Trekkin
2015-08-05, 11:58 PM
As my past threads have indicated, I'm gearing up to run an evil adventure path. The demographics of the AP as written have always bothered me: as an example, the plot revolves around two men fighting over a woman who never has a speaking line within the PCs' hearing or a described quality beyond her attractiveness. Her sole function is to give birth to the PCs' nemesis, and the entire adventure has only a bare handful of humanoid NPCs who are not able-bodied cis het white guys. It's painful to read and more so to play, and I'd like to do something different, not least because my players have cited a lack of diversity as one of the problems they had with a former DM.
In a more standard adventure I'd be confident in my own efforts to make a more diverse setting, but these characters are intentionally awful human beings, one way or another. They need to be: the PCs' best shot at success is to play to their adversaries' crippling character flaws. This leads me to my set of bad choices: either I relegate vast swathes of humanity to the background or every example the PCs come across is either a target to be killed or a horrible monster actively working to promulgate some dystopia or other, because those are ultimately the only types of character playing a role in the adventure. C'est la evil campaign. From what I've read about making villains diverse, actually assigning them flaws is risky enough (apparently every concievable combination of flaw and demographic has an impenetrably idiosyncratic trope name ready to describe its unfortunate origins), but if they are not flawed and deeply so the whole AP falls apart.
So, Playgrounders, what do I do? Do I keep going with the monotype rogues' gallery, or do I risk the unfortunate implication that some subset of humanity or other are uniformly horrible/obstacles?
In short, how do I tell a story about evil people doing awful things, where anybody with a shred of decency is eventually on the PCs' hit list, and not make anybody uncomfortable at my table? (Provided they're ok with the campaign -- and they are. Boy howdy are they ready to go be evil.)
I guess I could make everybody green again...
In a more standard adventure I'd be confident in my own efforts to make a more diverse setting, but these characters are intentionally awful human beings, one way or another. They need to be: the PCs' best shot at success is to play to their adversaries' crippling character flaws. This leads me to my set of bad choices: either I relegate vast swathes of humanity to the background or every example the PCs come across is either a target to be killed or a horrible monster actively working to promulgate some dystopia or other, because those are ultimately the only types of character playing a role in the adventure. C'est la evil campaign. From what I've read about making villains diverse, actually assigning them flaws is risky enough (apparently every concievable combination of flaw and demographic has an impenetrably idiosyncratic trope name ready to describe its unfortunate origins), but if they are not flawed and deeply so the whole AP falls apart.
So, Playgrounders, what do I do? Do I keep going with the monotype rogues' gallery, or do I risk the unfortunate implication that some subset of humanity or other are uniformly horrible/obstacles?
In short, how do I tell a story about evil people doing awful things, where anybody with a shred of decency is eventually on the PCs' hit list, and not make anybody uncomfortable at my table? (Provided they're ok with the campaign -- and they are. Boy howdy are they ready to go be evil.)
I guess I could make everybody green again...