Have you ever played in an evil party?

[NecroDancer]

My party is super close to becoming an evil party (very chaotic, scheming, willing to take the easy way out, and revenge driven) but we are held back from our long suffering paladin and the fact that becoming evil makes killing the BBEG slightly harder (I thought about working for him but I get the feeling that we've burned all possible bridges).

I was just thinking that it's still possible for us to become an evil party along ways down the road so that got me thinking? Have any of the playgrounders playing in an evil campaign that didn't fail? The fey evil campaigns I've read about are Kaveman's Bizzare Necromancer/Cattle herder campaign and Tales of and Industrous Rouge.

[Tetrasodium]

My party is super close to becoming an evil party (very chaotic, scheming, willing to take the easy way out, and revenge driven) but we are held back from our long suffering paladin and the fact that becoming evil makes killing the BBEG slightly harder (I thought about working for him but I get the feeling that we've burned all possible bridges).

I was just thinking that it's still possible for us to become an evil party along ways down the road so that got me thinking? Have any of the playgrounders playing in an evil campaign that didn't fail? The fey evil campaigns I've read about are Kaveman's Bizzare Necromancer/Cattle herder campaign and Tales of and Industrous Rouge.

Chaotic evil is a disaster, but there are lots of ways to do evil that doesn't cause the slightest of problems. Here are some helpful links.

Grey & grey morality (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GreyAndGrayMorality)
Greying morality (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GrayingMorality)
Black & grey morality (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlackAndGrayMorality)
How to play an evil character in an rpg (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-0hgP1tNH8)

[Sigreid]

Yes. I've played in many evil parties and frankly there's usually at least one evil character in the group. It's not a problem really. Just make sure that there is something important to them and that the party isn't planning on overtly screwing each other over (a little extra treasure filching isn't a big deal, or shouldn't be).

Oh, and remember evil doesn't mean stupid. So remember the golden rule - No live witnesses and rule number 2, double tap.

[Corran]

Just make sure that there is something important to them
This.
For an all-evil party we tried once, it was religion.
I remember I was so excited at playing at an all-evil party, but was so afraid it might end in disaster.
So I had given a little speech OoC at character creation, about how we should all play characters that stick together and stuff like that. When I realized that not everyone was 100% on board with that idea, I let everyone know that my cleric would only use faith healing for heals (it was back in 3e). Then everyone picked the same religion and it went smoothly for the most part (didnt last long because life got in the way, but it was going well).

One other time I had played in a mostly-evil party, it helped that there was a leader (another PC), that every other player character respected and followed (for their own reasons each), who was bringing back to order anyone who was misbehaving (through rp ofc). This went well too, up to the point that we got TPK'd by a freaking kraken (it still hurts when I think about it :smallsigh:).

[pwykersotz]

I played in an evil party once for 3.5. It was a modern setting. John Telemain, LE Psion was my character. The rest of the party trended towards either Lawful or Evil, making us cooperate very well. Too well. We committed genocide, harvested people as slaves for hideous medical experiements, and killed whenever it was expedient. We played for nearly two years, until finally the gods of good could take it no more. They trapped our party in an alternate reality where there was no such thing as magic. Only my character escaped, having left the party several adventures earlier, leaving a Simulcrum of himself in his place.

That said, we succeeded pretty wildly. There was a minimal amount of backstabbing, mostly because my friend played our leader, but it soon became clear that the name of the game was "Don't anger the Psion" after I made a few heads explode at the right time. Basically, it was a game of believing yourself to be the leader while pretending someone else is. Other characters had their own sneaky agendas too, beliving themselves to be the best in their own way.

I also decided that I would never play in an evil campaign again. I just can't stomach that much darkness. Still, it was a great learning experience.

[Naanomi]

While I've played in plenty of games with evil party members; I've only played in two games with really 'evil parties'... one a 3.5 Darksun game where we were united against an even greater Evil (one of the Dragons); and another in 5e Underdark game where we were mercenary/profiteer types exclusively evil/underdark races. The later was a little more 'backstabby' but still played out well. I think you just need a better established reason to work together compared to 'everyone meets in a tavern' that might pass in Good parties

[Contrast]

I'll go a step further - I've typically played most of my games in the Warhammer systems where the general setting and tone is much darker than D&D. I would say the vast majority of the games I've played in have had 50% or more of characters who are probably leaning towards the evil end of the spectrum. Its honestly harder to think of good characters, they've generally been neutral at best.

