Sure, it's possible to interpret Talingarde as a Lawful Tyrannical nation. If that's what your players would feel more comfortable with, that's fine. A lot of players also like the complexity and multiple layers that a genuinely evil PC could potentially have with a good backstory and roleplaying. I find it fun to roleplay a character who's unironically self-righteous and deluded, while having incredible amounts of cunning and patience but no empathy whatsoever.
This kind of defeats the purpose of the AP. Which is, essentially, generic fantasy reversed.
This is the player's opportunity to be Skeletor or something.
The AP doesn't really work if everyone isn't unrepentantly evil, and loving it while sticking it to the paragons of pious purity personified.
In one part you literally need to rescue a dragon in distress so it can slay a princess, and this is CRUCIAL to completion of the AP. That's the kind of stuff that's written.
Having played the AP...everyone in the party would have had to have dumped both Int and Wis for that to be the case.
Glossing over book 1 (I haven't played it) the goals of each book through book 4 or 5 are:
-Unleash a horrific, SENTIENT plague upon the masses to decimate the civilian population, and reduce morale among the Mitran troops (Knowing full well, mind you, that the actual soldiers will be completely fine for the most part due to the Mitran priests that make up a large portion of the army). Unleashing a powerful sealed Daemon in the process.
-Slaughter EVERYONE who resides in their holy land, including a phoenix and an ANGEL.
-Entice a Great Wyrm to raze their capital city to the ground, women and children included.
You talk about it being "banal and shallow" to want revenge for being rightfully imprisoned...how much moreso is it to do these horrendous things because you're pissed that you perpetrated a "victimless crime" and got caught?
"Well f~~* it, I'm screwed might as well MURDER EVERYONE, yeah that'll show 'em how wrong they were to lock me up!"
You can't really rationalize any of the above as being justified actions.
Sure, that last idea could work...but the PCs are still unrepentantly evil "really bad guys" for doing any of the above, much less all of them. If your goal is to make your players feel like anything but the cartoonishly evil villains they are, you need to re-write the whole AP.
The author may concede that everyone might not be comfortable playing that...but he then proceeds to make that the only way to play the AP as written. Your idea really only works for book 1, when you get into the later books it becomes harder and harder to justify their actions in any way.
For one, recruiting the Black Dragon is ENTIRELY UNNECESSARY. A crew of 14th/15th level characters who are probably Vampires, Liches, Graveknights, or some other horrid monster by this point are more than capable of being seen as a capable enough threat that the princess' daddy would want to come save her from them.
More advice for "Way of the Wicked".
The author overlooks an alternative ending to this AP. Spoiler warning if you are a player -
At the end of the AP the PCs are expected kill Princess Belinda and end the insurgency against their rule forever. But why kill the Princess? A better way would be to capture her, use a magical item to suppress her sorcerous powers, and drag her back to the capital city.
Once back in the city she is not put on trial or anything like that. Instead her role in the insurgency is whitewashed and blamed on "wicked advisors" and unnatural supernatural influence. Instead she is forced to marry the Asmodean King of Talingarde, and thus cementing the Asmodean rule.
There are plenty of things that could change throughout the AP. Anyone else think of any?
How do you figure the party would capture her? Grappling or dominate spells?
Well, I expect her to put up a fight. You could debuff her strength or dexterity to the point where she is helpless and cannot move. Or you can slap some manacles of cooperation on her when she is dying, then heal her.http://goo.gl/DjtrRi
Perhaps the manacles could be refashioned as a nice necklace. Something to suppress sorcerous powers would be helpful too (any item like that exist?).
Depends on whether being dragged off the battlefield and forcibly married is a "reasonable request". In any case, she won't have any trouble making a DC 11 Will save.
For one, recruiting the Black Dragon is ENTIRELY UNNECESSARY. A crew of 14th/15th level characters who are probably Vampires, Liches, Graveknights, or some other horrid monster by this point are more than capable of being seen as a capable enough threat that the princess' daddy would want to come save her from them.You are right. The villainous characters will probably want to kill or enslave the black dragon.
So if they can actually kill him, which Gary doesn't seem to think is possible, how will the fourth act proceed? Theoretically, the PCs could make a beeline for Bellinda herself. Would the GM use her stats from the final volume? If they kill her, then there won't be a final battle in part six.
Which is part of the reason the plot just collapses without the PCs climbing aboard the choo choo after about book 4.
For one, recruiting the Black Dragon is ENTIRELY UNNECESSARY. A crew of 14th/15th level characters who are probably Vampires, Liches, Graveknights, or some other horrid monster by this point are more than capable of being seen as a capable enough threat that the princess' daddy would want to come save her from them.
Indeed they can. But can they perform a violent demonstration, engage the assembled guard forces AND wait in ambush to assassinate the King at the same time. While not revealing the open role of themselves and Asmodeus in starting the war and so discrediting their future regime.
