How do you handle evil?

[Scruffy nerf herder]

When discussing this subject in different places, I've heard all kinds of responses. But the weirdest of the common responses is that playing evil characters is bad, and if you want to play an evil character you are a bad player.

It's really the most bizarre thing. I mean they do understand that the DM enjoys RPing villains, right? It's a fictional universe for Pete's sake, the players all already are something they could never be in the real world, and their characters also often have beliefs and motivations that they themselves don't have.

We have this weird segment of the D&D culture that appears to think either playing an evil character means you want to cause trouble, e.g. steal from the party, and that PvP is inevitable or your character leaving the party is inevitable. Or, they think that you are interested in playing an evil character because you want to RP a lot about stabbing people's eyeballs or routinely RPing other gruesome or edgy stuff.

Have we really become so pigeonholed into oversimplified ideas about alignment that we can't divorce our preconceptions about D&D from the way we understand villains in literally every other fictional media we're exposed to them with?

Villains are so interesting because they're doing wrong, everyone can see they do wrong, but they're still people. They're every bit as three dimensional as the protagonist. They have just as much reason for their worldview and ethics as the protagonist.

It's not satisfying to fight a villain for no other reason than that's the encounter you were given. The protagonist has to have real convictions about his/her actions and say "damn it, I'm going to stop you because you're wrong".

Somewhere along the way we've stopped short of that super cool and satisfying aspect of fiction, and turned villains in tabletop role-playing games into "that villain is so repulsive he must die". The villain is a caricature built to get a rise out of you, to provoke a visceral reason by doing very nefarious things.

It's incredible to me how most avid lovers of TTRPGs are big into fantasy fiction, but they don't really seem to like villains (except perhaps when they enjoy hating a villain), and especially hate the idea of a villainous party member. Villains are literally the bread and butter of fantasy and a big part of what sets the genre apart.

 

[Umbran]

Have we really become so pigeonholed into oversimplified ideas about alignment that we can't divorce our preconceptions about D&D from the way we understand villains in literally every other fictional media we're exposed to them with?

Some folks like paying differently than you. That's all. It has nothing to do with being pigeonholed in anything. It is about wanting a different experience at the table.

 

[Scruffy nerf herder]

Some folks like paying differently than you. That's all. It has nothing to do with being pigeonholed in anything. It is about wanting a different experience at the table.

Really I wouldn't be half as perplexed about how people in the D&D community have portrayed evil characters and people who play them, if they were less concerned with that and more concerned with stating that that's simply not something they would enjoy in their own campaign.

The problem is that there are droves of people who have declared to myself and others that there is something wrong with people playing evil characters or the campaign more prominently focusing on evil. They often will say that the person must be morally bad. And even more strangely they will also more often than not say "how could someone enjoy RPing an evil character".

This leaves me scratching my head and thinking: what? The DM roleplays evil characters basically every time D&D is played. One would assume that the DM also visibly enjoys doing so.

So really the main crux I was getting at is: why are villains, and evil, vilified and hated in a way that they weren't before? And what is it about evil characters that makes so many players not even consider the possibility (or rather the brute fact) that there's more to it than mustache twirling and making things unpleasant?

 

[payn]

Some folks like a game thats white hat vs black hat. Its that simple. The PCs are supposed to be the good guys. Its a style preference. Some folks dont want white hats mixed with black hats either. They prefer the conflict outside the party group and dont want to waste their time with intra party conflict.

Thing is, most RPGs dont bother handing out hats like D&D does. It is easier to roleplay in the traditional sense because there is no category foisted on characters. In the past, doing something evil had mechanical impacts too, which are largely gone now, but the legacy cuts deep with D&D. Which is why you have really weird discussions about how to be a good assassin or a good lich instead of just being them. Its not really an issue in TTRPGs other than D&D in my experience.

 

[payn]

The problem is that there are droves of people who have declared to myself and others that there is something wrong with people playing evil characters or the campaign more prominently focusing on evil. They often will say that the person must be morally bad. And even more strangely they will also more often than not say "how could someone enjoy RPing an evil character".

I havent seen this at EN world. Is this a twitter reddit thing?

 

[Scruffy nerf herder]

I havent seen this at EN world. Is this a twitter reddit thing?

Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, even lots of YT content creators. A prominent example would be the channel Nerdarchy on YT. They appear to think there's some kind of problem with evil and anyone enjoying RPing it.

Some folks like a game thats white hat vs black hat. Its that simple. The PCs are supposed to be the good guys. Its a style preference. Some folks dont want white hats mixed with black hats either. They prefer the conflict outside the party group and dont want to waste their time with intra party conflict.

Thing is, most RPGs dont bother handing out hats like D&D does. It is easier to roleplay in the traditional sense because there is no category foisted on characters. In the past, doing something evil had mechanical impacts too, which are largely gone now, but the legacy cuts deep with D&D. Which is why you have really weird discussions about how to be a good assassin or a good lich instead of just being them. Its not really an issue in TTRPGs other than D&D in my experience.

Now the white hat, black hat stuff, that makes perfect sense and I can get behind that. But when you play for twenty years or more the same stale fantasy tropes and the same stale ideal of "being an adventurer is about heroism" gets old once you've played in a million bog standard campaigns.

You're also spot on about D&D not being like other RPGs in the sense that it hands everyone hats from the start. The rub is that many people who play D&D have awfully strange misconceptions about what mixing black and white hats entails. As you've mentioned and everyone else does, they think it means PvP.

The weirdest part to me is when you stop to think how "good" the good characters really are, if they are only willing to work with people who fit into their worldview. Is that character truly good or only as good as the shallowest interpretation of their ideology?

 

[DemoMonkey]

Villains - in fiction, unfortunately not in the real world - are narratively supposed to lose.

Why would you want to play the losing side?

And if you DO want to always play the losing side...welcome to the DM'ing club!

 

[Mind of tempest]

it is likely the nature of being given hats and the assumption that being heroic involves killing evil that leads to pvp.
I more struggle to define evil properly as believe me I honestly have tried and part of me died in the attempt so how would we even know what a non-cartoon evil would even be like that you could role-play without feeling dirty?

 

[Scruffy nerf herder]

Villains - in fiction, unfortunately not in the real world - are narratively supposed to lose.

Why would you want to play the losing side?

And if you DO want to always play the losing side...welcome to the DM'ing club!

Are they? Sure, in a cosmic "in the end good wins" sense, but how many stories involve villains that are plainly winning?

Let's take Tolkien for example. There are whole periods in time, hundreds, even thousands of years long in which the bad guys are winning. Melkor/Morgoth wins so much and for so long that the Vanyar have to come over and deus ex machina him away.

Heck if villains never won then how could there even be villains? And wouldn't it be just as fun to win as a villain?

 

[Scruffy nerf herder]

it is likely the nature of being given hats and the assumption that being heroic involves killing evil that leads to pvp.
I more struggle to define evil properly as believe me I honestly have tried and part of me died in the attempt so how would we even know what a non-cartoon evil would even be like that you could role-play without feeling dirty?

Easy. Enjoy lots of good villains in fiction and apply what you've learned to your own villain characters.

You make it sound as if it isn't absurdly easy, and fun, for DMs to RP evil NPCs. There is a player at the table who has fun role-playing evil most if not every single time the game is played.

It's funny how people contextualize that with "well but the DM is supposed to do that they are the DM".... Ummm they're still RPing evil and enjoying it, how does that make a difference? Lol. It's so confusing how people don't get this.

The whole point of it is exploring a character that is totally foreign to you. If D&D was just populated with people who think and act more like average people then there wouldn't be much point in playing, would there? You can act out real life just by living.