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TheCountAlucard
2010-04-02, 06:52 AM
As I'm sure you guys know, not everyone is going to be necessarily compatible in a gaming group. As a result of this, I've got my Friday gaming group, and then I've got a number of people interested in playing D&D, but would rather not have to play with some of the Friday crew.

So I decided I'd go ahead and run a game for them as well, and we'd play on Thursdays. I told 'em that I was in the mood for running an evil-friendly game, and for them to roll up sixth-level characters. I also told them that if they wanted to play something a little "out there" race-wise, I'd let them knock a point of level adjustment off for free. So far, I've heard no objections from the players about this, so I'm assuming they're fine with it.

I also told them that they'd need some sort of motivation for their characters, because simply put, a villain needs to be proactive (and a decent backstory doesn't hurt, either). Of course, the PCs' overarching goals also give me something to work with when it comes to designing plot hooks for them to bite.

Haven't really gotten much from them yet, though.

Any suggestions from the Playground? Would also appreciate some ideas for for encounters, adventures, organizations, and other such stuff to throw at them in addition to their individual agendas.

wormwood
2010-04-02, 07:50 AM
Judging from the evil campaigns I've played (a good many), the biggest hurdle you're likely to face is party cohesion. A herd of selfish bastards who each think they're the best thing since sliced bread tend to run off and do their own thing at the first opportunity. My recommendation is to give them tight bonds to one another, if possible, and to give them an even stronger incentive to stick together... bigger evil. That bigger evil might be the target or it might be their boss or something else entirely. The point is that it has to be bigger and it has to have a focus on them.

Scare them into cooperating. it's useful and fun!

Gnaeus
2010-04-02, 07:51 AM
Evil games often benefit from an evil "boss" to keep the stupid evil in check. The head of the local evil temple, or an evil overlord, or a organized crime style guild leader can all work. The key attributes to this kind of boss include:

1. All the players work for him/her/it. He frowns on his underlings killing each other, and punishes this kind of behavior severely.

2. He plans to live in the area in which they adventure for some time. Underlings who act stupidly and draw unwanted attention to his criminal endeavors (by, for instance, burning down villages or killing patrols of town guards without a good reason) will be punished severely.

3. He has magical means of knowing what is going on, and sometimes his underlings spy on each other. So attempting to lie to him about 1 and 2 can get someone punished severely.

My goal in this kind of game is to allow players to be evil, without having them be psychotic marauders who attack every NPC they see and then murder each other for the loot every game.

TheCountAlucard
2010-04-02, 02:57 PM
Evil games often benefit from an evil "boss" to keep the stupid evil in check.Kinda hoping none of them play Stupid Evil in the first place, one of the reasons I asked for a backstory and motivation for them... though admittedly it doesn't do much to inhibit such activities; it only makes it more nonsensical to engage in them.


My goal in this kind of game is to allow players to be evil, without having them be psychotic marauders who attack every NPC they see and then murder each other for the loot every game.I agree, though - the "evil boss" is a fairly good idea. I'll probably include one at the start... I'm thinking a glabrezu, maybe?

Anyway, main thing being, I'm not going to restrict their evilness, but I'm going to give their actions consequences.

JohnnyCancer
2010-04-02, 03:17 PM
I agree, though - the "evil boss" is a fairly good idea. I'll probably include one at the start... I'm thinking a glabrezu, maybe?

Make it an imp. If they go stupid evil right off the bat and kill it, the imp was working for a much more powerful entity that is now mad. If they run with it, the eventual reveal that they were just taking orders from a lone imp will be hilarious.

mostlyharmful
2010-04-02, 04:16 PM
start with the ending they want to achieve. Nothing really holds a bunch of ruthless players together like their own self interest and that's what you've got to come up with. The longterm benefit of the whole team needs to be clearly set out and agreed on before the game starts otherwise you'll inevitably get the background level of dumb-backstabbing spiking beyound what you find acceptable, that's just the nature of the beast.

the humanity
2010-04-02, 04:17 PM
have them meet in a brothel.

it's the bad guy equivalent.

