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Bad guys/monsters-based campaigns?

Started by RPGPundit, June 24, 2009, 01:30:28 PM

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Benoist

Does eating some selected parts of the adventurers after the fight is over jeopardize this... "moral high ground"-thingy you just talked about? :D

Narf the Mouse

The main problem with government is the difficulty of pressing charges against its directors.

Given a choice of two out of three M&Ms, the human brain subconsciously tries to justify the two M&Ms chosen as being superior to the M&M not chosen.

Tamelorn

I've only really been in less than a dozen evil/monster/bad guy campaigns in various systems.  All of ours were quite successful, fun and liberating, but I think that's because we only went there when everyone was in the mood, only fairly rarely, and we approached each one as an interesting learning experience, for the most part.

Quote from: RPGPundit;310139Have 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

JongWK

I ran a Forgotten Realms campaign with the PCs serving a priest of Shar tasked with restoring an ancient temple. We had a blast playing it, but the group fell apart due to external factors. :(

By the way, you should totally check this.
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DeadUematsu

I have played in bad guys/monsters campaigns. They inevitably attract bad people.
 

Cranewings

We played a Heroes Unlimited game for about a year and a half where everyone was evil. The heroes were definitely more powerful than us. We almost never came across a hero that couldn't take two of us. People like Iron Man / Batman could handle 6 of us at a time.

Still, we could cause a lot of evil / get away with a lot of shit. The game found some strange balance.

LordVreeg

Quote from: Cranewings;310817We played a Heroes Unlimited game for about a year and a half where everyone was evil. The heroes were definitely more powerful than us. We almost never came across a hero that couldn't take two of us. People like Iron Man / Batman could handle 6 of us at a time.

Still, we could cause a lot of evil / get away with a lot of shit. The game found some strange balance.
Sounds like you had a very good GM.
I'm guessing he had an internal dynamic that sort of stated that most people who got super powers would use them for self-agrandizement, so there were a lot more of them, but he evened it out by making the goody-goodys more powerful.  My guess.

Was it fun?  light hearted, or not?
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Tamelorn

I remember one 'evil campaign' setting a long time ago - probably my first exposure to the concept, it did go pretty strangely.
Quirky (but fun) home-grown pre-AD&D (i.e. chainmail+) setting that had been going on forever, I made a half-elven fighter/thief who was CE for a 'side game with evil characters' that the DM wanted to run for one of his friends.
So, let's see, first level, starting out going into 'the dungeon' with a human cleric, a human fighter (nuetral) and a nasty little gnome illusionist.

We get down into the depths and the 'surprise' is sprung - this didn't make sense to me at the time, so don't expect me to be able to make it make sense.  The cleric was actually lawful good and the fighter his henchman, he was luring the other two evil adventurers down into the dungeon to 'apprehend' us or something.

He used a command spell to get me to surrender, then tried to take us into custody.  Things went badly (for them), and I had to fight my way back out of the lower level of the dungeon solo, after having looted all the corpses.

Afterwards, of course, I was still 'umm, what the heck?'

Imperator

Quote from: KrakaJak;310427I'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...
Ditto. But I would think that Pundit's question refers more to RPGs where that's not the default option.
My name is Ramón Nogueras. Running now Vampire: the Masquerade (Giovanni Chronicles IV for just 3 players), and itching to resume my Call of Cthulhu campaign (The Sense of the Sleight-of-Hand Man).

RPGPundit

Yes. I suppose the question could apply to a Vampire campaign or something like that, but only if beyond that all the vampires were particularly "bad guys", going out of their way to be evil for some reason, and not wussbag artistes laying around bemoaning their immortality.

Likewise, in Werewolf as I understand it the default is that the werewolf is a valiant eco-loving noble savage who fights against the true evil: capitalism and white european civilization, which along with the male gender and Jesus are responsible for EVERYTHING BAD EVER.
See, that would not apply, because according to the setting your werewolf is actually a good guy or at worst neutral. If, on the other hand you were playing a werewolf game where the werewolves were the bad guys, knew they were bad, and played it as such, that would be different.

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Quote from: RPGPundit;311066Yes. I suppose the question could apply to a Vampire campaign or something like that, but only if beyond that all the vampires were particularly "bad guys", going out of their way to be evil for some reason, and not wussbag artistes laying around bemoaning their immortality.

