...describes one of the worst RPG experiences I ever had...as a player.

 It was the "Evil" campaign. I wanted to game....the group were all players that had just played in a GURPS: MECHA mini-campaign. (which was much more fun)


The rules set was Rolemaster...we had pre-generated characters who were all 'evil' of one type or another. We suppesedly were on a mission or quest for the Prince of Darkness of that fantasy world - and our party leader was named ' Lord Chaos! '. That player would actually over-dramatically ham up pronouncing his name every time we got introduced to an NPC.


I just did not enjoy playing Evil.



- Ed C.

I ran a campaign where my wife played an despicable Russian agent. Seriously, a killer of babies and the hand of death upon the earth. He buddies in the campaign was a guy, an Aussie, who was just not right in the head. He had been tortured by Japanese in China and the result was a guy who could only feel any emotion when he was hurting someone...preferably slowly. Another guy was a real Peter Lorey kind of guy. Not so scary but utterly without any moral conviction. I kept thinking "Naw, this guy wont do tha...By the gods, he did!" and then he would be off to something else. The scariest thing about the group was not that the were "Teh Evul" but that they really played some sinister nasty guys with perfect rationale. They either KNEW they were superior to these lesser creatures that waddled in the dirt or they KNEW they were good, just misunderstood, or they KNEW they did what they did because they had to survive. It was one of the most entertaining and dare I say epic campaigns of my whole life. I fell in love with my wife all over again. A group that can play true evil (not naughty bad-bad) can make an incredible adventure nay, campaign of it.

However, that is not some folks cup of tea. That is cool too.

Bill

My group has a lot of morally ambivalent or grey stuff, but not often evil.

Mostly because it's a bit easy and therefore a bit dull.  If you're Evil (capital E), then you don't face much by way of moral quandaries or conflicts between what's right and what's expedient.  And those quandaries and conflicts, within reason, are fun.

When it comes to my friends, I'd much rather find out they have heroic delusions of greatness rather than finding out they enjoy graphic fish fucking or have nascent cannibalistic appetites. That's a buzzkill that lasts after the Cheetos are gone, so why tempt fate?

It really depends on what you mean by "evil", Ed. The PCs in my games are sometimes lying, manipulative, caprious, egomaniacs but they are also altruistic, have a moral code and are functional members of society.....some may call this "grey". All these characters draw the line when it comes to fishfucking, though. I suppose this is what NPCs are for.

Regards,
David R

I don't have good and evil in games. I just have people who do stuff. Because Balbinus is right--pure Evil is as banal a concept as pure Good.

Quote from: Koltar;267840...describes one of the worst RPG experiences I ever had...as a player.

The rules set was Rolemaster...we had pre-generated characters who were all 'evil' of one type or another. We suppesedly were on a mission or quest for the Prince of Darkness of that fantasy world - and our party leader was named ' Lord Chaos! '. That player would actually over-dramatically ham up pronouncing his name every time we got introduced to an NPC.


I just did not enjoy playing Evil.

That sounds hilarious (apart from the Rolemaster bit - now that is evil), but I'm not sure its evil as Balbinus is discussing. I don't think you can see it as good vs evil but rather playing different stereotypes or genre roles. That kind of hamming play has its own merits, but its hardly evil in the same way that the same sort of gaming for 'good' is really about being good - its about melodrama and hamming it up. Although I'm assuming this is a short term campaign, because a player who did that over a year would become really annoying. What did they do that made them evil?

Otherwise I agree with other posters - pre-defining characters as good or evil removes a degree of free will from their actions (not always I admit) which ultimately makes the terms meaningless if you are taking them seriously.

Quote from: Balbinus;267866My group has a lot of morally ambivalent or grey stuff, but not often evil.

Mostly because it's a bit easy and therefore a bit dull.  If you're Evil (capital E), then you don't face much by way of moral quandaries or conflicts between what's right and what's expedient.  And those quandaries and conflicts, within reason, are fun.

hmm, see, I find this to be too narrow a view of evil. I often see people define good as some sort of complex and intricate thing then turn around and say evil is a two dimensional caricatured.

The thing that was interesting for the evil campaign I mentioned was that the players took the time to come up with a moral code, there were things they would not do. They then took the time to come up with a rationale. Evil generally, does not stroke its pointy mustachio and revel in its "evilness". An evil person is going to rationalize the living crap out of what they are doing. There in lies the challenge. What is your moral code? Kill everyone but you would never rape a person? That would just be sick. Then, how do you rationalize killing the infant for the ritual? Well, he was going to die anyway. He had no parents. Hey, but you killed his parents.