Lord Vukodlak
2010-04-02, 05:01 PM
Well here's how my lawful evil cleric got a long in party of non-evil characters.

The group was trapped on an island that had broken off the material plane into a pocketplane. Getting in wasn't two difficult getting out was, to make matters worse the pocketplane was showing signs of breaking down.

The party included, a Neutral Good fighter, a chaotic neutral bard, and I forget the alignment of the spellsword before he fell to chaotic evil. [I tried to convert him but failed].

But they worked together because IF they didn't none of them would ever return home and as they later learned they'd all die a horrible horrible death.

Evil includes an disregard for the lives of other beings, but someone doesn't need to be pure evil and its all beings. Afterall good PC's fight hordes of evil beings that manage to work together. Being good requires you do good things and not evil things, but being evil simply requires you do evil.

As long as no one is evil for the sake of evil you should be fine.

Starbuck_II
2010-04-02, 05:06 PM
There is the always the death god, trickery god, etc wants them to do something.

Why choose them? For the lolz.
He wants them to topple the throne of a king. But they won't likely be ablwe to beat them in a straight fight: they will need to seperate the best warriors from the kingdom (by death, etc).
Granted, they could try the brute force way...just likely die.

HailDiscordia
2010-04-02, 05:23 PM
In my experience running evil games the PC's are not going to want to follow orders, coming from an evil overlord or not. They are evil, they want to do things for themselves. Motivate them with greed. Give them assassination type jobs. Make good parties come after them.

Glass Mouse
2010-04-02, 09:00 PM
Make them give some thought to why they classify as evil.
Is it because they have no respect for life?
Is it because they enjoy watching others suffer?
Is it because they're extremely ruthless?
Are they unable to feel regret?
Is there a distinction between thoughts and actions? Redcloak-evil vs. Belkar-evil.
Etc.

This should at least keep them from falling into too much Stupid Evil (although it can be difficult to define).

Oh yeah, and evil characters should always be able to explain why they're still alive and non-jailed. "Okay, in the last three weeks, you've burned down one and a half village. HOW did you survive the, statistically speaking, 260 villages you've burned down up until now???"

Aotrs Commander
2010-04-03, 06:14 AM
I have had great success (both as a player and DM) with evil parties, all working for some evil superiors. Two of those were Star Wars Imperial parties (both groups of elite units; one of which was like a sort of Evil Rogue Squadron!) The other, fantasy, party was working for the Bad Guys whom another (good-aligned) party of one of our groups in the same world were fighting.

The key I've found (bearing in mind the one game with an evil party that fell apart - not least because the DM wanted the players in-fighting) is that the players need to:

a) React Differently (to use Rich's phrase) when it comes to being evil to other party members; keeping some level of camraderie is sort of a requirement for a cohesive unit

and

b) not be Stupid Evil. I look at it this way; you can be as evil as you like to anyone who's not in the party (so long as it's not too stupid). If you get the players to agree by-and-large to a), the game will flow a bit better. (I generally for on CE characters - if alignment is even in the game - as it tends to be an excuse for such behavior. NE and LE generally lend themselves better, but really it depends on the maturity of your players).

On the other hand, if your players want to play evil as an excuse to be an asshat (killing random people for giggles, generally acting insane, psychotic criminals) there's not much you can do.



Oh, and make sure you do throw a few oppurtunities to Be Evil for your players! Being able to duff up Rebel Scum (dirty aliens!) legally (with some needless brutality) or extort the odd merchant who, for example, fails to identify that bag of Holding and a Bag of Devouring is all part of the fun. Remember, that while "He looked at me funny, he must be a Rebel" is totally justification for proton torpedoing that building with your TIE Defender, it's probably not so more than once...

magic9mushroom
2010-04-03, 06:32 AM
If you don't want PvP in an Evil campaign, you can just say to the players that their characters have known each other for ages and [trust/are friends/are "friends"] with each other (players get to pick the details, obviously). Smart Evil won't kill people who trust them and who they can trust (unless they've done a Vecna and become a god or something, but that shouldn't happen early in the campaign) - also, having friends is not incompatible with being Evil, it's only incompatible with being some laughable villain of DOOM who eats souls and chews scenery.

