Are evil campaigns out of luck?

[killem2]

In a few months after my current session I am dm'ing is over with, the next one I am getting a head start on is going to be with evil characters. Any race is allowed as long as it doesn't exceed ECL 5 (including any racial HD/LA/Classes).

I have the introduction of how the party will be combined easily enough, and they are going to be gestalt characters for this campaign. However, the issue is, where the helll are some evil modules?

Did Gygax/TSR/WoTC or really any 3rd party, even embrace a 100% evil character driven module? I've scoured 3.0/3.5 and found nothing except some overall dribble from book of vile darkness. I don't need help understanding evil characters, I wanted the adventure hooks and such.

Am I pretty much stuck to homebrewing up my own world in this case?

I'm willing to even revamp old modules if their were any from the alpha days to even pathfinder if their are any to do that with.

[Urpriest]

Check out the sealed section of the BoVD Dungeon. Not sure if it has one, but it seems like the best bet.

Also, a big part of the fun of evil characters is that they can proactively affect the world around them in ways good characters can't/won't. Playing a module gets rid of a lot of that.

[kharmakazy]

In my experience evil games never go very well. Most of the normal motivations for characters are right out, and the characters generally wind up backstabbing one another and each wanting to be the BBEG.

Honestly, if you are looking for modules, the best I can think of is taking a regular module and reversing the roles.

[kardar233]

The main problem is that Evil characters tend to go off the rails much more easily than Good ones in less-structured campaign settings like the standard D&D ones.

[killem2]

I wouldn't be too worried about back stabbing. The group is made up of a 42 year old, his 18 year old son, 13 year old step son, my coworker who is 27, and my son, who is almost 8 and has been playing with us for the last three sessions.

I don't anticipate any internal problems, they are here to play as a team.


This group of misfits comes from a renegade cult-like militant organization that is always training new recruits to do their bidding. Except that the jobs they have people do are for the personal gain of the council who run the underworld city. They aren’t anarchy driven, they have laws, but it is all based on greed, a very lawful evil presence.

The council is made up of five dragons. Black/Red/Blue/Green/White

All buried deep in their in alignments of evil. They formed solid pact from years long past as Young Adults. They are all now well into Ancient, teetering on Wyrm. They have created a sentient world that breeds greed and destruction, but have perfected the harness of fear.

They recruit or replenish their own ranks from inbreeding, cross breeding, breeding, or mutating prisoners of battle. It is perfect utopia of what evil can achieve. This evil dragon council have attained almost god-like status among their own society. They are well known among the evil side of the world, and are rarely confronted by the good of the world. They do keep to themselves but understand they must show their power every so often.

From time to time, supplies, money, weapondry, and so forth must be replenished, and this place didn't become the evil city by being reckless and stupid. Only the elite are chosen to leave out side the bounds of the city to pillage and sack cities, raid dungeons of weaker evil beings. Sending out peons lead to possible leaks and rats. Only the true loyal are privileged for these tasks.

[kardar233]

That sounds like it could work quite well. It's got the makings of a working Evil campaign: organization behind them/powerful bosses, defined objectives with latitude in how to do them.

[The Cat Goddess]

Evil people do dungeon crawls for similar reasons to Good people... get treasure.

The old "Against the Giants" (G1-3) modules work fine for Evil characters... Evil doesn't like competition.

Given the background you provide, the "Evil doesn't like competition" answer allows for using many modules... just not exactly as intended. :xykon:

[Doug Lampert]

Did Gygax/TSR/WoTC or really any 3rd party, even embrace a 100% evil character driven module? I've scoured 3.0/3.5 and found nothing except some overall dribble from book of vile darkness. I don't need help understanding evil characters, I wanted the adventure hooks and such.

I've never found any problem motivating evil characters.

Something is threatening your home and family gets an Evil character at least as upset and willing to act as a Good one. My current campain has an evil character who declared at start that she hates her family and wanted them dead, this attitude was repeated for a long time (several years real time). Then she found out someone ELSE was planning to kill them and still decided that she insisted on protecting them even though the rest of the party didn't want to bother (they're HERS, not some mangy evil goddess bitch's, they can worship HER and she may let them live, but either way she's not letting anyone ELSE kill them).

Treasure works at least as well to motivate Evil characters as Good ones.

XP and power also work at least as well to motivate Evil characters as Good ones.

The king offering a reward works about as well to motivate Evil characters as Good ones. (Evil characters won't normally CARE about the morality of their task or the king, but they will consider self assigning the task of killing the king and taking his stuff.)

Evil characters have goals, anything that furthers those goals can motivate them, Evil doesn't cooperate with Evil, there's no problem using conventional enemies.

