Evil Aligned Campaign? [Archive] - Wizards Community

Evil Aligned Campaign? [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Gift_of_Fury
05-01-07, 06:23 AM Hi all

I was wondering if anybody has played in a somewhat evil (or non good) aligned campaign?

I have been DMing a high (started at 3rd level) level Forgotten Realms campaign where for one reasion or another all but one party member has an evil alignment, 3 characters are Lawful Evil, 2 are Neutral Evil and the last is Neutral.

The game has been running for over 5 years now and we as a group have been playing together for twice that time.
At first I had my doubts about the whole concept of a non good or totally evil aligned adventuring party, I had concerns about the game deteriorating into a hack & slash bloodbath where the only (easy) option for the group was to simply slay any fool who they disagreed with however I am the first to admit that I underestimated our group and have been surprised by the great depths of the parties enterprise and ingenuity.

The group initially started as nothing more then a band of cut-purses, plying their trade in the slums of Waterdeep but from those humble beginnings the group has managed to thwart the machinations of a guild of Slavers, disrupt the dark crusade of the Cult of the Dragon and has even foiled the plans of the Evil god Bane during the Time of Trouble (godswar).
Don’t get me wrong, these guys are evil, they have manipulated others time and time again in an effort to best serve their own goals, murder and betrayal are not the norm with this group (it does happen though) their main modus operandi are however intricately woven plots, schemes and subterfuge.

They have made many an ally and an enemy, The Harpers hunt (and are hunted) by most of the party however they have served the King of Cormyr when it suited their own needs and even assisted his army during the Tuigen Horde invasion, They have slain foul beasts and overthrown tyrants (and taken their place).

They have been both the greatest of heroes and the vilest of villains but above all they have been a party.

I can honestly say that its been one of the most enjoyable campaigns that we have ever played in!!!

What about you guys?
Red_Wizard
05-01-07, 09:11 AM With a good group, and strong RPers I believe Evil can be done. Personally, I prefer playing the evil character. But on average, most people think they are of the good mentality, and thus lean towards playing, and DMing good aligned parties/ campaigns.

If it works/worked, congrats :). Wish mine had gone as well :(
Tarus
05-01-07, 09:27 AM It boils down to whether your group knows how to play evil. If they all want some character whose personality is to slay anyone that disagrees with them it won't work. Those types of evil people typically have short lives and they don't work well together.

If, on the other hand, you have a group that realizes their strength in numbers and tackles problems intelligently then it can.
Bolithio
05-01-07, 01:05 PM As someone else suggested, it is painfully important that the players you are with are going to still work together, be discrete in a largely "good" world, and acquire powerful allies.

I have taken part in several "evil" games, and most of them did not turn out so well. People tend to just randomly do evil things, such as stab a party member in the back for an item etc, and it creates animosity real fast. Between "not-so-thought-out murder in towns(in which the law strikes down with no mercy) - to killing other party members, it is hard to keep a group together.

Now if the DM is good, they can work everyone into a good story line - and people can be "evil", but run with the philosophy that they are .... just misunderstood.

I played in a game once where we were all part of a Zehnt "Cell", and in that format, we had someone to answer to, had a common goal, and had consequences for our actions. That worked very well.
MarkusTay63
05-01-07, 02:58 PM Although your players deserve quite a bit of credit, don't sell yourself short. I have played in numeous campaigns in my life, some good, some bad, but it all comes down to balance. If you were not DMing well then it would have devolved into a silly hack'n'slash despite the maturity of your players.

I 'guest DM'd' a group a few times that my brother-in-law had been running for two years. Basically, he let them get away with anything, and they were a party of good-aligned characters!

First time I tried to run the group I was describing the area, and mentioned that they were passing a small farmstead, two dogs yapping in the yard -

The 'good' Ranger: "I shoot a dog with my bow"

The 'Paladin': "I kill the other one with my sword"

DM: "Excuse ME?!"

They killed the farmer, his wife, his kids, and rummaged through the house to find a handful of CP's.

