Soon, I am going to be starting a campaign set in the world of Ravenloft, a lesser known campaign world with a theme of gothic horror to it. It is excellent for good aligned characters because of the insurmountable challenges placed before them, and great for evil characters because the world is in general more friendly towards evil alignments (in fact, it is not possible to detect good or evil with magic in Ravenloft). The flavor of the campaign in general encourages darker, more complex characters, and so my group has decided to play a party full of antiheroes.
I am requiring everyone to submit to me at least one page about their characters background and long term goals, and this campaign is going to focus on the characters, and allow them to accomplish these goals (overly lofty goals, such as world domination, will be vetoed, and new characters rolled up).
I am looking for general advice for this campaign. Because of the way it's set up, the overarcing plot is probably going to develop a bit later, once I've seen how I can weave the characters' individual storylines together, but I really need a way to get them all together in the first adventure.
Conventional means might not work, because with a party full of antiheroes, they're going to have different motivations that a typical character. I was thinking of pulling a trick that I tried in a previous campaign in which the characters begin the game in combat as a sudden threat has just arisen, and have to work together for mutual survival. Thoughts?
Sounds wicked. Here's a couple of thoughts.
The characters are all staying at the same inn, when it is besieged by zombies. Even antiheroes aren't immune to the ensuing Zombpocalypse, and the sheer number of undead mean the party must work together for mutual survival. When they discover that the Zombies are 1) drawn to something hidden beneath the inn or 2) are being driven by a cabal of reckless necromancers hunting an outlaw in the inn, do the players hand over the object their enemies desire? Or do they risk their own necks to discover the secrets of The Black Raven inn? Or whatever you want to call it.
It doesn't have to be an inn, a shared jail cell would also work. Having the players weaponless and chained in pairs would force them to work together and possibly escape their jailers. Perhaps they might be greatful to whoever organised the zombie uprising, nothing like a misunderstood necromancer for a patron eh?
The important part is to have the players realise that the biggest threat is not each other but whatever is coming at them. Being anti-heroes, it means that you need to appeal to their survival instinct, greed or other selfish motivation to get them going. Because once they've hit a path they'll probably follow it to whatever conclusion you can come up with.
Anyways, hope that helps.
With evil or Anti-heroes, you need a strong motivation for them to overcome their selfishness to work together.
This could be a mutual enemy, but gets difficult to hold up once the enemy is vanquished. And generating an enemy who cannot be finally vanquished is a bad idea, as it leads to player frustration.
Another idea is an "overlord" of some sort requiring the PCs to work together. You have to avoid the pitfall that the players turn against the overlord, if he uses some kind of pressure against them. One (rather heavy-handed) possibility would be to have the overlord have something he threatens the live (or existence) of the PCs with, or the time-honored tradition of holding something or someone dear to the PCs hostage.
Of course, you could plan your campaign in a way that the overlord will be the final enemy.
The central question is: "Why should they work together?" If you manage to give them a compelling reason without railroading them, that would be perfect. The two very abstract categories of answers I see are: They have some common interest, or there is someone or something forcing them in some way.
Stefan
They could be mercenaries all paid by the Darklord of which ever region they are in, part of an army raised to fight off an invasion from a neighbouring realm. the invasion is dealt with very quickly but the unit is maintained to do other "jobs".
Evil means selfish. It does not mean psychotic, or isolationist, or whatever else. Evil people work together all the time as long as they have a common goal that is mutually beneficial. Evil people have friends too, even close-knit relationships. For example, many Republicans have families they genuinely care for and are also perfectly capable of organizing in both evil and neutral causes.
Just look at Vice-President Dick Cheney. He has friends. Of course he shoots his friends in the face, but thats just what makes him an intriguing evil character.d13, will you be my new best friend? Very, very funny.
Yeah, I had a friend once but than I ate his face and sucked out his brain and reanimated him as a horrible abomination under my absaloute command.
I am going to do the same to you.
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Evil means selfish. It does not mean psychotic, or isolationist, or whatever else. Evil people work together all the time as long as they have a common goal that is mutually beneficial. Evil people have friends too, even close-knit relationships. For example, many Republicans have families they genuinely care for and are also perfectly capable of organizing in both evil and neutral causes.
Even though I'm a Republican, this is still funny. And yes, you're right. We are selfish and well-organized (most of the time).
I recently submitted a querry to write an article about evil PCs and antiheroes. Haven't heard anything yet, and I'm waiting for the rejection letter, but I'm thinking about making my players read it anyways.
We have had some experience with antihero games before, but the characters leaned a bit more towards evil than neutrality, and in the end many of them ended up as villains (not that it wasn't fun. My character became a darklord, but he wasn't psycho-evil and he is, to date, my favorite character I've ever played). I don't think I'd have a problem with the same thing happening again, but I'd like it to happen much more slowly than it did last time.
The most important thing to remember about evil (antiheros) characters is that they're not onesided, just like good characters aren't one sided. CE, NE and LE very different. You have to have characters willing to develop their story, but I can say from playing a CG character who "developed though prayer" into an NE character that it helps to have an organic story.
Why are you evil, what is your motivation? Moral reasons (i.e religous/philosophical) seem to be a great driving force and will keep your characters in general agreement. My 2 cents.
The most important thing to remember about evil (antiheros) characters is that they're not onesided, just like good characters aren't one sided. CE, NE and LE very different.
Not only are the three evils all different from eachother, but any two evil characters will likely be different, depending on the degree of their evil and what makes them evil.
The cleric who doesn't anesthetize his patients because he has an addiction to Liquid Pain is evil in an entirely different way from the ranger who's sworn a blood oath to slay every member and guard of a certain noble family to avenge his animal companion. The ranger, in turn, is still different from his assassin companion, who sneaks in and assassinates the noble's guards quietly because the ranger lets him claim their purses, and they're all distinctly different from the Blackguard who acts as an agent to an Ultroloth in exchange for power. For all that, they could all be any evil alignment, depending on their methods and your group's definitions of Law and Chaos.
One of my favorite characters is evil, not because she runs around maiming people, or any such. Anybody who doesn't use divination magic on her would be likely be completely unaware that she's evil, because she's friendly to everyone, unless they're trying to kill her. She views the "masses" as being a bunch of shmucks who wouldn't qualm about doing anything they wanted, if they thought they could get away with it, so she doesn't hesitate to manipulate them to get what she wants, and would only spend her breath mourning them for show, to maintain the facade that she actually cares about people. She has a handful of friends who merit actual consideration, but people are mostly there to be exploited, so far as she's concerned. And she makes a perfect team player, because she regards even those party members she doesn't like as an investment -- she'd have to persuade a whole new new set of people to follow her around and protect her if her current party died.