Spun off from the mission adventure thread.

One problem with running an evil campaign (one where the PCs are the stereotypical villain types) is things devolving into what I call "petty evil". Evil characters are viewed as not having to put up with those namby-pamby things like manners, and go in expecting to be able to kill the innkeeper, rape his donkey and ride off on his daughter.

So while playing a Sith character in the MMORPG Star Wars, The Old Republic, I noticed a few things. 1. There is a heiarchy of masters who demand performance from their subordinates. If you don't get results, you risk getting your ass force-choked. 2. There is competition among the apprentices. You might get back-stabbed if you don't back-stab first, but you also might make useful allies. It's a tightrope of risk and reward, benefit and betrayal.
There are a lot of pressures from various directions to keep a sith damn busy in a world like that. In short, they don't have much time for tormenting innkeepers to no useful end.

I find in my games of WH40K (RPGS I mean, mostly the Inquisition one), I tend to play characters who would under other circumstances be considered evil, and kinda bastards at that. But the framework of the game is that they dont think of themselves as evil, and the structure still motivates them to work within the society. So that works.


Generally speaking I don't like "Evil" campaigns, for the reasons you say and because "Chaotic stupid" seems to be the default for a lot of people in those sorts of games.

All things sentient and effective are organized. Remember that. Even chaos has its own form of order, it's just one not immediately apparent.

Those who defy organization, even the loose and in-fighting ones, gets the horns. There's a reason for the idea "honor among thieves." There's an acceptable and unacceptable way of doing things; to belong you must accept such received taboos.

Things hostile to the standing order have competition. Things selfish enough to assume expansion of their standing order upon nearby others makes more competition. Those who have competent competition do not survive long if they tolerate petty bullshit. In short, holders of power have real things to do lest all things fall apart. Holders of power are not so patient with petty bullshit.

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Alignment is one of my favorite things, as is world building. I like to run IN SJG, D&D, and WW stuff because of such morality meters. In group v. out group morality, and the delicate hell of tightrope walking it, is meat and drink to my gaming. What advice would you like to explore?

Quote from: Ratman_tf;830432Evil characters are viewed as not having to put up with those namby-pamby things like manners, and go in expecting to be able to kill the innkeeper, rape his donkey and ride off on his daughter.

In such a world I'd think innkeepers would have evolved to survive this. Think about how people survive the Mafia and similar groups - be very nice to strangers, and any known or apparent bad-guy groups get all the free food, drink & board they want. Keep your daughter out of sight, with some available serving wenches to keep the brigands distracted.
'Killing all the NPCs' tends to be a combination of CE players with NE GMs who play NPCs as surly and obnoxious, when evolution should have weeded out the surly NPCs long ago.

as i said in the thread that caused this one having a master is a great way to stop this sort of problem.

the idea i have had in mind is a party being assistants to a lich first mission would be going out to collect the hearts of children for spell components this is a nice way for the lich to test basic competence and to make sure that his underlings will do what needs to be done then they will start getting real missions.

another thing i think can help is have a few things that arent evil the easy way to do that is a sudden good thing for no reason but thats jarring the trick is to remember that when it comes to powerful individuals there are many things that both good and evil have to deal with (e.g well i cant auctualy think of any examples right now i will get back to you on that one)

I deliberately set out to GM an "evil" campaign, once, as one of my two GURPS playtest groups; it wasn't so much that I was planning on running Evil Plots as I greenlighted the players to be as dark as they wanted, and solve scenarios as darkly as they pleased.

Looking back over my records, only one of the originals was a Screaming Evil type, a necromancer with a propensity for gruesome rituals and with the highest social rank anyone's attempted in the 29 years I've GMed GURPS.  The rest ran the gamut between Nasty Bastard Merc, Amoral Assassin, Amoral Barbarian and Doesn't Give A Damn Martial Artist.

They were, in the main, smart players, all of whom had played in my campaigns for three years, and certainly didn't play Chaotic Stupid.  A couple of the PCs wound up being the signature characters for their players for several years to come.

