Looking for a good hook for an evil party.

[DPUNKSTAR]

Hi been visiting this site for a while but this is my first time asking for advice on here, I am going to be running a ninth level evil party but I'm drawing a bit of a blank on a good campaign. I was hoping for some suggestions on what to run. The party currently consist of one spell scale eldritch theurge with a flair or fiendish and draconic money only rivaled by his greed, a black guard follower of hextor who loves slaughter but a demon has a claim on his soul. We have one more character joining in. Any help is greatly appreciated.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I'm trying to make a joke about your use of "good" in this context, but it's eluding me.

Take a look at the motivations, and you can drill down from there.

The theurge's player probably wants stories where their character can pursue great wealth. The blackguard probably wants stories with either slaughter or ones that would help loosen the claim the demon has on them. Being that there's only two characters there, you can use those as starting blocks for the "issues" of the campaign.

If it's 9th Level, both of those goals should be possible, at least within the grand scope of things by the end. So figure out how opportunities to achieve those goals could be presented to the characters, and figure out how they can generate complications.

After all, money has to belong to someone before it can be stolen. Also, obligations to powerful beings (like the blackguard's) can't be dodged so easily.

[Yora]

What I once did when taking over a mostly evil party, and what worked quite well, was to give the PCs possession of a frontier keep they just cleared out. The GM before me had his storyline end with killing the previous owners of the keep so I started the next one by having some villagers come to the keep the next morning and begging the PCs to save them, since they are the new masters of the land and clearly much more competent and able to do what their predecesors couldn't.

Having peasants on their knees begging for the previlege of being ruled over by the PCs worked very well. Every attack against the locals automatically became a challenge to the PCs authority and their ability to defend their possessions.
And in my experience, nothing motivates the common evil PC group like pride. When challenged and taunted, few evil PCs can resist planning their revenge. And they won't defend their serfs not because they want to protect them from harm, but because someone is trying to damage their possessions which they need to run their little country.

[DPUNKSTAR]

Yes the joke has already been made good hooks for evil parties. Yes both those ideas do seem like good ones, but my players don't really use that kind of style. They want something more than hack and slash but they don't want to work for anyone, they aren't high enough level to do anything about the demon just yet and so far all the starting hooks I've thought of won't really work. Although I am considering using the elder evils for this campaign since we are looking to go all the way to level twenty.

[Yora]

When stuck, ask them what they want to do. They made up these characters with very specific wishes for what they want, then they should shove over some ideas how to make a game about it.

[DPUNKSTAR]

All they've said is we want a long campaign and we don't want to work for anyone.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Hmm. What about an obviously-inferior ring of thieves who are planning a heist, who happen to have some inside information and who are certainly not the people who ought to be pulling the heist?

[DPUNKSTAR]

That could work, the blackguard was trying for a more stealth based style. But in the given situation its kinda iffy if they will put two and two together.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

That could work, the blackguard was trying for a more stealth based style. But in the given situation its kinda iffy if they will put two and two together.

Hmm. Juicy score + overconfident thief revealing he has inside information + obvious fact that the thieves can't protect the info they have?

[TheCountAlucard]

They could always quest for an artifact. Maybe they uncover a clue of such an artifact while going on a dungeon crawl, and it so happens that another party is interested in it. Perhaps a good-aligned party wants to destroy it, or an evil one would wreak more havoc with it than even these evil bastards are comfortable with.

[The Oni]

Depends on the setting, but honestly, it sounds to me like they should become pirates. They don't have to work for anyone, they can slaughter hundreds (maybe thousands, depending on campaign length) and there will be much booty to be had for the Theurge. If regular piracy isn't exotic enough for your setting, there's always...Sky Piracy!

[Kol Korran]

Hmmm... How about the following idea: There is a town/ city/ whatever, which is a mix of all kind of factions, some are good, but most are bad. (Yep, A virtual Hive of Scum and Villany!) The town however controls some sort of resource, only due to politics and trying to avoid an all out war, the control of said resource is managed by committee (Perhaps even an outside power, that just gets paid enough or something). Make the resource appealing, intriguing, make it so that the players want to get control of it. (You know your players best for that).

And then watch as they scheme, work with, work against, and all in all vie for control against the opposing powers. The more power they get, the more some will try and oppose them. How far are they willing to escalate matter?

I suggest to set the city/ town with a fairly loose, yet brutal law system. Basically the strong and influential rules, but you can do most everything if you know to not piss the wrong people off, piss them off and get away with it, or something else that works.

