Save my Campaign: Evil PCs

[CleanDeceit]

I am the DM for a group of players in a 3.5 game. I started our adventure by pulling resources from the pathfinder adventure setting Rise of the Runelords.

Originally I gave my players some of the information from that setting before they generated their characters so they would be able to fit there characters into the setting. However, my players came up with some very creative Evil aligned characters. They are all elves, and took the following classes: Crusader, Cleric, Scout and Bard. Normally I might have asked them to go back and build non evil PCs with backgrounds more appropriate for the setting but that wold be foolish. The only reason I would do that would be to motivate the players for the adventure and to feel attached to the world they are in. But these characters already have that in their own way.

In their backgrounds each PC is a member of of the family and each has a specific role in ensuring their family's survival. They identify that as evil characters they must hide their alignment and agree to help good aligned NPCs. Each PC has an in depth personality complete with character traits and history as well as psychological profile. Additionally they all worship the same archaic, forgotten God as their chosen religion. This God they chose is a reference to another character from an ongoing lore used by my friends in other campaigns.

Given all of this, how could any DM possibly tell them to make new PCs? So we forged ahead and I made a choice to adapt the campaign to better suit the awesome PCs and their motivations. We started at level 1 and used the Rise of the Runelords books without much adaptation but the PCs have completed the first few encounters and are now level 2. I dont really see us continuing to fallow the adventure setting all the way to level twenty, the players are eager to forge their own path and ignore the needs of the town or the missions provided by the NPCs.

My question is this: can you guys help me brain storm some adventure ideas that will keep my evil PCs interested? If anyone can think of ways I can branch off of the current path in Rise of the Runelords and start moving a group of level 2 NPCs who worship a dark god in another way that would be great.

I can already see how the end game might be about helping their dark lord awaken instead of trying to prevent the evil wizard from awakening as it is in the rune lords setting. That part seams easy, but that is all the way at level 20 and these guys are only level 2. I dont know how to work my way backward through the whole adventure setting converting and adapting every plot hook NPC and monster to this effect. It seams like to much, that is why I think I might need to take things in an entirely new direction.

Any ideas you guys have is much appreciated. Thanks in advance :smallwink:

[Galvin]

Mayhaps if you wanted to turn them to good, you could do a quest that shows them the error of their ways, and eventually leads to a good aligned cleric atoning them.

If you are satisfied with their alignment you could have them perform quests that good characters would do, because you said that they are trying to hide being evil, and maybe through enough faked good acts they will shift their alignment.

They could try to form a cult of their forgotten god with leadership and together try to bring that deity to the mortal realm. Maybe there could be an order of good aligned clerics and paladins and crusaders and the like that are dedicated to stop them. Maybe this order's dedication to their cause shows them the error of their ways and they renounce their deity and seek atonement, which the order may or may not provide.

[DeBasilisk]

I'm not terribly familiar with the campaign in question, but one successful strategy I have used to bring evil PCs in line with good actions is to use the enemy-of-my-enemy strategy. Perhaps the PCs could have some villain from their past that they are universally opposed to and will do anything to foil who ties in to the campaign. By saving the villagers they somehow work against their shared foe and everyone wins.

[ArcturusV]

The thing is, evil is actually a lot easier to motivate than Good. Least so I find. Evil tends not to be THAT creative. It's always just the same themes over and over. Screw everyone for myself, meglomania, love of wealth, etc. You don't get that much depth in emotional content and driving motivations.

But I'm not familiar with the adventure module in question, so I don't know what building blocks you have to work with.

Keeping the party together and adventuring shouldn't be that hard. Evil characters are just as likely to "Crusade" as a Paladin. While a Paladin might go on some crusade against evil because it's Evil, Evil characters are more likely to go on crusades out of Revenge for real and/or imagined slights. Just having your BBEG show up early, and punk the players pretty handily can keep your evil characters on track pretty decently. Even if your eventual BBEG doesn't even do anything else for several levels.

[LTwerewolf]

Go with an anti-hero theme. They can save the world in an evil way.

[rezplz]

It's been a long time since I've played rise of the runelords. It's kinda funny though, the character I did play in that campaign went on to be a minor diety because he was epicly hilarious, much like how your players are worshiping another character from a past campaign. Anyway.

