Evil Campaign!

[Mahorfeus]

With the conclusion of our last campaign, the GM Hat is back on me, and now I have to whip up another campaign in the next two weeks or so. I've been brimming with ideas, but something just now hit me.

My PCs predominantly evil, and have certainly acted as such, extorting people for money and killing enemies even once they have surrendered. However, I find that in the long run, they end up accomplishing something for the greater good, such as saving a village from certain destruction. In the end, they come off as ridiculously selfish and haplessly cruel, but it just doesn't feel like they're actually evil. They aren't chaotic, but I don't feel that means they can't ruin society.

So, does anybody have some good general advice for an evil campaign? Even better if you can give some anecdotal examples of past campaigns, that always gives me a chuckle.

[Kierato]

No examples but some advice. Give them a reason to not back stab and kill one another, such as working for an evil overlord that will punish them for it. Give them quests where they have to choose an outcome that could be good or evil depending on their actions.

[shiverscar]

I'm playing in a game that's inadvertantly become an evil campaign. We're playing Shackled City, and half the party is evil, the other half is self-serving neutral. The evil half is actively trying to subvert and corrupt the already questionable morals of the neutral half, and we're doing all of this while still managing to "save" Cauldron from it's current woes.

My character is a devil worshipper, a lawful fighter who fell long before he ever reached paladinhood, and is now 'faithfully' enacting his master's plans while quietly plotting ways to empower himself and dominate everything and everyone he can lay his gauntlets on.

The party leader is a worshipper of Dagon masquerading as a priest of Pelor, and has absolutely labyrinthine plans for corrupting and driving mad everyone around him. He's been caring for a group of orphans he rescued with the intent to murder them and start a religious jihad by pinning the blame on another church.

We get along because we recognize that the other's existence is mutually beneficial. Sure we both have contingency plans laid over contingency plans for disposing of each other eventually, but for the time being, we need each other to accomplish our goals. On top of that:

Shackled City spoiler:

We've both acquired the Smoldering Eye template and neither of us are sure what that means; if one dies, do we both die, or does the survivor get all the power? Have we suddenly entered the Highlander movies? Acquisition of a plane of the Abyss has also gotten my fighter plotting ways to steal back his soul, or better yet, become a unique devil.

Secret plans have made the accidentally evil campaign amazing fun. Between my character's paranoid contigencies and defences and the Machiavellian plans of the Dagon cleric, our DM has had to go well outside the script to accomodate our scheming. More than anything, we have a blast trying to outdo the villains by being more evil than them.

I think the best advice for developing a campaign I can suggest is, keep it as Evil vs. Evil. Evil typically does not look out for its own, so evil beings are constantly in conflict with one another. It makes for fertile ground for creating conflicts; I'm always partial to the Demons vs. Devils (and everyone vs. Daemons) conflict, but putting mortal, evil people against a necromantic apocalypse or something else that threatens their existence makes for an easy time justifying why a selfish person would get involved.

I've found Evil vs. Good games get boring quickly or wander over into the realm of slapstick, which is fun for awhile, but difficult to keep up.

[posternutbag]

I play evil characters all the time, even in campaigns where the majority of the PCs are good. In fact, my default alignment is LE, unless my character has a compelling reason to be otherwise. I always say that, just because you are evil, you aren't necessarily looking to screw over your fellow party members. Evil characters, and, IMHO, LE characters in particular, can function fine in a group, as long as the partnership serves them. I, as an evil character, actually prefer to adventure with good characters (they are less likely to try to screw me over) and the benefit I gain from working in a group far outweighs what I would gain by killing them and rifling through their pockets.

The big problem with evil characters, as I see it, is motivation. Why risk your neck in a dungeon when you can just subjugate the local populace? For me, the answer is usually friendship. My opinion, and again, this is my opinion, is that evil characters can have friends and even love them. Just because you are evil, does not mean you don't love people and are not willing to sacrifice for them. In fact, I had a character that sacrificed most of a continent for the sake of a loved one. That is what made him evil. He was willing to commit genocide for the sake of one person. So, make sure that the characters have meaningful bonds and motivations.

IMHO evil campaigns require a greater depth of role-playing. Since righting wrongs and protecting the world are no longer primary motivations, you have to work a little harder at it. I once had an evil assassin whose goal was to become the greatest swordsman in the world. Adventuring gave him a greater variety of challenges and tests and a faster avenue to his eventual goal. he didn't want to rule the world, supervillian style, he just wanted to be the best, and was willing to do anything to achieve his goal.

[Bobson]

My very first D&D game was LE-inclined (everyone was LN, N, LE, or NE), and we ended up saving a few towns (and the world), although we usually extorted huge payments out of people for our services.

As posternutbag said, the motivation is the issue. Evil characters aren't out to right wrongs or save people for the sake of doing so. The best definition of "evil" I've heard is "extreme selfishness" - in nutbag's example, his character was willing to sacrifice anything (including half a continent) for the thing he wanted (in this case, helping/saving/whatever the loved one).

Given that, I think the best way to plan ahead of time is to have your players create character concepts and tell you what their driving motivation is. Then you can figure out a way to use those to build a campaign around. That motivation can be anything from "I want to be the best/most powerful _______ in the world" to "I want to understand why ______" to "I want to own all the ______". As long as the goal is sufficiently large and selfish, it's a good motivation for an evil character.

As long as there's no overlap, the party can work reasonably well together despite being evil: The fighter who wants to be the best swordsman in the world, the wizard who wants to know where magic comes from and is willing to sacrifice people to his experiments, the bard who just wants to have so much money he can buy anything, and the rogue who wants to be king may not have any shared goals, but they also aren't likely to start in-fighting to block each other. Once you have a collection of compatible motivations, you need to figure out why they're staying together - why do they each think the others are going to help them towards their own goals. The fighter is there to best the people who are inevitably going to show up to kill the wizard. The wizard may need the bard's funds, or the rogue's royal library (once they have them). And so on. It could also be external - they were all exiled together, and so it's them vs the world.

I'd recommend starting out moderately powerful. Anywhere from 7th level to 12th would probably be good depending on what your group likes. Obviously it's in relation to the average levels in your world, but it's much easier to be evil if you feel like the common people (and even the common guards) aren't a threat. On the other hand, having a "good" party of appropriate level that is hunting the players or just interfering with their plans is a good idea since it gives them a clear enemy that they can't just laugh off.

As for the campaign itself, it could be anything from "Ok, you have your goals, how do you want to go about fulfilling them" to "Here's a lead you might want to follow up on about a powerful _______" to defeating the evil people who want to destroy the world, because none of them can do their goal if the world's destroyed.

[J.S.]

I'm not sure why you're complaining. I mean, that sounds like an ideal sort of balance. I'm pretty sure that "idiculously selfish and haplessly cruel" is a good definition of evil. You're not actively trying to get them to start waxing their mustaches and cackling like megalomaniacs, right?

Evil is selfish. It doesn't do what it doesn't have to. If you don't want them to save the village, put them in a situation where it's to their advantage to see it destroyed. The point is good is compelled to do things, whereas evil is much more capricious.

[Heretek]

Just watch your PCs. Make sure they understand being evil does not mean "Kill everyone you see, burn down every orphanage you see, rape any wo/man you see (then kill them... or even in the reverse order) and kick any puppy you see just cause I'm Chaotic Evil"

If your PCs pull that, I suggest promptly ending the campaign or falling rock them. They NEED to understand evil has many forms beyond kicking puppies.