Anti-Villain Campaign? AKA "But Not Too Evil"

[Dusk Raven]

So, every so often an evil campaign springs up, which gives players the chance to do things they may or may not been restricted from doing in previous games. However, while playing an unambiguously Chaotic/Neutral/Lawful Evil character has its appeal to some, an idea I'm toying with is an "evil" campaign where all the PCs are anti-villains. Perhaps they have good intentions despite their ruthless methods. Perhaps they are the sympathetic type, driven to evil through tragedy. Perhaps they have a code of honor or other values that prevent them from being totally evil. Or maybe they're just the pragmatic sort who have no problems being good if it suits them. Or, most likely, any combination of the above.

Regardless, I'm curious if anyone has done, is interested in, or has ideas for such a campaign, where the players are evil by the standards of D&D morality, but it could be a lot worse. Perhaps even the world itself is so grey that the anti-villains stand a good chance of actually improving things. All the benefits of playing villainous masterminds, with only some of the evil.

[BowStreetRunner]

I've played in a LARP that would fit this trope. All of the characters were vampires, so mostly incapable of becoming true heroes but nevertheless capable of having goals that seemed good. I would say you could use any monster race that has some barrier to being truly good - such as needing to feed on others - and base a campaign around them to accomplish an anti-villain campaign.

Another idea would be an over-the-top Inquisition campaign, with a scorched-earth approach to dealing with heretics, witches, and the like. Let the 'greater good' be the rationale for lots of harsh decisions.

Make the players all members of a single family involved in a war of houses. Their ancestors are all evil and responsible for innumerable atrocities and the enemy houses in this case were actually the ones who were wronged. However, the current generation of opponents are unflinchingly committed to wiping out every last member of the players' house without exception. So if the players want to do what is right they have to either accept their own deaths or kill off the enemy leadership first before they can set things right once peace is achieved.

One of my favorite stories was always the Vlad Taltos stories from Steven Brust. Have the players all be part of a team of assassins, hit-men, mercenaries or such who just do this sort of thing for a living. They could end up in a Transporter type scenario where they, despite being bad guys, end up standing up for a good cause.

Anyway, I do think this is doable but it really depends upon your preference. Good luck.

[Fizban]

I feel like in lot of ways this is the default state for many PCs anyway, while billing a campaign as any amount of "villain" means someone's probably gonna want to take it too far. 'S why I've got "no evil and preferably all Good" on my list of "session 0" notes.

[Sam K]

It's my preferred type of game, actually. I would never play at a table that enforces good (or one to immature to manage evil properly, for that matter).

I tend to view "adventurers" as part special forces, part conquisadors and part old west posse. My characters tend to be either those who do their job (and if that job includes slaughtering the goblins and burning their village, they do it and take pride in a job well done), or they're people who with shaky views of morality who simply view the adventuring lifestyle as a way to take what they want with few consequences from society. Robbing merchants get you locked up, robbing the orc chief gets you a medal.

I would suggest you go for either "effectively evil", as compared to ideologically evil. Outside of the make-belief of middle class westerners, warfare is grim and frontier justice is quick and dirty. Acting anything like a a group of dark age mercenaries will get you on your way towards evil in D&D terms. Prisoners? Unless you think they can be ransomed, or they can be useful some other way, they're nothing but a drain on your logistics and a risk to your own troops. Dispose of them quickly. Someone caught stealing? You can't keep them around for weeks until they can be given a proper trial - hand out some rough justice and be done with it. It doesn't mean you have to be a drooling idiot who stabs people "for da evulz", though.

Currently playing a Lawful Evil orc cleric/crusader of Wee Jas - he's well read, devoted and usually well mannered in polite company. But being an orc he has no natural empathy for humans, and being trained trained in a very strict environment away from other orcs he doesn't really relate to his own kind either. He respects the church, and he respects alliance to just authority, and relates to people according to that. If you are protected by a just authority that gives you rights according to your station, which he is honor bound to respect. But if you are an outlaw, heathen or allied to an enemy faith, he has no qualms about doing anything that furthers his goals, assuming it's approved by church teachings. Empathy doesn't come into play because he doesn't have any. But as long as you're not an outlaw or a heathen, he's a loyal, devoted companion who happily puts his neck on the line for his allies.