I couldn't believe this group, reigning them in was nearly impossible. At the end of the adventure, instead of dividing up the treasure, they fought over it! Only one player was left standing and he got everything. I asked my bro-in-law about this, and he said they did that every session! The would have to roll-up new characters EVERY week, and the first thing they would do is all attack the survivor from the week before! I asked how they were able to get any experience that way, and he said they don't, that's why he let's everyone start out 5-7th level each time. They were basically breaking every single rule in the game (including Masive meta-gaming), and he let them.

Thank god I only ran them a few times, it was nerve wracking. One guy actually refused to play with me because his character did something VERY stupid and died. He said "Eric NEVER kills our characters!"

Hmmmm.. I figured out the problem right there...

The stupid thing he did, BTW, is stay underwater for over five minutes fighting something. I kept telling him "your lungs are starting to hurt" and then "Your getting woozy" and finally "Don't you think you should go to the surface for some air?"

I thought I was being nice with that last one, but he replied "I don't need to."

Congratulations on your game, it is so rare to find a group that can 'do' evil right.
Suncapcd
05-01-07, 03:23 PM We ran an evil campaign and honestly, it was the best campaign we ever ran.

Now I honestly think the secret to running an evil campaign is thus:

1) Everyone be LE. At least with this approach, they will respect laws and somewhat of a pecking order without meaningless rampage and slaughter. NE is too selfish and CE is to rampant and well, chaotic.

2) Have goals. You cant just wing it with an evil campaign like you can with a good one. Stay organized and have the characters focus on personal goals as well as group goals. This will keep them concentrated on the goals instead of falling to bickering and backstabbing.

3) Have mature roleplayers. This isnt going to work with a pack of 16-17 year olds. They have to respect authority and be mature enough to handle the situation and not act like kids on spring break free of authority.

Good luck! If you play a well thought out evil game it can very well be the best game you've ever played!
MarkusTay63
05-01-07, 03:42 PM You hit the nail on the head with this one -

3) Have mature roleplayers. This isnt going to work with a pack of 16-17 year olds. They have to respect authority and be mature enough to handle the situation and not act like kids on spring break free of authority. This was the EXACT age range of the group I described above. They started playing together at 15 and never changed their style.

When I started playing, I was only 15 but everyone else was 20+ and the DM was around 30 (I thought that was ancient back then), so I was fortunate enough to not have to go through a bad group first. I also had a second group eventually, and the DM was around 25 (by that time I was 18, and most of the others were smewhere around there). I guess I was lucky, because we had excellent, mature groups and the first (best) one was more about RP then anything else. We even had a Paladin (Christian, the world was a fantasy version of medieval Europe) AND a Necromancer in the SAME party, which led to lots of fun sesseions debating philosophical conundrums. The fact that I was a Voila (Norse Priestes of Odin) didn't help matters much. :D

As long as you have valid reasons for working together, as we did, anything is do-able.

In our game, there was a 'holy war' declared on the Dark Elves, which forced many people to work together for the common good (or at least, for survivals sake).

Oh, the memories....
The Ranger
05-02-07, 01:16 AM My group did a drow campaign a few years back, playing a house of Vhaeruanites in Menzo. The backstabbing, social climbing and scheming was quite fun. I was playing a rogue/mage who was the heir apparent as house spymaster and became locked in a back-and-forth silent war with another player's evoker, who was next in line to be house wizard. It's really too bad I never got the chance to enact my master plan that would have had my carefully cultivated cult of loyal followers cut him down like the dog he was.

Overall, I would say it was the best campaign we ever played because even though we were mortal foes trying to kill or at least one up each other, the greater glory of the house forced us to work together.

That said it's best to make sure every one is on board with the whole backstabbing your fellow players thing and are skilled enough roleplayers to keep up. A couple players in our group didn't really have what it took to scheme against their fellows and simply took sides in the power struggle between my rogue/mage and the evoker, more or less as pawns.
The_Shaman
05-02-07, 07:33 AM What may help is the same thing often advised for chaotic campaigns: have some pressure from above (the DM). If the party are members of an organization(s), things get a bit easier - evil overlords are much more straightforward in explaining to their underlings why it's a good idea to do something and not dabble about it. My first association is that the party is composed of Zhentarim agents, and they've been told to work to retrieve an item or scout a ruin. From then on it depends how things turn out. Oh, and of course, just because the players are evil doesn't have to mean they're psychotic or can't form bonds.
wtf_thats_my_head
05-05-07, 08:23 AM i was in a great evil one where part of it was rasieing asmall force take a town and get its relic they had some evil eye then we went under water to swim in to one of whose caves you see on old shows like the cave is under water but there was air there

shows with air caves

scooby doo
jonny guest
scrapy doo

i know there are more
ArnimThayer
05-06-07, 07:01 PM I run a lot of 3.5 campaigns set in past time periods of the Realms.

