Need Advice with DMing an Evilesque party

[Wombat]

I did away with alignments, per se, about four campaigns back. Since then players have run across something even worse than Detect Evil or the like.

Societal pressure.

If they break their promises regularly, people stop believing them. If they kill out of hand, there is a "welcoming committee" waiting for them at the edge of the next town.

Evil is evil. It is not something "cute" and "fun". The best way to keep players in line is to remind them that their are consequences to their actions.

 

[Felix]

Evil need not be obvious: Iago from Shakespere's Othello is a great example of an evil PC in a Good party. Nobody knows the guy is rotten until he has destroyed most everyone's lives. I reccomend reading or taking in the play to observe how that kind of Evil functions.

 

[thundershot]

It can be done, but it's not easy. The group I just ran through the RttToEE was a mix of 3 evil and 3 good, and while there was some arguments about what to do at times, some note passing and such were the worst of the problems. Basically, as the lawful evil cleric put it (who was the most powerful member of the party). "Why would I want to live in a world with a mad god like Tharizdun on the loose? Of course I'll assist so long as you stay out of my way."

As it was, after the adventure, the group split up, so I'll have a good group and an evil group to run (with the other players making new characters for each group).


Chris

 

[Kichwas]

Roughly 1 in 4 of the people you meet in life are evil, but a lot fewer people than that are sociopaths.

Something to keep in mind when shaping evil characters.

I recommend the purchase of AEG's Evil and or Kenzerco's Villain Design Handbook. Buy it, look it over as a DM to get ideas on how to GM these characters, and use it to coach them into being -good- roleplayers of -bad- characters.

You will probably find sections on roleplaying in both of those books you want the players to read, and I suggest having them do so.

I recommend against the Book of Vile Darkness for this situation, as it seems to cater to running the depraved variety of evil -which will only make it harder to DM a mixed alignment party.

Done right you can get effective and deeply developed characters while still having them evil. Done wrong and you get a juvenille chaotic mess that destroys the fun for everyone.

 

[Dugite]

The big problem you will eventually have is that the evil character will do something that a good character will not or cannot condone.
When this happens and the good character(s) do not do something about it what happens with the good clerics powers?

I once played a evil half-orc fighter assasin who was lawful evil.
He was able to adventure with good players successfully by keeping within the party rules etc.
However the sheer fact that his basic indiference to the suffering of others and callous behavour ie. finishing off prone or helpless opponents.
Eventually forced a confrontation and sadly the death of pc's.
The half-orc been evil extracted lethal revenge and as a result ended up effectively retired for some months.
While the group as roleplayers could more or handle less this not all gaming groups can.

So i would suggest you should have your gaming group be prepared to handle such a confrontation, if it happens imake sure your'e if an evironment where people do not get angry and cause a break up of your gaming group.

 

[S'mon]

Roughly 1 in 4 of the people you meet in life are evil, but a lot fewer people than that are sociopaths.

Hm, I'd say 90% are probably Neutral. I guess lots of people have the potential to be evil, though, but it depends a lot on their environment. Real humans are a lot more complicated than the D&D alignment system.