If I remember correctly, it doesn't take too long for the characters to find out that these various adventures are linked to the bad guys' plot to bring back that one dude whose name I forget. Which means this should be pretty easy to manage for you, as long as you play it correctly. Especially since all of your players are worshiping an ancient (likely evil), but forgotten god - much like the runelords are ancient and mostly forgotten. So have this diety of theirs be an old rival of this runelord guy - perhaps one of them betrayed the other. You might have to do a little tweaking with the history of the runelords campaign, but it should be pretty minor.

Now this runelord's followers are going to directly oppose your players because of the god they chose to worship. And, if they want to do any super evil long term plans, they know they'll have to take out this runelord first, otherwise the rivalry will make things difficult at the very least.

[Crake]

You need to find a way to motivate the players.

Maybe do something with the god they worship? Say that cults to the god have started springing up around the place, performing unidentifiable rituals etc. They'll likely investigate, maybe become welcomed into the cult, get some missions, but then along the way they discover that the cult is trying to resurrect the god, and that the god will then bring about a cleansing of the world, which includes the death of everyone on the planet, including it's followers. At that point, maybe they decide that they want to keep living, and start working against the cult. Or maybe they're cool with that, and work toward ending the world? At that point, you may want to start a second group of players that work against those, running 2 different games, and then at the very end have a climactic battle between the two groups for the fate of the world!

[thefirecrack3r]

Don't bother trying to change their alignments. If they want to be evil, they'll be evil. Motivating evil players are easy, just like good creature, they want to kill things and take their stuff. These things don't have to be good critters, they can hunt down evil drow, or vampires, undead, whatever. Doesn't matter. My evil PC's are combating a powerful arch-devil as well as a LG cult who wants to bring them to justice. They've eradicated a tribe of evil lizardfolk, slayed a vampire, as well as raiding a town, and sacrificing prisoners to their god. Also, I've never had a conflict between them, my Rogue and Cleric worship the same god, and the Ranger is too busy hating on his favored enemies to care about the party. The group dynamic works, they've even found a subterranean less-than-good city where the cleric's undead followers go overlooked. Its a fun campaign and I don't see why evil is such a hated (among GM's) alignment, properly motivated, and with DM intrusion on character backrounds you can make a party who probably wont ever kill each other, and don't just slaughter everything in sight. Enjoy the opportunity to step outside the typical, "We are good things, We kill bad things" party. Its fun and can be played well, talk to your players and ask them about their motivations and whatnot are and you can have some of the most interesting games to play.

[Endarire]

Ask your players what they most want to do. Are they up for an adpated Rise of the Runelords, or would they prefer to have a campaign more personally tailored to their group and backgrounds?

Evil and Good in D&D aren't that much different. They're kinda like opposing football teams (or sports teams). Evil tends to be proactive and Good tends to be reactive. Think about it: "Good" adventurers go around killing things they don't like and taking their stuff on a regular basis and people are OK with it! If you're Evil, you probably do that already.

I scrap alignment in my games for similar reasons. Act how you want and let your actions speak for themselves. (And please do not turn this thread into another alignment is/was/should be/could be X thread!)

[Lafaellar]

Actually to me this looks like a dream come true.
Self motivated PCs that want to explore the world on their own, set their own goals and have a fully fledged psychological profile.

You actually can lean back and let them do the hard work and jump in when they need to interact with the world.

You still can squeeze in the adventures though, but you have to make it in a more uncommon way.

Design the stuff you cannot make up on the fly beforehand, like an elaborate dungeon for example or a well crafted NPC or stuff like that but leave it completely open where you insert this into the campaign.
Then wait for the players to come up with a goal or shove them in the right direction if need be.

They are very strongly aligned to their family so you can make use of that by throwing in plot hooks related to that.
It's like fishing, just throw out baits until they bite.

When they bite, you can start throwing in your elaborated adventure step by step, making adjustments as required.

In an adventure it is never about what is at stake but what motivates the people. I once made an adventure where practically nothing was at stake and you might think "why in the world would they even think about following it" but they followed it like the world was in grave danger and they are the only ones to save it.

So, in short.

1. Design an adventure and be as non-specific about it as possible. Don't say it is a quest to recover the lost dragon crown of whatever just say it is about to recover something for example and design a dungeon for it or whatever you like.

2. Throw out baits that might interest the characters and aim right at their core motivation. Don't think too much about these baits until they decide to bite.

