Evil

[Delcor]

My group has thought about it a lot, and I was wondering:

Has anyone ever had a successful evil campaign?
If so, describe it, give me details.

I've played through evil mods, but never a whole campaign.

[Honest Tiefling]

Sort of. First, requires lots of OoC communication. Lots of it. If this sorta thing is going to bug or bore your players, consider a slightly ammoral neutral.

If you wish to avoid PvP, consider an OoC framework for why you guys aren't betraying each other. Maybe you're all brothers, or relatives. Maybe you are the last of your race. Maybe you're all a part of the same religion that doesn't believe that they should kill each other because the god gets pissy.

[Divide by Zero]

The main thing is that it requires a lot of player maturity, so that it doesn't devolve into a PvP free-for-all or a bunch of random arson, murder, and jaywalking.

[Yora]

We did City of the Spiderqueen with a group of evil surface drow. The PCs where a scouting party that noticed that their underground drow enemies are in huge disarray and fighting with each other, so they investigated how this could be turned into an advantage for their people.

Another group were a demon cult who tried to gain more favores from Graz'zt by extorting nobles and abducting acrifices.

And last year I played a group of evil and neutral adventurers who jumped at the call for to clear a border region of monsters and be granted ownership of their own duchy.

All went perfectly with no problems at all. All you need is players not trying to betray each other just for fun.

[GuyLoki]

Moral relativism is important when dealing with an evil campaign. It is not that your party want to destroy society, they are purging it of its flaws... like love and beauty.

I ran a very fun and pretty successful evil campaign that we around the table called "Atlantis Razing"

It was an underwater campaign where a custom race of fish people called Atlanteans were the dominant race, they were benevolent, powerful, and had persisted for thousands over years within an impenetrable city of Atlantis.

The party each had a different reason for why genocide of the entire Atlantean race was a priority. Because it was a big enough and impossible enough goal it forced the misanthropic group to work together and see the benefit in teamwork. While they may have been plotting against each other all along we adhered to a rule of no PvP except in designated parts of the campaign when it would be appropriate to the story.

It was also a rotating DM thing, we had three DMs running it and we all knew the whole arc of the plot. But we only knew the arc and not the specifics. Whomever was running a certain leg of the adventure was free to create freely, and we would meet and include elements from each other's segments to serve as foreshadowing. It worked out really well.

Some examples of the characters:
Splotch - intelligent octopus evoker/rogue/arcane trickster - Megalomaniacal world conquest driven, but step one was vengeance on the Atlanteans and to steal the source of their power

Grizznitch - Demon from another plane undergoing a rite of passage where he accidentally vowed to a much bigger undertaking than he realized when he swore to destroy Atlantis, doesn't know the material plane that well and suffers from being pretty noticeably evil

LG Dragon Shaman - this was a special case. He had been made aware of a prophecy suggesting that the artifact that powered the defenses of Atlantis was going to be used for an ultimate evil, and so decided that only way to prevent that was to destroy it. As the Atlanteans stood in his way he came to the conclusion that they were evil (he also lacked the requisite languages to communicate effectively and relied on the evil party to translate for him)

Lizardman Druid - ecoterrorist, the city of Atlantis was responsible for the shifting of currents which caused ecological disaster in his home, although it was not entirely the fault of the Atlanteans and it brought prosperity elsewhere he determined that the only way to solve the problem was with disproportionate justice.

Undead Bard - was an Atlantean and died, his heart broken and his love having left him. He came to detest beauty and life and regard the Atlanteans with a sinister sort of jealousy and worked towards their extinction.


So although they had issues and did not always get along it was very much a little rag tag team against the world sort of thing. Which made them band together. They were all smart enough to know that they relied on each other. With the Dragon Shaman, sure to keep him from realizing they were as bad as they were they had to pretend to play nice... but having someone that would grant fast healing was worth it (for example).

So just make sure the party synergizes well and has a common goal which they cannot accomplish on their own. Greed means you keep around people who you might not like or approve of in order to get what you want sometimes.

[Midnight_v]

I did once, I had a #1 rule. (that developed into some sub-rule kinda by extension) No pvp.
If you have it in your head to create a character that wants to betray because "thats what my character would do" you can't play that character. Period.
The second rule was "You have to create your characters together." You're backgrounds have to be shared and you know all about each others quirks abilities and misdeeds. You either grew up together or worked together for years or serve the same enitity or whatever. This was to reinforce the you against the world, and really to keep down rule 1 shennanigans. If one of you serve and elder evil? You all do.
You are "Team Evil" and take it from there.
....
I had some interesting times they ran for about 8 levels 3-11, I'll give more detail, but I'll have to dig up some campaign notes.

