So we are stuck inside and playing a lot of 5e in our other game worlds, but none of our Starfinder games are continuing yet, and I foolishly agreed to contemplate running a high-level evil game. I'm pretty sure our group is mature enough to handle it, for the most part. Vibe very influenced by reading through a pdf of Black Crusade, the 40k RPG where you play characters touched by Chaos. Probably not intended to have a long lifespan. Definitely intended to have a level of personal power, among the player characters, outsized of normal PC range (maybe 14th level?). I want to set them against terrifying Celestial forces that have a good shot at ruining their days. So I'm in a full on experimental mindset about the creation process.
This means:
I am letting players dedicate levels to being creatures not normally playable in Starfinder. So far I have someone wanting to be an old Golarion Vampire and a Shoggoth. The idea is to create a 'heist team', individually obligated to the bureaucracy of a particularly insane Archon in Aucturn, that can vacillate between a Grimdark and Legion of Doom style vibe. The players themselves (one is particular) have a good sense of game balance and a fair amount of experience in game design (they blow me out of the water... I'm the new DM here). Has anyone ever done something like this in Starfinder or any other game? Advice?
I am very interested in all the most terrifying goody two-shoes absolute lawful good bastards I can throw at them. I am thinking I'm going to be working a lot with the material around Hylax and the Forever Queen. Insect paladins. 'Angels' who exist more in the basic, purely 'life-preserving' realms of the higher planes where all mandibles twitch in unison to the glorious buzzing of the All-Light.
I think there is going to be one arc. It goes from "ooh looky all the things I can do without pesky morality and superhuman powers given by evil gods woopie!" to "no!!! return to the Hall of Doom". Maybe episodically. Anyone ever done anything like this? Advice?
In case this hasn't come across I'm not trying to make situations where players revel in repugnant acts, except maybe as comic asides. I'm trying to take the epic absurdity located in the grimdark setting and use it to explore the daily lives of the 'other side' of the pact worlds. I want to know how evil brushes its teeth.
Well, the shoggoth probably just grows a new mouth whenever it wants fresh teeth. Unless it is addicted to the sensation of brushing its teeth...
A vampire predating the Gap probably has centuries of habit of polishing and protecting fangs, it can't survive without them!
Hygiene Kits all around! Out the airlock for anyone who fails to take AND use them!
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Left handed!I want to know how evil brushes its teeth.
Most sinister!
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I honestly recommend giving the players a significant level of personal power in terms of property, corporations run, etc. Lawful Evil corporate scumbags are way easier to control in a gameplay situation than Chaotic Evil murderhobos with no responsibilities. Plus, while the PC might not personally care about NPC employees being hurt, inconvenienced, or killed, all that damage to corporate reputations would prompt the PCs to "heroics" to resolve the situation.
This is actually key to how I'm conceptualizing. Webs of self-interest turn to pacts turn to obligations. The chaotic aspect comes in with an essentially cultural acceptance that the mouthpieces and signifiers of authority and genuine connection as regards the Great Old Ones are all Mad Prophets, broken by their knowledge as an unavoidable cost to entry. I am imagining a byzantine half-cybernetic, half-mutant office full of dutiful transcriptionists surrounding a tall throne with a emaciated prophet-CEO gibbering into the high galleries, each phoneme entered into room-sized autonomic translation and analysis devices. The lighting reminiscent of the movie Brazil.