D&D 5E (2014) Evil parties that don't fall apart: ideas, suggestions, experiences?

[Hussar]

I've run a few evil groups and our current Dark Sun campaign is definitely not good (my character just set his own uncle on fire.)

The thing with evil groups is to challenge the players at the outset. My take was to say, "Look, you have these evil characters. They are evil. How are YOU going to keep them together? Falling apart is your fault and do you want to be the player who implodes the campaign?"

What that resulted in was a group that was very, very polite to each other. Almost like a Mafia sort of thing where everyone kept their manners, didn't get lippy with each other and worked together pretty darn well because they realised that as a group, their collective goals were far more achievable than alone. I actually found that evil groups function almost better than good ones because of this. No one was willing to be "that guy" who stepped too far out of line, because everyone at the table knew that being "that guy" would get you killed.

And it started going even further than that. They dealt with NPC's in a much more organised manner because they wanted to keep up appearances and be able to do whatever it was they wanted to do. So, when they met that authority figure, they didn't do the typical player schtick of mouthing off, but, treated him politely. Until such time as they had the upper hand and then they were utterly ruthless.

I've almost, not quite, but almost, come to prefer evil groups over good ones. They function better.

 

[Andor]

There is some excellent advice in this thread, I think it boils down to some key points.

• Outside pressure. Whether you're Darth Necromancers personal stormtrooper squad or a small street gang who needs to put up a good face to avoid being destroyed by rivals, someone will destroy whoever survives intraparty conflict.
• Moral pressure. Sure you're all vile cut-throat scum, but Maws birthdays coming up and you don't want to disappoint Maw. Or you're all devotees of the Dark God and unlike that idiot Lolth, the Dark God does not approve of worshippers who derail His plans for petty personal concerns.
• Player buy in. You need this. Take the advice above and talk it out.
• Campaign design. You cannot sit a bunch of sociopathic strangers at a bar table and expect anything in the long term but a bloodbath. You need commonality, shared background experiences, common goals, common enemies. If your fellow PCs are the only ones you can trust in a hostile world, you have strong incentive not to betray them.
• Straight up magical coercion. Maybe they ticked off fantasy Kaiser Soze and he geased them.

 

[occam]

IME, the big challenge for an evil party has nothing to do with the PCs and everything to do with the players. If your players are just itching to stab each other in the back, then playing an evil party gives them a gold-plated excuse to do so. If you have problems with intra-party quarrels already, your evil party is going to be a murder-fest, and there's not a lot you can do to prevent that.

However, let's say your players are generally non-backstabby sorts, who don't need prodding from the DM to play nicely together. In that case, an evil party can work fine. Just encourage them to have some kind of personal bond. Being evil--even chaotic evil!--doesn't mean you backstab everybody. Tribalism is a very human thing; the same warrior who's willing to give his life for his brother-in-arms may think nothing of committing horrific atrocities on civilians who cross his path.

This.

I played an evil character in an evil party for years; the longest-running campaign in which I've been involved, in fact. I was skeptical about the idea at first, having heard all the same warnings as everyone else: it'll end in chaos, everyone will backstab everyone else, etc. On the contrary, the party worked very well together, achieving a unity of purpose and action I've rarely, if ever, experienced in role-playing before.

During the campaign, our characters cheated, robbed, tortured, and killed numerous opponents over time. We allied with a devious rakshasa, a mysterious vampire, a fearsome lich, and a powerful evil dragon. We opposed holy knights and the avatar of a goddess of mercy. But we also fought a (different) evil dragon and her minions, killed lots of demons and undead, and held out against an invasion led by mind flayers. Heck, by the end, you could barely tell the difference between our party and any other group of D&D characters devoted to protecting the kingdom, or the world. Why? Because by that point we'd accumulated a bunch of... stuff (money, power, etc.) and weren't going to let a bunch of tentacle-headed jerks mess that up!

But we never turned on each other, at least not seriously and not for long. Why would we? We needed help to survive, and we could all accomplish our goals more effectively by working together. Evil characters can form trusting relationships with one another, and it's essential to do so in a game like D&D. You see this in various forms of fiction all the time, so there's plenty of precedent. Being evil doesn't necessarily mean you can't learn to trust.

However, if we had been faced with a situation where our individual interests didn't align (which almost happened a few times)... things could've gotten hairy. In those cases, we tried to massage things to realign our interests somehow, or at least stay out of each other's way. Again, building up trust over time is essential.

On a final note, the characters in this group did drive the plot more than other D&D groups I've been a part of. Most had plots and schemes that forced others (i.e. the DM) to react, rather than waiting for the noble to tell them about some town with a monster problem. Maybe that wasn't just because they were evil, but I think it played a part.

