PDA

View Full Version : Idea: Anti Villains and Tragic Monsters Campaign



Leliel
2008-07-01, 09:22 AM
Well, as some of you may know, I am deathly afraid of evil PCs, due to their tendency to be loose cannons.

As an aspiring DM, however, I have longed to be host to an evil campaign, due to all the tasty dark humor and moral ambiguity that will likely result from it.

"So how do I reconcile these two wants?", I say to myself. "I want to give my players a good story that will go along with a villain campaign, but I don't want them at each others throats." Then it hit me: "Hey, 'villainous' doesn't mean 'moraless'! And aren't all the good villains of the sympathetic, human sort? I'll make them anti-villains (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-villain)!"

So, the players are villains, with a twist-All traditionally evil roles-necromancer, amoral scientist, mercenary-are required to have good alignments, while if they want to be actually evil, they have to fill a traditionally good role-priest of Pelor, Robin Hood-ish thief-and in both cases RP personalities and goals consistent with their alignment...Without being too whiny, of course. A little angst is okay, just not being so emo it annoys everyone else.

So what do you guys think of this idea? What ideas for appropriately sad antagonists would be in line for appropriately sad pseudo-heroes?

JMobius
2008-07-01, 09:33 AM
Anti-Villains vary quite a bit in their flavor and tropes employed. Anything in particular you're shooting for, exactly?

My personal favorite is Necessarily Evil (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NecessarilyEvil).

Grey Watcher
2008-07-01, 09:44 AM
Well, as some of you may know, I am deathly afraid of evil PCs, due to their tendency to be loose cannons.

As an aspiring DM, however, I have longed to be host to an evil campaign, due to all the tasty dark humor and moral ambiguity that will likely result from it.

"So how do I reconcile these two wants?", I say to myself. "I want to give my players a good story that will go along with a villain campaign, but I don't want them at each others throats." Then it hit me: "Hey, 'villainous' doesn't mean 'moraless'! And aren't all the good villains of the sympathetic, human sort? I'll make them anti-villains (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-villain)!"

So, the players are villains, with a twist-All traditionally evil roles-necromancer, amoral scientist, mercenary-are required to have good alignments, while if they want to be actually evil, they have to fill a traditionally good role-priest of Pelor, Robin Hood-ish thief-and in both cases RP personalities and goals consistent with their alignment...Without being too whiny, of course. A little angst is okay, just not being so emo it annoys everyone else.

So what do you guys think of this idea? What ideas for appropriately sad antagonists would be in line for appropriately sad pseudo-heroes?

It feels a bit... forced, to be honest. It's gonna require some really strained logic to justify that Robin Hood is Evil, for example. And dictating character types isn't really the best idea.

If your main goal is to keep your characters from sabotaging each other, then I think the best thing to do is just explain that at the outset. Encourage them to choose personalities and backgrounds that won't make them prone to backstabbing their allies. I think most players will be mature enough to understand and play accordingly. Also, give them all a goal to work together towards: global conquest, uncovering unholy artifacts, saving the world from the Demon Hordes (you can't have any of your Evil plans come to fruition if you let the Demons destroy everything, now can you?). I think the key is just make sure that you and your players are all working to make sure your Evil characters have more reason to stick together than they do to turn on each other. Even Chaotic Evil characters aren't necessarily stupid. The decadent, morally bankrupt Bard (who I played once) knows the he benefits from the protection of his more muscular comrades. The dumb as bricks Half-Orc Barbarian knows that the Evil Mastermind will lead him to more opportunities for slaughter (or ice cream :thog:).

Vexxation
2008-07-01, 09:50 AM
*snip* stuff *snip*

I agree entirely.
You oughtn't tell people they *have to* do something.
Just encourage them to do it in a way that keeps them from slitting each others' throats, "Because I'm Evil like that."

Warn them that if anyone ever decides to play Chaotic Stupid, the other players have every right... nay, responsibility to kill him for the good of evil everywhere.

Evil can be fun, extorting money from the Orphan Matron before saving the children in the burning orphanage (that may or may not have caught fire due to your doing) but walking up to someone, stabbing him, and then walking away is just dumb. And if it happens, lawmen should find out, and give the party (or at least that character) another enemy.

Leliel
2008-07-01, 10:03 AM
Anti-Villains vary quite a bit in their flavor and tropes employed. Anything in particular you're shooting for, exactly?

My personal favorite is Necessarily Evil (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NecessarilyEvil).