Start with a basic premise, some initial info about factions and relations, some dangers and such, and add up as needed and the players mess up with the setting. I think it could be loads of fun!

[Mastikator]

All they've said is we want a long campaign and we don't want to work for anyone.

If they genuinely have no ideas on what they want then you sort of have to railroad them. :/

[Delwugor]

I was in a campaign that basically started with:

DM: The three of you reach the peak of the pass and look out the wonderful country of *forgot name*.

Evil Cleric: I claim this country in the name of Hextor.
BlackGuard: I will rule it with the iron fist Hextor desires.
Evil Cleric: You rule the people and I'll convert their souls.
Evil Sorceress: Great idea, let get going then.

[DPUNKSTAR]

Hmm very interesting, thank you all so much for the help. So far I have decided to start this off as an artifact hunt that will branch out into the coming of an elder evil.

[FlurriesRus]

Our current evil party's large goal looks to be starting (and then exploiting) a war between the two main countries on the continent. Some things we've done so far: assassinate a peace loving aristocrat, start a riot in the slum of a large city, help a weapons scientist obtain some key components to developing some nasty weapons.

The good thing about the path we're taking is that it will lead to the fulfillment of individual character goals as well (The cleric wants to spread the terrifying word of her goddess while building an undead army, the gunslinger wants to become fabulously wealthy and the sorcerer wants to wipe out as many humans as he can for what they did to his people). Leading the group around using their own ambitions is the way to go especially with an evil party.

[TheCountAlucard]

One evil campaign I ran had the specific goal of the PCs attaining immortality (or at least ridiculous longevity), so I could use their PCs as villains in a future game. Each PC ended up achieving it in different ways by level 20 - one used wishes to become a half-fiend, then took over a layer of the Abyss; one became a lich, spellstitched himself, taught an order of necromancers, and claimed a couple of artifacts besides; one became a god's emissary on the Material Plane, gaining (among other things) Divine Rank 0 status (with potential to climb from there); one embraced his draconic heritage and found means to extend his lifespan to draconic levels, he founded a dragon cult in the desert.

[Freddrick]

Considering a Demon has a claim on the blackguards soul and the party has no set plans, have the Demon offer to relinquish HIS claim if the BG does X, Y & Z and rail road them right along. Depending on the demon it could be kill a powerful rival, destroy all the churches of god A in these kingdoms or anything along those lines.

When the players come to collect they find that the demon traded his claim to a different demon/god/eternal evil (or good?) being so he has to take it up with them now and all his work wound up being for nothing.

-Freddrick

[Baron Of Hell]

I'm putting together a evil kingdom game of sorts. The main focus is to build a kingdom in the name of this evil god and to destroy the kingdoms of the good gods.

The party mainly gets its mission from a evil talking worm. The party gets the standard missions like kill bandits, monsters, and stuff but since they are evil they might bring these guys into their kingdom.

In addition they will get missions like replace the mayor of town x with a vampire you control. Or maybe have them make a number of pirate ships run buy skeleton pirates. Maybe have them go up and down the coast playing pirate until they raised enough skeletons to do it.

Plus they'll have the standard heroes come to try to stop them and/or have the group try to stop the plans of some heroes.

[Pseudo_Nym]

Evil people are people too, and can do all the same kinds of quests. Just... slightly differently.

Rescue the mayor's daughter from orcs? Sure, in exchange for half of everything he owns. Then they hold a dagger to her neck and demand the other half.

Kill an evil dragon that's extorting tribute from innocent villagers? Sure, but that tribute keeps flowing. Anybody want to mess with the guys who killed a dragon like it was nothing?

They can even save the world, if you want. They live here, after all. Evil, in general, has far fewer limits to what it can do than good. What's important is that you give them a chance to be evil while doing it, and don't punish them too much for it. Wanted posters, maybe, but no teams of high level paladins. No paladins came to take down the dragon, after all.

[Mr Beer]

You already have a plot hook with the demon, demons have rival demons and demons also have enmity with angels.

You could throw in the opposite of a love triangle, with a rival demon and also an angel, so your evil party ends up in an uneasy alliance with an angel and/or a demon, with all the possibilities for betrayal and unwittingly advancing the cause of good.

[Weiser_Cain]

Revenge, and none of them can do it alone. This a the plot I'm working on right now.

[Pokonic]

A prominent creature dedicated to good in the area (Let's say it's a half-gold dragon unicorn.) is trying to gather adventurers to attack the party. Kill it and deal with the local plucky adventuring party.