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I am sorry, but I must disagree with you. I do agree that mature players can play evil characters in a non disruptive format, and welcome this in a home game with players I know well. However this is in regards to pathfinder society being an organized play event, and is also often a public face for pathfinder to people not well versed in gaming. I think it is important for such a tool to have some boundaries on what is appropriate. I think a general goal of PG-13 works well for PFS.
Also as an organized play experience across the globe, while some areas might not experience any problems with evil characters, I think that many areas might. Even if a test of some sort could be devised, I can still envision people that would politely pass the test only to take things too far after they have been determined able to play evil characters. I must say that I think it best that PFS limits itself to non-evil characters.
To provide some background one of my PFS characters would probably be darker and actually LE instead of LN if that were allowed, and I still don't think that it should be.
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Honestly, if you really want to play an evil character, there's nothing stopping you from setting up a private game. PFS implies cooperation, and while a well-played evil character can survive or even thrive in such an environment, I'd expect most PFS evil characters to be of the "lol MASS murder hobo" variety. Not to mention that it expects not only you to be mature, but also your party - it's going to cause problems when someone playing a cardboard cutout paladin smites you. I can't think of a fair and reasonable way to adjudicate who is actually capable of being a party member in such a group in a broad scale organized way - you really need a GM with experience with each individual player.
Now, one thing I could see working is an evil 1-shot to get a boon you can apply to another character. But I really don't see a good way to introduce them to the broader campaign.
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I've actually given this a bit of thought and the only solution I can come up is forming a second organized play group, that way everybody knows what they are in for. Call it "Aspis Consordium Organised Play" and have some crossover with the PFS on some big events. That being said, I don't honestly think there is enough of a demand for it and I don't think Paizo would want to risk damaging their brand with it but one can dream, right?
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I get up to get a soda and theres all the negativity! This is not the thread for doubts! This is the thread for brainstorming. There is ALWAYS a way to make something work.
The way to make this one "work" is to play the organized campaign for the world's oldest roleplaying game. That one allows players to be lawful evil. If you don't like that game, not being evil is the price you pay for getting to play PFS.
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I honestly think the best way to go about this is to start another branch of Organized play where you're allowed play Neutral to Evil characters this could be some more of the darker dealings of the Pathfinder Society or they work for the Aspis Consortium.
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Ok, let me expand on my previous post. Evil characters in PFS is just a bad idea, here is why:
- The scenarios aren't built for it - There is no "evil option" baked into the scenarios, so there isn't much for your evil character to do that is different from a non-evil character.
- Who is a "Mature Player" - In short, there is no systematic way to determine who a good candidate would be.
- "Evil" is usually code for "Jerk" - I've played in evil campaigns and I've run evil campaigns. Many fail because a majority of players think that one needs to be a Jerk to be Evil.
- It will make the good guys feel uncomfortable - A lot of people play PFS to be the good guys. When you have one person who is pushing them to evil acts, the other players will either ignore them or berate them. So either the Evil player is stymied and not having fun, or there is active OOC tension. Not good times.
That being said, I actually think there is a market niche for a villainous organized play (i.e. Aspis Consortium), but there is a BIG difference between "Evil" and "Villainous". If something like the "Way of the Wicked" could be transitioned into Organized Play, I think that would be awesome.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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So, snickersimba, just for the sake of discussion, how would you determine "mature" players? (No, really: don't go by GM stars. Some of those 5-star GMs are real dopes.)
If someone were to get accepted as being a mature player, and decides to run a chaotic evil warpriest of Rovagug under brand new GMs and sits back and watches as the monster kills the rest of the party, how many sessions would you let that player play that character before pulling the plug?
Once you have them set that PC aside, how many more evil characters would you let them run?
If a gal sat at your table with her neutral evil poisoner of Norgorber and set about killing the townsfolk around the cave entrance of the dungeon for her Day Job, and you only later found out that she wasn't really a mature player, what would you do?
If you had children who were sitting at your table when the crazy member of the Old Cults ritually flayed [redacted], what would you say to their mothers?
I concur witheverybody else here. The downsides to this suggestion would be tremendous. You know that, and are being deliberately provocative. There are no upsides to it, at all.