I have one really memorable characters. A female elf named: Elohanna Starbreaker (her in game brother was one of the other players) and the thing about here was that she was "Chaotic Evil" and really it was insane Hannibal Lecter evil, but she would start every battle with a whispered "Muuurrder..."
The player got weird looks when she said it and it was actually creepy cause it was such a divergence from her real life persona.
All in all it was a bang up campaign and sadly ended because of scheduling conflicts but while it ran it ran really well.
Ah it also was our first Eberron campaign.

[Golkiwu]

I have played in a long term (currently in hiatus, but will be continued) evil campaign. It is a thieves guild type of campaign, but our characters are actually working for the true gods of the thieves, which allows more complicated play. We are loyal (through greed and fear of failure) to the gods, whom dwell below our city. We are all a gestalt thief type (thief/xxxx) and it has been loads of fun to play. This is actually a 2.0 version of it we are playing. We started out as nothing, and worked our way up. The Gods keep us working together, and while there has been no PvP, there has been conflict within the party, but it was good for the roleplay.

[TheCountAlucard]

Part of it depends on what you mean by "successful." :smalltongue:

[Socratov]

I have payed in an evil campaign, where I (along with the rest of my party) was necropolitan. the gist of the campaign was that the pharaoh was disturbed in his grave, and we were his henchmen. We were all lawful evil, so we were bound to the pharaoh's service (so no pvp).

personally I found it hard to play evil (althoug i guess evil can be in the details, such as seaing a deal, shaking hands while you have a poison/disease charged on your hand).

[Groverfield]

Avoid the pitfallls of Stupid Evil alignment. Do not be a card-carrying villain. Note that you and your PCs don't even have to be villains at all, there's a few RP supplements for evil PCs. Note the word "few," most people have the disillusion that evil PCs will betray each other for a few gold. They won't unless they're Stupid Evil because they know greater riches and power lie in keeping their associates alive. If they are an evil cleric, then they would only listen to their evil god to turn against their allies. Trust is not inherently good or evil. If an evil PC has a dump int, then make sure they have at least 12 WIS for the excuse that they understand trust or a roleplay "I owe the wizard/cleric/other my life," turned up to 11.

[Honest Tiefling]

Take the Grey Guard to extremes, even. Be followers of a neutral (Or fake followers of a good god) who do extreme acts of evil and violence for the greater good. You're not going to backstab each other as you face punch for vengeance.

[Talya]

Two words:


Pie Rats.





Arrrrrrrrr.

[Honest Tiefling]

Arrrrgh, matey, but how ye keep them scurvy dogs from skewering the cook when the rum is gone, or killin' one another for the wenches with the biggest tracks of ocean.

Seriously, pirates are good as long as you establish how the pirates help each other first. As some privateers were actually working for kings, there might be a precedent of not stabbing each other while looting and pillaging other people just fine.

[Callista]

It's the oddest thing, but in my experience, if you want a fun Evil campaign, the players in Real Life have to be good-aligned (or at least friendly Neutral) to work together enough to make it work!

[Talya]

Arrrrgh, matey, but how ye keep them scurvy dogs from skewering the cook when the rum is gone, or killin' one another for the wenches with the biggest tracks of ocean.

Seriously, pirates are good as long as you establish how the pirates help each other first. As some privateers were actually working for kings, there might be a precedent of not stabbing each other while looting and pillaging other people just fine.

Pirate Ships were democracies. There's no reason to mutiny because if enough of the crew didn't like the captain, they could just vote in a new one.

By nature, piracy required teamwork and discipline. Chaotic Stupid and Stupid Evil don't work there.

[Honest Tiefling]

Pirate Ships were democracies. There's no reason to mutiny because if enough of the crew didn't like the captain, they could just vote in a new one.

By nature, piracy required teamwork and discipline. Chaotic Stupid and Stupid Evil don't work there.

Not disputing this, but you do have to make sure the players are aware of this and agree, or you'll have Blackbeard the Backstabber for a teammate. Popular conception of pirates might not mesh up with historical accuracy 100%.

[Delcor]

This is what we had our DM was considering for our next campaign:

I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with Monte Cook's Ptolus but it is essentially a book as thick as a dictionary, detailing a campaign world, with the main city being Ptolus. (So essentially not too different from Forgotten Realms/ Eberron). In the setting there are some demons (the Galchutt or something) and they are trying to bring about the "Night of Dissolution" aka the apocalypse. So what I've gathered from your advice is to have the players collaborate on a reason as to why they don't kill each other on sight, and that a common goal is needed. Hence we would all be members of the same crime family, and be working to together to bring about the "Night of Dissolution". That way we have family bonds, and a common goal, but we don't just go out into the street and kill people.

