Going All Evil. Experiences?

[greyscale1]

The only evil campaign I've been in started out with a party like this:

Human Artificer (Me): Lawful Evil
Human Druid: Chaotic Good
Warorged Juggernaut: True Neutral
Shifter Scout: Neutral Good

And ended like this:

Human Artificer (Me): Lawful Evil
Human Druid: Neutral Evil
Warorged Juggernaut: Neutral Evil
Shifter Scout: Neutral Evil

I Corrupted them, ahahahahhaa!



I think overall, what made it a fun experience was the fact that I was always really cynical, selfish, and uncaring - but clever and charismatic. The others gradually swayed from altruistic to coldly calculating: Could leaving him alive possibly come back to haunt us? Yes? Balista (our warforged), kill him.


I think its hard to run an evil campaign when players are evil for evils sake. It sounds stupid, but you would be surprised how many players will do something like "I kill the baby kobolds" when it will actively take alot of time and effort to do so and there is no reason other than to have baby blood on their hands.

Be Lex Luthor, be falsely altruistic, be genius, at most have just a little bit of insanity hiding behind your beautifully composed alabaster facade.

 

[Ghostwind]

I strongly suggest you pick up a copy of Darkwalkers: the Evil Within. It was written as an evil player's handbook and contains everything you need to run an intelligent evil campaign without falling into stereotypical tropes.

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=13694&it=1

 

[Set]

I've played in at least a dozen vampire games, which, pretty much by definition are filled with selfish evil characters who, in some cases, can even gain cool new powers by *killing and eating their party members.*

Also various games of Paranoia, in which the party generally tries to screw each other, and a few games with evil characters in D&D (and lots and lots of GURPS, where almost *never* would one of the party members have any disadvantages like Vow of Chivalry or Honesty or other 'good' traits).

In every case in my experience, it isn't evil characters that sow discord, it's the guy who normally plays the Paladin and sows discord anyway. He was killing other characters for 'violating his code' or 'acting dishonorably' or 'killing my prisoner' and now he doesn't even need the excuse of a Paladin's code to be a disruptive jerk.

We've had parties of diablerist vampires function like a well-oiled machine. We've had entirely good aligned parties fall apart in spectacles of violence. It's all about the players. Even a party of chaotic evil dark elves from different feuding noble houses can be motivated to work together, if they fear something more powerful than any one of them can defeat (or, more appropriately for greedy, selfish evil, if they are low dogs in their own houses, and can steal more power for themselves if they work with allies that their housemates can't possibly compete with).

 

[Blair Goatsblood]

Heist movies, Spaghetti Westerns. Film Noir. There's plenty of precedent for such amoral entertainment.

Evil doesn't always mean stupid. In history plenty of "evil" organizations got along fabulously and accomplished much killing and taking of stuff. Evil folks can have a pet parakeet, visit their grandmother every week, have friends.

 

[Grimstaff]

IME, evil parties invariably end up self-destructing, which sometimes has led to bruised feelings in real life as well, and negatively affected the playing atmosphere and group dynamic for awhile.

Other "evil" parties I've seen have really just been Chaotic Nuetral in practice, which would seem to defeat the purpose, whatever that is.

If I had been in a session where players were acting out the murder and rape of children, as described by Doug McCrae above, I would have stopped the game and left. That's inexcusable, imo, be it "make-believe" or not.

On the other hand, campaigns I been involved in that were "no alignment" have been extremely enjoyable. Players felt unconstrained by forced behavioral parameters, and were able to act on their whim, which gave the game an extremely human element.

That might be a more constructive experiment for your game, OP, and going by a lot of the anecdotes here, give your campaign more longevity.

 

[carmachu]

We did have some other seriously frustrating issues though:

1. Being evil, each character had thier own agends which may or may not conflict with others in the party. The big problem here was the time it took. The DM was forced to concentrate on 1 or 2 (of 6) players at a time for large patches of time - making for a frustrating play experience. This problem can be mitigated with an experienced DM - but it's hard to eliminate entirely if agendas differ.