[Dusk Raven]

All interesting thoughts, although I guess when I think of anti-villains I think of characters who are sympathetic or even likable despite being nominally evil. To put it another way, D&D heroes are supposed to be good, but many aren't, due to how players play them. I'm thinking of a party of villains who are supposed to be evil, but likewise aren't quite so evil due to how they're played. Evil can be a nuanced thing, after all.

[hamishspence]

A good way to make a character likeable is to play up their compassion and altruism toward those they see as deserving of it.

[BowStreetRunner]

...when I think of anti-villains I think of characters who are sympathetic or even likable despite being nominally evil...I'm thinking of a party of villains who are supposed to be evil, but likewise aren't quite so evil due to how they're played. Evil can be a nuanced thing, after all.
The Vampire LARP I played in definitely had this feel. (White Wolf put out LARP materials for Vampires, Werewolves, and a variety of other themes.) I think if you have a group of monster PCs who are played sympathetically, it can have the nuances you are looking for.

I would recommend giving serious consideration to a Drow campaign, with the PCs all being members of a minor house that has to both navigate the life and death challenges of inter-house politics while simultaneously fending off the other denizens of the Underdark and performing raids upon the surface dwellers for the glory of their larger civilization.

By putting them in a situation where the survival of their house is often in question, the campaign can lend itself toward sympathy for the PCs, even while they might display very evil tendencies. Nothing like rooting for the underdog to generate sympathy!

[Fizban]

I'm thinking of a party of villains who are supposed to be evil, but likewise aren't quite so evil due to how they're played. Evil can be a nuanced thing, after all.
The problem is that "not quite so evil" is still Evil. If you harm others for your own gain past a certain degree, frequency, or intent, you're Evil. Where those lines are is determined by the DM. There may be a difference between Evil and completely depraved, but the only way to highlight that difference without shifting the goalposts so that what was an Evil character in a previous game would now merely be a Neutral character, is to contrast the PC's "lesser" Evil with other characters that are truly depraved, otherwise they're still Evil vs not-Evil.

Which means that a "not quite so evil" campaign specifically depends on the sort of things that the "not quite so evil" party doesn't do, being done by the DM. Nothing wrong with that, if you've got the stomach for it, or want to mince things down fine enough to get lines between the level of Evil you're willing to depict, the level of Evil the PCs want to take, and the level of evil that is tolerable for a Neutral character.

Thinking about it, this might feed why some people think of Neutral as actually being allowed to balance Evil actions with Good actions: if they don't allow this, they would have to make "Neutral" characters Evil, and then when they want a more depraved character because Evil has naunce, they'd have to go further than they're comfortable with. If one automatically disregards things past a certain level as completely inappropriate, then there's a floor that forces more Evil into the Neutral space.

[atemu1234]

Nuance is pretty difficult to get across in roleplay. Most of the time, characters' personalities tend to be boiled down to simple, palatable traits, such as 'This dwarf hates elves' or 'this halfling hates all people above 5 foot 2'

[Red Fel]

So, every so often an evil campaign springs up, which gives players the chance to do things they may or may not been restricted from doing in previous games. However, while playing an unambiguously Chaotic/Neutral/Lawful Evil character has its appeal to some, an idea I'm toying with is an "evil" campaign where all the PCs are anti-villains. Perhaps they have good intentions despite their ruthless methods. Perhaps they are the sympathetic type, driven to evil through tragedy. Perhaps they have a code of honor or other values that prevent them from being totally evil. Or maybe they're just the pragmatic sort who have no problems being good if it suits them. Or, most likely, any combination of the above.

