Well, after a relatively long hiatus, my PCs pretty much agreed that they suck at playing good guys.
Our first campaign was an evil one, that ended up having strange, out-there whimsical moments that practically became memetic amongst my group. Nobody has forgotten how the druid once slaughtered kobold children, rubbed their blood on his chest, and failed his Fortitude save, thereby contracting a plague, or how the party fighter got impregnated by a red dragon disguised as royalty. And of course, how the party convinced a cadre of imprisoned ogres to take revenge on their orc slavers for using them in their ogrekin breeding program. Good times. Needless to say, we have strange senses of humor.
We've come to the conclusion that random, stupid crap like that is what made the game special to us, and want that kind of experience again.
Bringing me to the question, what would be a good place to begin? The one weakness of that campaign was that there was practically no backstory to the characters, and they were pretty much strangers to each other. What would be a good way to make these characters more or less loyal to one another, so that they don't end up butchering each other (again)?
This kind of planning might defeat the purpose of the campaign being "random," but it did at least have some direction, so I'd appreciate any suggestion, comments, etc.
If you want an evil party to trust each other I usually out law Pking or at least don't let them do it until they have talked to me and the other player first(try to see if I can mediate conflict before it leads to death)...This can make it a little unrealistic(especially if a party member is abusing the privilege but it tends to have a more cohesive game were people have more fun...
As far as cohesion I favor having the party meet up before the game starts with or without me and making up a back story on how they know each other if its that type of campaign. They could be old friends, relatives, a mercenary company that has proved profitable, old military buddies, ex slaves who one their freedom together, people given no choice other then to obey commands by some one more powerful(geas spells are fun), members of the same religion, and/or they owe each other favors or debts ...There really are a ton of options.
Motivation is key to why does an evil party adventure. Gold and other wealth is usually a good start but they could seek power, safety, a religious mission, to fulfill an insane delusion, the simple joy of acting like a psychopath, or revenge of past wrongs. This usually comes from back story and is more important in evil parties because you can't just rely on the old troupes of maiden in distress, town in danger, ect.
First off most evil campaigns don't begin at a good place. However loyalty and trust exists within evil parties. They just need to know each other more than a good party. Btw I want to play an evil campaign so I support your plans.
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Begin the game with a pact. The players have to come up with a mutual goal: they're going to take over kingdom X, or murder the rightful ruler of Y, or build the engine of doom that will open the gates of hell, or take revenge on Person Z who has wronged them all int he past. Something like that - a discernible goal with a definite "We Win" state for the players.
Then draw up a contract. You can have the players do this independently, or do it all together, or whatnot. I recommend you do it in order to save endless arguments over the terms of the agreement before the game even starts. The contract should enumerate in specific terms what the PCs relationship is, who gets what share of any spoils, and most importantly what the PCs are NOT allowed to do to each other while the contract is in effect. (No murder, no stealing, fair distribution of treasure, magic, etc) The contract lasts until the PCs attain their goal, after which all bets are off, but by that time the players have succeeded in their quest and it doesn't matter if they destroy each other.
If PCs die and need replacing, any new PCs have to sign into the contract.
Seal the contract with a Geas or Marks of Justice or something so that it has teeth.
Now you still have a roving band of murderous villains, but their evil has a focused goal and they won't casually betray each other. Or course, the players still get to have lots of fun finding minor ways to subvert the contract when it suits them, but hopefully in not too terrible a fashion.
Just make sure the contract isn't a Tontine. :P
If they dont have backgrounds, give them a shared one. Like Chaos Scion said, let them be former slaves freed/escaped together, or work for an evil organization, or all be minions of another eviler big bad they have to follow (for the moment). Alternatively, you could start with them all in the good guy's prison, already captured and they have to work together to escape to start the campaign.
This one, imo (as a veteran of many evil campaigns) really just needs the players to act appropriately. Success requires cooperation. Cooperation requires trust.
