Banning evil alignments

[DisgruntledDM]

Is there such a thing as a game of D&D/Pathfinder where players make good-aligned characters? If so, I've never seen one. Ever.

Yesterday, in my Pathfinder game, the players were hired to slaughter a camp full of orcs. Not just the warriors, every last remnant of the clan. Well, they found where the women and children were hiding, and one genius chaotic evil half orc decides, on the spot, to make his character a pedo.

I expressed my disgust with this idea, as even in a free-roam sandbox game where the players are all adults, there should be lines that you do not cross in the interest of good taste. In retrospect, I shouldn't have had this scenario in the game to begin with, but I thought everyone was mature enough to handle it. I had to put the game on hold to spend fifteen fighting the "It's what my character would do" cliche.

If this guy hadn't been a good friend, I would've booted him out of the group after said argument. But I decided to give him one more shot, and ruled that any character he creates in one of my games, from Star Wars to L5R, cannot be evil. Or chaotic neutral. I had to deal with "that ruins my roleplaying" bitching and moaning before finally being able to get the *&*&ing game back on track.

Now, I truly have earned the moniker "The Disgruntled Dungeon Master".

So yeah...has anyone ever banned evil alignments in your games?

[Foryn Gilnith]

"No evil alignments" is up there with "no psionics" and "no Tome of Battle" as a common ban, in my experience. Not quite as common as "no Dragon Magazine", but still pretty common. The stereotypical roleplayer would just roll up Amoral Neutral instead, but your experience with a pedophilic character seems like a real outlier to me. In a drow game I played a bordering-on-LN pederast, but I can't imagine the sort of person who would just lolrandumb into a pedophile character.

[dsmiles]

Very rarely, and only in campaigns that are supposed to be HEROIC. If the campaign isn't meant to be heroic enough to get all the text effects, it's free game. Sandbox games, or anti-hero campaigns are also free game.

[DisgruntledDM]

The DMPC I created to help balance out the party is pretty much that, along with another player. There's one other CE character, who didn't act like a nutcase.

[Fiery Diamond]

Always. I always ban evil alignments. My games are about heroes, damn it, and that means the players are playing good guys! If prospective players don't like it, they can suck it up and go find another gaming group. It's possible to play a heroic Evil character, or an Evil character who is not a bane of good. It's possible to play an Evil character who isn't Chaotic Stupid or Stupid Evil. But players who actually want to play Evil characters who are also capable of doing it right are rare while players playing Chaotic Stupid EVILZ, like your half-orc player, are common. It's easier just to ban Evil.

As for Chaotic Neutral: I tell my players up front that I have a rather strict interpretation of what can be considered Evil and what I say, goes. I don't care if they think a particular thing is Neutral rather than Evil, if I think it is Evil I will tell them and either disallow it or have in-game consequences should they choose to follow through. As for Chaotic Stupid, that is outright banned and any player choosing that gets either 1) a talking to or 2) permitted retribution by the other PCs.

So...yes, I ban Evil PCs. Good or Neutral, you're the heroes.

Edit:

"No evil alignments" is up there with "no psionics" and "no Tome of Battle" as a common ban, in my experience. Not quite as common as "no Dragon Magazine", but still pretty common. The stereotypical roleplayer would just roll up Amoral Neutral instead, but your experience with a pedophilic character seems like a real outlier to me. In a drow game I played a bordering-on-LN pederast, but I can't imagine the sort of person who would just lolrandumb into a pedophile character.

See my "what I say is Evil is Evil and therefore disallowed." And in my opinion, amoral is Evil, not Neutral. (See Belkar.) So "Amoral Neutral" isn't allowed either in my campaigns.

[DisgruntledDM]

What's even more disappointing is that up to this point, he'd managed to avoid chaotic stupid.

Because I'm running a sandbox game, I don't mind evil characters...for people that can handle it. This guy seems to be focused on pushing the limits of what he can get away with.

[Callista]

I require people to request evil alignments specifically, kind of like non-Core feats/classes/items/etc. If they have a good character concept that'll work in the party, I'll allow it. Exalted characters, some clerics, and almost all paladins are incompatible with evil party members. If you want to play a Vow of Peace, Vow of Poverty cleric, then you'd better be good at role-playing. Paladins aren't allowed in parties with evil characters, and vice versa. I've never DMed for a primarily evil party.

In the games I've played, the typical party configuration has either no evil characters or just one, and any evil character who isn't played intelligently, who is outright sociopathic, or who doesn't attempt to hide his alignment tends to either die or get ejected from the party.

Personally, I prefer Good alignments. They have a built-in motivation to adventure: Their altruism makes them want to make the world a better place. And Good-aligned people make the best protagonists.

