Evil Campaigns

[Ulrick]

I'm toying around with running a short evil campaign for my players. That is, all the players will be running evil characters.

I have the Book of Vile Darkness and AEG's EVIL; I will heed the advice therein.

What I want though is 1st hand accounts of DMs who've run, or players who've participated in, an evil campaign.

Did it run smoothly? Were players uncomfortable will certain aspects of the game? How did you handle truly evil act like torture, rape, etc and how did that effect the group? Etc.

I plan on having the players run evil characters that will later on be villains in the campaign setting. It's an awesome idea I think I read in BOVD and I want to try it out.

So please let me know what happened in your evil campaigns so I know what to be ready for.

Thanks!

 

[the Jester]

Be prepared for a high pc body count. Not only are evil pcs prone to attacking each other, they're much less prone to use their healing abilities on someone else.

Be prepared for the pcs to guide the campaign from a very early point- in my (considerable) experience with evil parties, they are less motivated by the promise of 100 gp for saving the kidnapped daughter of the local merchant and more motivated by the thought of the merchant's cashbox and the cool two thousand gold in it. They're also prone to travel a lot, since they tend to make a lot of enemies and earn a bad reputation that stirs up bounty hunters, sheriffs and whatnot.

Evil parties can be tons of fun! Not everyone finds the evil group to be to their taste, but I listen to vile music too (hi ICP!)- it's kind of a cool way to release your aggression, that might never come out in a more restrained, good-aligned group.

 

[ElvishBard]

How evil?

Most of the time I run evil campaigns, just not in the traditional sense. They are evil in the sense that the means don't matter, just the end. They will happily go save the princess from the goblins, just they make the goblins they kill become skeletons to slay more goblins for them, or killing their horses for mounts that will never tire therefore making them more efficent.

Anyways, the most important part of evil campaigns (besides having fun) is reminding them that the evil things they do does get around to other people who are strong, that's how they always find out about the evil people they kill, so people will be hunting them down. Good luck playing, hopefully they play evil smart for you, otherwise it'll be a short campaign.

 

[Threedub]

I played in a very successful evil campaign last year. No character deaths, made it to 13th level--retired the campaign because on of the players decided to hang up his greatsword.

We all (4 of us) played genuinely bad people with dark backgrounds and the distrust/hatred/jealously factor was pretty high. So the GM gave us a lot to keep us busy, here is a couple things I'd recommend:

1) Make sure all the players understand that they are evil. Not neutral, not conflicted with goodness, but evil--so you don't get into moral questions with the other character's vile actions.

2) Give them lots of good guys to torture and enemies to keep them on their toes. If they have time to rest and reflect, they'll probably be at each others throats in short order.

3) Have the populace treat them in such a way that they have few to no friends outside the party, that will also help keep them together.

4) Make sure each party member is valuable to the group, or they'll be quickly viewed as expendable.

 

[BlakeT]

I'd say the one important thing that you could do from the start is make them an organized group of adventures rather than just a random group of evil doers. By that I mean give them a focus, it doesn't have to be singular, that keeps them working together so you lessen the tension between the party members.

If there isn't a focus to the group then you'll wind up with lots of back-stabbing and inter-party problems. Maybe they're part of a death cult, or a evil empire expanding it's borders into nations on a new continent and the players are the advance group, etc... Things like that.

A bit of pre-planning to the campaign in this fashion will go a long way to making sure that the party turns it's evil focus outward instead of inward.

 

[WayneLigon]

I only know of one evil campaign. This was several years ago, under 1E AD&D.

The game had come to a stopping point and a couple of the players said 'Hey, let's play evil characters'. Chuck didn't like this idea but everyone else wanted to and the DM didn't mind, so he was eventually convinced. Characters were rolled and play begins. A treasure map is secured from a local merchant and it's hi-ho off to the dungeon we go.

Many monsters are foughts, much treasure is gained and near the final rooms, Chuck looks around and says 'You know, I'm a fighter and I still have like 12 hit points. The rest of you guys are pretty beat up. Pretty badly beat up, in fact. I think that jewel and that nice sword are mine now.'

'Huh?' go the other characters.

'Snick' says Chuck's sword. 'Snick,' and 'Snick' again, and then there's just the mage and Chuck. The mage, long since out of spells, tries to run and Chuck's sword says 'Snick' again. Chuck goes back to town laden with weath as well as full XP for his fellow party members. Chuck is now second level.

