Okay this has come up in a couple of threads and I thought it was worth extracting for a wider debate. Is playing evil PCs acceptable? if so when?

I have been in numerous games where PCs have been evil. All teh PCs just 1 PC, a cabal of evil PCs. To me its no matter. A decent DM will construct plot hooks to tie the party together and if it ends in chaos well so long as its entertaining Chaos more to the good.

These games have ranged fromt eh ones we played when we were kids where gettign caught by the Jackleware's sleep spell was bad news, not becuase of the monster but because whoever was left at the end woudl slit your throat and steal all your stuff, to the elaborate politicking involved in out VtM game where 1/2 the party were mortal Templars and half were Camerilla all workign towards the common goal of stopping the Sabat releasing a devastating plague on mankind, to the set peice 2 day marathon games I used to run where all characters had complex backstories and were dametrically opposed to others int eh party and the PC conflict was deliberately set to be the games big final scene. I even recall a CoC game hwere we spent time investigatiing a series of brutal murders that seemed linked to the plot but were in fact the actions of one of the investigators themselves who had picked up a particularly nasty madness (and we thought he was in the library reading!).

To those folks who have an objection to evil parties/PCs is this from a game play keep it all on an even keel perspective or are there other moral considerations?

When do we think Evil alignments work? Is it all evil parties, pirates, briagands, evils cults? or can only Lawful evil work.

In a D&D context I have found from a playing perspective Neurtral evil was pretty hard as you are meant to be actively promoting evil so being merely selfish doesn't cut it you have to actively push evil. CE is actually pretty easy but in my experience PCs of this alignment just don't last very long. LE is easy as the rule is keep your head down do what hte big guys say but get your kicks and line your pockets when the opportunity arises.

The CoC example above makes me think of the possibility to run a Dexter-ish character in a modern espionage/police type game. I think that would work pretty well and I couldn't see it causing much in the way of party issues until the final 'reveal' of course.

To me the suspicion that one or more of the PCs might be an evil vampiric/communist/nazi/Chaosite/french(:-) ) infiltrator is a given. I find it hard to imagine a game where I actually trusted all of the other PCs until we have been through the ringer a few times.

Loved the 'investigator' schema above, btw.

I dumped alignment out of my system a long time ago.
It is a great mechanism for most FRP games, as it is a wonderful descriptive limiter.  But my setting is very political/morally ambiguous, and I find alignment too artificial in such a situation.  Very few people would ever really 'promote evil', though a disdain for the welfare of others comes close, and even less people would actually worship an 'evil' deity.  

That being said, I have a group headed by two ranking members of the Colelgium Tortoris (the Torturer's Guild), and while they work within the group, the other PC's have become aware of their 'different' morality.

so 2 things I see here.  
The first thing is that many more complicated/socially based games will be a lot less realistic without the ability to make players struggle with these tough choices, and the ability to slide into the 'dark side' has to be involved.

the second is from a meta-game perspective, you need mature players to play evil (or not-good).  As many of us have commented, evil does mean stupid or even uncooperative.  And an immature player that ruins the gaming experience for everyone else is not someone you want to even have the chance to play evil.


Again, maybe not for everyone.  But I could not do without.

Playing teh 3vi1 d00ds is stupid and puerile.

But rpgs shouldn't have alignments.

Quote from: LordVreegBut my setting is very political/morally ambiguous, and I find alignment too artificial in such a situation.

No disagreements here. I've got a vaguely similar playstyle... maybe not political per se, but I like my PCs as thieves and ruffians out for profit rather than knight in shining armor types.

QuoteVery few people would ever really 'promote evil', though a disdain for the welfare of others comes close, and even less people would actually worship an 'evil' deity.

But... whatabout the insane cultists? People might not identify with or promote the agenda of an entity they believe to be evil, but the search for power without regard for morality doesn't seem terribly unrealistic.

Quotethe second is from a meta-game perspective, you need mature players to play evil (or not-good).  As many of us have commented, evil does mean stupid or even uncooperative.  And an immature player that ruins the gaming experience for everyone else is not someone you want to even have the chance to play evil.

Evil only really gets to be a problem, IME, when you can't tell allies from enemies.

Evil PC1: I'll take first watch.
Evil PC2: The hell you will.

Quote from: BeejBut... whatabout the insane cultists? People might not identify with or promote the agenda of an entity they believe to be evil, but the search for power without regard for morality doesn't seem terribly unrealistic.

Note that I said very few, primarily becasue I knew that this was going to get a response.  

