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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jishosan" data-source="post: 6377882" data-attributes="member: 6779857">I'd like to think that we've come a long way since the days of "Lawful Stupid" and "Chaotic Random". Here are some rules I live by as a DM:Your Order <-> Chaos designation emphasizes your goals. Do you want to impose order, justice, retribution? Do you promote freedom, individuality? Or perhaps you have no greater agenda? Your Good <-> Evil designation emphasizes your methods. What are you willing to do to achieve your goal? Do you struggle to bring justice while honoring and helping the innocent around you? Or do you impose retribution and order by grinding all those who would stand in your path, regardless of their innocence? Or are you content with helping a family retrieve their kidnapped son, and then secretly helping yourself to their hidden loot stash as you leave?Additionally, "Evil" doesn't mean uncaring. Evil people can have comrades, emotions, loved ones, obsessions, etc. There are plenty of truly evil people who would still be willing to take a bullet or go to jail for a family member or close colleague even in the real world. The secret to a functional evil party is to create a compelling back story that stops the possibly in-fighting from the beginning. Perhaps they are family, the Mansons of Greyhawk, devoted to a single person or faction leader?I have successfully run a 3.5E evil campaign. I considered it slightly novel, because the PCs started out working for the villain. The villain was a LE General who was generally friendly, good to his soldiers, a family man, loyal subject of the realm, with a strong code of honor, and good to his word. However, his job was defending the kingdom, and he employed some truly terrifying methods to deter would-be invaders. If forces attacked, he had no issues with sending a small force into a neighboring village, razing the buildings, murdering it to the man, woman, and child, mounting the bodies on stakes, and putting them at the border for the next would-be attack force to see. He believed that in the long run, his brutality saved lives on both sides, and that it was noble to do it.The PCs were all Lawful Evil recruits of his elite forces and, on a mission into a neighboring territory, were the only survivors of an ambush by what appeared to be enemy troops. Long story paraphrased, they were "rescued" by orcs who killed their attackers, escaped the orcs, discovered the enemy soldiers were actually their own troops in disguise, were declared enemy deserters and traitors, and discovered that the general had taken possession of an artifact that was consuming him with growing paranoia such that he was playing with magics that would destroy the neighboring kingdoms and likely their own. The path of the story eventually led to some good roleplaying and gradual alignment shifts, including one character who renounced the blood on his hands and became LG after dedicating himself to Pelor. Probably some of the best role playing I've ever had from players, so I'm glad I took the chance. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Hopefully, you'll find a way to get a good evil group going! It can be challenging, but fun. And that's coming from a guy who doesn't actually like to play evil in RPGs. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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