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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mhacdebhandia" data-source="post: 2166411" data-attributes="member: 18832">I'm not sure that there's anything more unusual about people who consistently play evil characters than about people who always play quiet lone wolves, chivalrous nobles, self-sacrificing martyrs, seemingly selfish mercenaries with a heart of gold, flirty good-time girls with big weapons, et cetera.Some players just have a "type" they like to stick to. The first game I played at university included a player who long experience has shown always plays the same character - a reticent ranged warrior who likes to go off and work alone. Even his attempt at a James Bond-style superhero who could walk through walls ended up like this.I've known players who rarely play evil characters - and who have expressed some discomfort about the decisions they took on these characters' behalf. I've known players who regularly play amoral - if not necessarily immoral - characters, some modelled on fictional characters they admire and some simply for the freedom it affords them to act as they can't or wouldn't in real life.This latter isn't necessarily a sign of deep-rooted desire to steal, cheat, lie and murder, of course; quite often my uneducated guess would be that the key is the lack of consequences - not the "you get sent to jail" consequences but the "you feel really guilty for what you've done" consequences, and guilt is often the sign of a healthy conscience. People who act out their selfish impulses in a roleplaying game can do so without hurting others, which is the ideal opt-out for people who would feel horrible if they ever did something that really was wrong, selfish, or evil in real life.I enjoy playing evil characters from time to time because I find their stories interesting - where others enjoy stories of noble courage and self-sacrifice, perhaps finding them heartwarming or inspirational, I sometimes gravitate towards stories about people without that kind of strength of character, people beset by temptation and corruption who don't always manage to find redemption. There's even artistic merit, to my mind, in a story exploring the unremitting corruption and, well, vileness of an individual with no hope that he or she will change.Along with this, you can also tell excellent stories about people who believe they are right to commit the terrible wrongs they do. Characters with profound religious, philosophical, or political convictions that require them to trample on the lives of others can make for really interesting situations and games. To use an Eberron-related example, a DM can present the Lord of Blades as a genocidal lunatic out to rid the world of flesh races, as a profoundly dangerous ideologue willing to do whatever he must to carve a place in the world for his people (or those of his people willing to serve his cause), as a misunderstood figure neither noble nor villainous who just wants the space for his people to discover their place in the world and who is willing to fight for it, as a truly high-minded individual forced to resort to desperate measures in the face of prejudice, bigotry, and persecution, or anything in between.Some people will be more interested in one end of this scale or another - for some, stories about conflict between good but fundamentally opposed people is most interesting, others prefer a different kind of moral ambiguity where neither side is right or virtuous and there's no good choice, still others like their villains (or characters) to be understandable but still intolerable, and even more people prefer their villains (or characters) to inhabit the most lightless depths of depravity, for one reason or another.My ultimate point is this: some people just like the stories they can read, play, or imagine which arise from the actions and lives of characters who aren't necessarily heroic, admirable, or even tolerable. One might as well ask why other players prefer stories which focus on noble, self-sacrificing, decent people and their struggle against evil, ska more than industrial, or white bread more than rye. You can always articulate reasons, as I've done here, but I think all gulfs of preference and taste are ultimately unbridgeable.</blockquote>

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