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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lorne" data-source="post: 3285171" data-attributes="member: 48763">To a limited extent, I do enforce a style of play, by not allowing evil player characters. I view D&D as a game of heroic fantasy, and playing a villain is anti-heroic in my opinion. Besides, in my 22 years as a DM, I've never seen an evil PC played according to alignment - it's been my experience that a group that wants to play evil characters simply wants to avoid moral constraints in-game (being able to torture prisoners, endager innocents and kill everything that moves seem to be chief goals); but when they are faced with a challenge, they lapse into cooperating like a good-aligned party, even to the point of sacrificing themselves for each other. While I understand the 'Honor Among Thieves' concept, the players didn't engage in the jockeying for advantage and pawning off of risk one might expect from a group of evil folks. I envisioned DMing for an evil PC party rather like running Vampire or Paranoia, where characters work together in limited fashion out of necessity, but they are primarily watching their own backs, and everyone at the table knows it. The evil PC parties I've DMed for seemed to put on their 'evil suits' when a moral quandary would constrain them, and otherwise it was business as usual.And even if the players did play true to alignment, I can't stomach spending an entire evening being a spectator as players try to steal/kill/rape/rob/poison/pillage/burn/assassinate - dwelling on thoughts like that  for an entire evening isn't at all fun to me. I've tried it with a couple of different 'evil' gaming groups - even when they attain their objective, I found it hard to cheer for them.That said, I also make a point to explain my stance on this issue (and it's pretty much the only hard-line I have) to new players, and they have the option to play in my game or not. If they choose not to, I don't take offense - I'm just not the style of game they're looking for.Lorne</blockquote>

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