I wanted to mention this here on the Paizo forums, since I think a lot of the posters here would have some great insight regarding this.
The latest post over on my blog, Intelligence Check, examines the underlying assumptions of the Pathfinder role-playing game - namely "be a hero" and "kill things and take their stuff" - and asks what it'd be like if that first one were removed.
Or in other words, what would it be like to run an adventure for evil PCs? Moreover, what would the adventure be like if Paizo wrote it? I'm of the opinion that it would be incredibly cool, but is there something I'm overlooking?
Find the full post here: When You're Evil
yea, not many players can play evil and play along in a nicely written adventure without some heavy constraints.
There already is the option to play evil pcs, but I find evil characters often fall back into backstabbing other players and too much inner party intrigue to work smoothly. I have run and played campaigns like it in 2nd edition, but they were themed campaigns with built in restraints, like playing a drow raiding party, or soldiers from the Zhentarim from FR, restricting our loyalty and alignment to non chaotic non-good.
That said an evil character can work in a party of heroes, it depends on the personality though, for an interesting possible evil character read Alain's overview Iconic from paizo blog. It is not a character that actively will seek to bring other people to ruin, neither will he look to backstab others, but deep inside he doesn't really care for anyone else but himself.
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I'm all for adventures and campaigns written for "Team Evil", because it can be pretty gratifying to not have to hold back, and just let people have it when they annoy or offend you. In my opinion the best evil stories are the ones where the PCs will gain a lot of power, so that they might abuse it in the most cathartic of ways.
I've seen evil PCs work, with mature enough roleplayers. My rule on intra-party conflict is no PvP unless both players consent, and if they do, no holds barred. However, the best evil group I've ever played with was the one that teamed up and stuck together.
We had one character who was basically an amoral mercenary assassin, loyal only to herself and her guild. However, she had absolute loyalty, within the guild. She justified her lack of treachery toward the party by calling backstabbing rather inefficient - why waste the effort of killing her party members to take their stuff when she could just use them to kill the rest of the world and take its stuff. However, the rest of the world was fair game, and she lied, cheated, murdered, and stole everything she thought would be helpful.
The other two characters were in the "ends justify the means" camp, having started as good and neutral and then being convinced during the game to strike up an "unholy alliance" with the assassin PC in order to better accomplish their otherwise noble goals. The assassin didn't threaten their causes in particular, and she did good work, so they never bothered her about what other evil she did.
By the end of the game, when most of the good characters in the game world were dead or being viciously played by the evil PCs, they found out that much of the game's plot had been put into motion by an evil outsider who was priming the world for a planar invasion. Not wanting to lose her hard work, the assassin rallied the other PCs and their NPC allies, and had an epic showdown with the evil outsider, eventually prevailing and keeping the world safe for another day.
Despite the fact that all three PCs were Neutral Evil by that time, they turned out to be the heroes of the hour, because nobody was going to take the world they just conquered from them.
Conversely, the following game was a total disaster, because of evil PCs, immaturity, and the lack of an agreement between players to take off the training gloves and have it out. The chaotic evil PC who swore she was chaotic neutral was framed for a horrible crime, and the other PCs had to help her. However, the LE mobster wanted to turn her in for the reward, even though he knew she didn't actually do it, and the CG Bard became so fed up with both of them that he refused to solve the mystery or clear her name, and turned them both in because they were evil and deserved justice, even if it was for the wrong crime.
I think it'd be a great thing to have a nongood adventure path, but I don't know if it's financially possible - that's a smaller group that's interested in it, after all.
That said, there are difficulties, especially if you go for full-on evil rather than simply nongood. For example...what sort of evil? Do you set it up to be more organizational evil, or more "slaughter my enemies" evil? Do you encourage slavery, despite the negative response many people have to it even in a fictional game? What about murder? Do you go more for a "slippery slope" of evil, where the group starts out "goodish" but increasingly is forced to make morally damaging decisions until by the end of it they're evil, or do you go for a full blown "we're evil from level 1" type game?
It's harder to do an AP for evil because of that sort of thing, I think. That said...I think it'd be great fun.
The thing is, most of those questions are about the group's play-style, rather than the adventure's construction. No adventure is going to perfectly fit within everyone's ideal, regardless of how it's made. Not everyone likes political intrigue, but some do. Not everyone likes sandbox-style adventures, but some do.
That some people's reasons for not playing in an adventure are because it deals with a theme that makes them uncomfortable, as opposed to simply not enjoying it, isn't a more compelling reason not to make it (though a lot of people seem to think it is).
And as I pointed out in my blog post, given how a lot of "heroes" conduct themselves against the monsters they fight, murder really shouldn't be an issue. ;)
Oh, I agree, but from what I've seen the market for people that want to play evil is smaller than the market for people wanting to play good, so making it evil already shrinks your potential customer base in the same way a political intrigue one would, for example - adding on more things like that will shrink it even further.
Does that mean it shouldn't be done? Not necessarily - I'd love to see it, and play it most likely. But it does make it less attractive for a company to produce.
As for the murder thing, yeah, it shouldn't really be an issue, but it depends on who the adventure is set up to be murdering. If it's murdering Meowzer, the awakened cat who runs a rescue for non-awakened pets, you might see a lot more resistance ^_-.
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I ran the "Incursion" campaign (from Dungeon, where the Githyanki attempt to conquer a world) a few years back, with evil PCs. The players wanted to play an evil group, and took it as a challenge to play through an adventure by finding motivations where a more heroic group would do "just because". (btw, evil groups are more likely to throw minions/undead at something until it's weak enough for them to take) I think that some of the adventure paths would work as written just as easily for evil PCs as more heroic ones (Kingmaker itself almost seems keyed for the power-hungry).
If you can find a way to get the evil to work together, it might be REALLY interesting. I'm thinking the common enemy thing might work. Like the BGGG (Big Good Good Guy) killed their father/wife/spawn/favorite minion, foiled their plots/plans/and possibly even schemes, has the ingredient needed for that really cool dark ritual, IS the ingredient for that really cool ritual, always one-upped them in magic school, thwarted their perverted/creepy romantic advances, is just a way to prove they're the baddest of the bad, or simply evil ennui.
Season 6 of Buffy had an evil vampire, an evil witch or two, an evil demon, and a quasi-undead warrior as the main characters. They mostly worked well with others......and against another group of evil individualists....
I think it's much more plausible when you look at it from the perspective that sometimes evil characters do good things.. not because that was there intention.. but because the side benefit was beneficial for somebody else.
Some of the most evil people in history got where they were because they helped a not necessarily evil society out.
I myself still enjoy more heroic campaigns, but I do think it's interesting at times to find out that some good deeds were not always good for everybody.