Evil characters doing evil things -- where are the adventures?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

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Evil PC's can work very well as long as they are working together as a team towards some goal. They don't necessarily have to be "against each other" like we see in books and movies. Those tactics are necessary in books and movies because usually the badguys are powerful enough that if they actually worked together the good guys would lose.
Its part of the "lesson" they want to teach- that working together is greater than not working together. And its generally a good lesson.

An all-rogue theft campaign can work well along this vein. The PC's aren't against each other- but they are evil thieves robbing people blind. Robbing can easily escalate to assassination. Still- there is a concrete goal that doesn't pit the PC's against each other.

If the PC's are dead set on attacking each other and fighting against each other then no adventure you design or that can be professionally done will fix that.

In essence:
Evil PC's need to work together just as neutral/PC's do. The goals they work toward are just usually a great deal different.

-S


Heliocentrist wrote:
I think there would be quite a market -- an untapped one! -- out there for anyone willing to put some time and effort into writing adventures for evil PC's.

I don't. I expect the market would be exceptionally small. Market research has been done for computer RPGs on how many people play/want to play "good" vs "evil" in them and the results are overwhelmingly "good". I don't see why tabletop RPGs would be any different. More people want to be the hero who saves the world than the evil bastard who destroys it.


Evil (to me) simply means that the character is willing to step over a line that Neutral and Good are not willing to do.

There are no "rules" (if alignments can be called rules) saying you can't perform a "good" act as an evil character.
If the evil character feels he can't get away with being evil, then he won't do evil. Selfish means he's going to look out for himself.

Some examples:

He might not run into a building on fire to save someone. He might not even call for help so someone else can, and just walk away.
However, he might call for help if someone else is watching him and might get angry that he's being so callous.
He might even go in and rescue the person if he has the power to trivially do so, and a group of people are asking him why he won't... especially that guard there tapping the pommel of his sword.

I don't see why Evil needs to be "has an ultimate goal that means I have to eventually kill my friends". Why can't it simply be a goal that requires other like-minded people helping him? It might, however, mean that if his friend is hanging on the edge of a cliff, and they can't afford to go down and rescue him, they simply don't have a problem leaving him behind.

To an Evil person, it's a resource lost. To a Good person, they are losing a friend and will try harder. That is the difference. The evil person won't shed a tear.

I don't see why "Pragmatically Evil" can't work as an Evil character.

.

Regarding a campaign/adventure path that caters to this... try ENWorld's War of the Burning Sky.

Just in case this spoils things for players of the game (it's not specifics but it does thumbnail describe a bit of the game's progress)...

Spoiler:
In the campaign, you will end up having to fight celestials, and even good people, because their goals are opposed to yours. You might (will likely) have to side with identifiably evil people to beat a greater evil. You will come across many morally tough scenarios (kill the innocents to survive, make deals with devils for souls to get needed information, etc).
They did a stupendous job at covering all possible paths the players might decide to go, even if they fail at a task or do nothing. Playing an evil character, or a group of evil characters in this game is very easily DM'd.

Plus, it's a game that runs from 1st level to 20th, and possibly even epic levels depending on the side quests the players pick up on (or the DM drops hints for).

It's made for core SRD rules 3.5e. You can play most of it out of the box with little conversion, although you might want to add a couple hitpoints per CR for each NPC. Oh, and maybe figure out CMD/CMB.

The game also assumes 3.5e xp per level, which even the fast progression for Pathfinder gets too slow at around 5th or 6th level.
Since Pathfinder doesn't have any XP costs for anything, I've just been telling my players when to level when the campaign manual says "the players should be at about X level now". A lot less bookkeeping.

Grand Lodge

Kevin Andrew Murphy wrote:


As much as it may be fun to have evil be sociopathic axe murderers, crazed cultists, and Ritalin-deprived bandits, these aren't the sort of people who build evil empires, and in fact, the most successful evil empires may not be all that evil.

Morality and ethics are things that people in societies evolve to help build a stabilised environment out of chaos. They work as structure for large numbers of individuals.

Nations however by themselvs are too few and more importantly too disparate in power to be a society. Morality and ethics aren't principles that apply save for purposes of propaganda.