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Ok, let me expand on my previous post. Evil characters in PFS is just a bad idea, here is why:
[list]
The scenarios aren't built for it - There is no "evil option" baked into the scenarios, so there isn't much for your evil character to do that is different from a non-evil character.
While I agree with you completely on not allowing evil in organized play, several scenarios have you doing things that are if not evil, at the very least immoral and illegal.
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I think the solution is already out there. As mentioned up-thread, the PaizoCon special this year allows players to play as Aspis agents. Play that. If that isn't enough playing bad guys for you, then might I recommend that you GM? You get to play as Aspis agents, goblins, drow, undead, demons and devils, dragons, and even robots!
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The way to make this one "work" is to play the organized campaign for the world's oldest roleplaying game. That one allows players to be lawful evil. If you don't like that game, not being evil is the price you pay for getting to play PFS.I get up to get a soda and theres all the negativity! This is not the thread for doubts! This is the thread for brainstorming. There is ALWAYS a way to make something work.
Interesting, I may just try out 5E entirely for this reason.
Snickers, while I'm a huge proponent of allowing LE characters in home games, I just don't see it happening in PFS. The home game problems involving the other players would just become manifestly more intolerable. Ex: if I sign up for a game day with my LE heretic inquisitor of Red Mantis to play and a walk-in Paladin shows up, which of us gets to play? Me, who wants to exemplify "explore, report, cooperate" or the poor paladin who's paladin code prohibits him from working with me?
It's the whole "thou shalt not grok" mandate of PFS on an even larger scale and one of the disadvantages of org play. Well, that and all the inefficient CN murder-hobo's killing all of your potential future minions, of course. :)
-TimD
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While I agree with you completely on not allowing evil in organized play, several scenarios have you doing things that are if not evil, at the very least immoral and illegal.Ok, let me expand on my previous post. Evil characters in PFS is just a bad idea, here is why:
[list]
The scenarios aren't built for it - There is no "evil option" baked into the scenarios, so there isn't much for your evil character to do that is different from a non-evil character.
Fair enough, I haven't seen any of those modules yet but I'm certain they exist. However, I don't think evil should be banned for Organized Play, I just think its not appropriate for PFS.
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The downsides to this suggestion would be tremendous. You know that, and are being deliberately provocative. There are no upsides to it, at all.
Hey, now, please dial that back. :-/
Just because you can't find any upsides and many of us find more down sides than up, doesn't mean they don't exist.
It's one thing to disagree, another to say someone is being deliberately provocative because they want more variety in their PFS experience.
-TimD
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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The problem with allowing it for mature players - and frankly what character concept requires an evil character - is that everyone deemed not mature enough, will resent the situation.
If you allow evil characters, stopping the "apparent"murder hobo problem becomes ... pretty hard.
Developer
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I know you're aiming for "how we can" rather than "why we shouldn't" responses, Snickersimba, but I can really only provide the latter for two major reasons that come to mind—likely with many more that others can mention and have mentioned.
The word "evil" has power. Just putting that alignment component on a character sheet can influence what a player views as acceptable behavior, both in and out of the game. "It's not wrong; I'm just roleplaying my alignment" becomes a common claim when there are evil PCs, even when the players are mature. In a home game, a GM can get to know a PC's nuances and police these actions as best fits her group, but in organized play, a player can travel with this evil character and subject strangers to his particular brand of evil—an interpretation that might be acceptable in one region but completely unacceptable in another. It's particularly distressing when a PC's alignment begins to bleed into a player's behavior, and once evil is acceptable in-game, many aspects of the "Don't be a jerk" rule start to dissolve.
Also remember the perception of others watching the game for the first time. A game in which the PCs are heroes (or at least non-villains) is much more approachable than one in which some PCs are evil.
If you had children who were sitting at your table when the crazy member of the Old Cults ritually flayed [redacted], what would you say to their mothers?
Yeah, like that.
Players will game the system. If I were to publish criteria that allows a player to make an evil PC, I feel confident that numerous people would try to game the system by fulfilling the letter of the law for those criteria without necessarily embodying the virtues campaign management is looking for. I do not feel confident in my ability to craft such a set of requirements that would be both approachable yet also tough enough to weed out the troublesome candidates.
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So, snickersimba, just for the sake of discussion, how would you determine "mature" players? (No, really: don't go by GM stars. Some of those 5-star GMs are real dopes.)