I'm currently playing in a Black Crusade game where the intrinsic expectation of the entire system is that the entire party is evil. Really evil.

I'm also playing in a Vampire the Masquerade game where the general morality is that its ok to kill people as long as you do it discretely :smalltongue:

Its been quite refreshing to get some 5E games in and be heroes heroing about, but its always amused me, given the above, the level of panic this board seems to have for anyone ever mentioning playing an evil character or the number of people who say they automaitcally ban it. I guess it depends who you play with - I've only ever played with my friends/people who seem happy not to make the play experience unpleasant for anyone. The golden rule is to remember the characters are evil, not the players, so don't do something that would annoy another player and be mature about the ups and downs of your own character.

[GPS]

My party is super close to becoming an evil party (very chaotic, scheming, willing to take the easy way out, and revenge driven) but we are held back from our long suffering paladin and the fact that becoming evil makes killing the BBEG slightly harder (I thought about working for him but I get the feeling that we've burned all possible bridges).

I was just thinking that it's still possible for us to become an evil party along ways down the road so that got me thinking? Have any of the playgrounders playing in an evil campaign that didn't fail? The fey evil campaigns I've read about are Kaveman's Bizzare Necromancer/Cattle herder campaign and Tales of and Industrous Rouge.
Slightly harder? I've been wanting to play in an evil party for a while, but Curse of Strahd is probably not the best place to for us to do that.

Edit: Oh, you meant when we were out of Barovia. My bad.

[Sigreid]

One other thing, evil parties can save the world. After all, they live there too.

[Potato_Priest]

I played with an evil party in 5e. Our mutual bond was that we all escaped from the abyss together (not the underdark, the actual abyss).When we came back the capitol city of not!Europe had been conquered by a BBEG with a McGuffin. We immediately decided to try to conquer the city for ourselves. We went north and became leaders of an orc warband, then used water breathing (It's a ritual) on the hundreds of orcs and attacked the city from underwater. Simultaneously, I infiltrated the BBEG's army of fire elementals (I was a fire Genasi so that helped a lot) pretended to "capture" one of my friends, and faked an interrogation scene. We used the forged interrogation to convince the BBEG that he should withdraw his troops through the portal temporarily to protect them from a massive AOE attack that we would be pulling off. He did so, and once they were through, we immediately started butchering him, using a lot of grappling abilities to keep him from getting to the portal and summoning his army again. In the end, we succeeded in killing him and taking the city, using the McGuffin to close the portal again, after which point it became something of a government game. It was the game with the least player on player conflict I've ever played, because nobody strenuously objected to other people's evil actions, and we all worked together well to get our goals.

[ZorroGames]

Only as a DM. Played a neutral'ish charactver a fair amount. I guess I am "one of those people" because as a DM I go out of my way to sic the forces of law and order on truly Evil characters, as it should be IMNSHO.

[Beelzebubba]

Yeah, several. Latest was 3.5, Forgotten Realms, in a team that started working together out of necessity. When that was done, we stayed together because we worked well as a team, and found lucrative adventures to take on.

We didn't have any conflicts because our goals had no overlap. For example, I had an evil cleric of Kossuth that was financing a temple with my gains.

We were basically Tarquin's group.

[Corran]

Yeah, several. Latest was 3.5, Forgotten Realms, in a team that started working together out of necessity. When that was done, we stayed together because we worked well as a team, and found lucrative adventures to take on.

We didn't have any conflicts because our goals had no overlap. For example, I had an evil cleric of Kossuth that was financing a temple with my gains.

We were basically Tarquin's group.
Mike, is that you?
Your story just brought back memories from when I was playing 3e. Had a fellow player playing exactly what you described. And though it wasn't an all-evil party, the group dynamics were very similar almost identical in our case too. Weird...

[Beelzebubba]

Mike, is that you?

