I've been kicking around the idea of an evil campaign for quite some time, and talked my players into trying it out for our upcoming Council of Thieves game I'll be running in a week or two.
So basically I'm curious what they'll do with all the brakes off, and Chelliax is a great place for it. The players are:
A tiefling summoner who is particularly horrible-looking. He's got small metallic horns, an inner glow, smoking breath, shark teeth, the works. He's kind of embraced his scary appearance after a painful childhood as an unwanted child of minor nobility. He now hires himself out summoning what-have-you and plays up his connection to the infernal because he needs hugs. Lawful Evil and Rakshasa-spawned. He was convinced to attend the initial meeting via a letter promising his usual fee for an evening's work in exchange for participation in a community discussion. He assumes there is something illegal going on.
A strix rogue who was something of a black sheep on their mountain rookery due to his orphan status and lack of communal spirit. He left due to disinterest in the mythology of his people and concern about attacks from imperial troops. He's been living in the slums of Westcrown for weeks and has become something of a bogeyman among the locals. (Like Spring-heeled Jack or something) He was convinced to attend the initial meeting in exchange for some non-rotten food and the promise of being able to one day live in something more stable than a half-caved in bell tower. Neutral Evil.
A tiefling inquisitor. Despite being loyal to the Empress and Asmodeus, this tiefling (featuring eyestalks and claws) is forced to work three times as hard as his colleagues and is still despised for his freakish appearance and achievements. He's Daemon-spawn, I think; whichever one gave him an Int bonus. He has certain issues with the heavy-handed tactics of some Hellknights. Lawful Evil. Hasn't been invited to the initial meeting yet, and may be more likely to be a mole than an honest participant.
A tiefling cleric. This character is still conceptual, but will likely be a nuker first and healer second.
And finally, the control group. A Lawful Good Half-Orc Paladin. This Wiscrani native is the rare half-orc son of a stable if not the most romantic pairing of a particularly ugly human dockworker and a reasonably fetching orc woman. Unfortunately junior's habit of rabble-rousing and playing amateur lawman from time to time has seen his parents briefly "interviewed" at Citadel Rivad. Although they were released with no permanent damage the fact that all questions regarded their son's activities sent a pretty clear message. Works as a clerk for a day job, and is employed directly below a certain NPC member of the Westcrown resistance. Has agreed to attend the initial meeting after a strange meeting with an idealistic redhead while picking up ink for his boss.
I have been pretty pleased with the thought most players put in their backgrounds. Also, the tieflings all took the Fiendish Heritage feat which I feel makes them a lot more unique and fun. (I offered to give them a random heritage, but no takers. :D)
I'm looking forward to the party dynamic with the paladin. The character concept was in place before I requested an evil game, and I was kind of curious whether a good character in an evil party would be a divisive force or not. I'm not worried about the players having problems even if the characters do, so this should be fun. :)
I'm thinking about reporting the game sessions either here or in the Council of Thieves board. Partly because I like musing over it, partly to help me remember, and partly because I thought others might be curious. If anyone feels this is unnecessary clutter I'll just keep it to my notebook. ;)
Three demonspawn, and one paladin...
That will be a short story, a servant of asmodeus, an evil summoner and another "conceptual" tiefling (Surely evil xD) and a poor paladin.
Either the paladin falls or someone ends dead...
Maybe if they were not demons... but as far as you presented it, they are all rotten to the core, so, i wont place my bet on the paladin.-
a Funny experiment btw.-
Evil games can be some of the best; it really can encourage your group to think outside the box. It’s also nice to run a game where you truly have no friends except you comrades.
Not sure why everyone felt that playing a tiefling was appropriate? Because teiflings are part devil they are innately "evil?" From the sounds of it the group is gearing up to just rape and pillage everything in their path.
Sounds like you are just positioning the group to tear each other to shreds. If the pally plays the way his class should play he will be dead within 2 min game one... This doesn't sound very fun too me.
I hope all goes well but your group has enough hurdles to overcome with everyone working together but with the pally situation it seems insurmountable.