Now, don't get me wrong. I like playing good also. I had a knight who was the bastion of good in the country, the enforcer of law and order. He would selflessly throw himself in harms way to save peasant or noble alike. He also did not view bandits or those who broke the law as worthy of mercy. He would torture them mercilessly to get information then dispense "justice" as empowered in him. My GM said that he was the most evil good buy he had ever seen. Likewise, the same GM felt a rogue I played who had a strict moral code he lived by, although evil, was also one of the most noble.

To me, that is the challenge of playing characters with strong morals and codes, ones who you might call "good" or "evil".

But like I said, it might not be some folks cup of tea.

Bill

All of our players do not believe in the existence of absolute morality, and this is often reflected in the game; while we've tried very hard at times to play truly heroic characters - Good people who actively go out of their way to do Good things - it generally just ends up being frustrating for the players involved; we prefer a more morally ambiguous game, in which morality is not reflected in subjective character beliefs, but in consequences of actions taken.

Still, while we've had a lot of characters be extremely selfish, we haven't had very many who were truly Evil, people whose morality said it was right to spread and accelerate entropy. We've talked about it, about playing a group of proto-evil-masterminds, but it's just never happened. I do think it'd be interesting to do, particularly if you then turn the tables, let some decades pass, and then play people who live in the lands torn apart by these people's continuing actions. Your old characters then become the opposition for the new campaign.

But I doubt we'll bother; evil for the sake of evil doesn't please our players any more than good for the sake of good. Well, maybe a little more.

Ed,
  My wife decided to run an evil supers campaign. She decided to keep it from turning into a PvP bloodbath by imposing two restrictions
1) We were all part of a Brotherhood of evil
2) We had to keep our identities and the existence of the Brotherhood secret
  Well, it didn't take more than 30 minuted before we degenerated into Bond villains. It was ironic and sad.
  But, it was fun and we got to do that little backstabby moves and start wars, etc.

  I guess, we weren't classically evil, no one killed babies or kicked puppies just to prove we were evil. but we were bad and it turned out fun.

  I don't think our group has enough juice to run another game of evil campaign without getting squicky. But the one was fun.

My experiences with so-called evil campaigns is that they quickly turn into dumb campaigns. Or, as I like to think of then, Chaotic Dumb. I also agree with the other posters who think that playing evil campaigns turns moral choices into...meh.

Seanchai

I think I'm lost for evil campaigns. Having a 3 years old daughter, every time I read "evil" I picture Mermaid Man and Sponge Bob now.

The only game in which I played an objectively evil character was 1e AD&D. My character was a lawful evil cleric worshipping some god-of-war-type deity. I played him as a low-key megalomaniac. Mostly he was good for offing wounded prisoners and planning grandiose schemes of conquest. Other than the humour value, I didn't get much out of the experience.

I've never wanted to play a callously evil, randomly violent deviant -- that's not really evil, it's just sociopathic.  I did play with a couple of others like that, though, in my early-early AD&D days.  These were the same sorts of guys who liked to pull legs off insects and kick dogs, though, and they simply treated the imaginary construct as a world in which they would suffer no lasting consequence.  Like I said:  sociopathic.

I have played devious, unsympathetic, and amoral characters, though.  In D&D terms, they were on the far, downward side of Chaotic Neutral -- totally okay with doing whatever they wanted for their own personal satisfaction.  They still worked well with a group of adventurers, though.

You know, I'm suddenly recalling the Vampire: the Masquerade group I was in back in the early '90s.  I had grown increasingly tired of the society of bored do-nothings who only come out to argue with each other at night.  The Sabbat book had just come out, and I was really quite interested in the notion of playing a vampire in a truly malevolent, monstrous, amoral society.  When I broached the notion of playing a Sabbat campaign, my fellow players told me I was crazy, and that they'd never stand for such a thing.  It struck me as odd that they seemed to want to filter out the real horror from a "horror" roleplaying game.

!i!

In my experience, all 'evil campaigns' (as defined by the characters' alignments) almost always devolve into PvP action.  I've only played in a few games where the evil characters were able to form a stable equilibrium, and/or a consortium of evil.