Regardless, I'm curious if anyone has done, is interested in, or has ideas for such a campaign, where the players are evil by the standards of D&D morality, but it could be a lot worse. Perhaps even the world itself is so grey that the anti-villains stand a good chance of actually improving things. All the benefits of playing villainous masterminds, with only some of the evil.

It's not really something you, as DM, can do. It's something the players have to commit to. You can propose it, but it's up to the players to execute it.

Let me explain. Good campaigns, even sandboxy ones, are generally about fixing the problems. You, as DM, provide the PCs with a list of problems that need solving, from chickens in need of rescue and Kobolds in need of slaughter, to kingdoms at war, political intrigue, immortal sorcerors and apocalyptic phenomena. There are issues, and the PCs try to fix them.

Evil campaigns, however, are self-motivated, because Evil characters are self-motivated. That is, the same system doesn't necessarily work. You can't say, "These chickens need to be stolen," or, "These Kobolds need to be riled up," or, "This kingdom needs to go to war with that one," or even, "You guys need to end the world." Yes, the Evil PCs have to create action instead of react to it, but more importantly, they need to be motivated to do it themselves. And that means that the players have to come up with their goals, and then you, as DM, have to offer a world in which they can attempt to achieve them.

An anti-villain campaign - also known as an "Evil Has Standards" campaign - is really just an Evil campaign with ground rules. The players agree that there are lines they won't cross, that their characters have nuance beyond being kill-happy. But if you have mature players, that's probably just an Evil campaign. I've never been in an Evil campaign that consisted entirely of wholesale power fantasy and slaughter. There was always nuance. There was always character depth and complexity. That's sort of what you're describing here. And that's just a really good Evil campaign.

Now, if you go with an anti-hero campaign - a bunch of Evil characters doing all the right things for all the wrong reasons - you've got a fun hybrid. The PCs are still solving the problems reactively, like in your typical Good campaign, but they get to have their complex morality and wicked way of doing things. It allows you to play more with actions and consequences, and allows the PCs some wiggle room in how they resolve situations (and no, Fireball is not always the answer). You're still writing a more traditional campaign, which may be easier on you as DM, but you're doing it while letting the PCs have their nasty fun.

[Florian]

@Red Fel:

I'm actually quite a fan of the "Hellknight" campaign in PF, or all-Scorpion in L5R. That is "Necessary Evil". That´s a bit more of a tight-rope walk because you'll actually want to have a Paladin or Junshin in the mix and simultaneously showcase why the "evulz" choice is necessary, but also why you do it by shielding the "pure" ones that you actually ought to be in a better world.

[NecroDancer]

I played an anti-villain campaign where the players all use traditional monster races. The plot was for use to get revenge on the party of adventures that slaughtered our village for loot.

It was a fun role reversal.

We were
1. Bugbear rogue
2. Goblin Ranger
3. Hobgoblin Wizard
4. Orc Sorcerer
5. Kobold Cleric

[Dusk Raven]

Let me explain. Good campaigns, even sandboxy ones, are generally about fixing the problems. You, as DM, provide the PCs with a list of problems that need solving, from chickens in need of rescue and Kobolds in need of slaughter, to kingdoms at war, political intrigue, immortal sorcerors and apocalyptic phenomena. There are issues, and the PCs try to fix them.

Evil campaigns, however, are self-motivated, because Evil characters are self-motivated. That is, the same system doesn't necessarily work. You can't say, "These chickens need to be stolen," or, "These Kobolds need to be riled up," or, "This kingdom needs to go to war with that one," or even, "You guys need to end the world." Yes, the Evil PCs have to create action instead of react to it, but more importantly, they need to be motivated to do it themselves. And that means that the players have to come up with their goals, and then you, as DM, have to offer a world in which they can attempt to achieve them.

