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View Full Version : Good Guys Trying For World Domination (Idea)



Leliel
2007-12-09, 12:57 PM
Simply put...

Other than "act affably evil", how would you, the responders, go about creatiing a non-evil campagin where the PCs are trying to take over the world? What would be the method they would use? Good actual villan ideas? James Bond look-alikes?

LET THE POSTING BEGIN!

Emperor Demonking
2007-12-09, 01:03 PM
Thier's the whole doing it for your own good or all the leaders are evil.

Possibly blunt head on attacks.

random11
2007-12-09, 01:08 PM
Start simple: "We need to liberate the kingdom of X from it's evil oppressors".
Things will be very easy after that.

Besides, it's done all the time in a smaller scale. What do you think "get rid of the goblin infestation" is all about?

Xefas
2007-12-09, 01:08 PM
Why you would want to do this, other than subverting a trope for the sake of subverting it, is beyond me.

However, you could, I suppose, have a world of people who have given up on the idea of being good. Not necessarily evil; just that they don't feel any particular reason to go out of their way to do the right thing. In such a setting, Devils would practically run rampant, making Faustian pacts and tricking people out of their souls left and right, since no one is keeping their vigil against the forces of evil.

Enter the PCs, who need to take over the world and fill it with a totalitarian theocracy to save everyone from literally going to Hell.

The neutral citizens don't want you to succeed because they think you're loony, and the devils don't want you to succeed because they're getting a good deal here.

AKA_Bait
2007-12-09, 01:10 PM
Ideally their tactics would be nonviolent agaist nonevil people. There would be a lot of politics, creating political alliances, converting people and the like. It's easy when it comes to just smiting the evil countries and putting in a good government, harder when the nation in place is already good, or at least not evil.

Beguilers would be good for this campagin.

As for villians, you have your standard fare on the evil nations to be conquered side. On the other side, ovezealous good guys are one viable tactic. As are corrupt administrators, Aristocrats, Rogues, Beguilers, etc. You can have evil people in important parts of the beaurocracy of a system without the head of the system being so. Think middle managment Wormtounge.

Ominous
2007-12-09, 01:13 PM
Japanese games and anime like this theme a bit much, so you have plenty of sources to draw from. In Disgaea, Vulcanus wants to become the absolute ruler of everything in order to bring peace to the universe. You have Light in Death Note who plans on killing off all the criminals to make the world a better place (one can argue whether Light is good though). Maester Seymour in FFX wants to kill everyone in order to end their pain (though, he's probably more insane than good). There are others, but I can't think of them at the moment.

kamikasei
2007-12-09, 01:31 PM
Japanese games and anime like this theme a bit much, so you have plenty of sources to draw from. In Disgaea, Vulcanus wants to become the absolute ruler of everything in order to bring peace to the universe. You have Light in Death Note who plans on killing off all the criminals to make the world a better place (one can argue whether Light is good though). Maester Seymour in FFX wants to kill everyone in order to end their pain (though, he's probably more insane than good). There are others, but I can't think of them at the moment.

No, no. I'm only familiar with Death Note there, but if Light is on your list then I feel safe in guessing that the others, also, are not good guys. They may wear white hats and consider themselves good or heroes, but in fact they're just Knights Templar (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KnightTemplar). A campaign of actually good guys trying to take over the world for actually good reasons is a lot harder to see; imposing autocratic rule on everyone in the name of Good is simply not good.

I would suggest some sort of external threat to which the world is mostly blind. The heroes aren't trying to conquer the planet, but rather to turn, coerce and manipulate enough key figures in positions of power that they can direct all the world's factions towards countering this enemy. In this scenario they'd be powers-behind-the-throne, working a political game to get forces that on their own initiative would fight each other to instead - still thinking it's their own initiative - cooperate. Essentially, have the heroes pull off a Xanatos Gambit (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/XanatosGambit?from=Main.TheXanatosGambit) for great justice.

Ne0
2007-12-09, 01:31 PM
Maester Seymour in FFX wants to kill everyone in order to end their pain (though, he's probably more insane than good).