Giving them either a common background or a common enemy helps, but really, the players have to reign in their PvP instincts in order to prosper; if they can't see this on their own, there's not a whole lot to be done about it.
If you really need something like a contract, perhaps some evil deity has taken a personal interest in this group? Having foreseen the power they could attain if they survive each other long enough? Then you have divine forces in the wings to punish characters who violate the minimum level of cooperation.
"Punishment produces force, force produces strength, strength produces awe, awe produces virtue: thus, virtue has its origins in punishment." [First sentence of the Book of Legalism, q.v. the Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart.]
I have two pieces of advice and a shameless plug.
Advice first.
In regards to any campaign, you (the presumed GM) developing a huge pile of backstory that you dump on the players all at once is almost certainly a recipe for player boredom and disinterest. Truly great writers can manage to pull off such infodumps, but for us mortals, it's best to either slowly dessiminate information over the course of a campaign or (even better) enter into a partnership with the players to slowly and organically flesh out your world together.
Specific to an evil game -- it is probably more important than in good guy games to know limits (what is TOO evil?) and to establish cooperation (If you're so evil, why are you working together?). I actually have published a rather lengthy essay about this in...
*can you feel the plug coming?*
"Way of the Wicked", the Pathfinder RPG's only evil adventure path published by Fire Mountain Games. In the course of six books you will have laid out for you a path of utter evil and wicked revenge upon the noble nation of Talingarde -- twenty levels of irredeemable villainy.
It's for sale as a PDF here and in print here. You can check out a free preview here.
But most importantly, realize that the goal of an evil game remains to have fun. You are not trying to explore the depths of human degradation. Instead, you are taking a turn at putting on your Vader-helmet and for a night every week or two pretending that you are the Dark Lord.
There will be no one to stop us this time!
Gary McBride
Fire Mountain Games
I would think you have to give them a tie for a starting point.
All have to be a at least half human with the same father.
All temple guards for the same evil god.
They've all been screwed out of their life savings by the same con-artist that they are trying to locate and get vengence from.
They are the last living refuges from the invasion of X by the forces of Y.
etc...
Lots of possibilites.
Lots of good advice so far. Background development is definitely something I missed out on first time around. The characters were together for really no reason at all... at times it reminded me of the early 8-bit Theater days.
*can you feel the plug coming?*
Lol, from a mile away. I was actually in a PbP for it, though it fell apart. I'd certainly play it again. Not so sure about running it though.
Well, I ended up deciding to go with the prison escape angle to kick things off. The three PCs and one other used to be notorious criminals before he sold them out and left them to the authorities. I didn't feel like putting too many restraints on what they could do in the beginning, so I made the prison a mostly unguarded hellhole in the middle of a frozen wasteland, so they can do whatever inside, with escape only bringing more danger. They've been wanting a mid-level game for a while, so I made them all level 10.
The only issue now is somehow providing them with an appropriate amount of equipment to bring them up to the thousands of gold they should have at their level. Unless the prison wants everyone to kill each other or something.
I'm playing in an evil game now, and the core feature that makes it work is that, as players, we've consciously decided to play characters who will cooperate with each other while being evil.
Yes, we're evil. Last night we stood by while a vampire (who most of us don't especially like) drained 5 babies into a magical basin, and then snacked on the sixth. Because that's how the negative energy machine is powered, and we needed a negative energy machine to finally snuff a major resurrection ritual. In fact, it was an evil creature's resurrection ritual. We don't want a huge demon dragon flying around; it would interfere with our own goals. So we teamed up with a celestial who was willing to take any assistance she could, and was willing to turn a blind eye if we had to do something she couldn't stomach. And with the vampire who had the knowledge necessary. We've tortured people, killed them for pleasure or just to make our lives simpler.
Basically, our goals are sometimes evil, our methods are definitely evil, but we're not all horrible, heartless dickbags. We're friends with each other, for the most part. Our personal goals do not significantly conflict. So I can get the party to help me secure my family's holdings, because it doesn't hurt the party, and because I help party members with their goals.