Hah! No, that's not me. :smallbiggrin:

We had a Mike in the group, but he left before that campaign.

[Dankus Memakus]

Many evil parties work well together, if alot of players are Lawful Evil they can usually use their strength to bully the Chaotics into line so they don't cause too much of an issue, Chaotic Evil is very dangerous though and I've seen many CE PC's die from sheer stupidity, greed, or treachery. As long as a LE can lead and keep the arrogance down it should be alright. If you want to keep Chaotic Evil in check use fear.

[Tetrasodium]

One other thing, evil parties can save the world. After all, they live there too.


Basically, it was a game of believing yourself to be the leader while pretending someone else is. Other characters had their own sneaky agendas too, beliving themselves to be the best in their own way.

these two are extremely important parts of anyone playing an evil character. however you justify it, you have to do it or both the group & gm are justified in killing you in your sleep pretty quickly. However you explain it it, you live there too & some other evil insane thing doing unpleasant things to your home/minions would be bad for you. Bad things are happening over there?... well lets go solve that before it interfers with MY bad things.




I played in an evil party once for 3.5. It was a modern setting. John Telemain, LE Psion was my character. The rest of the party trended towards either Lawful or Evil, making us cooperate very well. Too well. We committed genocide, harvested people as slaves for hideous medical experiements, and killed whenever it was expedient. We played for nearly two years, until finally the gods of good could take it no more. They trapped our party in an alternate reality where there was no such thing as magic. Only my character escaped, having left the party several adventures earlier, leaving a Simulcrum of himself in his place.

I also decided that I would never play in an evil campaign again. I just can't stomach that much darkness. Still, it was a great learning experience.

but it sounds like you made a sharp turn past evil & veered well into kick the dog (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KickTheDog) evil that crossed over a moral event horizon (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MoralEventHorizon) going well beyond little e evil to big E Evil in that campaign.



Many evil parties work well together, if alot of players are Lawful Evil they can usually use their strength to bully the Chaotics into line so they don't cause too much of an issue, Chaotic Evil is very dangerous though and I've seen many CE PC's die from sheer stupidity, greed, or treachery. As long as a LE can lead and keep the arrogance down it should be alright. If you want to keep Chaotic Evil in check use fear.
Yep... chaotic evil is a disaster & the source of the vast majority of problems with "evil" characters. Regardless of what is written on the sheet, lawful & even NE characters have things like "that bad stuff will wreck MY bad stuff, lets solve that!" & in many cases can do it even better/faster than good characters because there is kess moral red tape to worry about along the way.

[Knaight]

Once, and not in 5e. The GM has everyone make their characters separately, so we couldn't synchronize. Still, all of us usually made heroic characters, so all of us assumed that everyone else would do so - we then all made characters intended as the antihero of the group (the party was only three people, so it's not as unlikely as it sounds). This ended up making my character the moral center of the group, and he was a casually violent religious extremist bound to a nature god that didn't particularly care about humanity.

[Dudewithknives]

I have played in 3 "evil" campaigns, sort of.

1. In the scarred lands, where we were all Horsemen of Vangal, while the entire group was either NE or CE, we all worshiped the same god and all had the same goal so it worked out fine.
We pushed and shoved around and 2 people in the group fought to the death but it was agreed upon by both ahead of time and it was for RP reasons.
The game lasted until we were level 12, but in 3.0/3.5 that was pretty common.

2. I have played in 2 campaigns where I was even but the rest of the party wasn't.
One of them was in a Dragonlance Campaign where I was a cleric of Morgion, but pretending to be a cleric of Zeboim, it was an ocean based pirate campaign so people did not really care that their was an evil cleric of "Pirates and the Oceans" but I was actually worshiping the god of disease and planning, using the pirating to spread diseases to the cities we pillaged.
No problems there either really.
The other I was playing a LE rogue assassin in 5e, honestly, LE is not that big of an issue.