If that guy was good, then I'm a 4th edition developer.

I'm with Xefas here. Why would you want to do this? It just gives you an overcomplicated plot that doesn't really make sense. But it's possible I suppose, the best way being what was already mentioned so far. I'd suggest doing it on a smaller scale, though, like a country or continent. Maybe a place that completely lacks order, and only one rule: "Whoever's the strongest, wins". The Pcs would have to overthrow each barbaric tribe and craft them into one solid nation.

nooblade
2007-12-09, 02:07 PM
Ooh, philosophy.

You could just say that the world is evil and needs to be subdued, but that's not so much fun or perhaps realistic, is it?

Or you could make it so that the "world" you're in is hellish and inherently really evil, meaning that conquering it and trying to rebuild it is only somewhat more good than destroying it. This is a little bit of a cop-out.

Another option would be to say that some great evil currently dominates the world and the good guys want to "dominate" it back to destroy that evil somehow. This gets a little fuzzy. Are you really going for world domination if you plan to just give it all back after completing the perfectly good goals?

And then there's the question of whether good can exist without evil, so maybe destroying evil is out of good's best hopes. Depends on religion a lot, actually, a lot of learned Christians think it can but then you get into deep-seated controversy if you introduce it to a party you don't completely know.

I think it depends on personal DMing style, really. A lot of people wouldn't even care about philosophical inconsistency, like murdering people, which would be a very evil action, to accomplish an overall "good" goal from a good character.

Good luck with your idea, I'm going to post one of my own that I've been thinking about for a bit soon.

Saph
2007-12-09, 02:09 PM
Now, now - Seymour and Light are horrible examples, but there are lots of Japanese series where this is done well, instead of badly.

The Suikoden games do it best, especially Suikoden I, II, and V. In this case you as the central character don't intend to take over the world, but through various events you become leader of a small movement, then a castle, then a de facto country, and eventually most of the map. You never actually try to become the king, it just sort of happens, because the alternative is letting the enemy forces take control of your homeland and kill you in the process. For an anime example, the series Utawarerumono does the same thing. In each case, though, after the final battle you end up passing the empire on to someone else to run.

The sequence always goes something like:

1. Some group is causing trouble - a country, a monster, another race, an army, a government. They either rule a nearby area, or have taken charge of where you live.
2. The PCs and their allies get drawn in somehow - either they get asked for help, or they decide they have to do something about what's going on, or they just get straight-out attacked and don't have any choice in the matter.
3. There's a battle, the PCs win, and the enemy lose their control over the area.
4. With the enemies gone, there's a power vacuum, and the PCs and their army/allies are now the de facto rulers, due to being the strongest guys around.

Note though that in these stories the heroes aren't trying to conquer the world, they're just trying to make the place safe again. Conquering the area ends up being a side effect that happens after you've gotten rid of the monsters. The characters who do decide to go the whole hog and actually conquer the world, like Jowy from Suikoden II, end up becoming your enemies.

- Saph

Zenos
2007-12-09, 02:10 PM
Try something ala Dune, where the PC's want to take over the world so they can prepare it for a much greater threat to mankind (and associated races) before it is too late.

AKA_Bait
2007-12-09, 02:29 PM
Note though that in these stories the heroes aren't trying to conquer the world, they're just trying to make the place safe again. Conquering the area ends up being a side effect that happens after you've gotten rid of the monsters. The characters who do decide to go the whole hog and actually conquer the world, like Jowy from Suikoden II, end up becoming your enemies.


That's a neat concept. You can have friendly NPC's decide that the PC's have the right idea and start causing trouble on ther own but go well over the line in their methods. You can also have neigboring good nations feel threatened by the PC's sudden rise to power and attack them. Perhaps also there were political alliances invlolved. It's not out of the question that two nations that share a border might have a mutual defense treaty even if one is evil and one is neutral.

Nermy
2007-12-09, 03:23 PM
An interesting twist on what "villains" the party could face might be a faction of good Paladins who can't be convinced that world domination for any means is justified.