Insane cultists are a fun campaign component.  But they'll be a real small radical fringe.  The search for power is a strong motivator, but again, you're dealing with a very small worship group.  Worship and faith, especially in a situation/setting where there might be more evidence of the existence of the supernatural, are still very tied to internal self-image, where people are very able to lie to themselves and rationalize.  Internally, even people who have commited repeated horrible acts are much more likely to commit them it in the name of a peaceful, mainstream religion...evil commited in the name of good is FAR more common and realistic than some cult of twits who should know they are probably sacrificing their eternal reward to Dingus Dave the Demon.
Far more historically-supported and useful to a deity/religion is a popular religion with components of worship that are acceptable, with the unnacceptable parts hidden from most of the worshippers.  Hide your cultists within your tight, upright, unreproachable religions.

The two best campaigns we ever ran involved prominent evil PCs (and actually, both were CE). In one, the PC, Alexander, started off LG and became corrupted by Cthulu. He came to envy his brother, and hate his brother's girlfriend, who had been his own childhood love. He gradually grew more and more distant from everyone around him while becoming more obsessed with their lives He decided to punish them by finishing the major villain's plan and destroying the world. In the end, the girlfriend killed him. It was a great arc, and a great character.

The second one we had was in the Dessinger campaign. Wayland Dessinger, my PC, went from Neutral to Chaotic Evil over the course of the 10 years in-game. In his case, that came from being a child prodigy / dandy / puer senex who no one took seriously. He was a ruthless, determined individual who people constantly thought they could screw with and who had to punch back harder. Amongst other things, he engineered a civil war, became a wizard who drained people's souls, and refused to save the life of his best friend from execution because he knew the guy'd be trouble down the road.

I think the main thing is to avoid playing chaotic stupid characters. Wayland, for example, was CE even though he had long-term goals, and was willing to pretend he cared about the law because his ultimate goal was to totally and completely dominate the rest of humankind and force them to obey his will without dissent. As time went on, he came to care less and less about the temporal power he'd been accumulating for his family, and more and more about the magical power he was discovering (this was in a low magic Iron Heroes steampunk world), and just let the consequences of his temporal rise play themselves out (He was one of a few individuals who could have possibly solved or stopped the civil war, but instead he left the continent to pursue more important research elsewhere).

Also, there were the various interludes in the Dessinger campaign, including our bandit sessions, of which only one or two are written up:

http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=9984

The PCs in some of my games have done some evil things (because of some very complicated reasons) but evil with a capital "E"  24/7....I don't think I could run a campaign like that.

I don't like alignments in rpgs.

Regards,
David R

Hmm.
3 votes for "evil, well ok, but alignment...Meh"
Intersting in and of itself.

Quote from: LordVreeg;307098Hmm.
3 votes for "evil, well ok, but alignment...Meh"
Intersting in and of itself.

There's no consensus in my group on what any particular alignment means, so that de facto we don't "enforce" alignment in any way. My CE char, for example, was the group's pacifist.

Pseudoephedrine,
that jives with the games you've described.
An interesting place for this thread to go.

I tend to create a character's morality, and then pick the alignment to fit.  Playing fun with certain false expectations of D&D morality is an occasional hobby of mine.  

For example, necromancy in D&D, and often fantasy in general, is frequently portrayed as automatically evil.  Undead in 3e are fueled by negative energy, negative energy spells are spontaneous cast for evil clerics instead of the positive energy healing spells of a good cleric, unless you're neutral, and then you can pick one or the other.  There's a definite thrust to treat necromancy as bad evil black magic sort of thing.

This of course is a source of challenge, because I rather like necromancers, and tend to think of them on more neutral terms.  The undead are nothing more than a tool, to be used for good or ill, technically speaking most of them are purely neutral in alignment excepting the intelligent ones.  Negative energy is just another side of the same coin, the cycle of life and death.  Mostly it's all just a lot of rubbish about burial superstitions at it's heart.  

So I made a cleric, who was part of a monastic order that considered themselves the stewards of Death itself.  They viewed Death as an inevitable part of the cycle, and monitored the use and abuse of undeath, the rites of death, and so forth.  They weren't necessarily evil, though they would almost certainly assumed to be by the populace, but rather like Death itself, neutral, sometimes caring, sometimes terrible, always on it's own terms.  

similarly, chaotic neutral has a tendency to be seen as the default "do whatever" alignment, but I've never really bought that line, even though I've used it as a "can't decide" button more than a few times.  It seemed more happy go lucky than actually unconcerned with others, by itself being more mundane selfishness and carefree attitude, like a drunk, but not without some scruples.

