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The Witch-King
2011-12-15, 06:13 PM
I have an idea for an evil campaign but I've never run one before and I'm afraid the game will disintegrate into players killing each other in their sleep or guys just degenerating into random slaughter and psychopathic behavior.

The kind of campaign I'm looking for with this idea is one where people do evil things that make sense to get ahead, like poisoning a business rival so you get a contract, that sort of thing, not burning down and "pillaging" a village of dirt-poor peasants and running around spitting babies on pikes to turn them into macabre puppets.

I'm thinking the best solution is to insist that instead of being actually evil, the players all play neutral-aligned characters. Then they're free to do evil things that further their goals and objectives but they're less likely to just engage in silly psychotic behavior "just because they're evil ha ha!!"

The only thing is: I've never ever heard of anyone running a "neutral campaign." Does anyone have an experience with such a campaign and how did it go? Thanks!

missmvicious
2011-12-16, 12:43 AM
Poorly.

Evil campaigns are easier than True Neutral ones. If you want to run a Neutral campaign, try a Lawful Neutral campaign with room for growth.

The campaign I'm in started off as an LN campaign, with us serving as an elite, special force serving a small, theocratic kingdom of Wee-Jas. But several things have led us to question our motivations and allegiances. My character is slowly bending toward Chaotic Good, while others are leading in other directions. The band is staying together but the inner struggle in our PCs social dynamic is creating a subtle intrigue that wouldn't have otherwise been there.

But since we are Lawful first, we are bound by duty to try to follow our orders. This isn't always pleasant, since not all of our orders are tasteful to our characters personalities. Suddenly we question why we killed the person or monster we just killed, or why we protected the person or monster we just protected. It's really cool.

True Neutral is hard to reign in. Especially if players struggle to define the role of an NN PC. Often times, NN gets played as CG or CE, while other times, the PCs just become Nihilistic, lethargic brats who won't play into any plot hooks. It's a lot of work to wrangle a team of NN PCs, inmho.

deuxhero
2011-12-16, 02:02 AM
Isn't a neutral campaign "kill things, take their stuff, don't give too much concern about helping people for any reason but your own gain"?

Scarlet-Devil
2011-12-16, 03:19 AM
Isn't a neutral campaign "kill things, take their stuff, don't give too much concern about helping people for any reason but your own gain"?

That description sounds pretty evil, but I suppose there might be a fine line in this case.

kieza
2011-12-16, 03:36 AM
That description sounds pretty evil, but I suppose there might be a fine line in this case.

I look at it this way:

Good sacrifices for the good of others.
Neutral tries to get ahead fairly. (Alternately, Neutral just wants to be left alone.)
Evil tries to get ahead at the expense of others.

To paraphrase an imperfectly-remembered quote:
"Evil isn't 'looks out for number one.' Evil is 'stamps on the faces of numbers two through ten.'"

One good neutral campaign hook goes like this: the characters live in a frontier area. They're trying to lead normal lives (they may have had adventures already and tried to retire, or maybe they're just starting out), but the exigencies of frontier life keep forcing them to make hard choices. Orcs attack, supply wagons go missing, famine looms, etc.

Example characters for this campaign:
-A wizard who is employed to send messages by magic. He'd like to tend to his business and maybe do some research, but he keeps getting drawn into other people's troubles.
-A former duelist, who is trying to settle down and escape his reputation. He got called up in the militia when orcs showed up, though, and he fought so well that people are spreading stories about him.
-A heretic priest who is hunted by the order he left. He could heal a lot of injuries better than the town's surgeon, but people might start asking questions.

Mastikator
2011-12-16, 03:56 AM
Isn't a neutral campaign "kill things, take their stuff, don't give too much concern about helping people for any reason but your own gain"?

Murder/Robbery is on the evil side I'd say. Not carying about other people is on the darker side on neutral.
Neutral doesn't mean "void of anything good", and the middle ground between good and evil isn't murdering people to take their stuff for your own benefit :/

Mono Vertigo
2011-12-16, 05:23 AM
Neutral can also be a (more or less healthy) mix of Good and Evil tendencies.
There's more to the world than definitely helpful heroes, definitely horrible jerks, and people who don't care about anything.