Mr. Fishy has Evil, Soulless, and non good.
Evil swerves to hit you. Soulless hopes that your corspe didn't damage his car. Non good swerves to miss you, as to avoid damage to his car.

Mr. Fishy is non good.

Sovereign Court

A Lawful Evil party respects each other's power, abilities, and realises they complement each other. Me and two other players formed a 10th Level Adventuring party for a DM, calling ourselves the 'Legion of Doom'. None of the character's were exactly friends, but they were driven by mutual respect for each other, for power, and a disgust for those too weak to defend themselves. We each found a niche (I was Nagash, a half-orc cleric Necromancer of Nerull), and the other two were a half-dragon fighter (the truly scary muscle incarnate of the group) and an Aasimar evil Paladin (who was subtly converting the local populace to Hextor, and by extension our Legion of Doom).

Lawful evil parties work great- a party of chaotic evils is just silly, but Lawful Evils? One of the best RP experiences i've ever had.

RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16

I've never associated evil with "selfish." That's the domain of chaotic. To me, evil is schadenfreude. Evil enjoys watching others suffer, but it doesn't have to be psychotic about it. (Good meanwhile enjoys seeing happiness: altruism and generosity are the effect, not the cause)

Evil is not a corner-case! Many people are evil, and get along just fine in society. Evil doesn't have to indulge every whim. Evil can know there's a time and a place for things, and not even be bitter about that. You don't eat cake for every meal, and you don't kick every puppy.

Evil can have exactly the same jobs as good. A prosecuting attorney might be netural good: giving some closure to victims and their families, and hopefully preventing future suffering by taking criminals off the street. He might be lawful neutral: ensuring that the common folk have a banner to rally around by making an example of those who disrupt their daily lives. Or he could be chaotic evil: gleefully sending those dirty bastards away on any technicality, to rot until they die.

Are there published evil adventures? Yes! The majority of them! Hell, even chaotic evil characters with at least one mental stat over 10 should be perfectly satisfied with "I get to watch some bandits bleed out, and these townsfolk will pay me for taking the pleasure." Do what you love, the money will follow!


tejón wrote:
I've never associated evil with "selfish." That's the domain of chaotic.

Nope, selfishness is very squarely the domain of evil and has nothing whatsoever to do with chaos. Evil always seeks to benefit themselves, regardless of whether anyone else benefits or is hurt by the gain. That's what makes them evil. The evil person will always ask (themselves, if not out loud), "OK, so how does this benefit me?". In the case of hierarchical evil, the answer is usually something along the lines of "I won't get squished like a bug by the Big Boss.", but it's still all about what benefit the individual gains from the action. Selfishness is evil, and evil is selfishness. They're inherently, bi-directionally, linked.

Chaos is a whole 'nother can of worms, but it doesn't have anything to do with selfishness. You can be a very generous and altruistic (as much as anyone can be altruistic, anyway) person and still be Chaotic.


This thread hearkens back to an idea I read a long time ago - that you can ask 100 gamers for the definition of a specific alignment, and you'll get 100 different answers.

Sometimes I hate alignments. Is that evil?

Dark Archive

Talonne Hauk wrote:

This thread hearkens back to an idea I read a long time ago - that you can ask 100 gamers for the definition of a specific alignment, and you'll get 100 different answers.

Sometimes I hate alignments. Is that evil?

Probably more chaotic, a desire to escape labels.

Given that slapping a reductionistic label on something is the first step to dehumanizing it and minimizing your own moral connection to it, eschewing alignments could even be seen as good! (Since that's how it's used in game, as an excuse for which 'people' are okay to kill and rob, based on whether or not they ping the Paladin's moral radar.)

And yeah, fastest way to drag a D&D thread to hell is to start an argument about the alignment of Batman. That or start a thread about the superiority of the katana. Either is our equivalent of Godwin. :)

Liberty's Edge

There was actually a very good essay written in a long-ago issue of Dragon Magazine exploring modern characters in relation to alignment. This was during the 1st edition days, but alignment hasn't changed much.

The first thing it said was that modern sensibilities can't be applied to medieval society. A lot of our modern social foibles would have made us lawbreakers and criminals in medieval society.

Anyone own a cat? Speak out against the government or the church? Have sex before marriage?

I think you get the idea.

But, being a game, the essay continued to explain modern characters who fulfilled the ideas of an alignment.