Advice? Comments?

[Vandicus]

Bringing about the apocalypse doesn't seem to be the most intelligent idea. :smalltongue:

It leans a tad towards being a card carrying villain(Why destroy the world? Because I'm EVIL!), and you could do something much more interesting if the ability to bring about the apocalypse was within your grasp. Get the MacGuffins that open the gates to Hell, and hold the world/game setting for ransom. Become the evil overlords by virtue of having the biggest gun.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Two words:


Pie Rats.





Arrrrrrrrr.

Everyone knows pirate PCs are chaotic good (http://onepiece.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page)! The problem is when you've got both the evil pirates and the world government trying to kill you.

[Delcor]

Bringing about the apocalypse doesn't seem to be the most intelligent idea. :smalltongue:

It leans a tad towards being a card carrying villain(Why destroy the world? Because I'm EVIL!), and you could do something much more interesting if the ability to bring about the apocalypse was within your grasp. Get the MacGuffins that open the gates to Hell, and hold the world/game setting for ransom. Become the evil overlords by virtue of having the biggest gun.

I like that ^

World domination sounds like more fun :smallamused:

[Hazzardevil]

I like that ^

World domination sounds like more fun :smallamused:

The problen with world domination is the paperwork that comes after it.

[NikitaDarkstar]

Personally I haven't been in a successful evil campaign yet. All except one has derailed, and the one that didn't go into evil stupid was a solo campaign that became boring because of lack of interest in the character and her motivations.

But I also think I've learned something from it and know what to watch out for.
1) Mature players is a must. If you notice anyone has power player/munchkin tendencies there's a good chance they'll become a problem in more ways than one.

2) Evil =/= ending the world. And if that really is your goal you better have it masked pretty well, or be playing a religious fanatic/general madman/biggest damn misanthrope in the world. Otherwise even an evil cleric will know that ending the world is bad for him. However helping his god reclaim his rightful place in the world/universe? Yhea that works, only problem is his god happens to be powerful enough to utterly end civilization as we know it, which the good guys generally wouldn't like. But it's still better to stick to smaller, more personal or local goals. (Power, revenge, getting his/her people to the top not caring about the means and so on.)

3) An evil character needs just as much backstory and motivation as a neutral or good one, if not more. You actually need to be able to justify, at least to yourself why this character acts the way he/she does, and most likely be able to at least roughly trace the how, why and when he went from being good or neutral to being evil.

4) Rules, honestly the more you need, the less likely the campaign is to succeed. If you need to point out that PVP, betrayal, backstabbing and general public stupidity is unacceptable you most likely have players that aren't mature enough for an evil campaign anyway. (Really, just use the same rules as for a good one, if that's not enough you don't have the right group.)

5) I suppose this is a more general one, but people do seem prone to use an Evil campaign as an excuse to be more graphic in their descriptions than what people are comfortable with. Agree on where the line is and make sure everyone stays on the right side of it. Just because you burned down the orphanage along with that church of Pelor doesn't mean you have to describe the death cries of countless innocent children. Especially not if the group isn't cool with that.

But as I said, I only really have past failures to go on here, but I do wish you luck with the campaign. :)

[kardar233]

Evil works fine if the players have a reason to work together. I was in a two-player campaign just recently where my character was a nobleman, though about the 6th son of the city's lord. The other character was my cousin, and as he wasn't in the line of succession he was relying on me for advancement.

When making a character to fit into a group, you have to consider two factors: What do you contribute, and how likely are to you betray them? You have to keep your usefulness above your danger in order to be useful in a game without trust.

[krai]

Evil PCs verses a more evil adversary worked well in a campaign I ran. The villains of the campaign were trying to destroy all life on the plane that the PCs were on. While the PCs were not acting out of compassion for the people of the campaign world, they were acting from the standpoint of "all life includes me" which was enough motivation to hold the campaign together.

[Sillycomic]

I have one going on right now. It's an evil mafia type game. Pathfinder meets 1920's Chicago with a small group of evil characters trying to take over the underworld of the city.

There have been PVP, but it hasn't derailed the game all that much. We made up a rule beforehand that no one could kill another character in the game without an in character reason and without both parties agreeing it will happen. So, poor wizard can't wake up dead unless the wizard's player agrees that it happens.

I did have a few rules that everyone had to follow in order to run this game for them.

1. No chaotic stupid characters. We're playing a mafia game, so there's no need for random "I wanna kill npc's for no reason"

2. PG 13. I didn't want any rapists or killing of children. Apart from a few NPC's there's not really any children in the game at all actually. Makes things much easier.