Cirrylius
2011-12-16, 12:41 PM
I always agonized about playing a TN. My favorite character was a 3-3.5 necromancer who was fixated on learning all the terrible Things Man Was Not Meant To Know because...well, someone has to. He was perfectly comfortable using summoned demons and evil undead, but not with permanently bringing 'em to the Prime or creating them. He'd use Evil spells, Contact evil gods, rob graves (if the tenants ever complained, he'd stop) torture enemies for information when necessary, even vivisect or soulcraft villains on occasion (they're going to die/hell anyway, why let the opportunity go to waste?). He was even a quiet but virulent Atheist. But he'd be the first to put his life on the line to protect the innocent, to make sure that people didn't get caught in the wheels of progress, to help the sick and the poor when it was feasible, to ensure that people were free to live their lives how they wanted. If it was necessary to sacrifice people for the greater good, he'd exhaust every other possibility before making the tough decisions, and he'd make them HIMSELF, so others didn't have it on their conscience. It came as kind of a shock when I realized that he was TN instead of NG.

deuxhero
2011-12-16, 08:02 PM
Murder/Robbery is on the evil side I'd say. Not carying about other people is on the darker side on neutral.
Neutral doesn't mean "void of anything good", and the middle ground between good and evil isn't murdering people to take their stuff for your own benefit :/

A "good" campaign is summed up as "kill things, take their stuff while helping others, mostly by killing things and taking their stuff"

Machinekng
2011-12-16, 08:24 PM
I'd say that the cliche dungeon-delving monster-slaughtering-for-the-sake-of-loot tends to be fairly neutral.

It also tends to not really support role-playing, so it may not count.

Dr.Epic
2011-12-16, 08:27 PM
Isn't a neutral campaign "kill things, take their stuff, don't give too much concern about helping people for any reason but your own gain"?

No, that evil. Neutral is we do that, but nowhere near that extent. We beat you, take half their stuff, and maybe align to good if some Big Bad is gonna enslave/kill everyone or we overthrow the government if we think they aren't perfect and have been offered enough cash.

Urpriest
2011-12-16, 09:27 PM
What turns a man neutral? Is it lust for gold? Power? Or were you just...

I'll get my coat.

Aron Times
2011-12-16, 09:34 PM
One of my characters in a game about to start is a dwarf conjurer who owns a shop built around an entrance to the Dungeon beneath Ptolus (an urban campaign setting based on the city of Ptolus). The Dungeon is basically a miniature Underdark beneath the city, made up of twisting tunnels and caverns and an older city that the current city was built on.

Think Cities of the Underworld™ on the History Channel plus monsters, traps, and treasure and you've got the Dungeon.

One of his long-term goals is to colonize the Dungeon, starting with the area just beyond his shop, not for a holy crusade or a desire for conquest, but for profit. He plans on making a killing in the real estate market by developing the cleared property for new homeowners.

A neutral character's motivations are basically the same as most people in the real world. In my case, it's money and a desire to live a comfortable life.

SowZ
2011-12-16, 09:34 PM
Or you could just, you know, encourage players to create deep characters with flaws, redeeming qualities, motivations, personal connections, prejudices, justifications, etc. without having to justify their actions to two arbitrary words. Almost without exception in my observation, (on a party level at least,) having a party with an alignment makes people think less in character about their decisions and have less interesting characters.

I've seen individuals craft deep characters with alignments, but in general I think it cheapens it. Instead of saying, "What would my character do in this situation?" people seem to say, "What would a good/evil/lawful/chaotic character do in this situation?"

I'm saying this because I understand your desire and the type of game you want to run. I think you can get the tone you want best by encouraging people to have edgier characters, (shouldn't be hard,) and just letting them play. Insisting on playing strictly within alignments that the DM decides frustrates a lot of players.

That is what works best in my experience.

Reluctance
2011-12-16, 09:47 PM
Talk to your players. Have them give reasons why their characters see fit to stay together (a good move for any game, really), and let them realize that excessive force tends to be noticed by people capable of bringing on even more excessive force.