My favorite was neutral good - someone who does good overall, without being hidebound by the law. Someone who occasionally steps over the line to work for the greater good.

The example they gave? Dirty Harry. I believe pretty firmly that most action movie heroes are neutral good.

Lawful evil is another good one. Organized, usually keeps their word, will betray an ally only if it's the only way left to succeed. I can't remember the example the essay gave, but I think Vader and Palpatine fall into this one.

Oh, and Chaotic Neutral was classic... Daffy Duck. Sometimes good, sometimes bad, usually crazy.

If you can rustle up the essay, it's good reading.

RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16

Zurai wrote:
You can be a very generous and altruistic (as much as anyone can be altruistic, anyway) person and still be Selfish.

Agreed. ;)

Shadow Lodge Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 8

Here's my theory: I think evil groups implode because the characters aren't playing the 'evil' alignment, they're playing EVIL.

Evil characters act much like good or neutral characters, they're first and foremost rational people who act to accomplish their goals in a reasonable (albeit immoral) manner.

EVIL characters, on the other hand, are just trying to do evil things for the novelty of being evil. They're main concern is "How evil can I be?" not "What would make sense for my character in this situation?" Eventually they get tired of pillage and murder and look for other ways to get their EVIL fix, such as Treachery and Backstabbing. It doesn't hurt that everyone else in the party is being just as EVIL, and you can't help but feel like they deserve it.

On the other hand, maybe they implode because players are used to slaying the bad guys, and just can't shake the habit even when they are the bad guys?

Dark Archive

I actually have run "evil" based campaigns, using regular adventures. The alignment-twist makes some encounters more challenging, while others become more challenging for the DM as "morally flexible" characters can find more novel solutions to problems.

Probably the best "evil" campaign I ran was using the "Githyanki Incursion" plotline and adventure hooks from an old issue of dungeon - the evil party ('united' under the same church's banner) took an attitude of "this is Our Realm to dominate, so back off!" attitude, so they 'defended' the world from Githyanki occupation out of their own selfish reasons.

Look also, any adventure or AP with Selytiel would probably be doable with an evil party, given his not-too-nice nature. :D

Dark Archive

Dork Lord wrote:

Man oh man... I just can't bring myself to play an evil character. My usual character types are Paladins and Angels. Am I just too much of a goody goody? I like being the good guy... being the hero. Vanquishing evil... the whole nine yards.

Yet I had no problem playing Sabbat in Vampire. Odd. In D&D though, a neutral alignment's the worst I'm willing to do.

Quick way to cure that: start up a game in Neverwinter Nights; play as a paladin; butcher everyone in town square.

I was somewhat surprised by how conflicted I was when I did that the first time. After all, they're just little bits of non-sentient computer code. But there it is...I actually feel remorse. I suppose that means I'm still human.

Personally, I have little difficulty roleplaying evil characters. Fundamentally, at a base psychological level, evil characters and good characters all want the same (or similar) things. They want their basic survival needs met, they want some measure of physical and emotional comfort (though tastes differ), they usually want some recognition or standing in society or among their peers and they want a sense of their own agency. Where characters differ significantly is in the methods and strategies for attaining such things; what they're willing to do and what they're all too willing to ignore.

What it comes down to, ultimately, is trying to realize that evil people are people too, and trying to figure out how their thought processes work and how they would go about getting what they want.

For myself, I had a rather lonely childhood growing up on a farm. So when my mind was set afire by The Legend of Zelda and I wanted to act it out...well, I had to play the role of the hero, the princess, and the villain myself. Even when I was seven years old there was an undeniable thrill to assuming the role of the bad guy, and somehow I think it gave me a peculiar insight into how bad guys work.

That said, I have very little experience playing evil characters in tabletop games, though with any luck, the Rise of the Runelords game my friends and I have been planning will get under way and I'll be able to try my hand at a lawful evil enchanter. I like lawful evil. It's a sophisticated, calculating evil, and if you play it right, it's indistinguishable from a good or neutral alignment. Lawful evil characters are usually smart enough to recognize that the goodwill of a town that you just rescued from a horde of annoying goblins can be useful.