3. The rule I mentioned before... PVP is OK so long as there's no hard feelings and everyone agrees that it's OK.

You can read about it here. http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=189659

I made a pretty successful journal that accounts what everyone is doing, their back stories, how they are all separately trying to tear apart the campaign and the over-all good guys plans trying to stop them.

[Corolinth]

Evil is a tough act. It doesn't necessarily require player maturity, although that helps a lot. You have to recognize a few things about the "Stupid Evil" mindset. When you tell your players they're going to be evil, it gives them certain expectations of the game. They're going to wear black hats and have curly mustaches. When those expectations aren't met, when they aren't given the opportunity to get their Evil on, they start making their own. You've gotta get your Evil on, otherwise you're just good guys with Satanic character art.

It doesn't have to be elaborate, or even on-screen. We've got a guy who occasionally tortures people "off camera." The rest of us aren't huge Saw fans, and don't really want to read descriptions of torture. Meanwhile, this guy's playing a cannibalistic blackguard. Curse his miserable black heart, the man needs to cut on people and eat their flesh from time to time. Occasionally, this just means we have to take a few prisoners when we'd prefer not to.

It can be a subtle thing, like the wizard preparing all of those boom spells that everyone thinks sucks. Save or Lose spells are nice and game-breaking, but you can have lots more evil fun with fireball and a casual disregard for the safety of other people. A little collateral damage goes a long way to making everyone feel like they're black-hearted fiends.

PCs betraying each other is relatively easy to manage. It's not necessarily a sign of a jerkwad who just wants to muck things up. Many players would be perfectly happy to betray the NPCs instead. Evil PCs usually only start the PvP nonsense when they're bored. The Evil Non-Aggression Treaty holds up very well if there are plenty of other people to be evil to.

[Yora]

Betrayal is not that much of a problem. If one PC feeds information to the other side or in a vital battle disappears and locks the others in with a dangerous monster, that's a twist, but it makes sense within the story.
However what most people do is to just steal items from other characters or don't tell the other characters that they found something valuable while the other players all saw it. That's just being anoying for the sake of anoying the other players.

[jidasfire]

I ran a game where the party was mostly evil, with a few neutrals as well. They were a gang of thieves and criminals, and one of the players was the higher-level LE leader. From time to time, most of them lied and held out on each other, and occasionally they even scrapped, but they had enough vested interest in staying alive and getting rich to remain a team. Plus, some of them managed to become friends, as despite their evil, they were mostly multifaceted individuals. So yeah, it's possible for evil parties to work if evil isn't all they are.

[opticalshadow]

played a few games, one was an underdark campaign, i was a koa-tua fighter amongest mostly drow, i played the body guard of one of them, had alot of fun, underdark is an easier place to run it because being evil is kinda daily life, less party members getting at each others throat because they need eahc other to survive.

to do an evil campaign your players needs maturity, and they need to know what evil means. evil does not mean murder, or out landishly badass wastelander type. all my rogues are evil, simply because they pick pockets and steal party loot every now and then. or i may lie alot and more then once on my turn to guard i set out to find the kobold we let go earlier because the cleric felt we should but i disagreed, so i killed him.

evil is an easy role to play, without actually disrupting gameplay, but you all need to discuss your ideas of it, and how you plan to do it. make some ground rules, and make sure they understand its much much harder to be an openly evil character. when your good you have most of the surface world on your side, when your evil, you dont even have your own race on your side most of the time.

[Xtomjames]

Playing in an evil campaign really requires one thing and one thing only which all the other stuff that's been said has to be applied through and is assumed to be a facet of. The PCs need a goal. If you feel that your players would be too chaotic don't let them play chaotic evil, stick to Chaotic Neutral, Neutral Evil and Lawful Evil. Their goals have to coincide to some degree. If Player X wants Y from the underdark, Player A needs a goal that is also in the underdark. It gives the PCs a reason to work with each other and not fight. Some PVP isn't bad however, it can create new dynamics or can be a process for player power swapping. If one player starts in control a PVP encounter can allow another Player to take control of the group.

In example; I'm in a game right now where I'm playing a proxie of Mask, (Divine Minion rank 1, Rogue 5, Truenamer 2 total level 9) I'm neutral evil. The other players is a Chaotic Neutral Psi-Warrior sell sword (that is mercenary) who has been hired by my character, and a Dragonborn Chaotic Good character who is attached to the Psi-Warrior whom I've hired. Right now my character is in control of the group as the de-facto leader. That doesn't mean that a future dispute won't change that. It could very well become PVP. At the moment our group is settled on a single goal set forth by a Half-Illitich Dracolich which has put the other player's suspicion off of my character for the time being.