And be careful what you wish for. You want an evil game, with people who don't naturally give their characters a full fleshing out. Good is easy to motivate if you like focusing on the gamist aspects of the game. Evil can be a touch trickier.

Nabirius
2011-12-17, 12:36 AM
I've played in what was essentially a Neutral campaign. It was not a d&d campaign but the alignments fit rather well. We had 2 characters that were not neutral, me playing a messianic-archetype Chaotic good character, and a girl playing a complete psychopath (Chaotic Evil). But I found something really interesting in that campaign. Neutral is boring, the neutral characters had no depth they were utterly predictable. One of their motivations was to bone an NPC, the other wanted to find his family (in theory, in practice he just did whatever).

I disliked the neutrality of the campaign, but that's just me they may come up with compelling neutral characters.

Sillycomic
2011-12-17, 05:00 AM
I did a campaign similar to this last year. I wrote a pretty decent campaign journal for it. My players loved being in the campaign and everyone who read it thought it was successful.

Link here: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=189659

Basically you need to be able to trust your players. If you feel they will take this idea and act out some inappropriate fantasy or completely try to break the game, then I would suggest against it.

If you can trust your players then set up some ground rules for things you do and don't want.

If you don't want players killing each other, then just ban it. In my game I said it was allowed, but that the PC's needed a good reason for killing another PC. So they couldn't just slit someone's throat in their sleep for a cool +2 sword. Another rule I had was that both players needed to be ok with the PC death.

If you don't want players being psychopathic, then just ban it. One hard rule I stuck by was to completely outlaw chaotic stupid characters... and at one point someone did come at me with a crazy barbarian murderer build. I worked with him on it and we altered it to something more cunning and conniving in his murders (basically a Dexter character) it worked out very well.

Make sure everyone is comfortable with what's going on, and be an open GM who will stop things the minute they start going in an unfun direction.

I feel like if you come at your group in this manner and they understand they will surprise you by what they come up with.

Good luck, and let us know what happens when you do put this together. I always want to know how other evil campaigns work out.

Xuc Xac
2011-12-17, 06:07 AM
An evil campaign doesn't have to descend into chaos and backstabbing and mindless slaughter. Just remind your players that their actions still have consequences and that an evil alignment is not a license to be a disruptive jerk to the other players. Evil people can still have friends, so they don't have to stab the other PCs in the back to "play their alignment".

Also, evil people don't have to be stupid. An evil PC could kill an innkeeper to avoid paying his bar tab and not feel guilty about it, but he still wouldn't do it unless he was stupid. The inconvenience of being hunted by a local posse for murdering the bartender outweighs the monetary cost of simply paying your bills like a normal person.

And being evil doesn't mean that other evil characters will like you or put up with your attitude if you make their lives difficult (by drawing unwanted attention, ruining business, etc.) or if you just disgust them (e.g. look at what happens to child molesters in prison among).

An evil campaign works well if PCs are amoral sociopaths who still possess the logic to see that acting like non-sociopaths is still the most convenient way to interact with most people. It also works well if they have some sort of goals and connections with each other (i.e. "I may be evil, but I ain't leaving my friends behind" or "We aren't going to resurrect our Dark Lord--praise his unspeakable name!--and get our revenge on the Order of Light by standing around bickering with each other and engaging in petty infighting.").

Haedrian
2011-12-17, 06:13 AM
Evil characters can get along as long as they need each other or respect each other.

Neutral characters look out for themselves but for nobody else - without necessarily making someone suffer.

Here's a suggestion for example:

Start the players off as slaves in a mine or something like that. They escape, and people try to hunt them down.

It could easily turn into an evil campaign where they slaughter everyone for revenge - but they have no reason to kill each other (since their characters are in it together)
It could turn into a neutral campaign where they try to escape and survive. They might do some good/evil acts to get along in life - get favors or whatever.
It could turn into a good campaign, in which case it'd be very similar to the evil campaign funnily enough.

Give your players the freedom of choice - and that's pretty neutral.

