I am not meaning to have an evil campaign here (though, I suppose this would work for one).
what I am interested in is a campaign where the bad guys are maybe misguided or too blinded by their goals to realize what they are doing.
maybe even their leadership is evil, and the rest don't know so they follow their orders.
I love the idea of throwing moral issues at my PCs and making them have to think of alternatives to "kill the enemy". obviously throughout the campaign they would have to kill a lot of their foes, but when they fully realize that their enemies are the good guys mislead by their leadership they may have to change up their tactics.
my ideas here are basic, and I know that the AP crew could come up with a better idea and story, but I think you get the hang of it.
Most players will go after their boss, which leads back to a "kill the bad guy" story as soon as they realize they have been duped.
I have riddled some of the later confrontations in Kingmaker with some good-guys for a bit of moral ambiguity. And I undid the evil alignment on one bad guy, since in my opinion, he was not doing an EVIL act, he was under duress and conceded in doing the least harmful, but still "evil" action in order to preserve his people. The other reason he was "evil" was because he was a bit of an a#!#++~. In that case, two of the player characters are irredeemable fiends, because they are far worse than him.
The characters I will be adding:
- a LG general serving an evil lord, as his popularity with the troops and his skills are too valuable to be dismissed.
- a LG cleric serving a neutral god (Abadar), who heals the people of the enemy capital and serves the enemy leader the name of duty, hoping to sway him to his perspective.
- a company of good rangers serving Erastil, who is fighting to protect their villages.
- a small order of paladins and cavaliers of Abadar, sworn to defend and uphold their city, no matter who sits on the throne.
- a good river captain whose family is held hostage, and has to fight the PCs.
Of course, if the players are diplomatic, both the rangers, the paladins and the captain can be swayed to see their point of view, which I think is all good. Enlisting competent people is part of the experience. (And I have always loved the Suikoden series :P )
@ wraithstrike, that was only one possible way to use the good bad guys. it is entirely possible that the boss is a good guy as well and maybe doesn't see things as he should from way up on his throne. there are many ways about it. and yes, if they found out the boss was duping his people into doing what he wants, he would be a legit end of campaign boss, if the PCs went straight to him, they would probably end up in a dungeon cell somewhere, or dead.
@ Kamelguru, thanks for the post. I am also running kingmaker and may steal some of your ideas. I assume you refer to fort drelev for the undoing of the bad guy's alignment ? if I'm wrong, who do you mean ?
I like the idea that not all enemies are going to be evil, and that some will likely be good aligned. it doesn't mean that the PCs have to fight them, but imagine what the paladin would say after a fight when he finds out that they had slaughtered "innocents" when they took out what they thought to be an army's supply caravan, and realized it was a well armed merchant caravan or something. its just something to push players into their roles I guess (assuming your characters are good guys themselves).
@ wraithstrike, that was only one possible way to use the good bad guys. it is entirely possible that the boss is a good guy as well and maybe doesn't see things as he should from way up on his throne. there are many ways about it. and yes, if they found out the boss was duping his people into doing what he wants, he would be a legit end of campaign boss, if the PCs went straight to him, they would probably end up in a dungeon cell somewhere, or dead.
@ Kamelguru, thanks for the post. I am also running kingmaker and may steal some of your ideas. I assume you refer to fort drelev for the undoing of the bad guy's alignment ? if I'm wrong, who do you mean ?
I like the idea that not all enemies are going to be evil, and that some will likely be good aligned. it doesn't mean that the PCs have to fight them, but imagine what the paladin would say after a fight when he finds out that they had slaughtered "innocents" when they took out what they thought to be an army's supply caravan, and realized it was a well armed merchant caravan or something. its just something to push players into their roles I guess (assuming your characters are good guys themselves).
It is indeed Hannis Drelev I refer to. In the background material, he seems like any other explorer type, and he seems to be a selfish git, but that doesn't make him EVIL in my book. To make the players have a personal interest in things, I cast him as an acquaintance of the party fighter; one of the more advanced Aladori students who bullied him by having him duel him and beat him sorely. I ended up running him as the ambitious type who didn't have the cool to run things and got in over his head (wis 8). And the truly evil acts (feeding erastil clerics to the oozes etc) were carried out by his step-brother and wife, who were running the show behind his back, feeding his ego by silencing the ones who would oppose him. I also made the bard woman an agent of Pitax, holding his leash through charms and compulsions, since it makes more sense to me than Daggermark even caring about this remote bog-side town, much less sending such a competent spy.
Due to the heavy intervention from the party cleric (of sarenrae, goddess of second chances and such) he is now "redeemed" and reinstated as an official of the PCs kingdom. He had a friendly one-on-one duel with the PC fighter, and the fighter finally won.
I am fond of throwing in the odd curveball, so the players need to be on their toes and behave like people, instead of murdering their way through everything, proving themselves villains in the eyes of the people they come to "save" by murdering their heroes.
I really like that kamelguru, I think I will definitely change that in my campaign. I also have an aldori swordsman in my group, so that would fit nicely.
though my cleric of sarenrae I think, is less lenient than yours. :)
I really like that kamelguru, I think I will definitely change that in my campaign. I also have an aldori swordsman in my group, so that would fit nicely.
though my cleric of sarenrae I think, is less lenient than yours. :)
Normally, we would not expect a PC cleric to be anywhere near as gung-ho about pushing their goddess agenda as this one. My wife started playing with my group, and there was a bit of a crash of play-styles. My group tends to be slightly war-game minded, and had a tendency to ignore the dogmas and the ideals of their gods. Any cleric was invariably just a soft-spoken healer/buffer, usually under a whimsical non-consequential god in order to do whatever they wanted in any given situation.
Not Naadhira though. She would have no deception, no killing of defenseless people and she would not bow to earthly law no matter how severe the punishment if it conflicted with the will of Sarenrae. Even the laws of the PC kingdom. She even demands that the justice system implements her ideals, and would never accept appeasement killing to "look strong and make examples". She almost left the party over it. The assassin-type rogue player (yes, he pretty much plays the same character over and over and over and over, with minor variations) left the group after a while because she "kept getting on his back" about being a shifty lying assassin.
Not a big issue on my part though, because the player was a self-entitled manipulating disrespectful man-child.
I really like that kamelguru, I think I will definitely change that in my campaign. I also have an aldori swordsman in my group, so that would fit nicely.
though my cleric of sarenrae I think, is less lenient than yours. :)
Naadhira actually kind of envies the dervish types. If she wasn't born a slave and weaned on healing instead of killing, say... her oppressive masters, she wouldn't be as much of a challenge to play, I think.
That said, she's traveled to Sarenrae's domain and gotten an earful from the Sunlord Thalchios about how she's only drawn her scimitar 4 times in the entire campaign (and twice she fumbled, once cutting her own hand and the other confirming the world's weakest critical against the party wizard for the lulz), and about asking in her diviniations if militarization of her country will be bad for it in the long run. *chuckle* My husband calls her a hippy.
She thinks Irovetti deserves a chance to redeem himself as well, even if he does piss her off to no end. Politically, anyway. He's so... white garbage in his pursuits, it's kinda laughable, but husband plays his charisma and machismo so well that he knows exactly how to get under her skin.
essentially if the good guys are being jerks why would you want to protect them?
I'm not saying that you would be protecting the "good guys". the "good guys" are actually the bad guys in this remember. its not quite the same as in 2nd darkness.