Otherwise he'd be evil.  Evil to me is the ultimate extension of selfishness, the evolution to the completely and utterly uncaring and heartless.  Neutral Evil seemed more in fitting to me with the utterly unconcerned with anything but personal gain.  No regard for law except when it profits them, but not actively promoting chaos in the world either, simply pursuing their own interests to the hilt regardless of those around them.  IT is the heartless mercenary, the assassin, the gun for hire, the crime lord, the crooked executive or baron.

Really, I think people get to hung up on the comic book evil angle, and wind up with Saturday morning cartoon villains, when there's plenty of more sinister and interesting evil to be had here in the real world.  We live in a real world out here where corporations pretty much exist to exemplify Lawful Evil as a matter of principle, where wars are fought by Neutral Evil mercenaries and fueled by similarly unprincipled arms merchants.  

But because people don't think of these real world things as "evil", they don't tend to even realize what they're looking at in a D&D game, it's not expected.  "Oh he's not evil, just not a nice guy."  Evil's a word we're very reticent to use in day to day life when dealing with things we know directly, rather like "Racist" in that respect really.  We know a guy who constantly throws out racial jokes or slurs or complains about the dirty immigrants, but "he's not racist, just a little old fashioned".  The soccer mom who locks her doors in the black side of town and will cross the street to avoid them, or always condescends to the Mexican immigrant who cleans the house, isn't racist, no never, and would be terribly insulted if you pointed it out, as would all her friends.  

People are squeamish about these things, so squeamish that they get by without ever being called on their behavior for what it really is, and after a time it simply gets absorbed into the collective psyche and goes unnoticed until it's too late.

I ran a very short mini-campaign (about four or five sessions) with pre-generated characters, one of whom was irredeemably evil. The other players knew it, but were forced to work with him anyway due to the structure of the game, and it worked out fantastically. The evil player played it to the hilt, and even though the other PCs eventually ganged up on him and killed him, he'd already set up the situation to screw them over posthumously.

But the whole theme of the campaign was about tragedy, loss, and everyone knew that going in, so it worked. I was also blessed with really excellent, non-puerile players.

Personally I don't see a campaign featuring all evil PCs having any long-term appeal.

Quote from: J Arcane;307121snip some awesomely insightful shit

Thank you for that.

I think the only problem with allowing an evil aligned character in a game is the Player of that character. If the Player tends to get a lot of enjoyment out of pissing off other Players in the game, then allowing him to play an evil character is going to result in some immature behavior which he will try to justify by claiming that he was only playing his alignment. If you have a Player who is mature, then that maturity will show in the playing of the evil aligned character and won't be much of a disruption to the rest of the party. The majority of complaints about evil characters in a party usually stem from not an evil character, but that character's immature Player.

Evil does not necessarily have to be stupid, deviantly antisocial, or insanely aggressive. It also isn't a badge worn by the character.

In a game like D&D where know alignment spells exist, identifying evil is easy. But is it socially appropriate to walk into a public place and then scan the room, pointing out all the evil aligned there? Is it evil to cast Raise Dead or Resurrection on a deceased comrade and bring them back from their afterlife (and possibly their final justice)? How evil is evil?

I've found that it is more fun to play with these concepts within limits then ignore them entirely. And yes, there have to be some boundaries of good taste when playing with these concepts. We're still talking about a game, after all.

Okay that was generally interesting but generally promotes what I would consider my point of view.ie Evil is okay in a game as long as the Player is sensible and there is a hook to keep the party together. Whilst i am no stickler in the alignment stakes I have on occasion as I say tried to play them as defined more as an exercise than anything else. I kind of thouight Pseudoephedrine's guy seemed more LE than CE to me. Real CE to me would be actively trying to promote anarchy and bring down legal and authoritarian regimes. Its a problem for us because most of our historical exposure to Evil is lawful, ie groups create and use Laws to promote their own interests (Nazis, Aztecs etc.) at the cost of others. Now true CE is tricky even a sociopath really in CN as they have no concept of Good or Evil. A cinema villain such as Jason or Mike Myers would be CE but they are so extreme as to be unplayable. Whereas I don't care about allignment I do like to play with extreme characters in one off scenarios.
But I digress. What I am really interested in is those people who really object to evil characters. The ones that won't allow evil characters in their games or won't play with groups that have evil characters in them. Does this taboo extend to modern games where alignment is far less black and white and characters have more mundane motives? would they play in a CoC game where the PCs are the cultists trying to avoid the police and that team of pesky investigators. Would they play in a heist game? woudl that heist game be more Ocean's 11 than Reservoir Dogs?
Really just curious as to what the background is.