Lappy9001
2011-12-17, 08:52 AM
The only thing is: I've never ever heard of anyone running a "neutral campaign." Does anyone have an experience with such a campaign and how did it go? Thanks!Not much differently from any other campaign, actually. Most of our campaigns fall into this category.

Either Neutral or Evil campaigns just require some creativity from the DM. Let the players know that they cannot in-fight, or otherwise attack each other, and that there are realistic consequences for their actions. Wanna kill the king in his throne room? You'll have to fight off the Royal Guard...unless you've otherwise dispatched them or convinced them to work for you.

I think you'll be surprised from the ingenuity and creativity you'll get from the players.

Also, make them fight other Evil people. Trust me :smallwink:

Morty
2011-12-17, 09:55 AM
:smallconfused: I find myself confused by the premise of this thread. How is a neutral campaign difficult? All it takes to run one is a goal for players that's neither altruistic nor heinous and for the PCs to be neutral, i.e. mixing good and evil traits - however we define those - in roughly equal measure. Assuming it's a D&D campaign we're talking about, despite this thread being in the general section, a group of neutral-aligned adventurers searching a tomb full of traps, undead and constructs for treasure or some magical MacGuffin is pretty neutral. In fact, I think there are much more "neutral" plot hooks and stories than there are "good" ones.

JohnnyCancer
2011-12-17, 10:29 AM
What about a neutral party that does questionable things to protect good people, perhaps using the most expedient means. They sometimes have to confront the forces of good, but the party pulls their punches because they see them as being on the same side; just naive or misguided ("The temple paladins are on our tails because we stole the relic we need to banish the demon instead of going on the priest's errand. Use the flat of your blades if they manage to catch up to us."). They have no problem colluding with criminals, as long as there's a greater evil to be fought ("The thieves guild's information is good, we can overlook their crimes if it will give us a shot at the Dark Lord!").

SowZ
2011-12-17, 01:07 PM
If you want to do alignments, evil characters don't have to be stereotypes. Even chaotic evil. It would be remarkably easy to make an argument for the characters in Princess Bride being an evil adventuring party, for example. They may not seem so because they are likeable, compelling characters with redeeming traits. Point this out to your PCs! They can do the same with their 'evil' characters.

Volthawk
2011-12-17, 01:23 PM
Well, for the game I'm in, our whole party is Neutral - 3 of us re CN and the fourth is TN. We've been doing things a) because we're being paid to do it (the exact job was to keep the peace, which ended up in stuff like taking out gangs of demons), b) some personal stuff (a guy who keeps on popping up and being the cause of stuff we investigate, so we tend to investigate if it looks like he's involved, since his goal isn't exactly what we think is best for the area), c) this is where we live. And the biggest scale (as in what's at stake) quest so far, that we're doing now? Well, it's mostly because if we don't or fail...well, we're not sure what will happen, but it won't be good (ie a god of slaughter with Sigil as a part of his domain). Sometimes we do fall into the 'good ends with more questionable methods', though.

Then again, our game is set in Sigil, so my experience may not be the standard.

The Witch-King
2011-12-17, 01:35 PM
:smallconfused: I find myself confused by the premise of this thread. How is a neutral campaign difficult? All it takes to run one is a goal for players that's neither altruistic nor heinous and for the PCs to be neutral, i.e. mixing good and evil traits - however we define those - in roughly equal measure. Assuming it's a D&D campaign we're talking about, despite this thread being in the general section, a group of neutral-aligned adventurers searching a tomb full of traps, undead and constructs for treasure or some magical MacGuffin is pretty neutral. In fact, I think there are much more "neutral" plot hooks and stories than there are "good" ones.

I don't know that it is difficult--I'm guessing running a neutral campaign is because I haven't done it before. (I haven't run an evil campaign before either.)

A game I recently played in collapsed because of lack of character motivation. We were staying together as a group because we were stronger as a group than as individuals but basically we were after money and magic items and experience. We got involved in a combat--our de facto leader was interested in retaking these ruins for people he personally loved as family--and we got in over our heads. He didn't want to leave and the rest of us were in the position of metagaming (staying despite the odds cause we know the DM doesn't want to slaughter the party) or roleplaying our characters. We roleplayed our characters, who had no reason to get killed for a bunch of people we didn't know and didn't care about. We bailed and our leader bailed after us when he saw his choices were run or die. We talked about it afterwards and agreed to start a new game with good characters because it was easier to keep them together as a group and focused on objectives.