The dragon is less risky than them doing it themselves, and they get 2 bonus achievements :- They kill off a good dragon which would oppose them later and if they are lucky their 'ally' gets killed after triggering any hidden angelic defenses and they don't have to deal with him later.
My players are only in book 2 but I can see them buying into the dragon plan , killing Thorne in book 5 looks like their likely goal and ruling the kingdom is their goal so I don't expect any major issues in book 6 either
As to the original point I am making a big effort to make it clear that the church of Mithra is actually largely good, popular and that the King is largely just and fair and that only evil power hungry malcontents would want to overthrow this realm. Which describes my pc's perfectly
I think I disagree with you.
Brandescar prison and the rather harsh punishments (also if you go with a medieval style society rather than modern liberal laws then the laws of Talingarde are not particularly harsh indeed they are a bit soft in places) are for serious criminals. There is no suggestion that petty theft , prostitution or similar crimes end up in Brandescar indeed the fact that there are only 4-6 criminals in all of Talingarde who end up there makes it unlikely that most criminals end up there.
In a truly lawful and good society Blasphemy will be directed at those who actively attack the faith of Mithra, not those who hold private and different faiths in reasonable religions which probably covers most elven and dwarven faiths, as the pantheon of Talingarde is not established but largely seems dualistic I don't see a lot of room for innocent worship going wrong, if you add a bunch of extra deities you would have to decide on their status I assume most good/lawful deitites would be tolerated.
The only group we know to be 'persecuted' are the worshippers of Asmodeus who practice the following completely reasonable religious practices
1)Human sacrifice
2)Slavery
I think I can see why in a reasonable and just society such a faith would not be tolerated
There aren't 4-6 criminals in all of Talingarde. Executions in Talingarde happen quite swiftly. In WotW the PCs are due to be executed within three days of arrival. Brandescar is more a death camp than a prison.I think I disagree with you.
Brandescar prison and the rather harsh punishments (also if you go with a medieval style society rather than modern liberal laws then the laws of Talingarde are not particularly harsh indeed they are a bit soft in places) are for serious criminals. There is no suggestion that petty theft , prostitution or similar crimes end up in Brandescar indeed the fact that there are only 4-6 criminals in all of Talingarde who end up there makes it unlikely that most criminals end up there.
I think you misunderstand. The adventure provides both a map to Branderscar and a complete list of all the prisoners there during the time the PCs are resident. It's not a long list. There's only five cells in the prison, so it doesn't even have the capacity for mass incarceration.
So there are indeed only 4-6 criminals in all of Talingarde who end up at Branderscar, because Branderscar is the equivalent of one of those Supermax prisons, designated to hold the worst of the worst.
This is supported by the character creation rules, which stress that you have committed some sort of "special" crime to get to Brandescar. For example,
* Arson -- You have willfully started a fire that destroyed property. To be sent to Branderscar, you didn't start just a minor little trash fire. Your act of arson threatened a major town, city, church, or castle.
* Attempted Murder -- You tried to kill someone and botched the job. To be sent to Branderscar Prison, you did not try to kill just anybody. You likely assaulted someone of great importance and prominence.
Prostitution, drug offenses, and similar "victimless" crimes aren't even on the list.
Also not on the list: "Minor" examples of those same crimes.
Murder or attempted murder of that neighbor that pissed you off? Not bad enough to get you sent to Branderscar.
Burn down some guy's shack with him inside? Not bad enough to be sent to Branderscar.
I think the best way to get your players into Way of the Wicked is to go the opposite direction in my opinion.
In my group our crimes weren't just run of the mill special-bad, our GM took us aside and basically said 'anything that a 6th level or lower character could do, you've been going through the perfectly reasonable legal system for a while and because Talingrade is so nice they honestly don't have much defense against people just going off the hook, go nuts, the bigger the better'
Our arsonist didn't just try to burn down a church, he tried to burn down the Vale and thus knew of the Phoenix within and had a rival, in the Holy Flame Inquisitors.
Our Slave trader tried to raid (and almost succeeded in raiding) an entire town before being caught by half the navy.
Our Assassin (a cultist of Sifkesh, refluffed as a Whore Queen of heresy) tried to seduce and nudge the princess towards suicide, then fell in love with her when she caught him.
You're not just evil, you're Evil, capital E, you're the largest concentration of evil aligned characters in the civilization at the start of the game (Bar the conspiracy you'll join)
And Thorn likes ambitious people, that's why you attracted his interest.
Talingrade doesn't deserve what you're going to do to it and know what? That's fine, make sure all the players are comfortable with being Massive Villains before you start, don't be afraid to work things out with them before hand in order to make them as complex as any hero, but the worst thing you can do is sugarcoat it, it defeats the entire purpose of the AP.
Let them revel in it.