It's entirely possible to play through an entire campaign as the sole evil character in a party of do-gooders, simply because it makes sense to travel and fight with a group of capable adventurers through situations where you're likely to become fabulously wealthy, get lots of magic items and lots of influence, all of which can serve a would-be tyrant-in-the-making quite well before he strikes off on his own. You don't betray the party until it's obvious that you no longer need them, and more importantly, you have catalogued their tactics and abilities and have planned counter-measures. Random killings and betrayals just out of spite and without any long-term planning are senseless and counter-productive. Even in D&D, it's difficult to unkill someone, and you never know when you're going to need someone later on.


Dumb and Evil gets executed.

Smart and Evil gets the girl...and the treasure...and the throne.

Dark Archive

Mynameisjake wrote:

Dumb and Evil gets executed.

Smart and Evil gets the girl...and the treasure...and the throne.

Dumb and Evil is indeed likely to to be executed by Smart and Evil, as it just makes sense to clean that sort of thing up, and Smart and Evil is more likely to clean it up decisively and unilaterally than Good.


People say evil parties implode ineitably because that is what commonly happens. YMMV

That being said, I played a fun reverse return to the temple of elemental evil game once where the premise was we wanted to join the temple so we tried to impress them but ended up getting laughed ouyt the door and threatened so we waged massive evil war on them for the insult. Was lots of evil fun what little it lasted.


Mynameisjake wrote:

Dumb and Evil gets executed.

Smart and Evil gets the girl...and the treasure...and the throne.

That sums it all.


Pregenerated adventures don’t necessarily need to have good/neutrally aligned PC. Try them with an evil party and see what happens. As for an evil party eventually impoding, that is not always the case. I played an evil campaign (2E) with a party of 3, and we ended up surviving and prospering in the end.

I played a LE human male fighter (2 handed sword), with a NE female drow ninja, and a CE male elf wizard/cleric necromancer. We started a rag tag group of treasure hunters and eventually killed a duke who was next in line for the throne of the nation we were in. We were dubbed the “king killers”, and eventually heisted the king’s royal jewels, scepter, and crown. Sold them, got rich, and eventually the king sent all the powerful heroes in the land after us one at a time. We were always on the run, hunted, nearly defeated numerous times, but by working together (out of necessity, survival is a great motivator after all) we slew everyone that was sent against us, including a band of good clerics, a high level paladin, etc.

Eventually, our notoriety was noticed by an evil guild, and we were taken on as their agents. Over the course of the campaign, we eventually turned on our benefactors, and destroyed personal enemies within the organization. In the end, I became to ruler of the nation through years of subterfuge and playing the part of a loyal duke, the drow set up her own ninja clan/assassins guild, and the elf raised a huge undead army and established a necromantic school. It was a campaign full of hardships, setbacks, loss of money and items, we were running from the law most of the time, and bickering between ourselves due to conflicts of personality and interests. It was the most difficult, aggravating campaign ever, but it was the most fun I ever had and required the most of my roleplaying skills. Would love to try it again sometime.


Sheboygen wrote:
I could very easily see Kingmaker being a great platform for an evil campaign.

yep, we are 4 sessions in

half the party I gm to are LE, the rest LN

They will
explore
exterminate
exploit
expand

They will go forth and tame a wild land, scatter the fey as they will ultimately get in the way. Route out chaos and all disruption, they will forge a great kingdom, make allies where necessary, make deals and pacts when needed.

forge an empire where everyone will contribute
everyone will push toward the same goal

this empire will fluorish

as an aside im amazed at the number of chaotically aligned PCs are in Kingmaker from reading the relevant forum. surely thats no way to run a kingdom...


Wolfboy wrote:

There was actually a very good essay written in a long-ago issue of Dragon Magazine exploring modern characters in relation to alignment. This was during the 1st edition days, but alignment hasn't changed much.

My favorite was neutral good - someone who does good overall, without being hidebound by the law. Someone who occasionally steps over the line to work for the greater good.

The example they gave? Dirty Harry. I believe pretty firmly that most action movie heroes are neutral good.

Lawful evil is another good one. Organized, usually keeps their word, will betray an ally only if it's the only way left to succeed. I can't remember the example the essay gave, but I think Vader and Palpatine fall into this one.

Oh, and Chaotic Neutral was classic... Daffy Duck. Sometimes good, sometimes bad, usually crazy.