I left an evil game after my "allies" plundered and burned a trade post that the DM had clearly and specifically said was dirt poor because the trade routes had changed. These people had trouble feeding themselves and my psychopath "allies" systematically murder every man, woman and child in the place. I'm outraged that they're killing these guys for absolutely no reason and incensed further because if we're gonna sack a village and be chased across the country by the law, it could at least be a prosperous village. I just don't want that to happen in a game of mine. If I had been running the game, I would have let them get away with doing it at the time, and then dogged their steps every moment after that and all for a few copper pieces. And I know that the result of that would have been these guys all quitting the game because "it had become boring" or "too hard" or something. And while I game with a higher caliber of player now, I'm still concerned that something like that might happen.

I want a campaign where clever guys do clever things (if immoral sometimes) to get ahead. Or even brave and violent guys decide "Enough talk! Groo does what Groo does best!" and kick the door in and take on a bunch of guys who outnumber them something fierce. I don't want (a player who shall remain nameless) who literally grabs the cute little girl running the village lemonade stand and stupidly sacrifices her right behind said lemonade stand to the gods of Chaos.

(I mean really--he didn't knock her out and drag her off or anything--he sacrificed her right there on the street--and he was so well-known in our party for just such vile crap that the instant I noticed the little girl wasn't at her stand in the middle of the day and walked over to check, I caught him red-handed bent over her corpse. I killed him on the spot.)

Lappy9001
2011-12-17, 02:29 PM
I want a campaign where clever guys do clever things (if immoral sometimes) to get ahead. Or even brave and violent guys decide "Enough talk! Groo does what Groo does best!" and kick the door in and take on a bunch of guys who outnumber them something fierce. I don't want (a player who shall remain nameless) who literally grabs the cute little girl running the village lemonade stand and stupidly sacrifices her right behind said lemonade stand to the gods of Chaos.

(I mean really--he didn't knock her out and drag her off or anything--he sacrificed her right there on the street--and he was so well-known in our party for just such vile crap that the instant I noticed the little girl wasn't at her stand in the middle of the day and walked over to check, I caught him red-handed bent over her corpse. I killed him on the spot.)Definitely take my earlier suggestion then. Just be sure both the players and DM act mature and don't get into a fight about their actions.

(And that makes for a great plot hook, btw! One of my party sacrificed a 12-year old girl who accompanied them [alongside her ranger grandpa, who died in the dungeon] after asking for her share of treasure following the first adventure. She came back, with a vengeance, and turned out to be the greatest villain we've ever had in a campaign :smalltongue:)

The Witch-King
2011-12-17, 02:34 PM
Definitely take my earlier suggestion then. Just be sure both the players and DM act mature and don't get into a fight about their actions.

(And that makes for a great plot hook, btw! One of my party sacrificed a 12-year old girl who accompanied them [alongside her ranger grandpa, who died in the dungeon] after asking for her share of treasure following the first adventure. She came back, with a vengeance, and turned out to be the greatest villain we've ever had in a campaign :smalltongue:)

That's awesome!

Yora
2011-12-17, 03:11 PM
And every time she kicks your ass, you remember that you created her. It was not set up by the DM as part of the plot, but is completely the result of you doing something the DM did not expect. It's your fault! :smallbiggrin:

Lappy9001
2011-12-17, 03:18 PM
That's awesome!With the Gods of Chaos situation...well, Gods of Chaos need divine avatars, don't they? :smallamused:

Realistic consequences and mature roleplaying are key. Initially, the players might go nuts with evuls (or netrulz?) but if they realize all their actions have consequences, they'll either mellow out or become crafty enough that evil deeds become plot hooks that basically write themselves.

For example, if the players are crafty enough to usurp a ruler by corrupting their guards from the inside, they probably deserve to run the kingdom. But then they would face the problems of ruling a land, and can't just sit on a throne and order people around unless they want to be dethroned next. They could try to micromanage their land themselves, or place a puppet ruler on the throne so they can adventure freely.

