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Message: <blockquote data-quote="awesomeocalypse" data-source="post: 4948924" data-attributes="member: 85641">Evil Campaigns are much, much harder to run successfully than good campaigns, and I’ve seen a whole lot of them turn from “campaigns” into unintentional one-shots after players attacked each other, committed crimes which made the adventure unplayable, etc. The generic D&D structure of a team of protagonists working together to win fights and challenges in pursuit of consecutive, shared larger goals meshes perfectly with heroic pcs—not so much with evil ones. When the noble paladin rides off to rescue the princess, it not only makes for a smooth adventure, it fits the character. The evil wizard is far more likely to ask, “why the heck should I care about the princess, and even if I did, why should I work with these bozos?” Many evil pc concepts have no credible motivation for working with (and not betraying) others, for completing any adventure not directly in line with their particular selfish goals (.e.g taking over the world), and doing all the other things that the game is built around the pcs doing.  That said, it can work. I’ve seen it done, and when done successfully it can be a blast. The players and DM just need to adhere to a few key rules: <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">“Heroes” or not, players are still protagonists. The first place most players of evil characters go wrong is that they look for inspiration on playing their character from fictional antagonists, i.e. villains. This is problematic, because villains and antagonists serve a very different roles in the story, and their behaviors are generally going to be severely disruptive if carried out by pcs. For example, the Joker is a wonderful villain and anatagonist. But a PC attempting to act like a Joker would be unlikely to be much of a team player, and would almost certainly be far too disruptive to social settings and indeed the plot overall to successfully serve as the protagonist of an ongoing campaign. Or look at the classic “evil mastermind” archetype. It works well in fiction, but at the table a player who spends all of his time manipulating others and building labyrinthine plots is going to end up on lots of longer social tangents which hold no interest to the other pcs, and isn’t going to have much in-character motivation for going out with a group and directing all of his efforts towards completing their shared goals. As cool as they are, Littlefinger or Lex Luthor are not good PC templates. A successful PC concept always supplies credible motivation for the PC to act as an adventurer and work with others. Those can be “evil” motivations, but they need to be strong enough to ensure that when you roleplay the character the way he would actually act, it functions at the table as smoothly as a heroic PC would.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Makes rules for characters, not just players. Rules like, “no betrayals” or “no stupid evil” sound great, but if they’re only player guidelines rather than explicit rules laid out in the gaming world, then you’ve done nothing to rectify the underlying problem, which is that if you’re roleplaying a treacherous or murderous character, staying in-character would naturally push you towards those behaviors. You end up with characters who don’t act the way they should purely due to metagame reasons. This causes cognitive dissonance and breaks immersion. Instead, gives the characters reason to follow those rules. For example, maybe they’re all undercover as advance scouts for an evil empire in a foreign land: they need to work together to succeed, they can’t create too much of a commotion or they’ll be caught, and if they fail the empire will hang them out to dry and leave them alone in a hostile country. Even if they’re naturally inclined towards killing, they won’t just murder random people, and even if they’re naturally out for themselves they need each other too much for any betrayals. This means the players can roleplay the characters to the hilt, without holding back, and still believably function within the game and work to complete the adventure.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Play Nazis, not serial killers. Characters who believe in the virtue of their cause are more interesting, complex and believable, and are far easier to get on the same page in terms of working towards a shared goal. If you all work for an evil empire, then that empire’s goals can credibly motivate all of you to go on the same adventure. On the other hand, psychos or people who are evil to be evil are generally boring and one-note, occasionally disturbing to other players, and are like herding cats when trying to motivate them to work towards a single adventuring goal.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Villains have friends too. Just because the characters are evil doesn’t mean they all need to hate each other, lack loyalty, and only care about themselves. Your tyrannical wizard could be childhood friends with that dark knight.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The sandbox is not your friend. If you do not provide a fairly rigid structure, the campaign will devolve into stupid evil and chaos. It happens every single time. Stay clear of sandbox play no matter what, just trust me.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The PCs should not be the most powerful beings in the area. 5 evil PCs in a small farm town with no guards worth caring about is recipe for disaster (literally—I’d be very surprised if the town was still standing after an “adventure” or two). Whatever the local authority figures are should pack enough muscle to effectively enforce order if the PCs decide to start acting like they can do whatever they like without consequences.</li> </ul>There may be other guidelines, but I’ve found that these ones are the bare minimum for making an evil campaign work. I’d think very hard if this is really the route you want to go and if you’re prepared to do the necessary work, but if you are, then best of luck.</blockquote>

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