If you can rustle up the essay, it's good reading.

If you can read the alignments in the Palladium frpg. They are so much better than the kindy of woolly descriptions given in D&D/3/4/PF rulebooks

they match to what your writing above


Magus Black wrote:

The first question would be: What kind of Evil?

Most people don’t have the attitude to play Evil Characters properly usually ending with them killing their team or the team killing them; they play 'evil' as 'chronically psychotic...and they give us all a bad name. (Asmodeus damn them!)

The very nature of DnD practically ensures that PCs without a moral compass to speak of will be murderous psychopaths on a power trip.


Mikaze wrote:


One thing to add to the whole group-cohesiveness issue is that just because someone is evil doesn't mean they have to be incapable of caring about their comrades, whether it's because of honor, sentimental attatchment, or genuine love of friends and family.

This is only true for villains from Saturday morning cartoons or those written by people who explicitly pander to "evil is cool" crowd.


Kaisoku wrote:


I don't see why Evil needs to be "has an ultimate goal that means I have to eventually kill my friends". Why can't it simply be a goal that requires other like-minded people helping him?

Because the true underlying goal of most DnD campaigns is accumulation of wealth and power. Evil bastards not being willing to share either of these is pretty much a corollary to them being evil bastards.

Sovereign Court

Mynameisjake wrote:


I can't comment on those adventure paths specifically, as I don't own them, but changing from good to evil is usually just as simply as swapping out stat blocks. Devils become Angels, goblins become halflings, etc.

Sometimes it's easier than that. Rescue the princess from the ogres becomes rescue the princess (who is needed for the sacrifice to the dark gods) from the ogres. Got orcs? Now you have elves. Got a cave? Now you have a hollowed out tree. Want to earn a few bucks? Raid the tomb of the sainted martyr instead of the tomb of endless darkness. Got an adventure with brigands? Now it's an adventure with the Just Lord's Garrison.

As for Good and Evil and Self Image, I just don't think fantasy role playing games are really suited for those kinds of explorations of ambiguity. Not because it's inappropriate for gaming, quite the opposite. Gaming is a great way to explore moral ambiguity. But any game that has alignments, by definition, isn't going to allow for much debate on the topic. Am I evil? Let's cast Detect Evil and find out. Huh, guess I am (or not).

Now, it certainly is possible to scrap the alignment system, and just about every DM has done it at one point or the other, but games like DnD and Pathfinder are very much "pick a side'...

The problem with playing evil characters is that though human beings are a varied bunch, they tend to gravitate toward organised societies with some sort of ethical system. Especially in our modern day world we like to be seen as good around our peers and certainly not evil.

Though the human psyche is a complicate mess of visceral and often dark urges we suppress them because people with any world view be it religious or atheist all know that for societies to truly survive there needs to be a certain level of cooperation, and people, even "evil" (defined by moral standards of Law) people are not above the concept of love, only if it simply amounts to the filial love between families, friends etc.,. This is the material belief of human beings who play RPGs. I'm sure that if Orcs or Devils or what have you, decided to play RPGs they would find the same difficulties in trying to understand motivations of good societies and ethical priciples which would not natural to them as players. Maybe they would be simply LG characters exacting psychotic revenge on evil creatures whilst not truly understanding the nuances of all the aspects of being a goodly soul. Basically they would act good (in a similar way they act in their natures). They would not have as players the same physical revulsion to power grabbing, murder, rape as we do as human players. They would be like fish out of water, playing an extreme "good" character as they understand good, which would be very little.

It's easier for actors to play evil characters because they work within the confines of a script and as such are not forced to take on the responsibility of an unscripted decision taken by a RPG player.

I think this is why when evil parties especially CE ones are difficult to manage because they cannot differentiate pragmatic survival of the group over their own selfish bid for power.

In D&D/PF or any fantasy game, I was never comfortable with playing evil characters, and found it detrimental to the fun of adventuring. I still find it hard to understand how evil mortals are happy to descend to the Abyss, Hell or Abaddon to endure eternal torments, eventual oblivion, or if lucky to rise in power. It comes down to the simple truth that a house divided against itself will fall. But were I personally to be a PC in a D&D/PF world I would want peace after death not pain and suffering.