The so-called All-Evil Group didn't last.  Back in those days, I never ran fewer than two groups, and at that stage I was running four.  It wasn't uncommon for someone to say "Hey, Bob, listen.  My work schedule's changed and I can't make Saturdays any more.  I hear Paul had to drop out of the Friday group; can I move my character over?"

In that particular instance, Laura wanted to keep running her goody-two-shoes elf, and the premise I had to concoct was her hiring the AEG to help rescue her sister, who'd been kidnapped by slavers and sold to the barbarians of the interior, with enough nasty details slipping out to have steam coming out of her elf's ears and suspend any qualms she had about the group torturing people for information or exacting sickening revenge.

But that was the bit which started the AEG off to history, and I haven't yet repeated the experiment.

Mafia movies and shows like the sopranos give a good model of how an evil party might function. I've taken a lot from that kind of gaming when parties end up evil in my fantasy or historical settings. Basically if they want to torment an Innkeeper, fine, but there ought to be a good reason for it (like they are shaking the inn down), or that kind of behavior is likely to catch up with them eventually if they're just randomly going around causing mayhem.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;830463Mafia movies and shows like the sopranos give a good model of how an evil party might function. I've taken a lot from that kind of gaming when parties end up evil in my fantasy or historical settings. Basically if they want to torment an Innkeeper, fine, but there ought to be a good reason for it (like they are shaking the inn down), or that kind of behavior is likely to catch up with them eventually if they're just randomly going around causing mayhem.

Catching up with them may require a society that is organized to include laws with penalties for tax evasion.

Quote from: Bren;830470Catching up with them may require a society that is organized to include laws with penalties for tax evasion.

They are different settings so the consequences will be different. In a fantasy setting, there are still going to be organized groups who don't want that kind of instability in town (The series Rome has some cool ideas here). In a fantasy setting an out of control evil party that just randomly slaughters innkeepers will make a lot of enemies and even attract adventuring parties after them. You need to excersize some restraint but eventually they'll murder the wrong innkeeper (maybe one whose brother is a powerful Mage for example).

Quote from: Opaopajr;830446All things sentient and effective are organized. Remember that. Even chaos has its own form of order, it's just one not immediately apparent.

Those who defy organization, even the loose and in-fighting ones, gets the horns. There's a reason for the idea "honor among thieves." There's an acceptable and unacceptable way of doing things; to belong you must accept such received taboos.

This is precisely the reason I always called bullshit on the Drow being called Chaotic Evil as their racial alignment. It made no sense to have the civilization they had.

Quote from: Opaopajr;830446Things hostile to the standing order have competition. Things selfish enough to assume expansion of their standing order upon nearby others makes more competition. Those who have competent competition do not survive long if they tolerate petty bullshit. In short, holders of power have real things to do lest all things fall apart. Holders of power are not so patient with petty bullshit.

Quote from: Opaopajr;830446Alignment is one of my favorite things, as is world building. I like to run IN SJG, D&D, and WW stuff because of such morality meters. In group v. out group morality, and the delicate hell of tightrope walking it, is meat and drink to my gaming. What advice would you like to explore?

That's funny. I am exactly the same way... which is why I don't use alignment. Alignment to me is "meta" - characters don't go around with signs on their heads saying LE, or CG or whatever. Actions and intent speak for themselves in my games. But yeah I see where you're coming from.

I played a game set in the Star Wars universe that the GM named "Star Basterds."  The game was set right after Return of the Jedi, and so we were the assholes who went and did the New Republic's dirty work.

We were a group of misfits who got to indulge our dark sides as players.  The game took some crazy dark turns, but it was overall a hell of a lot of fun.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;830475They are different settings so the consequences will be different. In a fantasy setting, there are still going to be organized groups who don't want that kind of instability in town (The series Rome has some cool ideas here). In a fantasy setting an out of control evil party that just randomly slaughters innkeepers will make a lot of enemies and even attract adventuring parties after them. You need to excersize some restraint but eventually they'll murder the wrong innkeeper (maybe one whose brother is a powerful Mage for example).

Agreed.