3. When they bite, pull them slowly into the adventure, don't slam it into their faces, be gentle.

4. At the moment they start being emotionally invested in the plot, they will do anything to be part of it.

[Darcand]

Are you willing to put in some leg work? Run Runelords in reverse! If they're only level 2 then they've beaten back the goblins, time to let them finish off the clan, then discover the sin well. Maybe the antipaladin tips them off. Maybe not. They have to corrupt greedy townsfolk.

Undead Murderfest Time!

Then we're off to the big city, where they take on the role of the Skin Saw cult, killing greedy people to feed the well. After that it's time to recruit some ogres and destroy a fort. Maybe start an army of giants and smash a dam too.

Take said army of giants and invade Sandpoint, yes please! Use the battle as cover to sneak into the ruins underneath, destroy the immortal servants of their god's rivals and claim the well for themselves. Time to bring back an ancient evil.

Maybe now the giants realize that they are being played and you need to put them in their place; a grave.

Off to the city in the sky for the grand resurrection! Halleluiah! Oh snap! Rune Giants who are still miffed about centuries of enslavement! Slay them.

Then we raise the lost god, only to find out that something else, something worse, comes through with him. Bring on the epic battle.

It is a fair amount of rewriting, but it could be fun.

[Darcand]

On a related note, what I did with that setting was to borrow from Runelords, Shadow in the Sky, and..... the other one and make a Sandbox. The PCs interacted with elements from all three paths, but didn't take up any of the main lines. It made for a fun game where we didn't have to worry about saving the world.

[Segev]

I know nothing of the campaign other than what I've read in this thread, but if the Runelords are out to revive some ancient thing, perhaps you can introduce the same overarching plot but with the twist that their long-forgotten god wants them to hijack the ritual(s) to make them bring HIM back.

[chillmynaga]

It may be a little unethical but you should try to play this campaign on the villain point of view. The antagonist could be a lawful good crusader general who hates elves. What about another evil adventuring group or rival elf clan. Not all evil people like to be friends. In addition try to have their actions help the village, such as being overtaxed by the crusaders nation or under attack from the rival clan.

[Roguenewb]

Figure out their particular brand of evil. Do they want political power? To end the world? More mechanical class power? Money? Whatever it is, build adventures where they will have the ability to gain those things.

-Clear out this castle(dungeon) and the warlord of the surrounding countryside will be dead, and you can reign over the lands.
-Letting your dark god out requires 9 macguffins. This one looks almost indentical to a million good PC campaigns, except at the end, the screen goes dark instead of walking off into the sunset.
-A powerful spellbook/sword/sneaking technique/vestige/soulmeld/power/maneuver/whatever can be recovered from someone/thing, which will make you more powerful.
-Banks. Rob them.

Same kind of adventures as good characters, just slightly different methods and motiviations. You can put a bunch of choices in a given adventure that will help them adjust and tune their except level and strain of evil. If you get party conflicts between the evil guy and the other guy who just isn't evil enough, you win as DM.

[zilonox]

If you want to stick with published adventures, then my suggestion is to transition to another PF adventure path called "Way of the Wicked" by Fire Mountain Games. It lets evil characters be evil and work to bring down the church of a good diety and destroy/take over an island kingdom. Like Ruenlords, it's designed to take charaters from 1st to 20th level, but you can jump out at any time. You could either skip the first chapter (essentially a prison break), or just up the encounters to account for the characters already being second level when they are captured.

Even though the focus is on Asmodeus, you could easily refluff this to any evil diety, including the one your PC's worship already. I'm currently running the adventure path (as a 3.5 adventure) and I like the mix of play styles that it offers (from straight dungeon crawls to sandbox style sabotaging of a city's defenses to basically being a dungeon keeper for a while). If you are willing to let them flex their evil muscles in a structured way, then this is one way to do it.

[Chester]

Frankly, I find evil a lot of fun to play. My current party consists of a N.E. Dread Necromancer (me), C.G. Barbarian, N.G. Cleric, and T.N. Bard/Illusionist.

We play a "grey" campaign--good and evil are not so clear cut. It's interesting to play out the dynamic between me and the cleric. In fact, my character has succeeded in guiding our barbarian down a dark path, and he'll be turning evil shortly!

Perhaps you could introduce your own character--maybe a neutral aligned character--into the party? It might begin to shift the balance and make things more interesting for the group.