If someone were to get accepted as being a mature player, and decides to run a chaotic evil warpriest of Rovagug under brand new GMs and sits back and watches as the monster kills the rest of the party, how many sessions would you let that player play that character before pulling the plug?
Once you have them set that PC aside, how many more evil characters would you let them run?
If a gal sat at your table with her neutral evil poisoner of Norgorber and set about killing the townsfolk around the cave entrance of the dungeon for her Day Job, and you only later found out that she wasn't really a mature player, what would you do?
If you had children who were sitting at your table when the crazy member of the Old Cults ritually flayed [redacted], what would you say to their mothers?
I concur witheverybody else here. The downsides to this suggestion would be tremendous. You know that, and are being deliberately provocative. There are no upsides to it, at all.
Do you think you could shove some more straw in this post? First, I think you are imputing malice where there is none. Second, the players you are describing are the exact same problem players who play "detect evil murder paladins" that spend the session berating the rogue PC; it's not the alignment, it's the player.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Florida—Melbourne
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You know that, and are being deliberately provocative. There are no upsides to it, at all.
No, he is doing it because he genuinely thinks it is a good idea and since he is new to PFS he didn't know a good way of proposing this so I suggested he start a thread to brainstorm for ideas.
I don't think it is a good idea either, but if via brainstorming he can come up with a reasonable solution that the powers that be may agree upon, more power to him. He is trying to be reasonable. Please try to be reasonable in return.
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This is going to be long. It's also dependent on the philosophical premise that who you are (and in Pathfinder terms, your alignment) is based entirely on your actions rather than your beliefs. So if you disagree with that, you can probably stop reading here.
I get the feeling that the restriction on alignment for PFS is a means to an end. It's not that the campaign doesn't want evil characters so much as they don't want to deal with the consequences of evil actions. That may sound like semantics, but it's an important distinction. More on that later.
PFS is an all-ages affair. It is also welcoming to people who may not enjoy dealing with rape, torture, and infanticide, and other unequivocally evil things. While some scenarios may contain references to, or even depictions of some darker material, they can control how it's presented (to the degree that GMs stick to the script, as they're mandated to do). They cannot similarly control how player characters comport themselves.
Which leads me to a question: in your ideal implementation of your proposal, are the certified mature and respectful players given carte blanche once they get their evil cards? Or are they still restricted from engaging in certain acts or breaking certain taboos?
If you think the answer is yes, they have passed the test and have full license, I will have to go ahead and tell you that will likely never happen. There will be too much risk of players gaming the process. There will be an influx of complaints from players bearing witness to the mature and respectful torture of NPCs.
If you think their actions will be necessarily restricted, then you now have to codify that. You said elsewhere you're fairly new to PFS, but you'll soon see there is a strong contingent of those who, given an inch, will take a mile.
So now we have to determine which evil actions are approved and which are not available to players.
Without a sufficient list of available evil actions and the opportunity to carry them out, the ostensibly evil characters will soon cease to be evil. If all you do is save the townspeople and kill the monsters, you're not evil. You're neutral at worst.
You've got to do evil to be evil.
tl;dr
the only way I see this working is if there's a whitelist of evil actions. Start drawing that up and see where it goes.
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RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Evil characters and creatures debase or destroy innocent life, whether for fun or profit.
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Evil implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master.
Lawful evil represents methodical, intentional, and organized evil.
I'm trying to think of a way to roleplay an evil PC so that it's not disruptive to the table but is still true to the Core Rulebook, but I'm not coming up with anything. Honestly, whenever a topic like this comes up, I end up wondering just how many people even realize the CRB has its own definition of evil.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Florida—Melbourne
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I personally think allowing people who have shown the ability to be mature and respectful in the society should be allowed to play evil characters.You want to institute a rule that benefits only 0.5% of the player population?
SNAP!
Are you suggesting that 99.5% of us are immature? My only response to that is...
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I personally think allowing people who have shown the ability to be mature and respectful in the society should be allowed to play evil characters.You want to institute a rule that benefits only 0.5% of the player population?
SNAP!
Are you suggesting that 99.5% of us are immature? My only response to that is...
I'm rubber and your glue, and ... and ... I'm telling!