3. The last campaign we all played evil characters who were trying to take over the underworld, and eventually the whole city. However we had our well defined roles and did not get in each other's way. The whole campaign happened in one city from beginning to end, and it was only a 3 person game. It was in Pathfinder with: a slayer/rogue as a melee assassin and killer who specialized in intimidate and murder, a stealth expert archer ninja who was all about espionage and archery, a social expert Street Entertainer Bard who was like a social god as the only real caster.
It worked out great, it was much more a social and political game as we started as urchins booted from an orphanage who relied on each other to live so there was no infighting like at all.

Evil campaigns work great just so long as you are prepared for the lengths that people will go to, to accomplish what they want, and that the group all has the same overall goal.

[Grim Portent]

Most of the games I play in are evil, if not initially they always wind up that way within two or three sessions.

Across six groups I've been in the players have tended to play characters who are any combination of paranoid, selfish, impulsive, greedy, violent, mad scientists or demon worshippers, as well as a few other nasty things. I've yet to meet a roleplayer who doesn't quickly slide into such a role when it seems even vaguely sensible. I differ from a lot of them only it that I am more grandiose in my desired villainy, not being content with being petty crooks, but wanting to become dark lords and fell sorcerers. I can think of exactly one PC I've played alongside in the past decade I would happily call Good, and that one was a pacifist in a system without alignment.

All the aforementioned groups have also been fine with PvP, but it usually winds up being one character who disagrees with the group getting violent and then beaten to a pulp until they submit to the group consensus, or lower scale violence and threats to keep dissenters to the group goal in line. There's usually little if any actual PvP though, because we rarely have moral or ethical issues in character, just practical ones. We won't fight over if we should steal from a merchant ship or caravan, murder all the traders on it and burn/eat/animate the bodies, we'll argue over when and how to do it, or if there are better targets nearby, but such discussions are far more cordial.

I've never actually seen Evil result in any problems within a party. I've seen players be disruptive because they didn't take their own character seriously a few times, but that's always been resolved by IC bludgeoning them into line as a temporary measure and the player getting more serious as the wackiness often found in early sessions fades away.

[2D8HP]

Yeah in the 1980's, a "homebrew" modern-day setting game called "senseless violence" was invented by my first DM/GM, it was pretty much "what it says on the can", and mercifully my memories of it are dim.

More recently I briefly played a 5e D&D "evil campaign in which we started at 11th level, and had a lot of wealth including magic items... JUST SO BORING!

I dusted off a Noble background PC that had been rejected by another DM as "Too murderhobo", I ratcheted up his psychopathy "to eleven", and it when it wasn't boring it was unpleasant.

I think I like limits on my PC's, moral and otherwise.

[gameogre]

I played in a Evil Party and we loved it. However, we played it the exact same but we were more evil on the side.

We were still an adventuring band out to make a name for themselves and become rich and famous.

In order to do that we still needed a good reputation and still needed to honor our contracts and word.

Did we occasionally get creative in our tasks and take some shortcuts when it couldn't followed back to us? Yes we did.

Did we make some deals that ordinarily wouldn't have even occurred to us to make? Yes we did.

We also back stabbed and murdered and blackmailed and tricked enemies into compromising situations left and right but at the end of the day we were still on the side of civilization and order, even if we did walk all over some of its laws.

At the end is when it mattered the most. When we stood toe to toe with Tiamat and destroyed her because we wouldn't have her collar around our necks any more than we would have anyone else's.

We retired those characters and that is probably the last time we play evil. It was fun but wasn't different enough of a experience to make it worth it.

[Sigreid]

I've also played in several games where the party was evil, but thought they were good and simply "doing what was necessary and others didn't have the stomach for."

[pwykersotz]

but it sounds like you made a sharp turn past evil & veered well into kick the dog (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KickTheDog) evil that crossed over a moral event horizon (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MoralEventHorizon) going well beyond little e evil to big E Evil in that campaign.

We never went "kick the dog" evil, but we were definitely irredeemable. We started as merely ruthless, but we had large dreams. John's dream was to see humanity rise to their rightful place as leaders of the "lesser races". He was incredibly kind and merciful...to individuals. He killed painlessly when possible, and he was a very patient man. That was part of his horror, to me at least. He simply treated people as statistics. And yes, the genocide was a 'practical' decision largely made by John. *shudder*

[Ninja-Radish]

I've done it before. Every time I've played an evil campaign it's turned into a clusterf--k of backstabbing, PvP, and runaway idiocy.

