Games Where Player Characters are the Bad Guys

[mari99]

The only game I know where the character is a villain is Vampire: The Masquerade.

 

[Art Waring]

Only a few games I know of sound close to that:

Kult: While not entirely true because you aren't really playing outright bad guys, but the game definitely give players the impression the the whole world is growing increasingly hostile to them as they continue, which can push players into reactionary stances, which can sometimes lead to the players looking like some crazies running around at midnight doing bad things.

L5R: While the assumption of the game is that you are all playing samurai loyal to the empire, the absolute rigidity of the social rules often motivated me to play scorpion clan characters, who aren't bound by any of the same rules, get to backstab anyone as long as they retain their clans honor (as in nobody saw it, it never happened), and generally act like the bad guys in the script.

 

[rgard]

Monsters! Monsters! It was an expansion for Tunnels and Trolls.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

An awful lot of oWoD and nWoD games other than Vampire: The Masquerade feature bad guys if we go by the "don't harm innocents and leave the world better than how you found it" definition. In most cases (including Vampire) they're being struggling against doing that damage, by default (usually with a later splatbook where they can simply lean into it), but they are doing it. I didn't really regard my main Werewolf character as a "bad guy", but like, not everyone he ripped to shreds was an intentionally bad person, sometimes they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time (I mean, usually a very wrong place, like a Pentex facility, but still).

Exalted has you pretty much always being some kind of bad guy. The odds of you leaving the world better than you found it and successfully not harming innocents, especially as a Solar, are pretty low, especially with the oft-overlooked Limit Break mechanic and the Solar Flaws meaning it's just really a matter of time before you go on some kind of rampage. And a lot of Exalts just Bad People - I mean, I'd say Dragonblooded for sure, but they have hordes of defenders (I mean, if they're good guys, so is the British Empire and no it isn't), Abyssals, Sidereals (OH MY GOD they're worse than Solars!), Infernals, etc.

So yeah Exalted, absolutely stuffed to the gunnels with people who think they're doing the right thing but are either horrible monsters, brutal overlords, just ticking (nuclear) time bombs.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Paranoia has Troubleshooter characters who a nominally good guys, but they spend most of their time backstabbing each other for obsequious favour ti a tyrannical and autocratic Computer. They are essentially playing a SS group of enforcers for a totalitarian state, if you think too hard.

CITIZEN! Excessive thought is insubordination. Insubordination is treason. Please report to sector RPG for remedial unlearning and psychosurgery.

 

[MGibster]

The only game I know where the character is a villain is Vampire: The Masquerade.

I think I could also make an argument for Delta Green. This is a game where it's completely reasonable for Investigators to frame an innocent man for murder if it means accomplishing their mission. It's one of the few campaigns where I had a PC send a kill squad after an innocent family to recover an alien artifact from the teenage son who didn't know what he had.

 

[Mezuka]

In one AD&D2e campaign players wanted to be pirates. They started level 5 with a ship. But soon the pirate life of crime became very difficult to continue. They had many enemies. Some players wanted to stop being 'evil'.

They became the King's Commissoners and started chasing the other pirates. Thus becoming the good guys.

 

[aramis erak]

Technically, Edge of the Empire doesn't default to bad guys, but it's VERY easy for PCs to be bad guys by interpretation of random table rolls....

My current Edge group has PCs behelden to two different hutts from different Kadjics (cartels) - Sinasu and Jabba - a third wanted by Teemo the Hutt, one affiliated with Black Sun (the SW Mafia), and one in debt to Crimson Dawn... Oh, and one's hunted by the Imperial Inquisition. Criminals all... They recently broke a group of Jawas out of an organ harvesting ring, becoming domestic terrorists. Fun, Right? (They were supposed to kill them... but morality intervened.)

From certain viewpoints, dungeon fantasy as a genre is "home invading spree-killers looting subterranean homes"...

The largest and most lauded Classic Traveller Campaign is all about a stolen item and the secrets it contains... and the crimes the search leads to. (CT: The Traveller Adventure. MgT: Aramis: The Traveller Adventure.)

 

[wicked cool]

gangbusters and boothill gave you options to play the bad guys

 

[Mezuka]

I recall a 1e AD&D game in which all the players wanted to be chaotic evil. It didn't go very well. They didn't make it to the dungeon they were supposed to loot for an evil magic-user. They attacked each other over petty egotistic reasons. Some were killed. Tension was very high. I put an end to the session. I let a month pass before we started the next campaign.