I think you certainly COULD do this type of campaign. The need would really be the same for any situation that isn't specifically described in the text (and what group of PCs won't throw new curve balls). To react you need to understand the overarching plot and timeline what the villians are doing and what happens if they aren't stopped. Motivations of the NPCs would also be good. Then you would have to wing it. For me, having them driven out the city or arrested would work just fine if they started acting evil. None of the other bad guys get to walk openly as bad guys in the city, why should they?
Anyway, while this is doable, I am sure, I can't see the draw of DMing this type of game. This is a very personal preference though, so if it floats your boat, go for it.
Sean Mahoney
I had a bad experience with evil characters in my first days of dming. In a group of six players, three were chaotic and neutral evil and three were lawful and neutral good. It was a disaster. Every session was just a fight between the two groups, the evil one trying to kidnap people for ransom, kill peasants for sport, and the like, and the good one just trying desperately to stop them. Soon the main goal of the campaign was lost. Finally, the evils became bored of the goods thwarting all their attemps to be bad and decided to conspire against them and kill them during night watch.
The goods had a sword with clariaudience and heared all the plan.
And that was the end of the Empire of Terror of The Three Bad Guys.
Not surprinsingly, they lost interest in the game after that and never came back to game.
So, I decided that was my first and last time with evil characters. Too complicated to mix with good ones, and terribly boring when playing all alone because everything is "I do this because I am Evil and I am not tied to any morality rule...on second though, to any rule at all".
daedel, el azote.
You might try asking your players what their PCs' goals are. Some sets of goals will work with SCAP, some won't.
Taking "kidnap Stormblades and hold for ransom" as an example, followup questions would be: How are you preparing to deal with the families' reactions? How will you keep them from finding you out with divination magic? What will you do once you have, or don't have, your ransom money--do you have a safe way to spend it? Do you have plans to frame someone else for this crime, and can you make it stick?
I'd mean these as real questions, not veiled warnings: if the PCs have good answers, by all means go ahead. (An alliance with the Last Laugh might do the trick--I'm sure LL can launder the money, for example.) If you can't get PC-reasoning answers, though, you're in trouble. SCAP is not a good campaign for "we just want to blow off steam and do what we like." The consequences are liable either to ruin the setting (making it impossible to take seriously) or kill the PCs off.
If you get answers that suggest blowing off steam is the main motivation, you might consider putting SCAP on hold and doing a dungeon crawl with no overarching society and fewer consequences, to let them get it out of their systems.
The PCs in our game are not nominally evil but they have sure made a lot of deals and alliances with various bad guys. The party wizard is involved in a drug-running operation with the durzagon merchant from Life's Bazaar, and also had a long-time alliance going with the dark stalker from Jzidirune. Lately they are trying to work something out with Fetor Abradius. The thing that makes it work is that they are very purposeful and very aware of consequences, so the GM doesn't constantly have to sweat over "If they make a public scene, who reacts?" Just like Vhelantru, the PCs know that a public scene that shows them in a bad light is the last thing they want. When they wanted to kill Jil, they made sure that her actions were seen as so embarrassing by the Last Laugh leadership that not only did the LL look the other way, they *paid* the PCs to do it.
Mary
Just to add my two cents on the topic of evil PCs:
When I was recruiting for my Shackled City PbEM game, I made my opinion on alignment very clear. I don't care what alignment the characters are, as long as they follow two simple guidelines.
- Don't be a liability to the other players (e.g. murdering or stealing from other PCs, commiting crimes right in front of the city guard). There should be a reason for the characters to stick together other than DM fiat!
- The campaign revolves around fighting an evil organization and doing various errands for good-aligned churches. If the character wouldn't be interested in that, maybe that isn't the right character for the campaign.
So by those criteria, I'd much rather have a neutral evil fighter who is outwardly pious and honourable but whose hobby is torturing kittens in the privacy of his own home over a chaotic good rogue who refuses to accept any missions from the church of St. Cuthbert and who constantly gets the party in trouble with the city guard.