[Tengu_temp]

I ban evil PCs. And Chaotic Stupid. And Neutral Stupid. And Neutral Jerkass. And... you get the point. I don't demand a bunch of flawless goody-two-shoes, characters who have vices are much more interesting, but they should ultimately be decent people, or at least not horrible. They're the heroes of the story.

[WarKitty]

Personally, I like playing evil characters. That said, I have seen it done quite badly. My rules are:

(1) While you may play an evil character, your character must be such that he could reasonably be taken into a city and not get killed or arrested every time.

(2) Observe some decency in what you do. Sex crimes are off limits. Torture is off limits. Murder, arson, etc., may not be described in detail.

Then again, in my own characters I favor the well-intentioned extremist. The religious zealot who believes in spreading his faith at all costs. The ranger who had his sister killed by orcs and now believes that all orcs and related groups must be completely exterminated (not entirely my character there). The necromancer who wishes to achieve world peace at the cost of human freedom.

[Kiero]

In both of our 4E games there were no evil characters. The first had a Lawful Good, a Good and two Unaligned. In the second I think everyone was Unaligned.

[Ferrin]

Personally, I like playing evil characters. That said, I have seen it done quite badly. My rules are:

(1) While you may play an evil character, your character must be such that he could reasonably be taken into a city and not get killed or arrested every time.

(2) Observe some decency in what you do. Sex crimes are off limits. Torture is off limits. Murder, arson, etc., may not be described in detail.

Then again, in my own characters I favor the well-intentioned extremist. The religious zealot who believes in spreading his faith at all costs. The ranger who had his sister killed by orcs and now believes that all orcs and related groups must be completely exterminated (not entirely my character there). The necromancer who wishes to achieve world peace at the cost of human freedom.

While I understand that those are your opinions, I'd still like to know why you're ok with genocide, but not with murder(which happens... ALL the time in D&D). Not going to touch the rest.

[Toliudar]

I've often banned or soft-banned (ie expressed a preference for the opposite of) evil and Chaotic Stupid. Games are hard enough to hold together when people are predisposed to work together.

[dsmiles]

Personally, I like playing evil characters. That said, I have seen it done quite badly.

Ditto. There are a LOT of people that overdo it when it comes to playing evil characters. I usually go for the more subtle-evil-mind-controller archetype or the tyrant-in-training archetype when I play evil characters.

Although, when I DM for evil characters, nothing is off-limits. Of course, we're all in our 30s, and tend to limit ourselves out of courtesy to the rest of the group. If there is something we want our characters to do that falls outside the limits of said courtesy, it goes on a note to the DM.

[WarKitty]

While I understand that those are your opinions, I'd still like to know why you're ok with genocide, but not with murder(which happens... ALL the time in D&D). Not going to touch the rest.

Actually, I said murder is allowed. You're just not allowed to go into detail about how you're doing it. No describing exactly how you're ripping this guy's guts out.

Part of my rules are also influenced by having actually gamed with people with real life experiences of sexual abuse. So that's sort of the most hard and fast rule when I DM.

[Ferrin]

Actually, I said murder is allowed. You're just not allowed to go into detail about how you're doing it. No describing exactly how you're ripping this guy's guts out.

Ah, that wasn't really clear for me. I like it when DM's describe critical hits though. But I understand that's not everyone's cup of tea.

Torture can be quite useful though.

[Callista]

While I understand that those are your opinions, I'd still like to know why you're ok with genocide, but not with murder(which happens... ALL the time in D&D). Not going to touch the rest.

I think "murder" includes "genocide", actually.

A well-run D&D game doesn't include genocide committed by non-evil characters--you're not wiping out goblins because they're goblins and you're an adventurer; you're tracking down the goblin bandits who killed the old blacksmith and his family and kidnapped their three-year-old daughter.

[Piedmon_Sama]

If I hadn't more-or-less just stripped alignment out of my game this might have been a huge problem. We have one guy who wrote "Lawful Good" on his character sheet and enjoyed pedantically arguing he was both of these while attacking and robbing random strangers and looting at every opportunity. I have another player who likes playing the archetypical ruthless "does anything to get ahead" badass and a third who always plays do-gooders no matter how "dark" his character concept is.

I don't care about it anymore. The guy who wipes out a band of orcs to save a village is a hero to the villagers, a fiend to the families of those orc raiders. His god supports his holy crusade against the greenskins, Gruumsh demands satisfaction for his murdered sons. I don't need to know where objective "good" fits into the picture and the removal of alignment rarely even matters in the campaign.

[Ferrin]

I think "murder" includes "genocide", actually.

A well-run D&D game doesn't include genocide committed by non-evil characters--you're not wiping out goblins because they're goblins and you're an adventurer; you're tracking down the goblin bandits who killed the old blacksmith and his family and kidnapped their three-year-old daughter.

