other campaign settings dumb because of the deity creation of races seems a bit extreme.

yeah the fact that the fiction of D&D (according to the PHB itself) relies on "the gods made them do it" seems like ????. meanwhile the other "non-evil" races are off the hook because their gods don't do that and gave them "free will", yet somehow none of them tend toward evil as a whole

 

[Lanefan]

Here's what I think will happen: the first few times a PC of an "evil" race encounters the setting appropriate backlash, they'll take it in stride. Probably by the fourth time it happens it won't be fun anymore, for players or GM.

And what happens next will entirely depend on how persistent the player(s) is(are) in attempting to bring these "evil" types in as PCs.