Module for evil party?

[Fifth Element]

Most modules revolve around murdering creatures and taking their stuff. That's fairly evil by itself.

 

[Endur]

Wow - a thread from 2003....

Its kind of funny that this thread was resurrected. I actually gmed an evil campaign (party of all drow) back then.

I think that campaign was even inspired by this thread.

The name of the campaign was "House Millithor in the City of the Spider Queen." It was a Forgotton Realms campaign in the play by post section of EN World. The characters were members of House Millithor from the Menzoberanzan boxed set (the noble house for PCs in the boxed set) and they were playing through the WOTC City of the Spider Queen Module.

The characters went most of the way through the module, until half the party was slain by a pair of 20 HD Balors.

 

[kitsune9]

Regular adventures are easy to be played by an evil group, but you have to change the motivations to suit evil characters.

Here's some generic motivations to try on your group:

1. Their master tells them so. For groups that belong to a greater organization, their master or liege tells them to do X. The option of failure is not accepted. This opening could be quite railroady, but it works when the PC's are just the "hired minions".

2. The evil threat is a rivalry to the PC's own plans. The PC's have plans to do X, Y, Z in the region. However, their spies come in and tell them that there is this other group that is setting up shop. The evil PC's know that they can't afford the attention of this other sloppy group so they are going to go shut it down.

3. The villain has something our evil PC's want such as a relic of power or an artifact. The PC's are engaged in a campaign-wide plan of collecting items that will grant them ultimate power, either for themselves or for the master they serve. They learn that this other group has the item and they need and will get it.

4. The PC's actually want to recruit the lead villain to their side, but needs to convince the villain that his current plans suck. The PC's will go in with a show of strength and force, waste the entire villain's plans to ruin and at the end, attempt to recruit him to their side. Whether the DM wants to make that a possibility is up to him.

 

[Endur]

1. Their master tells them so. For groups that belong to a greater organization, their master or liege tells them to do X. The option of failure is not accepted. This opening could be quite railroady, but it works when the PC's are just the "hired minions".

One of the problems I ran into was the "evil mastermind" problem. How does a Player play an evil mastermind?

The Player may not know the campaign world as well as the villain would know it.

Suppose you are role-playing the Joker in the beginning of the movie "The Dark Knight." Can you plan out that entire bank robbery? Do you know which bank to rob, which henchmen can be effective at which tasks?

If you decide that the mastermind is too hard for a Player to play, then you are left with the NPC mastermind under #1 above. And the NPC mastermind can be too much of a railroad, leaving the players to feel like they have no options.

I'm curious how others have handled the evil mastermind problem.

 

[smetzger]

Check out this blog of an evil D&D campaign for some ideas...
The Assassins

 

[Sorrowdusk]

published adventures are fine provided the adventurers are payed!

Snowy Little Village Mayor: "You've saved us-we are in your debt. You have our grattitude."

Stereotypical 'Evil' Party: "Grattitude- where's the GOLD?!"

Snowy Little Village Mayor: "But...the town is... poor"
CE Wizard: "The town is FLAMMABLE!" }:-(
NE Rogue: "So, ya poor? Then fork ova coppers-er else." }:-/
LE Fighter: *pulls out battle axe* "Pay us in firewood." }

Stereotypical 'Evil' Party: *laughter*

 

[kitsune9]

One of the problems I ran into was the "evil mastermind" problem. How does a Player play an evil mastermind?

The Player may not know the campaign world as well as the villain would know it.

You bring up a really good point Endur. It's one that I've been thinking about too since my next campaign is supposed to be a Reverse Dungeon Evil campaign.

So far my ideas is come up a Clue method--pick the weapon, pick the suspect, and pick the location in order to make the plan work. So the players who want to become masterminds in their own right need a few things--money, henchmen, and a base of operations. So any player who tells me that they want to become the supreme lord of X or want to ultimately destroy the Temple of Good, or so on, I will automatically feed this information to them in that they need to acquire serious gold, need to hire the muscle, and need to establish a base of operations. Those are at least three adventures to get them started and focused.

Now, once they get things going, then we enter into the problem phase. The minions need X amount of resources in order to accomplish a goal our villain PC gives them. This then becomes an adventure in of itself. Say for example, that the evil PC's realize that in order to destroy the Temple of Good, they need to burrow to an artifact chamber that will aid them. Unfortunately there is not enough minions to make the work go faster than a snail pace, so the PC's should reasonable conclude that they need slaves. How do you set up a slave ring or acquire slaves? This is another adventure(s). Then the plan is in full swing to start digging; however the next adventure is that because of the slaves, good-aligned adventurers come calling and the evil PC's have to deal with them. Also, they get intelligence that there is a village that is rallying good-aligned heroes to send party after party to the evil PC's so that's another adventure--sacking the village. And so on....

Let the PC's plan the details, but the problems must be dealt with in order for their plan to succeed.

 

[Scott DeWar]

or how about this:

Snowy Little Village Mayor: "You've saved us-we are in your debt. You have our grattitude."

Stereotypical 'Evil' Party: "Grattitude- where's the GOLD?!"

Snowy Little Village Mayor: "But...the town is... poor"

LE fighter: then your fired. i am the new Mayor.
to NE Rogue: need some practice? He is all yours.
To the CE wizard What kind of expiraments did you want to try?

 

[amerigoV]

Old skoole Tomb of Horrors. 'Cuz Acererak does not discriminate based on alignment.

 

[Alzrius]

Snowy Little Village Mayor: "But...the town is... poor"
CE Wizard: "The town is FLAMMABLE!" }:-(

Been reading Oglaf, have you?