My own goals have progressed to "keep my family safe, no matter what it takes" (which has involved a quest for power, as well as breaking a relative out of the most secure prison in the land and murdering an entire organization of his political enemies), to becoming emperor, and breaking the power of the great nobles and of the church, to truly put my character in control of the nation. The goals themselves aren't quite evil, but the methods are. The party helped with the jailbreak and murder. The rest will occur post-campaign, as it really requires retiring from adventuring. But it will involve deception, blackmail, and manufactured incidents.
Anyway, before the campaign, the DM gave us a short writeup on evil in the campaign and in the party. It was a mix of rules (primarily no PvP), and guidelines. He pointed out types of evil characters that work badly in a party or in the world. Examples:
- Psychotic Evil: This is your most stereotypical bad evil character. He kills for fun. His only real goals are to have fun by doing evil things. He's going to try to kill the party, just because.
- Bonehead Evil: Evil for the sake of being evil, without any sense. This is the character who gets himself arrested because he's so evil that he steals apples, just because stealing is evil, and he's evil, so why would he pay? (And takes no precautions to avoid being caught.)
- Evil Loner: Pretty much no loner character does well in a party. Doesn't mean you can't play a guy who starts as a loner and learns to deal with people. But don't stay a loner.
- Darth Evil: This is the guy who's so obviously evil that everyone can tell. He wears black spiked armor which is probably dripping with blood, has a baby impaled on his helmet, etc. And he does it in the middle of town. He and Bonehead are going to live very short lives, given the presumption that the campaign takes place in a notionally good-aligned area.
Basically, the players should design evil characters who will be willing and able to work together and put up with each other for a long time. They should play the sort of evil that isn't going to draw the attention of authorities they can't avoid or defeat. They don't just want to play evil characters. They want to play successful evil characters who can function as a party. Because it's a cooperative game, so you need to be able to remain a party, rather than kill each other or split up after one adventure. And they want to be successful, because otherwise the campaign is short.
Now you've got them going with a shared starting point and shared enemy. They're in this prison, they need to find a way out, find a way back to civilization (presumably they can't do anything quite as simple as teleport), and get some equipment. One obvious source of equipment (once they get back to civilization) is any safehouses they might have, where they would have stashed some backup equipment. You could ask them to lay out, say, level 7 gear to get from those hides. But first they would have to get back to civilization. If you're careful about the encounter design until then, they could go with little or no equipment. At level 10 perhaps they're sufficiently higher level than the typical criminal in this prison, such that it's not quite adequate to hold them. After all, to get out of this frozen wasteland, they need what, endure elements and create food and water? Those are resources far in excess of what most people can rely on, but they're quite accessible to level 10 characters (so long as the cleric has his holy symbol and the wizard has his spellbook... or is a sorcerer).
Basically I would probably use the prison break as a way for the players to:
- See how awesome their characters are even with almost no equipment (in comparison to lower-level characters, at least).
- Establish exactly what it was they were notorious for, and what a reputation they have among other criminals.
- Establish for themselves what sorts of evil things their characters will do. Will they kill other inmates to get more food, or some limited equipment?
- Have the characters bond with each other, if they haven't already, and bond further if they already have.
- Plot how they'll get their revenge (so you can prepare that adventure).
By the time the party gets back to civilization, they should be a party rather than individuals, with a decent idea what makes the characters tick. And now they hit their safehouses to pick up equipment. With whatever they've salvaged on the journey, they'll still be below proper gear level, but they'll have enough to get started on revenge. If the prison is also some sort of mine (so the government can get a benefit out of its prisoners), they could perhaps have enough stolen diamonds, say, to make up part of the wealth gap.
Alternately, the escape could be quick and direct, perhaps forcing their way onto a diamond shipment or taking the place of the guards when food is brought in.