My mild frustration - an evil party

[RangerWickett]

I had a great game for my last campaign. Sure, we had that one player who always has his 'evil' characters, but they're basically neutral guys who make over-the-top claims to being evil. Like, he'd love to rule the world, but he's not going out of his way to hurt people to do it. And the rest of the characters were heroic and well-realized.

But in my current campaign, most of the PCs are, to put it frankly, sociopaths. After the second adventure they were on the run from the law, so they stowed away on a ship that was run by a pair of crazy scientists. The party didn't bat an eye when the scientists started tossing halflings into the ocean to "check their buoyancy." The scientists had a large collection of halflings as prisoners, and the party didn't seem to care. Sure, we did kinda play up the scientists as comic relief at first, but no one seemed to care when things turned morbid.

Then, since the party is running away from the law for a crime they didn't commit, they got into the habit of killing anyone who looked like they might report them. I can kinda understand that since their pursuers aren't nice people, but I'd prefer if they showed some qualms about killing people who are just doing their job.

And in the last session it was the worst. They picked a fight on a ship that led to the ship catching fire and sinking, and they hoarded the few life boats, leaving the rest of the passengers to drown. When they reached land they got angry that the villagers they met weren't being hospitable, so one PC killed a villager then tried to shoot the man's wife when she refused to serve them. They basically held the town hostage in fear for a day before they left on more pressing business.

I don't really know why the players are doing all of this. It is frankly starting to get on my nerves. I'd much prefer to have the party be mildly heroic. I was hoping the overall arc of the campaign would be "discover and defeat the villain in an effort to prove their own innocence," but instead it's becoming "find those bastards responsible for this and kill them, and kill anyone else who gives us a hard time."

From the party's perspective, I guess maybe the NPCs are just coming across as enemies that need to be killed but, damn, that's a lot of killing, and I'm getting sick of it. Should I try to get rid of the more vicious characters, and ask the player to create a new character? Or do you have some suggestions?

 

[Ghostknight]

Well, if they are going over the top, then so can you. Terrorising a village and sinking a ship are likely to alert some major good guys to them. So now you can have some organisations out to get them, not just the original guys. On top of that their is bound to be at least one, if not more bounties on their heads, so every bounty hunter now keeps a look out for them.

This could have one of two results-
1) they keep their heads down and tone their actions down to prevent too much attention OR
2) they end up captured/killed and you get to start anew, hopefully without this problem.

(Yep, have them being attacked continuously by bounty hunters/do-gooders/law agencies etc, and never with enough time to loot bodies before the cavalry arrive and they are forced to flee. The slow whittling down of their equipment and resources should get them to start considering staying in hiding and keeping a low profile.)

 

[Teflon Billy]

Unless I've been told by the GM that he wants the PC's to be nice, I (and most of the people I game with) tend to lean well toward the pragmatic.

And no offense Ryan, but I think that a GM that needs players to be "Good Guys" isn't flexible enough.

Find ways to motivate the characters they are playing, not the charaters you wish they were playing.

If my character was on the run from the law, was martially powerful, and some villagers started giving him a hard time...I suspect they would be bullied into line but fast. At the very least a hearty dose of intimidate would be on the agenda.

What were you hoping they would do?

 

[FireLance]

TPK. Now.

After you've calmed down a bit, have a kindly old priest bring them back to life because he sensed that they had to potential to be truly great heroes, and he wanted to give them another chance.

If they still mess things up, CTRL-ALT-DEL the campaign.

 

[LunaticGoat]

Hi! First things first, i´m not a native speaker, i would be pleased if someone could point out my mistakes.
I know this kind of "overkill" gameplay and there are a couple of ways of dealing with such a situation.

Getting rid of the most violent characters is relativly easy , but keep in mind how the player(s) will react. You also should allow the player(s) to create a new character with approximitly(now this one is spelled wrong i´m sure) the same wealth and xp. But keep in mind that the campaign already took the "wrong turn", so it might not help at all.

You could resolve this in game, with aligment shifts and a reaction from the game world, for example being hunted by some kind of NG organisation (sp?) that plans on changing people throw dialog (verbal not martial). But this always looks a bit......clunky? rough? artifical?(sp?) It really depends on your setting.

I have the feeling that your players and you had a great time with a heroic campaign , and while you want to go on with heroism, they want some ....villainous action. They grow out of it, sooner or later, so you could continue to let them murder around, or if you are really sick of it split your gaming time into one part evil campaign (were you continue what you ve done up to now) and one part serious campaign (were they are playing new chars and you ´re gming a new campaign).
Well if you dont want to "ruin" your campaign you can rework the part of the campaign already played and start anew with different chars while leading the overkill pcs into a different plot.
Heck, depending on how good your players can seperate player and character knowledge you even can play the same campaign twice, with "good" and "evil" pcs ,para(l)lelly (sp?).