In my experience Evil PCs are MORE likely to take prisoners than good characters are (alive is easy to fix and may provide information/ransom/sale as a slave/future assistance; dead is mostly just dead, what good are dead bodies, and they don't even scream entertainingly if tortured). This provides all sorts of hooks (and makes backgrounds with ransoms used as a regular thing far more usable).

Evil characters also often worry more about social interactions, good characters may assume they are "The Heroes" and everyone should help them, evil characters know better. And having evil PCs makes it obvious that Detect Evil is almost no use at all in a mystery (so does reading the spell and other alignment material without thinking you already know what it does and means, Detect Evil is nearly useless for mystery solving, but with Evil PCs everyone knows that).

All this means that if I ever ran from modules I wouldn't care if people were playing evil characters. On those rare occasions that I do run from modules I typically don't really CARE what people put down on the Alignment line of their character sheet unless there's something specific that makes it relevant.

[killem2]

Hmm, I'm not sure they are strictly against competition, they survived as long as they have by being able to run their own show. That's not to say, they won't pillage weaker places, to gain an advantage, more troops to turn into viable options.

So I guess, I might just be good to go. :D.

Just throw in the occasional goodie-two-shoes party that doesn't like what they are doing.

[Zubrowka74]

You're making your 8-year old son play in an evil campaign ?

[kharmakazy]

You're making your 8-year old son play in an evil campaign ?

You think he has to make an 8 year old play make believe?

I usually wind up torturing people with even my neutral characters... It just seems like the most effective method to get the information I want. It's a shame some dms don't allow that sort of thing.

[Raimun]

I really don't think evil campaign would be that fun in the long run. What I've heard, they usually devolve into Stupid Evil campaigns where the PCs just burn villages and try to kill everyone. There should some other motivation for the PCs.

Perhaps the best example of an evil campaign that comes to mind is the Marvel's Dark Reign. In that story line Norman Osborn (the Green Goblin!) saved the earth from skrulls and he was made the leader of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers. He ruled with iron fist (not that Iron Fist) and was trying to shape the world to follow his vision. There was a catch, though. He had to keep in mind his PR. That meant all black ops and shady dealings had to be kept secret from the american public. He had super villains to join his cause but he made them pose as super heroes with similiar looks and powers. They were still mostly psychoes and criminals but they couldn't act any way they wanted. They were in the position of power but to keep it that way, they had to keep it all under the wraps and smile for the camera.

[SSGoW]

The problem with evil games is that most people play evil as "stupid evil".

A game I played in had three LG/CG types and me as CE. We grew up as best friends and I would do anything for them... And god help whoever messed with my friends... I had the old testiment style revenge "kill you, your loved ones, and your goat" if you even drew a sword on my friends. My character would help his friends with anything the needed even if he didn't understand why they were doing it.

The thing people don't remember is Magneto loves mutants. He thinks they are the future and will do anything to protect them, hell many times he is show to protect/care for Professor X since he is his best friend/rival/enemy. The bastard is still evil... He just has some redeeming qualities.

I would say to take an existing module and then twist it to where maybe a group of heroes (of light?) are performing a ritual to create an item that will be the bane of evil. Plus if you make up your own twist you might catch some of the more experienced ones off guard.

EDIT: Just run a game where your players have a curse/quest spell on them. They have to help a kingdom and such to pay for their crimes. Give them a way to break free and then set it up where they can "get even" with the govt

[Andorax]

All I can really offer here is that there are a great many modules that, stripped of their initial plot hook, consist of "go into that monster-and-trap-infested hole and bring out the stuff."

Adjusting the hooks for adventures such as these is trivially easy.


An evil party probably wouldn't have any harder of a time (either justifying or completing) adventures such as the old X2 module Castle Amber...basic premise is you wake up trapped in a pocket dimension and need to find your way out. Evil characters will be just as motivated as good ones to do so.

[hiryuu]

The problem with evil games is that most people play evil as "stupid evil".

A game I played in had three LG/CG types and me as CE. We grew up as best friends and I would do anything for them... And god help whoever messed with my friends... I had the old testiment style revenge "kill you, your loved ones, and your goat" if you even drew a sword on my friends. My character would help his friends with anything the needed even if he didn't understand why they were doing it.

The thing people don't remember is Magneto loves mutants. He thinks they are the future and will do anything to protect them, hell many times he is show to protect/care for Professor X since he is his best friend/rival/enemy. The bastard is still evil... He just has some redeeming qualities.

I would say to take an existing module and then twist it to where maybe a group of heroes (of light?) are performing a ritual to create an item that will be the bane of evil. Plus if you make up your own twist you might catch some of the more experienced ones off guard.