I don't run worlds where the PCs are above the law. Nor where the PCs are more powerful than the entire society they operate in. So PCs may murder people, but if they don't take care to make it look like the people they killed deserved it, or hide the bodies, or align themselves with someone or thing powerful enough to shield them from society's wrath, then their career will end in a hail of bullets (or the in universe equivalent) just like Bonny and Clyde.

Sounds like Edge of the Empire. We did something similar for Westend SW. One of the group was a Czerka employee... his job was to go to planets with his other co-workers, that had been located by Czerka Corp's scouts, and "clean" the planet of any distractions.

I got to play a Chiss agent infiltrating the Hutt cartels for one of the Darths. Everyone else was just a meat-and-potatos merc-crew. Much fun. Much dark.

Quote from: tenbones;830476This is precisely the reason I always called bullshit on the Drow being called Chaotic Evil as their racial alignment. It made no sense to have the civilization they had.

I am going to answer this RPG tidbit of setting with an observation I received from one of my history class textbooks and then relay it to a video game experience. Humanities major, we are allowed to work discordant magic (also known as "interdisciplinary studies" ):

The medieval lands of France were compared to newly conquered medieval lands of the Turks. France, and much of Europe, diffused power through feudal nobility with significantly more autonomy. It was not uncommon for the nobility to fight amongst themselves continuous, with alliances ever shifting. Turks, and similar Sultanates and Caliphates, stratified feudal power with far less autonomy, and often lands remanded to the top leader's demesne. Scheming alliances were the norm as well, but this time highly focused within the capital's court, and often more oblique.

This made France a mess to get organized and mount offenses at the same caliber as the Turks. However, it meant everyone had a stake fighting for their own backyard and very difficult to retain peace. Conversely this made the Turks a mess to get organized and mount "guerrilla" warfare (more like continuous warfare) to oust invaders at the same caliber as the French. One's strict hierarchy and the other's lack of it offered different advantages and disadvantages.

Nonsensical it seems at first, but perhaps true when it comes down to logistics. Afghanistan and Vietnam are fantastic historical examples of fluid, nay seemingly chaotic, shifts of power alliances always grinding down colonizers to a standstill. Maybe there is a method to this madness.

Then, since simulations are good attempts to feel another unknown experience, there is Crusader Kings video game produced by Paradox Games. Suddenly you thrust yourself from typical Europa Universalis immortal mind behind world conquest and slip into dynastic feudal mindset. Suddenly the chaos of attacking your neighboring count while your duke or king is battling for his life seems like a sensible idea. Hey, it's all about marriages and prestige and piety, so as long as the religion or culture remains the same who cares?

Scattered into pieces like mercury droplets the nation of France falls apart and rebuilds constantly in CK, akin to history. Up until a foreign religion or culture threatens, then there shall never be peace again for the alien invader. Like a bee hive they pester and sting anywhere and everywhere until the bear backs off. Not explicitly organized in a hierarchy, but implicitly organized in a conspiracy.

Such is the logic of law and chaos organized.

Quote from: tenbones;830476That's funny. I am exactly the same way... which is why I don't use alignment. Alignment to me is "meta" - characters don't go around with signs on their heads saying LE, or CG or whatever. Actions and intent speak for themselves in my games. But yeah I see where you're coming from.

Characters don't walk around with alignment signs on their heads in my games either. And their actions usually speak for themselves. Though I do allow for subtlety, so seeming kindness or cruelty may have a different intent behind it.

Asking alignment, or using magic to reveal it, is considered the height of bad form in my game worlds. No one does it lightly, if they cannot at all avoid it. Besides, not all acts are filled with aligned intent, nor are they filled with pivotal importance to world view. Content, context, and degree matter. In example, sometimes being nice to an animal is its own reward and means little else. I don't run alignment as an always rigidly on, stark contrast, trip alarm or booby trap — that's shallow to me.

Though I understand why people forego these tools.

Despite the multi-level hierarchy, feudal states do seem rather chaotic. Chaotic Christians and Lawful Ottomans...I like it.