I played in one game (one session) where an evil fighter character decided on a whim to rape and sodomize a fellow player's Dwarf PC and the GM was fine with it. I found the whole thing completely repellent and basically made the game to me a joke. I left.

So my take in my games are this. The fantasy world is full of horrific beings that do all these horrific things. Good societies are creative and form islands of hope against terrible odds. So a world needs heroes. There are plenty of anti-heroes about but they are better off as NPCs. I discourage evil characters in my games for reasons I've stated above, and the fact that players will distrust the evil PC player which eventually leads to strife among players rather than PCs.

Another take is this. Alignment in D&D/PF is All or Nothing. There is no middle ground. Characters from time to time may do evil things (i.e. lie, cheat at cards, or take out their anger on a defenseless foe by beheading him, despite the victims whimpering defenseless protestations). The character might be generally chaotic good but has "issues" that make him do something on a whim in one circumstance. Does he become CE? No he is fallible, and his emotions got the better of him.

A devout Paladin might set fire to a evil temple in a city due to his anger at their slaying of his comrade, Unfortunately the fire spreads and many innocent people die in the inferno. He lost control and did something that was both illegal and wrong, but this does not mean he automatically becomes evil. He must seek atonement for his rash an foolish act, but at the time he truly (Though wrongly) believed he was expressing righteous anger.

Strict alignment enforcement should only be for outer plane outsiders.

But in my experience of 30 odd years playing the great game is that parties reflecting goodly/lawful/neutral/chaotic characters with flaws in their traits makes for interesting roleplay. For me the fun is the exploration of a psyche, and playing upon the traits of that psyche. There is much more to PCs or NPCs and monsters for that matter than their simple alignment label. Now if we were Drow playing D&D/PF we would play characters from the perspective of a Drow player.


Adventure Path Charter Subscriber
FatR wrote:
Mikaze wrote:


One thing to add to the whole group-cohesiveness issue is that just because someone is evil doesn't mean they have to be incapable of caring about their comrades, whether it's because of honor, sentimental attatchment, or genuine love of friends and family.

This is only true for villains from Saturday morning cartoons or those written by people who explicitly pander to "evil is cool" crowd.

Not so.

Case in point - Pablo Escobar, the most infamous of the Columbian drug lords. He is clearly evil because he ruthlessly will have anyone (including his Columbian drug cartel rivals) killed who interferred with his operations. He very nearly killed his own brother over a minor misunderstanding concerning the 'business'

Yet, by all accounts, he was a devoted family man and father. He built schools, churchs and recreation centres, sponsored youth sports teams and helped the poor, becoming a hero in the eyes of the poor.

Same thing with real life historical slavers. They are well respected icons in their communities, even church going men. But they are still 'evil' by definition because they peddle in the pain and misery of capturing, 'taming' and selling of human beings.

Evil can work in a campaign if the characters have 'common cause' (such as being slavers or drug kingpins or the fantasy equalivalent of Mafia Dons). Where evil campaigns break apart is when players view each other as rivals and threats for clawing their way to the top of the dung heap, rather than 'partners' to maximize their power and wealth.

That said, my experience is most evil campaigns fall apart because the former viewpoint (rivals / threats) dominates rather the the latter (partners in crime).

Grand Lodge

Heliocentrist wrote:


Great point! My 6 year old son commented on Star Wars the other day, saying, "The Imperials think they're the good guys, right?" It is, to a certain extent, all relative. The tribe of goblins living life in relative quiet seclusion probably views that band of adventurers raiding their homes as "evil." Not a bad plot line -- goblins get revenge on the humans who wiped out their tribe. Something like that would work.

If you ever read the SW supplement on Imperial PCs, many of them ARE. Quite a few are idealistic young guns who bought the Imperial propaganda on "Join the Empire and help save civilisation as we know it."

At least one of the canon Star Wars characters started out that way... Han Solo.

Dark Archive

I was gonna suggest Reverse Dungeon, but it's already been noted, I see.

Really, almost any adventure works equally well (or, in some cases, even better!) for an evil party. Our first 'evil campaign' was Keep on the Borderlands. After clearing out the Caves of Chaos, we brought our booty into the Keep and continued the carnage.