No, he is doing it because he genuinely thinks it is a good idea.You know that, and are being deliberately provocative. There are no upsides to it, at all.
All right, let me run with this.
Why is it a good idea?
How will it make the game more fun, especially for the novice gamers that are the reason that PFS exists in the first place?
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Venture-Lieutenant, Florida—Melbourne
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No, he is doing it because he genuinely thinks it is a good idea.You know that, and are being deliberately provocative. There are no upsides to it, at all.
All right, let me run with this.
Why is it a good idea?
How will it make the game more fun, especially for the novice gamers that are the reason that PFS exists in the first place?
I will let the OP respond to the first of that, but what makes you think PFS exists solely for the novice gamers?
You make money two ways:
A) By gaining new customers
B) By retaining old customers.
Evil characters and creatures debase or destroy innocent life, whether for fun or profit.
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Evil implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master.Lawful evil represents methodical, intentional, and organized evil.I'm trying to think of a way to roleplay an evil PC so that it's not disruptive to the table but is still true to the Core Rulebook, but I'm not coming up with anything.
A paid assassin who refuses to kill people he's not paid to kill (e.g. is very honorable about "no collateral damage").
A monomaniac who cares so much about accomplishing the mission that he's willing to commit evil acts to do it (e.g., an abolitionist who is so anti-slavery he's willing to kill slaveholders).
A slaver who is nevertheless willing to work with the forces of Good for this one mission because there's something important at stake.
Lots of options. The problem is that they all hinge on very specific aspects of the plot, which is something that you can't control in PFS except in very specific adventures.
I will let the OP respond to the first of that, but what makes you think PFS exists solely for the novice gamers?No, he is doing it because he genuinely thinks it is a good idea.You know that, and are being deliberately provocative. There are no upsides to it, at all.
All right, let me run with this.
Why is it a good idea?
How will it make the game more fun, especially for the novice gamers that are the reason that PFS exists in the first place?
Because the people that are already in the gaming community generally don't need PFS-like structure to permit them to play.
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RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Because the people that are already in the gaming community generally don't need PFS-like structure to permit them to play.I will let the OP respond to the first of that, but what makes you think PFS exists solely for the novice gamers?No, he is doing it because he genuinely thinks it is a good idea.You know that, and are being deliberately provocative. There are no upsides to it, at all.
All right, let me run with this.
Why is it a good idea?
How will it make the game more fun, especially for the novice gamers that are the reason that PFS exists in the first place?
Spoken like someone who has little, if any, experience with PFS.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Florida—Melbourne
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Because the people that are already in the gaming community generally don't need PFS-like structure to permit them to play.I will let the OP respond to the first of that, but what makes you think PFS exists solely for the novice gamers?No, he is doing it because he genuinely thinks it is a good idea.You know that, and are being deliberately provocative. There are no upsides to it, at all.
All right, let me run with this.
Why is it a good idea?
How will it make the game more fun, especially for the novice gamers that are the reason that PFS exists in the first place?
Then how do you explain the large number of experienced players and GMs in PFS? Why are there people with more that 2 stars? Surely after GMing 50+ games they would, by then, have entrenched themselves in the gaming community so as to not need PFS-like structure?
Pssst...here's a tip.
Then how do you explain the large number of experienced players and GMs in PFS? Why are there people with more that 2 stars? Surely after GMing 50+ games they would, by then, have entrenched themselves in the gaming community so as to not need PFS-like structure?Because the people that are already in the gaming community generally don't need PFS-like structure to permit them to play.
I explain it largely by understanding the difference between needs and wants.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Florida—Melbourne
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Then how do you explain the large number of experienced players and GMs in PFS? Why are there people with more that 2 stars? Surely after GMing 50+ games they would, by then, have entrenched themselves in the gaming community so as to not need PFS-like structure?Because the people that are already in the gaming community generally don't need PFS-like structure to permit them to play.
I explain it largely by understanding the difference between needs and wants.
Moot point for two reasons:
1) Despite how much we may pretend otherwise, no one needs to play Pathfinder.
2) PFS is a marketing agency for Paizo. People don't buy what they need, they buy what they want. Arguing that PFS is somehow geared towards only those that need it is to fail to understand PFS. This is not a charity or government sponsored gamer support program.
