I am presently running a group of PCs though the Age of Worms adventure path. The only problem is that two of the PCs keeps saying thare are 'Chaotic Good' or 'Lawful Neutral'. Its just that they keep doing 'evil' things. While I don't mind moving their alignment to evil. I am wondering how this might affect the rest of the adventure?
I've been reading through what I can, but I'm worried at the upper levels, when they start to decide to summon creatures, having some Devils and Demons fighting undead kinda makes me wonder if they wouldn't mind joinning up against the PCs and all.
If anything, I think the campaign universe that I set it in will go through an Age of Worms. If anything the players would probably CAUSE it.
I am presently running a group of PCs though the Age of Worms adventure path. The only problem is that two of the PCs keeps saying thare are 'Chaotic Good' or 'Lawful Neutral'. Its just that they keep doing 'evil' things. While I don't mind moving their alignment to evil. I am wondering how this might affect the rest of the adventure?
I've been reading through what I can, but I'm worried at the upper levels, when they start to decide to summon creatures, having some Devils and Demons fighting undead kinda makes me wonder if they wouldn't mind joinning up against the PCs and all.
If anything, I think the campaign universe that I set it in will go through an Age of Worms. If anything the players would probably CAUSE it.
Evil can fight evil - it's one of the nasty parts of having an evil alignment. I would make sure to stress how the coming Age of Worms would smash the board, making the game no fun for the current characters. It sounds to me like they are evil for selfishness' sake, rather than for evil's sake, so If they think that the Age of Worms will personally screw them over, they'll fight it.
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Evil can fight evil - it's one of the nasty parts of having an evil alignment.
On that same note, good can fight good. Two lawful good kings can easily come to blows over border disputes and other crises of a political nature.
As far as fixing the campaign, you have two choices.
1- Roll with it and adapt the campaign as necessary. You might just have to scrap it all and start over with another campaign.
I can tell you're thinking 'I just blew 60 bucks on this damn thing and these guys won't even play along with me'. Hell, I would be too. I have felt that way before. So much time and money that could have been spent elsewhere and a couple antisocial morons in the group want to screw it up. The first time that happened to me, I was pissed. The more I thought about it though, I realized it was my fault. Instead of taking things one step at a time until I was able to feel out what each player wanted in the game, I jumped the gun and planned the campaign out fifteen levels past where they were.
2- Have a metagame discussion where you tell them that acting like idiots is hurting the game, and find out what is causing their behavior in-game.
You could be cheesy and threaten to impose XP penalties and forced alignment change; however, the tack I would take would be to say something to the effect of 'You know, when you created the character you decided you wanted your characer to be LN/CG. I planned the campaign and adventures accordingly. What has changed between then and now that made you want to completely change the concept you came up with for the character?' They might get the hint that what may just seem silly/funny to them is messing things up for you.
Chances are that they don't realize how much work goes into running a game like this. Acting random/capricious/careless might also be a sign of boredom with the game. I had a guy one time who was very bored with the adventures I ran. I thought they were pretty good, and so did the other players. He wanted more hack'n'slash, but he never communicated that to me. If I had been a good DM then, I would have noticed his behavior (both in-game and body language at the gaming table) before he seemingly out of the blue announced that his lvl 8 ranger jumps headfirst into the spiked pit and tore up his character sheet.
Actually, I'm just gonna play with it anyway. Some of them are a bunch of Min/Maxers (aka Munchkins) and they keep thinking they can get away from stuff. So far they have stolen horses and other items from Diamond Lake (where they won't be able to show their face again), gotten Allustan VERY angry (to put it mildly), tried to rob the inn that they had a stop off at on the way to Blackwall Keep and generally 'bully' their way through things.
Right now we are still working on "Encounter at Blackwall Keep" I was missing a few of the first two modules, and I really wanted to run them through those also. At the same time they wanted to be higher level. (Which I allowed since I didn't think it would be that bad.)