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A halfway decent Paladin player will see this group as a challenge to try to not only keep on the straight and narrow (more or less frustratingly, since it wouldn't be fun if they just rolled over!), but to redeem.
At the very worst, he could resign himself to 'fighting fire with fire' and allow the forces of evil to destroy each other... The evil PCs might find it unsettling when one of them dies in a fight and the Paladin shrugs and says, 'So what. They die. You die. Either way, I win and the world is a little brighter.'
If he's clever, he might even be able to peer-pressure one of the Tieflings to, 'Stop being an obedient child and letting your fiendish daddy tell you how to act. Spit in his face and prove him wrong, by doing something he'd *hate.*'
He could also see himself as the force preventing these guys to break lose and wreak havoc by pointing their fangs at the true ennemy. Even though allying with evil would be bad, in the end the greater good triumphs.
A lot of outside of the box thinking and original roleplaying will be required to come up with new exiting, believable ideas explanining why he is still working with them when somethign really s@~%ty happens and is discovered by the paladin.
That sounds like a really interesting setup for a game. How well it will work will depend on your players and on how mature they are. I have been in one or two evil games, both as a player and as a DM, and they can be good fun as long as you make sure that everyone has the same understanding about how graphic and how far evil can go. If you want the game to last for a while, the characters will need a reason to work together (it is good that no one is playing Chaotic Evil so far). As you have a group of good and evil alignments, you should prepare for what happens when the paladin either falls or has to confront his "allies". Intra-party conflict tends to end games really quickly.
Thank you all for expressing interest, I'll let you know how it goes. We might be starting as early as tomorrow night, depending on how long the final session of our Rise of the Runelords game takes.
I'm not terribly concerned about the game's longevity, these are very good players and close friends who have no problem keeping disagreements civil.
Hokay!
***!SPOILERS!***
Had the first game on Sunday, and a couple of housekeeping bits... The inquisitor has eyestalks AND a dog snout. The third tiefling is no longer intended to be a nuking cleric. He's a red-skinned something-or-other spawn (I love that all three took that feat) who is building towards True Necromancer.
SO! The first game went as follows. The inquisitor joined the initial meeting due to a childhood hatred for shadowbeasts and concern over the methods of House Thrune. The True Necromancer joined for little reason at all. He's our youngest player and just kind of nods his way through roleplaying. He'll get there...
When the party was forced to flee into the sewers following the arrival of Hellknights, Janiven immediately separated from the party and took the boy (Morsolo?) with her. Since the entire party has darkvision, she figured it would be safer for them to go it alone without a lantern. The party wandered fairly aimlessly in the sewers going from encounter to encounter. I wasn't too concerned with pacing in this initial chase because I was testing what they could handle and I know they were experimenting with the new characters. I had them run into most of the hazards, except the special ones and the undead. They encountered hellknights several times and proved to be as powerful as I'd anticipated. (They have a tendency to build murder-machines.)
A couple of gems from the sewer:
They encountered a goblin den and were detected as they approached. When they came near the door the goblins burst out in a surprise round and managed to sneak attack the inquisitor and paladin (with some successful tumble checks and no concern about entering the water) who were both under-equipped - not wanting to look ready for battle while walking around town. They started laying the goblins out in the next round, so the fourth (I added one) shut the door, dropped trow over their meager hoard of 20gp and took a ready action with his crossbow. Managed to nail the rogue when he opened the door, and then the goblins were no more. But the party left the 20gp, covered in the goblin's parting gift to them.
They also made their way past some brown mold in a small side-room, setting off an out-of-sight shrieker and attracting a torble swarm from one direction and four hellknights from the other. Most of them also took a good deal of damage from the brown mold. The swarm proved to be difficult to kill, the hellknights mostly died due to brown mold. The party had moved past it and when one of the hellknights entered to kill the shrieker he was overcome. When his torch hit the brown mold, it took a couple rounds to gutter out. That was fun. In fact, the mold eventually killed the swarm too. =/
After making their way out of the sewer I described the NPCs in the resistance to them, but they weren't too interested. Except the paladin, who was startled to see Sclavo. (His direct superior in his day job.) Janiven was quick to get them up to speed on the Arael issue, and then they were out the door to set up the ambush. I let Janiven and the NPCs she brought with her be vague about their contributions so I could use them to turn the tide only if it proved necessary. As it happens, they were pretty spooked at the size of the prisoner escort, but stuck to their plan of stringing ropes at either end of the bridge. Then they'd lever the ropes taught at both ends after the mounted hellknights charged Janiven's crew further down the road and the wagon had drawn up onto the bridge.
