corruptionpoints:
I’m going to have a rather unpopular opinion for a moment.
I don’t really understand evil campaigns. To be honest, I don’t really understand the appeal behind an evil character. I mean this in the most cut-and-dry sense of the word evil. Not neutral, not good with bad tendencies, not evil with…
Now I have certainly run an evil character or two in my time, though they all sit on different points in your traditional alignment scales, but it is rare for them to be entirely too difficult to handle regarding group motives. Especially if they’re intelligent. I’ve also had the experience of running an avil campaign in my time, so I’ll break this into two parts for clarity. Before I get into those two sections, however, something needs to be said about “evil” in general in order to really understand what is going on here.
Now I’m not going to get too deeply philosophical here because it is not the topic at hand, but let us begin by noting that these games take place in a fantasy world. What is good and evil is, by necessity, going to follow some different rules in a world that is completely different from the reality we know in our lives. That being said, we essentially have to consult the books and the settings to find out what is and is not evil in a given universe. I say this for reasons relating to a long line of thinking that I can explain if someone is really interested, but I’ll leave out for now. When we do this investigation, though, we find a lot of similarities. Abusing the poor or disadvantaged, taking of innocent life, stealing from others, all of these typical things we think of are still considered evil by most standards in the majority of systems. The easiest way to determine this is to just look at deity entries. If they’re listed as evil, then the things they do that are in contrast with the good deities should be considered evil. If you’re running homebrew, good and evil is basically up to your DM to define. In all systems, however, evil is essentially defined by actions. An action is either evil, neutral, or good. “Good” characters refrain from evil actions and attempt to engage in good actions when possible. That is what defines them. “Neutral” characters often do neither good nor evil actions as a whole, though tehnding towards good actions in non-neutral circumstances. They are defined by not intentionally seeking the good or the evil in any of their actions. “Evil” characters are defined by a single characteristic, namely that they engage in evil actions and likely do so without remorse or guilt. The motivations here are not necessarily relevant, though they obviously can be in special circumstances. Nonetheless, if you engage in many evil actions, no matter your reasons, you’re not going to be counted as a “good guy” for long. Evil is a category that exists in these systems by having done evil. You do evil? Welcome to the evil club. don’t sully the name of evil or neutral by pretending you’re not a member.
Yeah, that was my brief examination. You want something more complex and I will gladly write an entire essay on alignment in video games, but that’s a primer. And for the record, none of this line of reasoning has any place in the real world where morality is an extremely different matter altogether. Now, for the section devoted to players of evil characters and getting along with a group.
I have played a few evil charaters in my time. For case study here, I will use an old PC as an example of evil. The PC in question was a necromancer. As a necromancer who specialized in the creation of undead, he necessarily desecrated the remains of the dead and while some systems don’t recognize this as evil, most do. This character had little value held in human life overall and was not above killing someone who would get in his way. That being said, he never really clashed with the party. He sought the same goals which involved surviving monster attacks and fighting back against them. society was in danger and he lived in society so he didn’t want it to fall apart. He formed friendships with a party member or two (before they died) and while he had some issues (he was 8 years old and mentally scarred by mind-wrecking monsters in an early session) he was a cohesive individual. He had no need or desire to destroy anyone or anything, but was motivated by a simple and childlike worldview where he wanted nothing more than to be alive and to have friends. And if you disagreed with his goals, you would do fine as a skeleton to carry his things for him and make sure none of his friends got hurt. This character is evil, there’s no doubt about it. He kills without remorse and takes what he wants because he can. It doesn’t make him clashw ith the party, however, and he was pliable enough to change his course of action should someone voice a protest.
As a an evil PC, it is always worth remembering that friends are not bad and evil does not need to be done “for the lulz” because that is where insanity begins to come into play. Intelligence is not disallowed for evil characters just because they are evil. Their willingness to do evil is what makes them evil, but they are no less capable of being socially adept and coherent within a group than any other character. Even a selfish bastard need not steal from his own friends when there are plenty of other people to steal from in the world. Remember, having good motives and actions is not what makes a character good. It’s having good actions and motives while simultaneously abstaining from evil ones that does.
Now to swing behind the DM screen for a moment and describe the evil campaign that I ran for some time. In fairness, it didn’t start that way, but the party slowly became more and more entrenched in the rebellion and those guys were pretty freaking evil, no matter how much the group tried to play the “lesser of two evils” card (which, by the way, is totally not true because the “empire” here is actually a fairly benevolent governing body) and that was that. These characters sought the overthrow of the government as well as the good of the draconic peoples of the Blood Rebellion. Sounds good at first, right? The problem is that the rebellion was mostly banditry, ransacking settlements for goods and killing people everywhere, initiates collecting skulls to devote to their god and embracing the destructive power that came with the arcane energies flowing from dragon’s blood. There is some long drawn out history that I could get into, but even the best aspect of the rebellion was simply a military force whose purpose was fighting back against the new gods (who had slain the old pantheon as a result of a long history of drama that I also won’t get into here) and restoring “order” to the world. Why so evil? Murder, necromancy, pillaging, torture, etc. All over the place. These were their means of operation. It was how they did things. The party freed a necromancer capable of destroying the world from imprisonment to work for them, sold out an entire race of lizardfolk to their deaths for military alliance with a stronger tribe, collected the souls of an entire innocent village to release the imprisoned drow from their eternal prison between realities, and did a great number of bloody evil acts to further their cause.
Why did the game remain fun, even in spite of all this evil taking place? The characters had a cause. They had purpose. They didn’t personally run around raping and pillaging and stealing everything they could. realistically, it ran much like any other game, but the details were different. Rescue the princess to gain favor with the local lord that he might lend military aid? Why not just rescue the evil trapped necromancer instead? She’ll be pretty grateful. Free the outmatched lizardfolk from their oppressive enemies? Why not help the stronger ones crush their resistance and get better allies instead? It worked out pretty well there. A race of people trapped for all aternity that needs a magical McGuffin to rescue them? Sure, but they happen to be irredeemably evil and the McGuffin requires hundreds of souls to function for this purpose. All of these story arcs run similarly no matter which side of the spectrum they are designed for, but the fact that the group is evil dictates what they are willing to do. The flavor and coloration changes, but the game remains somewhat the same overall. It’s the drama that is different.
If your group is doing nothing but backstabbing one another and destroying civilization, they’re not just being evil. They’re being either stupid or crazy in addition. If you want advice on these things, I can dispense plenty from experience. If you’re looking for opinions, I’ve got plenty more. This is just as brief as my own handling of the topic is going to get is all and is really just a snippet of at least half a dozen other entire essays that could be written on these subjects. By all means though, if you’re interested in reading any of that give me a request. I enjoy writing as part of a request or conversation far more than just writing for the sake of writing.