I've warned them time and time again that the Anti-Social Behavior that they so love to do, will haunt them. I'm adjusting a few things on the fly, but I have a feeling that the important stuff that they need will be missed... badly.
I'm just wondering HOW bad will they do. I've only done a brief overview/reading of the modules that I do have. While I could spend some time readjusting, we are going to have a 'Marathon' session on 19 July 2006 (about 16hours of playing) and I was wondering how badly will they screw up. I can fly pretty well with a canned adventure that I've read a few times, but I haven't read deeply past "The Champion's Belt". I'm wondering how much more their 'Anti-Social' behavior will actually give them problems.
Essentially take EVERY ally and enemy they could meet in the game, and make them hostile. I'm wondering when would the campaign end cause they don't have anymore leads or the person who they need to talk to is so angry with them.
I've also been toying with the idea of a 2nd group of adventurers who will 'follow' them and are all 'Good'. So when they mess up the 'Good Group' will follow up, take out the baddies and 'Get all the Glory'. Having them play second fiddle to a bunch of NPCs.
I almost had a similar fate when my two players decided to play a Cleric of Wee Jas (LN) and a Half-Orc Paladin of Hexotr (LE to start and then after an adventure he changed it to LN).
I decided to roll with it (excuse the pun) as far as evil PCS, although in the end we are playing a more Law vs. Chaos based campaign, which suits me fine, and as far as I am concerned is a seriously underlooked direction in D&D. However back to the question at hand.
I see two distinct possibilities growing from running a campaign with evil PCS.
#1 - Even most evil people don't want the world to end. As long as the are not interested in Undeath and a general destruction of all that is cute, lovable, or even nasty and living, you can pretty much count on most evil characters to have a good reason to fight against Kyuss. Maybe they are worshipers of Nerull or Wee Jas and neither god/dess wants a piece of the Death domain stolen from a upstart like Kyuss. On the other hand maybe they worship a demon like Demogorgon (maybe even they play a hand in the plots that eventually surface in the next AP - talk about a coool concept eh? have these PCs show up much later as evil NPCs in Savage Tides), for a similar example look at how this might work out look at many other adventures such as the Porify House in Dungeon #95 where one evil worshiper of Graa'tz is fighting and scheeming against a group of worshipers of Demogorgon (although personally I think they mixed up the two).
Ok that is posibility #1
Now lets go out to the far edges of reality.
#2 - So what if the PCs want to help out the bad guys. Sounds like a damm fun adventure to me. Starting about mid way through (somewhere after the Champion's Belt) a group of Evil PCs could convert over to Kyuss worship and actually help out the baddies. This would lead to all sort of interesting changes and shifts, although some adventures would still work as written. Prince of Redhand works because maybe the players would have heard that Lashonna is a leader in the Ebon Triad, and so they end up seeking her out for council and leadership. Likewise the Spire of Long shadows would work great as a info search on Kyuss. Just change the Kyuss spawn Angels to real Angels protecting his legacy from the outer world and walla! roll up a group of opposing adventures or even use Auric's band (along with a little help from Tenser err Manzorian and maybe even Allustan along for the ride) to fight against the group in trying to retrieve Dragotha's Phylacary. They could even fight against Dragotha as agents of Lashonna, bent on becoming the prime agents of Kyuss's new right hand dragon. And in the final fight, rather than taking on Kyuss, they would take on Manzorian, Allustan, and some other biggies intent on keeping Kyuss from breaking on through to the other side as it were. I think that would be just as much of a fun campaign.
I had a problem with evil PCs in my first AOW game. Then they all died, and I didn't have a problem anymore.
Here's something that worked in one of my other games where the players were all Chaotic Lawful pains in the butt:
I wanted the players to face off against a big, bad, evil organization bent on ending the world. The players were more content on finding, killing, and looting anything that popped up in front of them. They didn't follow the clues put in front of them, couldn't remember NPC's names, and honestly didn't care about the fate of the world.
Then came the assassins... and the ninjas... and the ninja assassins.