If that's what the players want, that's what I'll give.

And Grey: You are correct about the forced feeling, but it's a necessary evil.

Part of the feeling for this campaign idea is a feeling of grayness, subversion of heroic fantasy. Any character archetype-Robin Hood, for example-can be twisted, making good evil, and vice versa. In Hood's case, one simply has to put emphasis on the "revenge against King John" bit-make it so he is a generous person, but at his core, he really just wants to make the king pay for the removal of his noble title-and you've got yourself a tragic, but effective, villain. The same goes for characters like -DELETED FOR STORY REASONS- Yggdrasil from Tales of Symphonia-place emphasis of the noble aspects of his quest, and make it so that he learns from his mistakes and listens to his sister when she tells him how wrong he got it, and you've got a noble hero with a fatal flaw. Thus

I like your suggestions for making a truly-evil campaign float-worthy though.

Pronounceable
2008-07-01, 11:07 AM
And here I thought you were planning to pit them against fallen paladins and celestials who were molested by their uncles when young...

There's another way of making evil parties work, if you have players for it. One PC is the boss, and others do as they're told. An evil cleric works especially well there.

Carinthium
2008-07-01, 02:31 PM
You could make it they are united against a common threat. For example, (taking an idea from OOTS and altering it a bit), a group armed with Detect Evil is trying to exterminate all those of evil alignment once and for all.

Another idea, if your players like it, is a brief campaign on the principle of Last Man Standing- a player can make a new P.C when out, but it has to be a minion. They don't have to backstab, but this way they can...

mikeejimbo
2008-07-01, 03:15 PM
My group is almost always evil. (Though I'm usually neutral of some sort.) We don't tend to backstab each other, because we're working toward the same common goals. We're definitely smart evil.

One of my favorite evil groups was more or less led by a Neutral Evil Blackrobe. His closest companion was a Lawful Evil Ogre who pretty much provided his muscle - not that he usually needed it. I was a Chaotic Neutral cleric to a True Neutral deity, so I didn't mind working with evil, especially when we were saving the world from a horde of undead.

I think we all died at the end of that one.

Mostly we don't backstab each other out of an unspoken, mutual agreement, though.

AKA_Bait
2008-07-01, 03:17 PM
There's another way of making evil parties work, if you have players for it. One PC is the boss, and others do as they're told. An evil cleric works especially well there.

There are actually a few ways. The easiest, in my book, is simply to request that your PC's have characters that are loyal to one another. Just because someone is evil, doesn't mean they don't have friends that they are loyal to and might even sacrifice themselves for.

Another pretty easy one is the NPC overseer one. Basically, they all have the same employer who scares the daylights out of them. Someone who can't go do the things they need done themselves, for whatever reason (I typically use fear of exposure), but lets the party know that if they turn on eachother and don't get what he needs done, they will all feel it.

One more, that's a little more tricky, is to make the PC's need eachother to get what they want. "The Prophecy states it must be you four. If any of you bite it, none of you get Ultimate Cosmic Power."

PanNarrans
2008-07-01, 03:26 PM
Old-fashioned backstabbing can be a lot of fun on its own, though. It means a lot less work for the DM, too - they can just provide the setting and some exciting things to happen, but the main plot unravels purely through the player's actions. A friend of mine ran a drow-only campaign a while ago, and the very thin illithid slaying plot was spiced up no end by a vendetta between my Arcane Trickster and the party Cleric. In the end I managed to slice off each of his arms, on separate occasions, and feed them to my Small spider familiar, K't'l!Perras. Of course, one of the artifacts of doom was a bolt-on arm that could paralyse or kill just about anything by shooting envenomed adamantium darts... so that kind of play CAN also be beneficial to the party on certain occasions. Be inventive, and imagine ways your character's flaws could lead to more fun for the rest of the players.
Later on I ended up paralysed in the middle of a drow temple, being carelessly trampled by all and sundry...

TheEmerged
2008-07-01, 04:12 PM
The campaign I did most of my 3rd Edition playtime in was a 'monster' campaign. I was playing a kobold telepath, ended up going from 3rd to 18th level with him. The backstory was that we were part of a new 'collective' of lesser monsters that were teaming up to try and form their own kingdom to defend themselves against the rampaging "good guys" AND the inevitable Evil Overlords that would try and use them to further their own goals. I rather enjoyed it; roleplaying a character that much different than myself was a nice change of pace.