To be honest, the "Villains Act, Heroes React" trope has a big grey area in the center where things could reasonably be defined as acting or reacting. Really, the idea that heroes primarily react to problems only holds true if you see a setting in terms of the presence or absence of problems - basically a "good is the absence of evil" view. It's a mindset that inherently casts heroes as the reactors, as their only purpose is to react to the existence of problems. But if you look at things in terms of the presence or absence of, say, justice or happiness, then the heroes become the actors as they act to promote and spread those ideals. This works best in a setting that's already rather dark, such as a post-apocalyptic world or a setting where the villains have already won and evil is now the baseline. In such a setting, heroes are the ones who act to improve things, and villains are the ones who react to preserve the status quo for their own benefit.

Point is, it's really not that hard to flip around the "Villains Act, Heroes React" thing so that villains are reacting to plot hooks. After all, they have problems too - some meddling kids heroes coming along to ruin their world isn't that different from some villain coming along to ruin the heroes' world.

More to the point, the "players coming up with their goals and the DM building a world around that" is actually how my first Pathfinder campaign went. I didn't even bother to create any kind of main plot - I gave them quests if they asked around for work, but in general I was content to let them follow their own personal plotlines. Admittedly they were a very self-motivated group of heroes and two were basically evil - but one of those PCs was actually the very sort of anti-villain I'm looking for. I'll get to that in a bit.


An anti-villain campaign - also known as an "Evil Has Standards" campaign - is really just an Evil campaign with ground rules. The players agree that there are lines they won't cross, that their characters have nuance beyond being kill-happy. But if you have mature players, that's probably just an Evil campaign. I've never been in an Evil campaign that consisted entirely of wholesale power fantasy and slaughter. There was always nuance. There was always character depth and complexity. That's sort of what you're describing here. And that's just a really good Evil campaign.

Having mature, talented players is something one should hope for in every campaign. Going back to what others have said in this thread (I think), morality is something that shouldn't have to be enforced - either it should arise naturally, or the players are willing and able to follow the premise.

I trust my own group to be able to do that. Just earlier I mentioned that one of the characters was someone who'd work well in an anti-villain campaign. The character, Kytron, was a Catfolk Bloodrager whose main deal was that he had a long list of names, and his goal was to find and kill them all for their crimes. He also killed elves on sight, as elves were responsible for massacring his home village when he was young, and since then he viewed elves as, well, subhuman. Kytron was utterly ruthless to those he viewed as evil, but considered himself a good character as he primarily acted to destroy evil. The problem being that viewing them as evil and them actually being evil weren't always the same thing.

Kytron's player told me that he preferred to think about why a character would actually be evil - and it typically takes the form of a character who believes their actions are good. To use another example, when our other DM talked about a running a villain campaign, that same player came up with the idea of a character who's disgusted by the fact that people kill, steal, rape, and commit evil, and sets out to create an artificial, perfectly good being - but his contempt for existing sapient life means he's willing to do evil things to achieve his goal.


Now, if you go with an anti-hero campaign - a bunch of Evil characters doing all the right things for all the wrong reasons - you've got a fun hybrid. The PCs are still solving the problems reactively, like in your typical Good campaign, but they get to have their complex morality and wicked way of doing things. It allows you to play more with actions and consequences, and allows the PCs some wiggle room in how they resolve situations (and no, Fireball is not always the answer). You're still writing a more traditional campaign, which may be easier on you as DM, but you're doing it while letting the PCs have their nasty fun.

To be honest, that sounds like something in the vein of what Sam K was describing... or, frankly, most of my experiences as a player. In the 5e campaign I'm in, most of us are not actually good, but we end up doing good things either because our personal goals require them, or we're getting paid for it.

[Nifft]

Yeah @Dusk Raven has a solid point.


To build on that: an "evil" campaign could very easily resemble the most bog-standard reactive "good" campaign.

Here's a very simple formula:
- Behave like mercenaries
- Kill things, take their stuff
- Repeat to gain wealth & power

The cliche "good" murder-hobo campaign is trivially identical to this "evil" campaign. All that changes are the means to power, not the motives and not the behaviors.


Just use a setting with a canonical history of evil-vs-evil conflicts, and it's quite easy to have a game which is as reactive or pro-active as your players want.