 

[GameDoc]

I think Marvel can give us two examples here.

The first, a short one from the recent Guardians of the Galaxy movie:

Rocket: Why would you want to save the galaxy?
Start Lord: [indignant] Because I'm one of the people who lives there!

Admittedly, neither are evil characters. But the point is its about motivation. Evil characters can recognize the need to work with other people to attain their own goals.

The second, broader example comes from the "Dark Reign" storyline where Norman Osborn manages to get himself made the Director of SHIELD.

First, he creates a secret cabal with Dr. Doom, Loki, the Red Hood, Emma Frost and Namor. These are powerful villains (or at least in the case of the latter two morally ambiguous heroes with reason to distrust the powers that be) the he cannot control and has to acknowledge as equals. The idea is they divide the world up amongst themselves and respect each other's turf and agendas. Like the dons of various mafias.

Then, he creates his own team of Avengers made up of mostly evil villains disguised as heroes. They actually work well as a team because they have a strong patron (Osborn) giving them purpose, direction, and rewards for doings so. They are all total bastards. But the creature comforts and opportunities to settle scores on the down low with their enemies are enough to keep them in line for the most part.

Interestingly, it's the cabal that falls apart first. These are powerful people with high opinions of themselves and eventually they can't just abide by Osborn's notion of them all being equals. They cannot contain their own agendas.

The "Dark Avengers" are mostly thugs. They are used to working for someone else and historically their self-directed schemes have been about acquiring riches or getting revenge on one superhero or another. To the extend Osborn can satisfy those needs, they work as a team (although the do antagonize each other quite a bit, but that could just as easily be because they are a Marvel team). The only one who really goes rogue is Bullseye and that's because he's a total psychopath. I'd say of all of them, he's the one who is closest to Chaotic Evil. The others are more LE/NE, at least as portrayed in the storyline. One could argue that Victoria Hand and Ares are actually more neutral characters.

At any rate, I'd recommend reading the Dark Avengers series to anyone wanting an idea of what an evil-aligned party looks like.

 

[ppaladin123]

It is a lot easier if your players understand that evil does not mean "homicidal lunatic." I imagine there are plenty of evil people walking around the world who have never killed anyone or burned down a church or whatever because a. there was nothing to be gained by doing it and b. they are not particularly interested in being killed/jailed themselves.

So you want to cultivate the sorts of players who think:

"Hmm, if I stab the meat shield in his sleep and take his money, there will be no one to be a meat shield in the coming battle and I will be endangering myself"

and

"Hmm, if I murder and double cross everyone I'll build a reputation for murdering and double crossing everyone and then nobody will work with me and I won't get things that I want."

Feel free impose such consequences on myopic behavior. But really you don't want to end up there....if your players aren't sophisticated enough role players to be able to imagine being a character who actually has to continue to exist in a persistent world where actions have consequences you should probably avoid running an evil campaign. The same advice goes for campaigns that include fanatical lawful good types by the way.

 

[drjones]

Very topical, in my game this last weekend the PCs had just rolled up new characters to replace the pregens. Some of them said they wanted to play kind of evil characters. I said I didn't think that was a great idea for a lot of reasons and tried to push them to more neutral characters that would fit into the party and the starter set adventure without me doing a ton of work.

Well they made it an hour into the first session before the half-orc fighter robbed the unconscious assassins body as payment for dragging him out of the dungeon. The assassin then demanded his 20 gold back and sneak attacked the wounded half orc when he was not forthcoming enough. I warned them that I would not be protecting them from the fallout of their characters behaviors so I let it roll. The Assassin was knocked out by the fighter and the next day the assassins player let me know that he was going to murder the other character as soon as possible and wanted the ok from the DM in advance so he would not get 'screwed'.

So I was like F this, I don't really even like horror movies or gritty True Crime stuff. I love moral shades of grey but had no interest in DMing an evil campaign that was just tons of uninteresting drama and power fantasy stuff and hurt feelings. These are 40 year olds who behaved EXACTLY like the 12 year-olds I played with as a child who decided to RP evil characters and just bullied each other relentlessly.

Is it possible to do right? Yes of course. It takes every single player and the DM all being interested and positive about the idea, and it takes everyone forcing their characters to have motivations for working with the other PCs and it takes a campaign designed specifically to be played by monstrous sociopaths.

But that's nothing I enjoy or want to waste my time on, so I'm not.

 

[aramis erak]

As fun as it can be to DM games where the good guys save the day, I do wonder what it would be like for the PCs to be ruthless, black-hearted scoundrels who would drown a box of kittens if the price or cause is right. What would be a good setup for an evil party that would not immediately devolve into in-fighting or disrupting the entire story?