It worked to plan, and they had most of the hellknights left at the bridge stuck with little room to maneuver. The summoner proved pretty deadly, although I think his pets are going to be less impressive in a few levels. The inquisitor didn't feel particularly useful, but I suspect that will change in the second module - where social skills are more necessary. During this fight the river was also a hazard, sweeping more than a few hellknights and summoned critters downstream. The driver sounded the alarm pretty quickly when his escort started dropping (and the guy on the ballista couldn't aim at most of the party who had swarmed up from under the bridge) so the mounted hellknights never got close to Janiven's crew, who actually pursued from a distance when the horses wheeled and started back towards the bridge. By the time the mounted hellknights returned (third or fourth round) their companions were all sleeping with the fishes and the rogue had managed to get the door open and yank Arael out. They had to jump the river, disposing of the summoner's pets on the way, and wound up getting trounced pretty bad when they reached the other side where the party had dug in a bit. Shanwen actually got killed by NPC arrows, but he was on his last legs due to the party, who took out the entire rest of the ambush unaided. Arael gave them the healing they desperately needed and while slitting throats "to make sure" (the rogue has emotional problems) the strix found the carriage key (haha) and the note mentioning the bastards of erebus. So the party should have some insight into the scale of the bastard's operation once we get to the next game.
The paladin soaked a lot of damage, go figure. He also mentioned pretty early on that the resistance is unlikely to find another group of capable adventurers that doesn't have mostly selfish (read: evil) motives, so he's devoting himself to pointing these delinquents at greater evils and keeping them from hurting the resistance. (or its members, given the way the rogue was glaring at they boy who led the hellknights to the inn)
So they've got a sense of their characters, and a familiarity with "home base". I've taken their measure and it's clear I can abuse them a bit without worrying they're going to drop dead. This should be fun! I'm also pleased that the inquisitor and paladin already appear to be fairly similar in their approach to the law (and changing it) so I expect they will probably do a lot to keep the rest of the party doing something productive. Maybe they'll both shift to LN. That would crack me up.
Second session was surprisingly eventful considering how little got done.
The tiefling cleric officially requested to be female before this session started, which was odd but didn't bother anyone enough to deny. The party started with a LONG argument over what to call their rebel group. It was eventually decided that they would be called "The Call of the Steel Phoenix". Quite a mouthful, but not bad. They played around with it - coming up with codes, "Have you heard the call?" and getting a new player into the group (an antisocial LN human fighter that wants to be a Hellknight of one of the minor orders).
Eventually they were asked to return horses to Jacovo on behalf of Gorvio (I've taken some license with when certain events happen) and three of them agreed to do so. One of whom was the newly female tiefling with the 16 Cha and no hideous deformities. So when they met Umberto he pretty quickly cozied up to the "exotic" beauty and they managed to get him to friendly (for the moment). He invited the party to come to his staging of "The Dowager Princess" and so they were mostly on hand when his performance went badly. Following the play he spotted them in the crowd and made a point of blaming them for his strained voice (he had already taken to spreading lies about the tiefling who wouldn't sleep with him after they had lunch together). The strix, who has become more and more established as a psycho, followed his carriage home to his estate and firebombed it using a bunch of alchemist fire tied to a rock and dropped while flying by at speed. The actor survived the fire though.
The inquisitor has been pursuing his own investigation of the Bastards of Erebus while continuing to keep the details of his loyalties a mystery to the rest of the party. He is reporting to his superiors that he has infiltrated a seditious movement in order to use their resources before deciding whether they should be hung. Because of him they have a pretty good idea where the BoE are hiding out despite not having gotten the information that Janiven and Arael will soon provide.