They could be Paladins of Honor upset at the PCs for attempting to overthrow the natural order of things, or Paladins of Freedom that are upset that you're destroying an individual's right to rule their kingdom so that you can impose your own unified will amongst the land.

dyslexicfaser
2007-12-09, 05:01 PM
And, of course, you could go the Radiata Stories route (Suikoden III did this, as well, as I recall): in which you have two 'good' groups who cannot coexist for whatever reason.

You do your best to take over the place, but not for yourself. It's just the best of bad options.

PsyBlade
2007-12-09, 07:04 PM
Here's an idea, the PCs outright take over one nation from a bad guy. From there it snowballs from one or two nations feeling threatened by the PCs because they had a peace treaty with the previous ruler so they attack the PCs. These nations lose their leaders in the war started by attacking the PCs, but those leaders were the only thing keeping peace within their lands. So the PCs take over these lands. This results in even more nations feeling threatened, and so on until the PCs feel like they have no choice but to finish what has started: conquer the world.

Tengu
2007-12-09, 07:19 PM
As already mentioned, the best way of doing this would be for the players to want to unify the nations in order to fight a bigger threat (the players find out that a prophesy that the gate of Hell open all over the world in 10 years turns out to be true and there's nothing they can do to stop it, for example). However, since they are good guys, there will probably be a lot of diplomacy involved, as they will use force to conquer only those places that are ruled by malicious tyrants and other such kingdoms.

TheSteelRat
2007-12-09, 07:27 PM
While I'd say the character isn't necessarily "Good" all the way, there's The Rigante series of books, which features a young man who sees an advancing enemy nation (think, Rome) that will be heading towards his nation in several years, and devotes his life to trying to build up a defense against it to maintain his people's way of life. It involves a lot of politics, wars, etc. He's not perfect, but he's doing it for a good cause. Otherwise, "Rome" would come in and slaughter everyone.

Heck, even in the Star Wars series they start saying Palpatine wasn't such a bad guy - since his initial power grab was to try and develop a defense against some horrible threat in the near future. Just got corrupted. Could be off here, kinda third-personing some of this, haven't read too many of those.

Rigon
2007-12-09, 07:31 PM
crime tainted system.
example:
a crime organization is "in the news" for years.
suddenly it fades from the view public eye (like in 1 month or so)
the PCs bump into information that they are actually pulling the lines of the goverment (in 1 to 5 countries).
the evil is in control and must be removed.
after the PCs took over... it turns out that this crime organization was just miming a bigger one... that one owns the rest of the world and is also aiming for this/these cleansed lands.

taking over the world is a "neat feat" but the after finish state is meaningless to those looking for adventure and this games actually ends at a point where you do nothing but argue with aristocrats.

psychoticbarber
2007-12-09, 08:01 PM
I tend to find that good people don't conquer the world. They might unify it, they might guide it, but if they're ruling, it tends to imply, at least from our perspective (as D&D is as well) that they're not doing the right thing.

I can, however, give you one circumstance, and this requires looking at Medieval Political Thought.

There's a medieval idea known as Delegation. The idea goes something like this: The people each hold a little piece of the necessary sovereignty for a king to rule. Ideally (though in practice this didn't really happen), the King is given that sovereignty in exchange for an oath of fealty, which was his protection in return for the subjects' obedience. The really funky part was that (again, ideally, this didn't really happen much in practice), the people could take their sovereignty back!

So, how does this apply? Well, the quest might be for the Heroes to win the support (sovereignty) of the people. However, acting without this support makes the ruler a tyrant, and not good. It's extremely difficult to do this and remain good all the time, as Machiavelli noted.

(Note, I'm a Political Science student, that's why I'm taking this somewhat academic approach.)

GoC
2007-12-09, 10:17 PM
How about if the PCs are Illithiods and every other race is evil?:smallbiggrin:
They want to make millions their thralls to put an end to the humans oppressive and racist+genocidal rule.

żOr maybe wall between hell and the material plane is becoming thin due to the "wieght" of all the souls wandering about the material plane and the only way to reduce the pressure is to kill 90% of the sentient beings that inhabit the material plane?