Why evil characters? Because evil characters have plans. Evil characters have goals. Even if those plans and goals don't make sense (a la the Joker), evil characters aren't waiting around for things to fall into their laps. They are active characters, not reactive characters, and those are the kinds of characters I like best.

I have in mind something like Inuyasha's Band of Seven or this idea I had based on Inglorious Basterds. Even something like Magneto's Brotherhood of Mutants.

What have been your experiences? What worked or didn't work? What are some things you'd like to try?

Advice: run a Lawful Evil party.

Remember. LE doesn't break the laws. They wield them. LE is devious plans, fine print, and callous disregard for others. Evil Lawyers tend to be Lawful Evil.

Even Chaotic Evil need not be careless. I've run one session of chaotic evil. And the issue was that it was beautiful and terrible. Each was trying hard to cut the others out by sacrificing them. It fell apart not because they wouldn't work together, but because each was so busy trying to get the others to go first that I was able to get a TPK due to their inaction.

But what it sounds like is your players want to play Chaotic Stupid.

If you throw it open, insist that they each have a goal. The CE players can take any means to get to it... and the LE characters have to work within the law... but also, make certain that the goals overlap. And reward them with XP only if they make some progress; if not, hit them with a penalty. (And don't be subtle about it.)

 

[sithramir]

Very topical, in my game this last weekend the PCs had just rolled up new characters to replace the pregens. Some of them said they wanted to play kind of evil characters. I said I didn't think that was a great idea for a lot of reasons and tried to push them to more neutral characters that would fit into the party and the starter set adventure without me doing a ton of work.

Well they made it an hour into the first session before the half-orc fighter robbed the unconscious assassins body as payment for dragging him out of the dungeon. The assassin then demanded his 20 gold back and sneak attacked the wounded half orc when he was not forthcoming enough. I warned them that I would not be protecting them from the fallout of their characters behaviors so I let it roll. The Assassin was knocked out by the fighter and the next day the assassins player let me know that he was going to murder the other character as soon as possible and wanted the ok from the DM in advance so he would not get 'screwed'.

So I was like F this, I don't really even like horror movies or gritty True Crime stuff. I love moral shades of grey but had no interest in DMing an evil campaign that was just tons of uninteresting drama and power fantasy stuff and hurt feelings. These are 40 year olds who behaved EXACTLY like the 12 year-olds I played with as a child who decided to RP evil characters and just bullied each other relentlessly.

Is it possible to do right? Yes of course. It takes every single player and the DM all being interested and positive about the idea, and it takes everyone forcing their characters to have motivations for working with the other PCs and it takes a campaign designed specifically to be played by monstrous sociopaths.

But that's nothing I enjoy or want to waste my time on, so I'm not.

I think the issue as many noted is making sure the evil PC s doesn't get a big head. The assassin goes to stab the fighter who is a martial expert. He catches his dagger hand and smashes his face. 'Try that again and you are dead' the fighter states. The assassin realizes perhaps he can't just win and plots for another day. Or perhaps realizes that he isn't the most powerful in the party and he probably likes living etc. Or realizes maybe the fighter has better use or maybe during battle doesnt help him expecting he might die.

I think it can add more fun if people think about consequences. The 12 year old mentality only works until some beats the living crap out of the character (in game) and he realizes some consequence

 

[amerigoV]

We had a blast running a small time criminal gang trying to work its way up the ranks in a crime family (all Ptolus based). We could not quite be as evil as we wanted to be at the table as we had one younger player, but it could easily have been hard core Russian mafia in its tone.

Now this was Savage Worlds and not D&D, so there is not inherent alignment issues that come along with D&D. But I found that the Greedy hindrance worked in an odd way to keep the party together - they realized that together they could acquire much more as a group than individuals. Not all groups may come to that conclusion.

The best moment in the game was when the group realized that instead of killing the Surgeon (he transformed people in hideous beings using Chaostech) that we could strike a deal with him instead. We were by no means working for each other, but an acceptable exchange was made instead of each group trying to destroy the other.

We just concluded a deal that may unravel all of Ptolus, but we might gain access to the multiverse in exchange. Not a bad deal.

(that game is on hold for a bit as we go through something more heroic, but I am really curious to see where that thread goes).

 

[Wolfskin]

I've ran an evil campaign exactly once, and it turned out ok because all of the players understood that the idea was to oppose the good guys, not kill each other for the lulz. PCs were the chosen of an assortment of evil deities who had united to mess with the good races of the world.