But maybe the puppet goes a little power hungry and turns on them? Maybe assassins will tail them on their adventures? Maybe their governing is quite poor and the people of their new land start to starve and revolt?

Don't be afraid to go off the rails and be creative!


And every time she kicks your ass, you remember that you created her. It was not set up by the DM as part of the plot, but is completely the result of you doing something the DM did not expect. It's your fault! :smallbiggrin:Characters like this often make the best villains!

Haarkla
2011-12-24, 10:27 AM
I'm thinking the best solution is to insist that instead of being actually evil, the players all play neutral-aligned characters. Then they're free to do evil things that further their goals and objectives
Thats not neutral, thats evil.

Unless their objectives are for the greater good, in which case they are good-aligned.

zanetheinsane
2011-12-24, 12:11 PM
I think the biggest problem with "alignment-based" campaign models is that most players who are new to some of the roleplaying aspects of the game have a very narrow view of the nine core alignments.

To most people "Chaotic Evil" is pretty much "Chaotic Murdering Psychopath". A person, who for some reason, forsakes his own personal safety and any rational consequences to randomly kill and set fire to everything and everyone he comes across, even if it would mean suicide for him.

The ever unpopular "Lawful Good", AKA "Lawful *******", who is the shining beacon of all that is right and has to impose his will and world views on every other party members. For some reason this character has no flaws and always upholds the moral fiber of everything he believes in at every moment in his life. If another party member steps out of bounds of what a LG conceives as his beliefs then its time to instantly attack and murder that player with no recourse for rational discourse or any other solution.

"Chaotic Neutral" to most players means that the solution to any NPC not doing everything you say is to just attack them. "Hey I'm just playing my character's alignment!"

The problem with "True Neutral", is the "Neutral Apathetic" interpretation. Players assume that their character is somehow incapable of every having any meaningful relationships with any other beings in their entire life. Party member getting killed in the next room? Doesn't matter that you've been adventuring and having fun with this person for the last 1 year because thats "not your problem." Three interesting adventure hooks in town? It doesn't matter that you're an adventurer who specifically set out to find adventure/glory/riches, because hey, "that's not my problem, I'll just leave town".

I always sit down with my players and explain to them that alignment doesn't define your character, your character defines their alignment. The 9 archetypes should be seen as a loose framework instead of rigid definitions. The use of the terms "Chaotic/Lawful" imply that your character either "Breaks ever law" or "obeys every law". The same problem comes from "Good/Evil". A lot of players don't have an understanding that instead of just putting their alignment into one of those nine boxes, they could use each axis as a sliding scale. I could have two Lawful Good NPCs, one could be Lawful right on the border of Neutral, the other as far Lawful away from Neutral as possible. But then maybe the extremely Lawful NPC is Good on the border of Neutral, and the other one is as far "good" as possible. Without telling my players what their alignments are, they may never guess that both are Lawful Good.

What you get are characters and NPCs who are willing to compromise in small situations for the overall fabric of their alignment. I disagree with the poster that said doing "evil" things makes your character evil. I think you have to consider what the overall goals of a character's plans are. Is the end result evil? Do they see doing what could be an "evil" deed as a way to accomplish a "greater good". Is knowingly sending 100 soldiers to their death evil if their battle allows a thousand innocent people to escape from an advancing army that would most assuredly have pillaged/raped/massacred them? What if you had to lie to these soldiers to ensure they went into battle? What if you had chose to sacrifice an innocent to an evil god who agreed to spare a hundred innocent villagers in return?

Sure there are other solutions in those hypothetical situations, but maybe they were outside of your character's scope, beliefs, or means. The biggest problem with the "all neutral" campaign is that neutral has the most diametrically-opposed beliefs. You could have a Lawful and a Chaotic character and a Good and an Evil character all in the same party and still be "all neutral". This is obviously going to cause more intra-party conflicts. Working together with everyone's morales is party of the fun of adventuring, but your players have to be mature enough to understand that alignment doesn't just mean "my way or murder" or "my way or split town".

zanetheinsane
2011-12-24, 12:56 PM
And to answer your last question, I'm currently running what you could call is a "neutral campaign". It's more aptly a "neutral-friendly" campaign.