Likewise, in Werewolf as I understand it the default is that the werewolf is a valiant eco-loving noble savage who fights against the true evil: capitalism and white european civilization, which along with the male gender and Jesus are responsible for EVERYTHING BAD EVER.
See, that would not apply, because according to the setting your werewolf is actually a good guy or at worst neutral. If, on the other hand you were playing a werewolf game where the werewolves were the bad guys, knew they were bad, and played it as such, that would be different.

RPGPundit

I'll give you Jesus, capitalism and White European civilisation, but male gender? please, we are the new underclass didn't you know :)

Evil is jsut a perspective. A bunch of orcs raiding a human village and putting them all to the flame is no worse than a bunch of knights stumbling across a kobold village and putting them all to the sword. Its all about perspective.

Maybe it was because we started playing young but we had maybe a 4 year period when ever one was an evil bastard and woe betide you if you got incapacitated or hit with a sleep spell by the 'monsters' cos the chance of you ever waking up again were slim to nil :)
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Narf the Mouse

The main problem with government is the difficulty of pressing charges against its directors.

Given a choice of two out of three M&Ms, the human brain subconsciously tries to justify the two M&Ms chosen as being superior to the M&M not chosen.

Tamelorn

Yes, I sort of took the question to mean things like Sabbat for Vampire and the Black Spiral Dancers for Werewolves - obviously destructive, evil or irredeemable villains.

Quote from: RPGPundit;311066Yes. I suppose the question could apply to a Vampire campaign or something like that, but only if beyond that all the vampires were particularly "bad guys", going out of their way to be evil for some reason, and not wussbag artistes laying around bemoaning their immortality.

Likewise, in Werewolf as I understand it the default is that the werewolf is a valiant eco-loving noble savage who fights against the true evil: capitalism and white european civilization, which along with the male gender and Jesus are responsible for EVERYTHING BAD EVER.
See, that would not apply, because according to the setting your werewolf is actually a good guy or at worst neutral. If, on the other hand you were playing a werewolf game where the werewolves were the bad guys, knew they were bad, and played it as such, that would be different.

RPGPundit

Imperator

Quote from: RPGPundit;311066Yes. I suppose the question could apply to a Vampire campaign or something like that, but only if beyond that all the vampires were particularly "bad guys", going out of their way to be evil for some reason, and not wussbag artistes laying around bemoaning their immortality.

Likewise, in Werewolf as I understand it the default is that the werewolf is a valiant eco-loving noble savage who fights against the true evil: capitalism and white european civilization, which along with the male gender and Jesus are responsible for EVERYTHING BAD EVER.
See, that would not apply, because according to the setting your werewolf is actually a good guy or at worst neutral. If, on the other hand you were playing a werewolf game where the werewolves were the bad guys, knew they were bad, and played it as such, that would be different.

RPGPundit
It depends on the setting of the campaign, actually.

I'm not the biggest expert in Werewolf, but I have played in a long campaign and there was no assumption that we were good. Actually, most werewolves were pretty fucking monsters when dealing with humans. We gave humans the creepies. We were just changed (late changers, as it happens) and we had to deal with our new instincts and our new society and we felt surrounded by monsters all the fucking time.

And in Vampire... most vampires are evil. They try to deal with it the best they can, but they have something inside them constantly tugging them.

Quote from: jibbajibba;311080Evil is jsut a perspective. A bunch of orcs raiding a human village and putting them all to the flame is no worse than a bunch of knights stumbling across a kobold village and putting them all to the sword. Its all about perspective.

Good one.
My name is Ramón Nogueras. Running now Vampire: the Masquerade (Giovanni Chronicles IV for just 3 players), and itching to resume my Call of Cthulhu campaign (The Sense of the Sleight-of-Hand Man).

RPGPundit

Quote from: jibbajibba;311080I'll give you Jesus, capitalism and White European civilisation, but male gender? please, we are the new underclass didn't you know :)

Well, "Patriarchy" then. You know, like the college professor on the Simpsons: "Everything shaped like a penis is bad".

RPGPundit
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Also, now with the CULTS OF CHAOS cult-generation sourcebook

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