Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3269385" data-attributes="member: 4937">I frankly have never seen it done well.  Well, there is one exception, but it hardly counts.The only time I've ever seen it work is 'reverse dungeon' slightly humorous campaigns for bands of all evil humanoids.First of all, I've never met a person who played an evil character who was a half-way decent roleplayer.  I've never seen a complex evil character.  Perhaps it is that you have to bring some maturity to the table in order to play evil well, and most mature players have lost interest in the shock value and novelty of an evil character.Secondly, most people who try to play 'nuanced evil' miss the point.  There are no end of quotes in this thread of the sort, "Evil is the alignment that isn't afraid to rape, kill, or steal when it serves a purpose."  I believe these posters mistake nuetral for evil.  It is the nuetral character who in extremity, in order to protect his interests, will do something evil.  You would never say of a good character that they in extremity in order to protect thier interests would protect the innocent, act charitably, and serve justice.  Evil is the opposite of good.  Just as good must do good even when its interests aren't obviously served, even when it means a certain amount of trouble to do so, so evil must do evil even when its interests aren't obviously served and even when it means trouble to do so.  Evil is the alignment that revels in doing wrong, and you are out of character if you pass up an oppurtunity to kill, rape, and steal whenever you can get away with it - and sometimes even if you can't.  I'm sure that you can have a complex interesting evil character, but you don't get to that complexity by being less evil, any more than being a complex interesting good character means being less good.Thirdly, a truly evil party doesn't do the sort of things that heroes do.  Villians don't act like heroes.  It isn't in thier nature.  I can scarsely think of a story of a group of evil beings having an adventure together.  Greedy thieves pulling off a crime maybe, as in the Sting or Oceans 11, but its usually pretty clear that you are dealing with something less than evil here, with a measure of honor, for which theft is just a trade they practice to get by and maybe get rich and murder is a bit beyond the pale.  But evil?  They don't go off and attack monsters.  They attack children.  They attack the most helpless than that they can find. (Not to bring politics into this, but when's the last time you heard of a shooter busting into an NRA meeting or a serial killer that target MMA champion's or SpecOps or whatever.)  I said that I had once seen a well played evil campaign.  It lasted all of 15 minutes.  It was highly entertaining, but the characters took longer to roll up than the campaign did.  The most powerful character demanded tribute from the second most powerful character.  The third most powerful character played the toady.  When the second most powerful character refused to yield to the most powerful one, a lethal fight insued (initiated by a surprise attack by the weaker character) but with some lucky dice rolls, the stronger character defeated then raped and looted the body of the victim.  Down a party member and injured, the lead character died to the first wandering monster at which point the campaign ended when the toady made off with everyone's possessions.  I couldn't fault anyone's roleplaying.  Maybe that's why villains in the stories surround themselves with weaklings and don't tend to act in groups.</blockquote>

Verification