The majority of the campaign centers around a single town. The campaign is currently only level 4-5, but the idea behind the structure of it can translate to many levels of play.

The town has "non-literal" factions, loosely representing certain alignments. When I say "factions", I don't mean clans or tribes or churches exclusively. For example, one major faction is the local law-enforcement, of which there are two factions: a corrupt section that seeks a less-morale solution for personal political gain and a more righteous faction that would see the problem dealt with for the greater good of the town. Or course one faction is a criminal element of the town, too.

There is a central "problem" facing the town that none of the factions are very well-equipment to deal with but each have their own motivations to "solve". Each wants the player party's help and are offering varying degrees of rewards.

Since the party is mostly neutral, they have been trying to play multiple sides of the conflict to maximize their reward (which I in no way discourage at all). At one point they received a quest reward from two separate factions for accomplishing the same quest, simply because neither side knew they were working for the other! The downside is that they walk a razor's edge in trying to keep their accolades separate from all parties since the more they accomplish the more acclaimed and famous they are becoming in town.

For example, if the law enforcement knew that the players were working for criminals, the head of the guard may arrest them or he may instead try to use the players to route out the criminals. Instead of locking up a bunch of adventurers he could employ them as undercover agents. However, if the players start working for the cityguard, the criminal elements will become suspicious and untrustworthy, maybe to the point of trying to "deal" with the problem. Because the party is neutral, I even had a storyline arc drawn up for if the players had joined a band of local orc raiders, so don't exclude anything from your planning, your players may just surprise you.

The trick is design the "problem" in such a way that multiple parties have a vested interest in the solution, although approaching it in different ways. Make sure to have your NPCs be more "grey". Even the bad guys should have a little sympathetic plight. From each of the NPC's perspectives, all of the other factions are the "bad guys". You come up with a campaign where not everyone has be "the good guys versus the bad guys". If the players are having trouble finding things to do, have NPCs show up to nudge them towards the NPC's own goals but without forcing them. I had an NPC utterly fail to convince the player party to his side which caused them to seek out a competing faction who was paying more, simply because they didn't find the NPC's story interesting or convincing.

The hardest part of the neutral campaign is learning to not say "no" when the players come up with a plan. Since you aren't railroading the players into joining a side they may come up with solutions that you never thought of or decide to join a faction (or play against multiple ones) that you never anticipated.

Is my game world now a convoluted mess? Absolutely! But the players feel like as they grow stronger their decisions are having more impact on the world than if they were simply told by an authority figure to "go here and wipe out these guys". If the motivation isn't right or if the job is too risky, the player's have the right to say "no" until either the stakes are right or someone else has a more attractive offer. I still "guide" the players from time to time when they're feeling a little lost from the open-ended nature of if. It's also more liberating to play in a morally "grey" world where things are more complex than just "right" and "wrong". Knowing that you can do "wrong" to get your goals accomplished is a nice change.

horseboy
2011-12-25, 01:48 AM
Step 1: Get rid of alignment. So long as they can justify being retardedly evil it's going to happen.
Step 2: Have a justifiable reason why. Something like: We WILL bring enlightenment and civilization to these toothless hillbillies whether they want it or not. They'll thank us later.
Alternatively, you can just call it "The Guild of Calamitous Intent."

QuidEst
2011-12-26, 02:57 PM
If I were in the position of trying to run a TN campaign, I'd probably try to balance out player tendency towards chaos with some lawful elements. Give them business contacts in a city, maybe even involve them in trade. TN might use some slightly shadier methods, though, misdirecting competitor caravans and the like. Questions should arise, such as what could you have to sell in an hour to turn a profit off of using a Potion of Glibness? In my mind, you can add neutral feel to things by providing more-or-less amoral out-of-combat ways to make money, even if it's just to supplement the looting.

Obviously, there are other ways (Yay alignment debates!), and probably plenty of more effective ones.