Never again.

[Malifice]

It requires every player to be on board (and the DM obvs) AND it requires maturity.

Maturity from the players to accept that inter-party conflict is inevitable, and to not let that spill out into the real world, and to actually play evil PCs properly with fleshed out motivations and nuance and not some kind of 'I brake into da NPCs home and merder him becaz he was rood to me' kind of rubbish.

Evil is not = psychopath that makes Charles Manson squeemish by killing people for little to no reason. Tony Soprano, Kitiara and Walter White (NE), Vader, Raistlin Majere and Titus Pullo (CE) and the Punisher and Steel Brightblade (LE) have reasons and motivations for their evil.

Of course from what I read on these forums, most of you are DMing evil parties anyway (I've seen baby murder and flat out genocide greenlit as morally 'good' actions, and the Punisher hilariously labelled 'CG').

But I digress.

[Jamgretter]

Dude, I've gone over this since the beginning. I have so little interest in running an evil campaign. I can understand why you're interested, but I'm not. I just want to run a semi-tradtional horror campaign. I'm aware that CoS is all about corruption, but I don't understand why you continually push for everyone to just go evil. I have no problem with Sym going evil, but most of the rest of the party are with me on this. I beg of you to find another way to get your evil campaign fix somewhere else.

[NecroDancer]

Dude, I've gone over this since the beginning. I have so little interest in running an evil campaign. I can understand why you're interested, but I'm not. I just want to run a semi-tradtional horror campaign. I'm aware that CoS is all about corruption, but I don't understand why you continually push for everyone to just go evil. I have no problem with Sym going evil, but most of the rest of the party are with me on this. I beg of you to find another way to get your evil campaign fix somewhere else.

The main problem is that 75% of us are super corruptible (we would follow Strahd for 1,000 gp)

But in reality going evil would ruin this campaign as the lack of friendly NPCs would doom us and the campaign would lose its vibe. Also it's not worth going evil in this campaign for the previously stated reasons. I just want us to go evil for two reason:

1. To take out Fiona permanently and without any guilt.
2. So we all become werewolfs (it's just seems funny for some reason).

[GPS]

The main problem is that 75% of us are super corruptible (we would follow Strahd for 1,000 gp)

But in reality going evil would ruin this campaign as the lack of friendly NPCs would doom us and the campaign would lose its vibe. Also it's not worth going evil in this campaign for the previously stated reasons. I just want us to go evil for two reason:

1. To take out Fiona permanently and without any guilt.
2. So we all become werewolfs (it's just seems funny for some reason).
1. But like, Fiona is evil. We can just kill her without remorse, it's all good.
2. We can get easier bonuses through the Marriage ceremony.

[Sigreid]

The main problem is that 75% of us are super corruptible (we would follow Strahd for 1,000 gp)

But in reality going evil would ruin this campaign as the lack of friendly NPCs would doom us and the campaign would lose its vibe. Also it's not worth going evil in this campaign for the previously stated reasons. I just want us to go evil for two reason:

1. To take out Fiona permanently and without any guilt.
2. So we all become werewolfs (it's just seems funny for some reason).

It's not a given that evil characters will side with Stradh. No one is going to be more suspicious of an evil, lying bastard than another evil, lying bastard.

[Corran]

It's not a given that evil characters will side with Stradh. No one is going to be more suspicious of an evil, lying bastard than another evil, lying bastard.
Or as Littlefinger once said: ''I dont want friends like me.''

[lperkins2]

All the darn time... Of course, it's never supposed to be an evil party, there's just at least one player who cannot empathize with NPCs (and often there's a player who is just a sociopath IRL). The other party members just tend to go along with it. About a quarter of the time it leads to the premature end of the campaign, either because the evil party dooms the world, or because the other players aren't having fun.

I suspect it works better when the goal is to make an evil party, rather than morph into a party of murderhobos.

[GusPorterhouse]

Twice, once in D&D and once in M&M as Marvel villains. Both times it went surprisingly well, particularly in the D&D game because without the "we're the good guys" plot armor, the players were much more circumspect about their actions.