You missed the line about; "The ranger who had his sister killed by orcs and now believes that all orcs and related groups must be completely exterminated..." that's the genocide part.

[Kurald Galain]

Is there such a thing as a game of D&D/Pathfinder where players make good-aligned characters?

Yes, and that's quite common in my circle of players. Also, RPGA games have traditionally banned evil alignments.

[Melayl]

It has been awhile since I've been able to game with a group (or DM), but Evil characters are always out. Neutral, yes. Chaotic Stupid, no. No to any Stupid, actually.

We're the Heroes. We may not be great heroes, but we're still heroes.

[Callista]

I like having alignment in the game. It connects a character--especially a divine magic-user--to a larger picture and puts the party into the "cosmic struggle" going on between opposite alignments. I don't penalize people for playing non-Good characters, and I refuse to try to screw over alignment-dependent classes. I've never had the issue of having someone play an alignment-dependent class who very obviously wasn't playing that alignment; but I think if I did, I would probably ask the player to re-build the character into something that made more sense for his personality. In some cases, of course, I'd just remove the alignment restriction. If you're playing a lawful bard or a good assassin, I'm not too fussed about it; but Pelor's probably going to have something to say about it if his cleric is torturing the orcish prisoners, and in that case I'd be suggesting a quick conversion to Hextor or Erythnnul or something.

[Achernar]

I often ban evil alignments, since my plot arcs are generally designed for the Heroic Adventurer. I have to specifically rewrite my plot arc in which one of my friends is going to RP a complete lunatic (not that his last character WASN'T...)

So yes. Evil is most often out, due to my wanting to run a particular story smoothly and without mass murder of characters, player and otherwise. Anyone who declared their character to be "Vile Darkness" material, though, as the OP's friend did, would have an encounter with a draconian number of Inevitables and Cross-Planar Justiciars until said character was tot.

Edit: and their souls bound to a lodestone in the Abyss.

[Callista]

You missed the line about; "The ranger who had his sister killed by orcs and now believes that all orcs and related groups must be completely exterminated..." that's the genocide part.

Oh. Yeah, yeah... that's genocide. And a double standard. And apparently I need more coffee today... *goes to get some*

[Ferrin]

I like having alignment in the game. It connects a character--especially a divine magic-user--to a larger picture and puts the party into the "cosmic struggle" going on between opposite alignments. I don't penalize people for playing non-Good characters, and I refuse to try to screw over alignment-dependent classes. I've never had the issue of having someone play an alignment-dependent class who very obviously wasn't playing that alignment; but I think if I did, I would probably ask the player to re-build the character into something that made more sense for his personality. In some cases, of course, I'd just remove the alignment restriction. If you're playing a lawful bard or a good assassin, I'm not too fussed about it; but Pelor's probably going to have something to say about it if his cleric is torturing the orcish prisoners, and in that case I'd be suggesting a quick conversion to Hextor or Erythnnul or something.

Putting it like that means you like to put team good and team evil against each other, while there might be many more team good and evil's which fight among each other as well. In the end it's about personal motivations, not hard-cut rules for morality. Good and evil can co-operate just fine, they just don't always agree with several methods, or have different motivations for doing it. I don't like alignments myself, and just say I'm True Neutral in whatever game I play, with the exception of a few characters.

Also; Pelor, The Burning Hate.

[Callista]

Highlighting the cosmic L-vs.-C and G-vs.-E struggle doesn't automatically mean that all people with the same alignment always cooperate and all people with different alignments always fight. That's not the case at all.

Good and Evil can cooperate, but it takes extraordinary circumstances and very compatible personalities to make them do so. What an Evil person is willing to do is exactly the thing that a Good person is fighting to try to prevent.

[Dr.Epic]

Yeah, I've banned evil alignments.

Yesterday, in my Pathfinder game, the players were hired to slaughter a camp full of orcs. Not just the warriors, every last remnant of the clan. Well, they found where the women and children were hiding, and one genius chaotic evil half orc decides, on the spot, to make his character a pedo.

You slaughtered all the younglings?!?!?

[Callista]

Well, he's a CE character. Slaughtering younglings is kinda what they do. (Often, anyway. Not like you can't be CE and like kids, but CE and slaughtering kids are entirely compatible...)

You can definitely make a rule that everybody has to keep it PG-13, though. The whole pedo thing is probably crossing the line, and would have stopped being fun for quite a few people. Your evil characters can be truly evil, sure, but don't let that ruin other people's enjoyment of the game.

[Tengu_temp]

I think that was a Star Wars reference.

[Dr.Epic]

I think that was a Star Wars reference.

Strong with the Force you are.

[Callista]

Mmhm, yep.

*goes to get yet more coffee*