What ever you do discuss it with your players, most often they are pretty cooperative when the gm isnt enjoing the game.

 

[Ghostknight]

Billy I disagree with you on this. Players being pragmatic is one thing, intimidating people another, sinking ships and leaving everyone else to die by hogging life boats, killing people who talk back etc is just over the top. Criminals on the run do not generally call attention to themselves by going even more overboard than before (with a few notable exceptions like Bonny & Clyde), the general rule is to run fast, with a low profile, to an area of relative safety. Otherwise you can expect the kind of approach that Bonnie & Clyde got- overwhelming force being applied against you till you are dead or safely incarcerated.

 

[RangerWickett]

And no offense Ryan, but I think that a GM that needs players to be "Good Guys" isn't flexible enough.

What were you hoping they would do?

I can motivate them, sure. And no doubt I can come up with some interesting adventures that play with them being amoral bastards, but I mostly just didn't want to. I find it distasteful when my friends, who are the 'protagonists,' are doing rather abhorrent things.

After the last campaign, I crafted the overall arc of this campaign with the assumption they'd be similarly good. Heck, if they were at least being charming bad guys I'd be okay with it too. Like, The Godfather is all about characters who aren't good people, but at least they're not depraved. People who do bad things because they're in a bad situation can be very compelling characters, but people who murder because it's convenient are, um, well, not the sorts of people I'd like to spend my Friday evenings with.

 

[S'mon]

Evil campaigns can be fun _if_ you're willing not to give the PCs breaks just because they're PCs - they need to deal with the likely consequences of their actions - ie being hated, feared and hunted whereever they go. Forget about balanced CRs - the guys coming after them are not going to be 4 levels lower than them, or same level but 1 guy vs 4 PCs! Nope - the PCs _are the villains_; they are outlaws being hunted by the Heroes (the NPCs in this case) - what that means is _they are somebody else's moderately challenging encounter_ - so a group of bounty-hunters 4 levels higher than them, or a lone bounty hunter 8 levels higher, is about right*. This may in all likelihood give rise to a short-lived campaign, but exceptionally smart & capable PCs have the chance to win such tough fights & get loads of kewl loot & XP. Fun while it lasts!

*If you were playing in an evil-dominated world like Midnight of course then good-guy PCs would be the outlaws and the converse would apply.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

My initial thoughts are that you are somehow "rewarding" their behaviour. Or more correctly their bahaviour is the line of least resistance.

To make them less quick to use violence you could:

- Have very competent law enforcers assigned to serious crimes. These law enforcers consist of a Dirty Harry type figure (PC level +5) and some serious a$$ kicking "side kicks" who get paid in bonuses. Maybe they don't fight fair either.
- Make the peaceful path the easier path.
- Make the peasants not back-chat an armed band.
- Play up reputations so that a notorious one attracts bad company.
- Ghosts and Revanants.
- They bump into a pilgrimage of paladins and clerics who worship the god or righteous whoop-a$$.
- The powerful thieves guild wants these upstarts to join or die.
- Assign XP for successfully proceeding by use of the social skills.

Then again, maybe the players just want to have a short "campaign" of a group of psycho's misadventures that led to their untimely demise? If that's the case it could be best to join in the fun.

 

[RangerWickett]

The plot as originally conceived is one of those cool, slowly-mounting epics like something out of Final Fantasy. Start with the characters in trouble, reveal that they have a connection to something big that's going on, and then have them confront the villains. I'm perfectly willing to have their motivation be heroic or self-serving; I can easily make the villains piss the party off enough that they want revenge.

Maybe I oughta just have them be approached by an organized crime group, to give them some sort of allies they feel at least slightly safe with. Then I can play around with the moral shades of gray involved. But right now one PC is definitely a black-and-white EVIL person, no shades of gray involved.

Eh, this isn't the first time the player has done this. In my last campaign his first character went out in an apathetic blaze of glory (very hard to explain, but it was cool nevertheless), and the new character he made was just psychotic evil. I think he's got a lot of repressed issues with wanting to be cruel. I mean honestly, he talks very enthusiastically, not joking at all, about how much he wishes he could be a meaner person. But he was raised with a strong religious guilt complex, so he can't bring himself to be very mean. Except in my games.

In the last game, his character was killed quickly because the party was in an area with law enforcement, as the rest of the group wasn't too fond of his character, but with this current group, everyone's a bit of a criminal, so it doesn't seem fair to pick on just one. *sigh*

I don't think talking with him will work. Maybe I can come up with a way to turn his evil into a unifying force to make the rest of the party become more goodly. Maybe I oughta just encourage him to act even more depraved.