Have you ever played a game where the PCs were the monsters, bad guys, undead beings, etc; and have it actually work out?

Or are these games by their nature explosive/implosive/whatever, or just plain dull?

RPGPundit

I'm in one now. It's probably the more common type of 'evil campaign', where instead of being set up that way, it's become such because the players play to win ie if their characters were real people they'd be psychopaths.

My only D&D campaign was based on the Orcs of Thar book, so th PCs were are goblins, kobolds and such. It was actually really good fun, though it was more of a comedy that a genuine exploration of evil.

Yes. I've run T&T games where every PC was a "monster race" PC. Where the goals of the party were to raid the village and eat the villagers.

Heck, it's such a common theme in T&T, that a companion game was released for doing so... Monsters! Monsters!

Heck T&T 7th is missing the 3 pages of description from monsters monsters needed to differentiate the monsters better.

For Free RPG Day, one of the two demo games I ran was a T&T game for a Balrukh and a Ghoul. A serious Pinky (the Ghoul) and the Brain (The Balrog) kind of feel. They went raiding an underground orcish home. They killed all the warriors, never even found the wizard... and made me laugh like nobody's business.

I played some Monsters Monsters...

But currently, I have a set of PCs from the Collegium Tortoris (the Guild of Torturers) .  They took out the local theirve's guild and set up in their place.  Though our setting does not have alignment, and as such they are free to appear quite normal and helpful to outsiders, when they kiled off another PC and mulched up the body and put in stew for orphans, I think they qualified as pretty nasty.

These 2 characters are going strong, having been gamed consistentlyu since 1995.

I've played years of Vampire, Werewolf, Demon and they worked out great.

Part of the reason those games work though is the Monsters aren't straight up EVIL. They have survival/mechanical reasons to do some of the terrible things they do. Just like all other characters in RPGs they're trying to do the best they can with what they've got. It's just what they've got makes them kill innocent people sometimes...

I've played in a few.  A 3ed campaign, where we just decided to make everyone evil.  Worked out great - the DM thought we'd be at each other's throats and ripping eachother off and murdering eachother, but as I said to him "I'm Chaotic EVIL, not Chaotic STUPID."  We could accomplish MORE evil by (somewhat) working together, and then when he made the mistake of having a LG community dedicated to Heironious begin actively hunting us down and had the uber-good Paladin become a constant thorn in our side, well, he gave us something to band together against.  How we got our revenge, and basically destroyed the campaign, was one of the most beautiful things ever.

As for monsters, we ran through Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil in our "Monsters Inc" campaign, as Savage Species had just hit, and we were all juiced to play monsters.  We had Troll Monk twins, I initially played a female Orc working towards the Champion of Gruumsh PrC, but she died, so I made my Umber Hulk named Zoidberg, half-dragons, half-ogres, ettins, goblins, you name it.  It was such a fun campaign.

We are currently running through a "Pirates" campaign, where we aren't EVIL, but we sure ain't good.  I'm a CN cleric of Umberlee, since even though she's evil, few good coastal communities accost her chosen.

Monsters!  Monsters! needs a remake.   The idea is great fun and it could be repackaged as its own stand-alone game.   It tends to go comedic, but I used it for a post-LotR game where Evil battles itself in Mordor for supremacy and tries to connect with other evil across Middle Earth.    It was a lot of fun exploring ME where monsters had to sneak about because Men and Dwarves ruled the world again.

The players were surprisingly bloodthirsty.  They made it a point to discover who destroyed the One Ring and when they did, they came for Sam in the Shire...  

It didn't go well for the Gamgee clan.

Our d20 Star Wars campaign turned out that way, and ended in our tpk, which neither bothered nor surprised us. We had a blast, then the "good guys" (as in, not us) won. Heh... fun.

Quote from: Spinachcat;310646Monsters!  Monsters! needs a remake.   The idea is great fun and it could be repackaged as its own stand-alone game.   It tends to go comedic, but I used it for a post-LotR game where Evil battles itself in Mordor for supremacy and tries to connect with other evil across Middle Earth.    It was a lot of fun exploring ME where monsters had to sneak about because Men and Dwarves ruled the world again.

The players were surprisingly bloodthirsty.  They made it a point to discover who destroyed the One Ring and when they did, they came for Sam in the Shire...  

It didn't go well for the Gamgee clan.

Probably one of the more creative uses of a monster based game I've ever heard of.  Very satisfying!

I played WoD games for years, but that doesn't really qualify here, does it?

I once played an AD&D game where I was a CN werepig and my partner in crime was a CE half-elf assassin, and that went completely overboard gonzo (my character was his mount) really, really fast. One of the most hilarious games I've ever played (and I played Toon, for the record). Think "medieval roadtrip of Charles Manson and Ted Bundy directed by the Wayans bros" and you get the tone of the game.

In another game, we played a monstrous tribe trying to settle in a sandbox-type of wilderness environment. One PC shaman goblin, another fighter half-ogre, another ranger hobgoblin etc. We would deal with our neighbours, try to avoid getting manipulated by other bad guys in the area, etc. A wilderlands sedentary freewheeling survival game of sorts. It was a blast. It was 3.5.

Quote from: Benoist;310661I played WoD games for years, but that doesn't really qualify here, does it?

I once played an AD&D game where I was a CN werepig and my partner in crime was a CE half-elf assassin, and that went completely overboard gonzo (my character was his mount) really, really fast. One of the most hilarious games I've ever played (and I played Toon, for the record). Think "medieval roadtrip of Charles Manson and Ted Bundy directed by the Wayans bros" and you get the tone of the game.

In another game, we played a monstrous tribe trying to settle in a sandbox-type of wilderness environment. One PC shaman goblin, another fighter half-ogre, another ranger hobgoblin etc. We would deal with our neighbours, try to avoid getting manipulated by other bad guys in the area, etc. A wilderlands sedentary freewheeling survival game of sorts. It was a blast. It was 3.5.

See, that's also great.  The GM was pretty clever to set you up that way.  Did you have to deal with the real enemy, adventurers?

Quote from: LordVreeg;310669See, that's also great.  The GM was pretty clever to set you up that way.  Did you have to deal with the real enemy, adventurers?

As a matter of fact, we did. Once seemingly with a "wandering monster" event, and later, with the consequences of that encounter, a raiding party determined to avenge the "poor", "murdered" (though we didn't attack first, but nevermind) adventurers.

Quote from: Benoist;310671As a matter of fact, we did. Once seemingly with a "wandering monster" event, and later, with the consequences of that encounter, a raiding party determined to avenge the "poor", "murdered" (though we didn't attack first, but nevermind) adventurers.

In our old monsters monsters game, we started as minions of an evil priest.  We had to deal with a few sets of adventurers...

I like your avenging raiding party...nothing like playing the other side for giving moral amiguity a good name.

As someone once posted somewhere, (More or less) 'A real hero doesn't attack first'.

Far as I'm concerned, in that situation, the 'monsters' have the moral high ground.