The party managed to make their way to the ruins in dribs and drabs, not wanting a large group of heavily armed freaks to approach the Obrigan Gate all at once. The strix covered himself in flour and flew very high above the city in order to give the appearance of being a seabird. The summoner bribed his way past a dottari sergeant to the tune of 11 silver pieces and a copper. (The guard kept slightly increasing the price, trying to goad the tiefling). The paladin and the cleric masqueraded as charity workers, and because the paladin wore his holy symbol of Iomedae openly, the guard captain (who happened to be a worshipper of Iomedae) assumed they were both clerics and let them pass with no trouble. The fighter and inquisitor both waited at a distance for everyone else to pass through the gate (making them both late, it was a 10am meeting they agreed on) until finally the fighter gave up and went to the gate first. He told the dottari that he had a cousin who had been badly hurt by a gang from the old town, and that he intended to go seek restitution. As he was armed only with a heavy pick, but is enormous, the guards figured he would be able to handle himself and gave him a short sword so he would have a proper weapon. He insisted on paying for it. Finally, when everyone else had passed the gate, the inquisitor rolled up and informed them of his position as an inquisitor. They saluted and let him pass. (I gave him a palm-sized token that works as both a symbol of office and a means to make reports to his superiors over long distance. Think of the Inquisitorial rosette from Warhammer 40k)
Having entered the ruins successfully they snagged a guide (actually, the summoner did this while he was waiting for the stragglers) and set off to the north in order to find whitechin the goblin king. The paladin made it a point to actually hand out bread to beggars. Eventually their guide stopped and told them they were near whitechin's territory, insisting he would go no farther. Once the party was marching on their own, the guide took a shortcut to meet with whitechin and sell them out. The goblins set up a three-part ambush that began with a trio of crossbow bolts nailing the strix from a distance. When the party charged towards those three, they scattered as best they could (two of the three were cut down pretty quickly). The fighter dove into a crumbling building to one side of the street, anticipating more goblins. Unfortunately, that building and the one facing it across the street were the hiding spots for the rest of the goblins. He was quickly surrounded and about half the party had to turn in order to combat his four goblins. Two others charged out of cover to attack the inquisitor and paladin. A goblin sorcerer stayed hidden for much of this combat and plinked people with orbs and grease. Whitechin was the third part of the ambush, riding a goblin dog into combat with the summoner (who had been separated from the rest of the party) but being pretty quickly dealt with by the summoner's pets. The strix managed to get the kill on whitechin (that 60 ft fly and flyby attack is pretty nasty) which pissed the summoner off to no end. Two goblins eventually escaped, one down a hole and the other with a fear-inspired sprint. The party spotted the guide watching from nearby and captured him in order to ask politely if he had sold them out. Of course he had, and the fighter started screaming in his face for him to repent his unjust ways while lining a heavy pick up with the guy's head. Eventually this turned into a big thing. The summoner didn't want to be a party to murder, even if the guy deserved it. The paladin was against killing him out of hand as well. The inquisitor and cleric were indifferent. The strix and fighter gave serious consideration to testing whether the rest of the party would turn on them for killing the guide but decided not to test it. After everyone started splitting up to head back out of the ruins, the strix tracked down the guide and butchered him. (Before this session we discussed it and he switched to CE instead of NE)
The party brought whitechin's head back, and Arael preserved it before asking one of the NPCs to leave it in a public place with a poster proclaiming that the Steel Phoenix was responsible for defeating the little menace. Afterwards, the newly christened rebels toasted the party, calling them "The Phoenix Guard". (I love Stephen Brust)
There was a ridiculous amount of role-play in this session. It was fantastic. Oh, and the strix has an arcane security and investigation agency tracking him as a result of his botched murder attempt against Umberto.
Other names that were suggested for the rebels include: The Order of the Silver Haloran, The Heralds of Light, and The Knights of the Iron Phoenix. (I liked that last one, but the party felt steel was less negative-sounding than iron) Their goal with the names was to come up with implications of rebirth, light, and goodness; while avoiding combative-sounding names. Ahhhh, good times.