"Evil-Guy" Campaign

[jiggla]

Hello there, first post in here!

I have like 20 years of Roleplaying experience and still loving it.
Yet one wish was never really granted.
There are so many really great Adventure Paths and especially you Guys at Paizo-Pathfinder put so much love into detail that its a pleasure playing them.

But for once I don´t wanna save the World, free the Slaves or fight the Demonhordes.
I´d like a Campaign where the goal is to open a gate to the Abyss, or plot and scheme to enslave a kingdom and become the new tyrant.

There are so many cool Races I never got to play because of there evil ties, like Drows Bugbears, Gnolls and many more. Even lots of Classes or Archetypes seem difficult to play in classic "Hero-Stories".
And yeah I´ve played the "Evil Guy" trying to redeem himself, but thats not what i want.

I´d like a Campaign where the goal can only or also be accomplished by fullfilling morally questionable deeds. Furthermore it should be somewhere where Duergar, Half-Fiends and Goblins can walk along the Street without any problems.

Or does his Campaign already exist?

[Teiidae]

Way of the Wicked by Fire Mountain Games..It's third party...but Holy hell is it good...AND EVIL! *INSERT THUNDER...My players love the idea behind it because it's different and they feel more free to play what they want. WotW is well worth your money.

[Alaryth]

+1 to Teiidae. Way of the Wicked is a really good AP. Great argument, interesting NPCs, and really good villains: the PCs. I Can't recomend it enough.

Edit: While I recommend Way of the Wicked, if you want to stay with Paizo's APs, I think Skulls and Shackless is the most appropiate for that.

[JonGarrett]

My group is starting Way of the Wicked in the New Year. My wife is GMing.

[Teiidae]

Also, Evil kingmaker is an option. you may need to re-skin something here and there.

[Icyshadow]

Well, they can help out in setting up the colony (aka book 1), only for people to realize these guys are evil tyrants.

[Teiidae]

Same with me, i've laid the back for it...but my group needed to take a break which is fine, by the time we start again I should have the WotW books, because they're back ordered on the paizo site.

[jiggla]

Teiidae wrote:

Same with me, i've laid the back for it...but my group needed to take a break which is fine, by the time we start again I should have the WotW books, because they're back ordered on the paizo site.

THX so far, I´m gonna check it out!

[Walter Leeuwen]

How to avert the same problem with evil campaign that always occurs.

PC kill eachother cause they R evil

[Threeshades]

Walter Leeuwen wrote:

How to avert the same problem with evil campaign that always occurs.

PC kill eachother cause they R evil

Even evil people can be fond enough of someone to not want to kill them. And if they can't be friends, they can still be desparate allies, only keeping each pther around because of how they help each other achieving their goals.

I've played enough evil adventures to know how this works.

[gamer-printer]

Walter Leeuwen wrote:

How to avert the same problem with evil campaign that always occurs.

PC kill eachother cause they R evil

I've never had this problem. Our players don't use their alignments to define relationships with each other nor with NPCs. Only encounters with unknowns or monsters of expecting opposing beliefs/alignments. Relying on your alignments for in-group politics for good or evil groups is just silly.

But then again, nobody deliberately does acts to disrupt the party anyway, so it's really not an issue.

The best villains are often in love with an innocent they can't control, friends/associates in high places (of conflicting alignments) that they don't want to disappoint. Just because one is evil, doesn't mean kill everybody and be a friend to no one. Evil people need friends too.

[Corathon]

Threeshades wrote:

Walter Leeuwen wrote:

How to avert the same problem with evil campaign that always occurs.

PC kill eachother cause they R evil

Even evil people can be fond enough of someone to not want to kill them. And if they can't be friends, they can still be desparate allies, only keeping each pther around because of how they help each other achieving their goals.

I've played enough evil adventures to know how this works.

Agreed. In the evil games that I've run the player characters a) weren't enemies and b) needed each other to accomplish specific goals. This kept the group together.

I have seen the intraparty conflict amongst evils too, and its not pretty.

Another problem with evil games is the atrocity contest, in which the PCs participate in disgusting (and often foolish) acts of one-upmanship to show how EEEEVIL they are. Can be both repellent and tedious (and can lead to TPK if they are foolish enough).

[Teiidae]

Just like paladins dont massacre every creature that they detect as evil... or charge into a room full of devil yelling "EVIL MUST DIE" even though he is out numbered and out matched. There is such a thing called Smart roleplaying and Stupid roleplaying

[Teiidae]

Two be honest, it's a small thing but, 3.5 did smething that pathfinder didnt, back in the old days right beside monsters alignments it would say often,usually,always,etc. I think it was Dumb that the paizo guys didn't include it because without it leads to the famous paladin and the goblin baby issue. People these days look at alignment and treat it with RAW like it's set in stone, demons and their fiendish counter parts should always be evil, not goblins or kobold. I like to think the main reason they're "evil" is because people treat them like like horrible monsters and form lynch mobs, they only become evil because they react to their mistreatment..well that just me 2 coppers

[gamer-printer]

Teiidae wrote:

People these days look at alignment and treat it with RAW like it's set in stone, demons and their fiendish counter parts should always be evil, not goblins or kobold.

