Evil Campaign

[Dredan]

Swedish: Couple things, DM'n for over 10 years and playing for over 20 years, there is a few things about evil campaigns (if the characters are actually evil and want to play evil), first evil party's will attack each other and kill each other unless they are

A) Lawful evil
B) some other evil alignment but have a common goal with the part, but still the Chaotic evil will kill whenever it suits him, for no rhyme or reason other then for the pure joy of it, and well the Neutral evil is just evil incarnate itself, its purely selfish, driven but whatever goal and will use and discard whenever anyone of any power starts either getting stronger or is no longer needed. If evil is played correctly the party probably will not stay together long either because power struggles within the group or you have the lawfuls maintaining some order or keeping the other evils in check out of brute force.

Most of the evil campaigns listed above aren't evil....they are trying to be evil but they are still doing some sort of flavor of "good" help this thing, rescue this for that, true evils would take what they want, subjugate ones that can be forced and neutralize others that are in the way.

Usually the evil campaigns work well for short term campaign goals to establish a force of evil in the campaign and it is a good segway for players to try it out and then have them build a party of neutrals and good and let them try to fix the evil in the area. What this allows is the party to play together without killing each other off and occasionally when the good party comes across this evil its actually one of their other characters that they can use to fight against the party. Its quite entertaining. One suggestion as a DM when doing this, is if the good party runs across one of the players evil characters..that player has a choice, give the DM one of the character sheets, evil or good player to play as an NPC, that way the player can play evil or good that night and either way he will be fighting to save his character!

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It comes equipped with new spells, deities (evil and good) items, equipment magic and technology based.

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Regards

 

[Salthorae]

Great information and ideas. Many thanks, to everyone!

One thing I would say Swedish Chef is that even if the group is playing small "e"vil as a group, that you shouldn't categorically rule out allowing PVP. If a player wants to poison another player that has offended him or thwarted him, I would say allow it.

Also, it's not such a big stretch to get reasons for Evil character to follow a plot, just need wealth and power as the ultimate goal for them as others have said, "save that person? Sure for a reward..." etc.

 

[Jorael]

I would have to say that msot of the time, an evil campaign (or Evil, like the one I was in... more later) is much more involved than a "good" campaign. In a good campaign, you need very little to motivate your characters; a damsel in distress, a big pile of gold, a kingdom under siege. In an evil campaign, you really need to work out the motivations of the PC's.

In the Evil campaign I played in, each player had a definite goal in mind. Mind you, we were, at the time, deployed to Iraq, and all needed a sort of release. Our cleric (worshipper of Afflux) wanted power for himself and his god, and would do anything to get it (kidnapping of the local hero's sister and ritual sacrifice). Our rogue made a deal with the nearby black dragon to replace his missing arm, which gave him bonuses but occasionally choked him if he wasn't obeying his "master" (excellent plot device). The rogue also died at one point, and his soul was transferred to a Mohrg, which changed his goals completely. Our monk was actually CE, and did whatever he felt like, unless the cleric intervened. The barbarian (and later blackguard) had a CE streak, but mostly wanted a throne of bones to sit on. The ninja was working his way up the chain of assassins in the city, to become their leader. And my swashbuckler... well, he wanted everyone to love him, really. The Charm Eye he had transplanted into a (very) recently empty socket helped a lot.

Yes, we did have the BoVD, but GS is correct, it's all up to comfort level. I'd avoid our depths of depravity in your game, considering the players.

...My point was that your characters need to be in-depth, with more history than "My village was slaughtered by orcs so I became a fighter to kill things and be strong."

Also think about little touches you can add, such as; when our cleric, being of an evil god, cast a cure spell, it healed the PC's, but caused considerable pain in the process. His Bless spell caused our eyes to glow red and the room to get cold. Little things like that can really set the mood.

Hope you have fun!