More characters are rolled and of course the GM makes them note that none of the new people know Chuck. In fact, there is no bad word about Chuck, since the first group was so secretive about going to this dungeon.

Chuck and the new group go into the dungeon once more, and once more the same thing happens when they do not turn over their hard-won loot to Chuck. Chuck is near third level once everything is sorted out, and one character survives to become Chuck's servant, which lasts until Chuck catches him trying to 'warn' the new party of Chuck's probable perfidity. Down the well goes the halfling and Chuck is now third before the first-level (save for Chuck) group even sets out for the dungeon.

Many monsters are fought and dangers overcome. During the course of things, some unavoidable accidents do occur which thins the party's ranks. Indeed, the only time 'Snick' is even heard is when the party cleric discovers that Chuck has an antidote to the poison the cleric is using in his wine. A couple sessions more and Chuck is now fourth, laden with magic items, and virtually unkillable by even a cooridinated group of determined first-levels.

The person who spoke up at first says 'I don't think we should play evil characters any more', that was that, and a nice normal campaign was started.

Around fourth level or so, they hired a guide to the nearby dungeon. It wasn't until they were near the place that one guy asked the man's name.

The DM just looks up and says 'Chuck'.

 

[BlakeT]

Around fourth level or so, they hired a guide to the nearby dungeon. It wasn't until they were near the place that one guy asked the man's name.

The DM just looks up and says 'Chuck'.

LOL that sounds like it was a trip. Thanks for sharing that.

 

[s/LaSH]

I've never run a D&D evil game, but I have run an In Nomine evil game. It was boatloads of fun so long as you didn't take it seriously. And it was easy to set up. I said 'You are demons, you have a movie camera, go to Earth and entertain your masters'. And they did. Oh, how they did.

Evil doesn't have to mean backstabbing, utterly untrustworthy villains. It can mean people devoted to evil, which is a very different proposition if you think about it. Mention this to players. My demon team worked very well together, because they weren't stupid, and had bigger goals than annoying other superpowered, hard-to-kill demons. This should also be pointed out.

I did little or no work for my campaign. The players saw something, thought about how they could pervert it, and went right to work. I just provided the logical opposition and kept track of all the towns they couldn't go back to. (Again, smart villains know when to run like the wind.)

My gang did horrible, nasty things that would probably offend half the boards, but they were pop culture nasty (current events, popular TV shows, and the perversions thereof). It's amazing what people will do if you point a camera at them and mention prizes. In a fantasy world, that's not quite so possible, so some disturbing stuff will likely come up. It all depends on how the game plays out, I guess... ours was just cartooney, over-the-top no-limits vicaricity, but yours might turn out different. Be that as it may, our game was really, really fun, and I can't recommend avoiding similar ideas.

 

[Wombat]

Closest I came to an "evil" campaign was a Klingon mini-campaign in the pre-TNG days -- Klingons were still Evil, Torturing Murderers and Puppy-Eaters.

The game was highly paranoid, as I gave each player a separate briefing, with differing goals, and then informed all of them that one of the players was from Internal Security to keep an eye on the in the name of the Emperor.

In the end, the major mission was accomplished, but only 2 (out of 6) PCs survived, one in the brig. Very messy.

The point I would stress with an All Evil campaign is the difference between Yuk Yuk Kill 'Em All Isn't This Fun Like Duke Nukem Evil and Real Evil. Real Evil characters do not necessarily kill everything that walks down their path -- that is counterproductive and leads to too many questions, too many search parties, and too many bodies to dispose of. Equally, Real Evil characters do not necessarily work together (nor do they necessarily work against each other). Evil only opposes Good, not Law.

As GM, I have to play out evil characters fairly frequently, but as a player I refuse to do so. I have faced down some Real Evil in my life and, as such, I refuse to further slime myself with it. If I am playing a character, I want to be a hero, not something twisted and loathsome. Personal taste only, however.

 

[Stone Angel]

Well one thing you can expect is a little more roleplaying. You would think that they would just kill everything but in any of my evil campaign experiences whether playing or dming.

For instance the darkside campaign we played in SWD20 was a hoot! We were so afraid that if we used our light sabres or too many darkside and force powers that wer would set upon en masse by the Jedi conclaves. So we all turned into shceming arch genus and manipulated everyone and we rarely used brute force. Good luck!

The Seraph of Earth and Stone