These days?! People have been thinking that 30 years ago. Alignment has always been problematic. Some live by it alone, other's treat alignment as a means to nudge direction of play and little more. There's never been one way to look at alignment and be accepted by everyone. It was a problem like that from the beginning, and no doubt forever onward too. You'll never get a one-true-wayism regarding alignment in the game ever.

If a designer wants to show a given monster to not always following alignment, it would be in a descriptive paragraph below the formatted stats. I don't designers to hand-hold me to the point to add extra descriptors for alignment in the stat block - that's silly. Stat blocks need to be static.

[feytharn]

Teiidae wrote:

Two be honest, it's a small thing but, 3.5 did smething that pathfinder didnt, back in the old days right beside monsters alignments it would say often,usually,always,etc. I think it was Dumb that the paizo guys didn't include it because without it leads to the famous paladin and the goblin baby issue. People these days look at alignment and treat it with RAW like it's set in stone, demons and their fiendish counter parts should always be evil, not goblins or kobold. I like to think the main reason they're "evil" is because people treat them like like horrible monsters and form lynch mobs, they only become evil because they react to their mistreatment..well that just me 2 coppers

PRD says alignemnt set in stone isn't RAW:

Alignment, Size, and Type: While a monster's size and type remain constant (unless changed by the application of templates or other unusual modifiers), alignment is far more fluid. The alignments listed for each monster in this book represent the norm for those monsters—they can vary as you require them to in order to serve the needs of your campaign. Only in the case of relatively unintelligent monsters (creatures with an Intelligence of 2 or lower are almost never anything other than neutral) and planar monsters (outsiders with alignments other than those listed are unusual and typically outcasts from their kind) is the listed alignment relatively unchangeable.

[SnowHeart]

I would also strongly suggest checking out Way of the Wicked. I'm usually not a fan for 3rd party stuff, but I picked this up on Monday and have been really impressed. It anticipates a lot of the usual pitfalls with evil campaigns and presents ways to avoid them (sometimes a little contrived but mostly fitting well with the story... and it's a great story). There's a free 30-page preview you can grab (downloadable here) to get a feel for the campaign.

Kingmaker might work but I've never played it; I gather it's rather sandboxy, so it may take a little more work on the GM's part (not necessarily a bad thing).

[gamer-printer]

SnowHeart wrote:

I'm usually not a fan for 3rd party stuff...

Why is that? I see more anti-3PP on the Paizo boards than anywhere else. Don't you realize that a good chunk of official rules are written by the same freelancers that are PF 3PP themselves? PF 3PP is nothing like the garbage from back in d20 glut - nothing like it at all, apples and oranges, really.

Sorry for the derail, but I just don't understand this mentality. I have yet to see any PF 3PP content that's seriously broken or over-powered. (There's more questionable material from official Paizo releases than ANY PF 3PP, IME!)

[SnowHeart]

gamer-printer wrote:

I have yet to see any PF 3PP content that's seriously broken or over-powered.

Bolded part of this as it may be an important distinction. I readily admit I have a bias based on what I saw of 3pp with 3.5 (of course, wizards did quite a good job all on its own with knocking things out of balance). Anyway, my intent was actually to compliment Fire Mountain Games. As always, YMMV.

[Fire Mountain Games]

SnowHeart wrote:

Anyway, my intent was actually to compliment Fire Mountain Games. As always, YMMV.

And we appreciate your kind words!

Gary McBride
Fire Mountain Games

[Teiidae]

@Feytharn- thanks for proving me wrong :).

I cannot wait to get my hands a print copy of all the the books.
Also...I wonder if gary might be wicked enough to play with our heartstrings by...maybe tell us the release date?

[Dr. Johnny Fever]

I am usually extremely leery of 3rd party Pathfinder products, having been repeatedly burned during DnD 3.5 by splat book overload. Having said that , there are exactly two companies that I am now totally sold on: Frog God Games and Fire Mountain Games. Both have offerings that can intelligently support long term evil campaigns.

Frog God Games offers Rappan Athuk, quite possibly the single greatest mega dungeon in existence. Nothing motivates evil characters like greed for loot and power. RA offers them both, but the GM is on the hook for creating the glue that keeps them from killing each other along the way. I would offer the idea that self preservation can do the trick here. RA is so deadly that even a chaotic evil barbarian will think twice about killing a team member when the group is barely (if they're lucky) surviving when firing on all cylinders. I'd also give them a heads up that the church of Orcus isn't looking for any converts or inside help from the PCs (I've seen this happen too with an evil group going on RA).

Fire Mountain Games' Way of the Wicked, as mentioned multiple times previously in this thread, is really the premiere evil-centric Pathfinder campaign. The first book includes sections on the traditional problems encountered when running an evil campaign as well as excellent ideas on how to avoid them (hint: rule number one is to not have chaotic evil party members). I've purchased electronic copies of the first five books (hopefully book 6, the last book, will release in December sometime) and I'm eagerly awaiting Paizo to get some stock of the hard copies. After our current campaign, Rappan Athuk, wraps up we'll be going on Way of the Wicked; it just looks like WAY too much fun to pass up for anything else.

Just my two bits (and little more),

DJF