I mean, really, why else would the adventure have detailed the contents of the keep's 'bank' if we weren't meant to take it? :)

Many standard dungeon-crawls work excellently as fodder for an evil party, as they can retrofit the castle / dungeon / etc. for their own use afterwards. Quite often, the area can be seized, first by ousting the monstrous inhabitants, then by securing a writ (if even necessary, as some dungeons are squarely in unclaimed territory) from the grateful local rulers, to 'keep the area secure.' Bam. Instant evil stronghold.

Several adventure areas also have interesting features, that can be exploited, starting in ye olde days with the magic rock in B1, or the amazing magic-item granting altars of the Elder Elemental Evil, or just the occasional magical pool of water that can cure wounds, but mysteriously doesn't work after being removed from the pool, incentivizing the party to seize control of the area around the pool, so that they retain exclusive access to its infinite healing potential.


Set wrote:

Our first 'evil campaign' was Keep on the Borderlands. After clearing out the Caves of Chaos, we brought our booty into the Keep and continued the carnage.

I mean, really, why else would the adventure have detailed the contents of the keep's 'bank' if we weren't meant to take it? :)

Heh. I remember, about a quarter of a century ago, playing in a campaign where the PCs helped to conquer the Keep on the Borderlands. We weren't evil; we were simply of a nation that was an enemy of the Keep.

But before THAT, I ran a campaign of my own, starting with KotB, in which the Keep was the party's home base for many adventures. After returning to the Keep from the umpteenth adventure, the party found that bad people had infiltrated it and were in the process of conquering it, so the PCs travelled all over the Keep to hunt down the bad guys. I must have reasoned that without an adventure like THAT, what was the point of having a map of the Keep?

Silver Crusade

FatR wrote:
Mikaze wrote:


One thing to add to the whole group-cohesiveness issue is that just because someone is evil doesn't mean they have to be incapable of caring about their comrades, whether it's because of honor, sentimental attatchment, or genuine love of friends and family.

This is only true for villains from Saturday morning cartoons or those written by people who explicitly pander to "evil is cool" crowd.

I'm going to give you the same advice I gave you before:

If you honestly believe what you wrote, you need to READ MOAR.

Either more good fiction or some @#$%ing history.

Hell, Black Moria hit it right on the head and that's only scratching the surface.


Black Moria wrote:
FatR wrote:
Mikaze wrote:


One thing to add to the whole group-cohesiveness issue is that just because someone is evil doesn't mean they have to be incapable of caring about their comrades, whether it's because of honor, sentimental attatchment, or genuine love of friends and family.

This is only true for villains from Saturday morning cartoons or those written by people who explicitly pander to "evil is cool" crowd.

Not so.

Case in point - Pablo Escobar, the most infamous of the Columbian drug lords. He is clearly evil because he ruthlessly will have anyone (including his Columbian drug cartel rivals) killed who interferred with his operations. He very nearly killed his own brother over a minor misunderstanding concerning the 'business'

Yet, by all accounts, he was a devoted family man and father. He built schools, churchs and recreation centres, sponsored youth sports teams and helped the poor, becoming a hero in the eyes of the poor.

It is CoLOOOOmbian pleaaaase. And being partially Colombian myself I must agree with this analysis.


Don't adventurers regularly slaughter entire communities of orcs/goblins who are more often than not simply hanging out in a dungeon?

I mean, sure, those orcs regularly rape and pillage the local villages.. but from THEIR perspective they are simply providing for their families. I mean, think about it: if orcs were simply murderous sociopaths with no regard to loyalty, duty, family ties, etc..., how could they mount ANY sort of organized resistance or organized attack?

Think about the Huns or the Magyar or the Mongolians or the Vikings... those are the "orcs" of real life.

Those orcs feel comradery with and loyalty to their orcy friends, worry about their families, and feel persecuted by humans and elves.

I guess my points is that "evil" in the RPG setting is probably best defined by the measures you will take to achieve your goals. Being evil does not necessarily mean you are a homicidal sociopath who simply can't work in a team. I think an "evil" adventuring party that was cohesive, that considered the other members of the party friends whom they felt loyalty towards...

I would even argue that roleplay an "evil" character is actually MORE difficult than roleplaying "good" ones.

I do concede, however, that when the average 13-year-old decides to play an evil character, he will simply become destructive.

Anyone with any life experience might take a view that is a lot more nuanced.

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