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View Full Version : How do you guys feel about this campaign idea?



Keinnicht
2011-03-16, 02:25 PM
So, I've been DMing an evil game. They're fairly new players, so naturally in an evil game they sorted of just wanted to rape/pillage/murder/kill everything. So they're wanted by the authorities.

I've been considering some way for them to get at least a little off the hook so that the entire game doesn't devolve into bounty hunters following them wherever they go and trying or succeeding at killing them.

So, I decided to both solve this problem and launch a campaign at the same time.

There's this titan, who's been locked away for millennia (naturally.) He's sort of like Santa Claus in Futurama - he's supposed to be a force of good and destroy evil, but no one meets his standards of "good" and therefore him being released is a problem. A group of fanatical semi-paladins is trying to release him. I say semi-paladin because, arguably, they're evil, they're going to be sort of Knight Templar archetype lunatics. So they're sort of evil but get paladin powers anyways. An organization of more sane good-aligned people (The kind that handles really nasty criminals like the PCs) is going to offer the PCs some kind of legal benefit for helping to prevent this, since they don't really want to kick in the door and kill a bunch of paladins personally.

Basically, the PCs prevent the eradication of all life, and the legal system overlooks their crimes (But will still punish them for any future crimes.) I like this because it's a very nice gray area of alignment stuff, plus it has killing paladins, sure to appeal to evil PCs.

Altair_the_Vexed
2011-03-16, 02:47 PM
Sounds sort of fun - but I think the "Good guys don't want to kill So-Called Paladins" hook a bit weak.

I think you ought to make the need for the PCs' help more important that "We nice people don't want to kill other supposedly nice people."
Maybe the party patrons are magically prevented from killing the semi-paladins? Maybe the semi-paladins get more powerful in the presence of good aligned creatures, so the patrons have to find evil people to help them?

In any case, I think the most important thing for you to do at the end of such a quest is utterly betray the party. :smallbiggrin:

Seonor
2011-03-16, 03:59 PM
Sounds good, but as ATV said the reason the good guys can't just stop the others themselfes is a bit weak.

My Idea would be to have the king of country A capture the party and send them against the semi-paladins, which are an organisation working in country B and have some influence over the king of B. If king A would move open against the semis, he would risk a war with B. Which he cannot risk because A and B are allied against the stronger C. The party can now fight the semis directly, search for evidence against them to convince B to help them or betray both to C and hope the titan isn't released. If the party is captured A can say he has never heard of them and they must be a plot by C to destroy the alliance. Spells that compell the party to obey/silence or just mindwipe them if they are captured are optional.

GoatToucher
2011-03-18, 10:32 AM
Not to be criticalo, but I think that running new players through an evil campaign is a bad idea from the outset. A lot of the game's systems and fluff are designed to favor good PCs, and it might have been a better idea to get them used to playing the system straight for a while before instead of having it work against them.

Playing evil campaigns always struck me as a more advanced RP challenge. How can you be evil without getting the town guard and a host of bounty hunters after you (or at leat, not more than you can handle)?

Also, why would evil PCs enjoy killing Paladins? Given how paladins are specifically designed to fight evil, wouldn't most prefer to avoid paladins?

begooler
2011-03-20, 01:21 AM
The "Good Guys Don't Want to Kill the Paladins" hook:
How about instead, "The Lawful Neutral Guys Don't Want to Be the Ones Directly Linked to Killing the Paladins, Even Though Everybody Agrees It Needs to Happen" hook?


Also, it is very difficult to make CE characters that are also complex and interesting. Finding a way to nudge (but not railroad!) them towards law could provide some character development along the way, as well as make the plot more manageable.

kieza
2011-03-20, 01:41 AM
I don't see why good people wouldn't want to avoid killing other people publicly perceived as "good." These pseudo-paladins may not appear evil to people in the street, and those in the know wouldn't really want to be seen advocating their execution. (At the very least, the pseudo-paladins could probably whip up some public outcry.) So, the good authorities arrange for a lesser evil to get off the hook, in exchange for being the "unknown agents" in the headlines: "Valiant defenders of the good and righteous were killed today by unknown agents. More on page 5." "Unknown agents responsible for X deaths still at large."

Just because you're good doesn't mean you're dumb, or that you can't compromise for the greater good.

BayardSPSR
2011-03-20, 06:26 AM
Sounds good to me. Comes with the instant motivation of the fact that their being evil means there's a good chance they'll be some of the first to go (or they might think that). Evil or not, they'll probably act in self-interest.