EDIT: Just run a game where your players have a curse/quest spell on them. They have to help a kingdom and such to pay for their crimes. Give them a way to break free and then set it up where they can "get even" with the govt

King Kaius wants to protect and help his people, he wants the world to rest peacefully after a long war, and he wants to help the economy of not just his country, but every country prosper and grow.

He just thinks that keeping a harem of blood slaves, mind control magic, killing people, and turning his descendants into vampires is a perfectly valid way to do it.

Hm. My own experience with evil campaigns hasn't been all that great, either. Tried it a couple of times, but each time the players used it as an excuse to just burn buildings down and break windows. Tried to run a task force of soldiers who would do just about anything for the crown, a sort of "those guys you call when you want someone in the enemy kingdom to die" kind of thing. Which was a great idea, and two of the players were totally on board. The other two just assumed that "evil" on the character sheet meant "as angry and loud as possible and also naked Tuesdays!"

In my own experience, Evil isn't more proactive in changing the world. Good people are just as proactive, if not moreso.

[killem2]

You're making your 8-year old son play in an evil campaign ?

Yes.

Problem?

Make believe, is make believe. He'll be fine, he's a very smart kid. :smallwink: I'm not worried.

Anyway, as far as the rest of the comments, I can agree, evil characters can become stupid evil very fast, but again, we have a pretty close knit group. We are not out to ruin our own games. I've played in those games before, usually when I was a younger teenager with my other younger and very immature teenager friends.

I was looking for modules more out of time saving than anything else, I have a lot going on in my day to day life, and being able to just have a pre made module would help, its not impossible for me to do it, just have to set aside my free time for it. We only play once a month.

:smallbiggrin:

[White_Drake]

My DM used the sample party in The Ghost Tower of Inverness as an evil party to spice things up; when we finally fought them over the pieces of the key (both parties had grabbed two pieces simultaneously) everybody had a great time. I imagine you could do the same thing with most modules, except have the NPCs be good.

[Menteith]

You think he has to make an 8 year old play make believe?

I usually wind up torturing people with even my neutral characters... It just seems like the most effective method to get the information I want. It's a shame some dms don't allow that sort of thing.

I remember water boarding Bill Ferny during a re-imagining of Lord of the Rings. Oh, our terrible evil Hobbits....

[Zubrowka74]

Yes.

Problem?

Make believe, is make believe. He'll be fine, he's a very smart kid. :smallwink: I'm not worried.

As a DM, pretty much anything goes for me. It's your kid, you do whatever you think is good.

My line of thought was more like : already playing evil campaigns at 8, don't you think that by 12 he'll be jaded about the whole RPG thing ? I remember my first games in grade 6 when we were happy just blowing stuff up (remember Top Secret ?). Trickier concepts like roleplaying an evil PC correctly only came years after.

[kabreras]

There is a pathfinder campaign for evils characters (aimed at lawful evil) named "way of the wicked" if you can get your hands on it it can be a good start even if you have to translate it to 3.5

[killem2]

As a DM, pretty much anything goes for me. It's your kid, you do whatever you think is good.

My line of thought was more like : already playing evil campaigns at 8, don't you think that by 12 he'll be jaded about the whole RPG thing ?

Not sure, its about the only genre he plays,that and racing.

He likes first person shooters but I limit those to about an hour a week.

[ThiagoMartell]

I usually wind up torturing people with even my neutral characters... It just seems like the most effective method to get the information I want. It's a shame some dms don't allow that sort of thing.
This is just wrong.
By RAW, the best method is a social skill check. No torture involved.
In real life, the best way to get information and to get people to do what you want is to be nice to them. What you see in Hollywood movies about policemen beating the crap out of people for a confession is just, well, Hollywood. In fact, that was one of the key points behind the criticizing of Enhancer Interrogation Techniques - they were not enhanced, they were ineffectual.
Torture is simply unnecessary cruelty.

[Doug Lampert]

Hm. My own experience with evil campaigns hasn't been all that great, either. Tried it a couple of times, but each time the players used it as an excuse to just burn buildings down and break windows.

At which point unless your PCs are the most powerful things arround, the town guard+militia help+the high level characters in town KILL THEM DEAD!

Seriously, part of running ANY campaign is that PC actions have consequences. There's an obvious consequence to a low level PC party trying to loot the town, and it isn't pretty for the PCs!

Killing people at random annoys other people, lots of them, and they do something about it. If worst comes to worst they find an adventuring party for which the PCs ENTIRE GROUP is a standard patrol encounter (so every individual member is 4 or so levels higher than the party), and the NPC adventerers kill them. Note that even other EVIL adventurers will LOVE to do this, because few things have more loot for the risk than a PC group and most PC groups in actual play are horribly vulnerable to scry and die.

[killem2]

Burn Notice is my gauge for use of torture :P