2. Related to 1 - you think good characters can hog the spotlight - they got nothing on evil characters - and PC's with an excuse. Talk about a time waster.
.

what our group does is we have a yahoo group set up and do alot or rping there and via email as to not to hog table time....

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Make 'em all Lawful Evil, following a leader. Obeying the rules/fear of punishment keeps them in line, and lawfulness prevents party contact. They can be a squad of fantasy SS stormtroopers, or something.

 

[Lancelot]

I've DM'ed multiple evil campaigns over the last 25 years. Some of my experiences (learned the hard way):

1) Echoing a previous poster, it works best if the party is Evil (4e) or Lawful Evil (3e). A Chaotic Evil PC, as played by most of my group, is a nightmare for party cohesion and long-term goals. Your players may vary, of course.

2) Develop strong "villains" who are clearly Good-aligned, but also extremely unlikable. Pitch the players against crusading (but bigoted) paladins who exhibit extreme pride and intolerance... or a powerful angel who is convinced that all evil must be eradicated (similar to the Kingpriest, from the Dragonlance saga). If you don't have strong Good opponents, the players may feel obligated to justify their alignments by petty things like burning orphanages or mugging peasants. And frankly, that's just weak-sauce.

3) Have a strong mentor / leader for the PCs who rewards them for performing dubious missions. This helps build a sense of cohesion, and guides them towards committing the level of "evil" that you're comfortable with in the game. Plus, the players get the extra satisfaction of working for a death knight or a Duke of Hell or whatever ("Wow - we *must* be Evil!").

4) ...and know your group. If you suspect there's even a chance that one of your players will be offended by a particular type or description of evil (torture, murder, appreciating Justin Timberlake, whatever), don't go there. It's just a game, and a game should be fun for all players.

 

[xazil]

The only evil campaign I had that went well did so for a few reasons.

We were all Priests of Cyric from one church in a city that didn't really like us, but couldn't just crush us.

There were a lot of factions already in place to play with or against each other. The game mostly consisted of playing alliances and getting power without letting all of the good churchs get together to gang up on us.

Each person found a niche. We had one person end up in control of a major church faction, one spymaster, one leader with a gang of thugs, a magical seductress etc.

So quite often we had to work together for mutual benefit to achieve things we couldn't alone. Also we were all powerful enough to have at least a few minions to act as bodyguards to make small random acts of betrayal not feasable, and smart enough to have insurance against each other in the form of pacts and information.

 

[dm4hire]

I've never run a full out evil campaign, though I've always wanted too, but I tend to allow any alignment. I stress to the players that evil players tend to work for themselves and while nothing is out of bounds for an evil person they usually don't kill indiscriminately. That would be more sociopathic which those types tend not to be sociable anyway. Most evil as mentioned tend to see others as tools who might outlive their usefulness eventually and given the opportunity they exterminate said tools, but usually they let fate handle that. That’s still pretty sociopathic.

An example of evil playing upon others would be in the Drizzt books showing his growing up in drow society. One doesn’t have to kill someone to be the reason they die. Most of the drow used opportunity to do away with their competitor (i.e. in the midst of battle they either make their attack or deny aid which allows the enemy to eliminate the competition). I explain in my campaigns that a PC could kill another PC in my game only if it fits in the story. Remember though, what goes around, comes around.

As for how evil people can coexist, well that’s easy. People tend to need people; most everyone has the need for being social to some extent. There’s no reason why evil PCs can’t have friends, close family, or even lovers. These same people can be just as evil and may be sincere or using them. That’s part of being evil though, trying to figure out who you can trust while doing the things you do.

Another aspect of evil to look at is that the PC might not view him/herself as being evil. History is full of people who did despicable things but didn’t consider themselves evil. Your party might be made up of people like that; that allows them to be friends and still do the horrendous things they will do.