The standard motivation for adventuring (get loot) is actually far better suited to an Evil party than a Good one. Realistic Evil will often be mercenary - if there's something in it for them, they'll do it (encourage your players to haggle and otherwise bargain hard). Cartoon-style supervillainy isn't actually particularly smart unless there's a massive payoff from it (and that sort of payoff is likely a campaign-ender).

Thing is, Good people in RL are far more likely to have a meaningful overarching motivation than Evil people. This will likely carry over into D&D - with the exception of the "out-there" races. Like, for example, a Phaerimm might look out for things that might allow it to release the rest of its race.

See, I do know a thing or two about roleplaying...

Aotrs Commander
2010-04-03, 06:58 AM
also, having friends is not incompatible with being Evil, it's only incompatible with being some laughable villain of DOOM who eats souls and chews scenery.

Cartoon-style supervillainy isn't actually particularly smart unless there's a massive payoff from it (and that sort of payoff is likely a campaign-ender).

Actually, I think both are quite compatible with an evil party - provided the WHOLE party are doing the eating and supervillaining. (I mean, half the fun of being Evil is being able to laugh manically and eat souls. I know, that's one of the prime reasons I am Evil, personally!)

Provided that there's minimal to no cross-purposing treachery going on (which is a good standard to make you players adhere to in ANY party of any alignment), everyone can have a wail of a banshee..er...time eating souls, in a sort of distorted soul-eating, scener- chewing evil picnic, probably in an extinct volcano with some sort of superlaser.

(This, of course, works best if the PCs have a massive organisation behind them who legitimatises their soul-eating, at least in part; e.g. the Galactic Empire, Mordor, the Decepticons, Lord Voldemort, the Daleks etc ect, so they aren't automatically going to be the personal targets of everyone in the world, just evil cogs in the evil machine).

magic9mushroom
2010-04-03, 07:24 AM
Actually, I think both are quite compatible with an evil party - provided the WHOLE party are doing the eating and supervillaining. (I mean, half the fun of being Evil is being able to laugh manically and eat souls. I know, that's one of the prime reasons I am Evil, personally!)

Provided that there's minimal to no cross-purposing treachery going on (which is a good standard to make you players adhere to in ANY party of any alignment), everyone can have a wail of a banshee..er...time eating souls, in a sort of distorted soul-eating, scener- chewing evil picnic, probably in an extinct volcano with some sort of superlaser.

(This, of course, works best if the PCs have a massive organisation behind them who legitimatises their soul-eating, at least in part; e.g. the Galactic Empire, Mordor, the Decepticons, Lord Voldemort, the Daleks etc ect, so they aren't automatically going to be the personal targets of everyone in the world, just evil cogs in the evil machine).

That's being a mercenary, basically.

Aotrs Commander
2010-04-03, 07:40 AM
That's being a mercenary, basically.

I don't know many mercenaries that eat souls...



I also think there's a difference between being a mercenary (and working for money) and being part of an evil organisation (like say the Brotherhood of Nod) and working because you believe in the Cause (especially if the Cause is Ruling the World or Shooting Rebel Scum).

I mean, if you don't have an evil organisation backing you, it just means you have to be cleverer, and you can't be so over-the-top evil on occasion, as everyone and their uncle will splat you (unless you're high enough level you can do what you like, as with most comic-book villains, e.g. the Joker, Apocolypse or Lex Luthor or something). Really depends what sort of Evil campaign you're going for. My take is that is you want to play an evil party, you want to have fun with it, and do the opposite to all the things you'd do with a good party. Having a framework that encourages the PLAYERS to let their characters get along is useful, since it kerbs the more Stupid Evil tendancies that evil parties are more likely to encourage. It's hardly necessary, but I've personally found that out of four evil campaigns, the three that did that worked better than the one that didn't.