The BBEO were annoyed the group was getting too close to their plans (in a misguided way), so they decided to rub them out. After the assassins tried killing them, the ninjas stole some of their stuff, and the ninja tried killing them WHILE stealing their stuff, the group finally decided to track down who was trying so hard to annoy them. And suddenly, the campaign was back on track.
Granted, this method won't work for everyone, but I was tickled by the fact that when they faced off with BBEGuys, they never knew what they were babbling about. They just knock him down and move on.
From what you've posted, I agree with what someone else said... they're acting evil in a selfish sort of way, not a "mad-scientist out to kill the world" sort of way, so it doesn't mean they won't still meet the objectives.
The trick for you is going to be finding selfish hooks for them, as most of the hooks are geared towards altruistic, "I wanna save the world cause it's the right thing to do" sort of groups.
If their behavior is out of boredom, as someone else suggested, then finding more personal hooks with more personal significance for the group can help with that as well. I've changed just about every hook so far to make it more relevant to the group.
You can try the idea of the "good" adventurers cleaning up behind them, but with the group you've described it's likely to do one of two things:
1)they lose even more interest because they know if they screw up there's someone else to fix it or...
2)they see them as rivals to kill and nothing else.
Could be interesting to see how they react to it, thought.
I had a problem with evil PCs in my first AOW game. Then they all died, and I didn't have a problem anymore.
*wipes tears away after a belly laugh* Nice.
I have an evil PC (1 out of 5) in my group and he first joined the others because they had similar goals. But since the end of the world would prevent him from doing what he likes best namely; get rich, go to bordellos and parties...he really wants to save it.
As for their anti-social antics...it will cost them dearly after Blackwall Keep since nobody will direct them to Eligos and Celeste. After that they won't get the Manzorian hook and even if they do...Manzorian will probably whip the sorry asses, I mean come on he's a 21st caster!
So evil PCs = no real problem
Anti-social and disruptive PCs = no real campaing.
It seems to me that the campaign will be over with the end of the Blackwall Keep adventure. If the party has made Allustan sufficiently angry at them, I don't see why he would pick them to go to Eligos for Hall of Harsh Reflections.
In my campaigns, I tell people before they bring in their characters that I run a "heroic roleplaying" game, that I do not allow evil PCs, and that if they want even to play a chaotic neutral PC, they need to have a good RP reason why the character will want to cooperate with other party members. I further tell them that if, for any reason, their PC's alignment changes to evil, that character immediately becomes an NPC controlled by the DM, at which point they have to bring in a new character who is 1 level lower than the old character.
I haven't had a problem.
I prefer to open up all possibilities to my players. I think that the Age of Worms is really well built to accomidate neutral and even evil PCs. In my case I think in fact that it is even better when played with Lawful Netural PCs for a number of reasons:
- The whole Wind Dukes Back story is a war between Chaos and Law, which works nicely with Lawful Neutral characters siding with the Wind Dukes
- The churches of Hextor and to a lesser extent Wee Jas play important roles in the AP. One of my players, a Paldin of Hextor is fighting to rid the church of heretics and weakness, ie. the Ebon Triad cultists. I see a perfect match also with trying to unseat Prince Zeech because of his placing the church in a position of subservance to him, making a mockery of Hextors rule.
The only main problems are with Tenser/Mazorian and some of the other good NPCs. Although it would be easy enough to replace them with say....Rary. Talk about a great reason for Allustan to no longer be talking to his old mentor eh? This would also place them in a interesting position when them come into epic power, as associates of one of the most hated men in the Flannesse, yet also saviors of the world. I could see Rary not wanting to have Kyuss rise up, especially if he felt that Kyuss might want to take over his old homeland (ie. the Bright Lands) or maybe Rary even discovered some lost or forgotten lore about or by Kyuss in his study of the Bright Lands and acting upon that lore wants to stop his deification.
Anyway lots of possible directions there. As I said there is no reason an evil campaign is at odds with the Age of Worms Adventure Path.