I ran an evil campaign about three or four years ago. The PCs were all members of the Zhentarim serving a wizard based in the Citadel of the Raven before the fall of Zhentil Keep. One was a 1/2 orc Fighter/Cleric of Bane, who was hiding from the Cyricists' Bane Purge. One was a halfling Ranger/Exotic Weaponmaster (skiprocks!) with a Favored Enemy of Hillsfar Red Plumes. One was a Sembian Swashbuckler Duelist, a mercenary. And one was a Shade Rogue; he was a criminal from Shade that they had used the Shade process on as an experiment (he was expendable to them!), that served as a spy for the Shades previous to their return. Since the party consisted of a group of misfits, each with their own secrets and agendas, I decided that the one thing that keep them together was loyalty (sometimes forced) to a master. The halfling had been rescued from Red Plumes by the wizard; the 1/2 orc saved from being a sacrifice to the Dark Sun; the Sembian had been saved from being sold into slavery; and teh Shade had been caught trying to steal from the wizard and was geased into serving him.

I used this campaign to show that no matter how evil the players wanted to be, I could find things more evil than them to face... effectively making them heroes (albeit to the Zhentarim) despite themselves.
CuttinCurt
05-07-07, 06:04 PM I liked reading the stories of evil campaigns. I think anyone who has been in more than one campaign of this type can say that almost all of these scenarios were experienced in some way. A good dm is so important, and good players are as well. With that mix, anything is possible.

I have not run an evil campaign, but as a character contemplating what I would run in the few I have been in, I made a special effort to get all the guys together to discuss our character ideas before making something that would not mesh with the other players. Using this tactic, We were able to make characters that were LE, NE and CE and get them to work together with good reason and realistic backgrounds.

The one thing I remember (as it has been 6 years since I was in an evil campaign), was coming up with a CE Rogue/Cleric of Mask that was every bit the one that took offence to being called names or being made fun of, but he was loyal to just one person, and that was a cleric of Umberlee. I dont have time to describe it all, but the Cleric was LE, and she was the only one I trusted. She had never done anything to betray me, and so, I respected her and she did me, or i thought she did...). She was the second in command of our little group, and because of that, the leader never spoke to me directly, but through her. This was fine with him as I did exactly what my friend Umberlee cleric told me. Sure, I didnt get along with everyone in character, but I repsected the fact that the cleric wanted to be involved with these folks, and so I followed her. She became so important to them that I was respected as well and within 6 months of game time, we had worked out a relationship between my character and two others in the group.

I enjoyed my group, but I knew I was really only going to RP with one person going in. It was set up perfectly, and the others took to it well. We meshed, made a but load of gold, and flourished in the City of Waterdeep as well, although, we eventually moved to Luskan, where even greater challenges awaited us. There was nothing more fun than when we reconed the streets of Luskan, found the weakest power group, infiltrated them, and eventually, took them over from within. the RP was amazing and then building that group into something more than it had ever been was the grand reward for our efforts. But it required a good dm, and even better players.

CC

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Gift_of_Fury 05-01-07, 06:23 AM	Hi all I was wondering if anybody has played in a somewhat evil (or non good) aligned campaign? I have been DMing a high (started at 3rd level) level Forgotten Realms campaign where for one reasion or another all but one party member has an evil alignment, 3 characters are Lawful Evil, 2 are Neutral Evil and the last is Neutral. The game has been running for over 5 years now and we as a group have been playing together for twice that time. At first I had my doubts about the whole concept of a non good or totally evil aligned adventuring party, I had concerns about the game deteriorating into a hack & slash bloodbath where the only (easy) option for the group was to simply slay any fool who they disagreed with however I am the first to admit that I underestimated our group and have been surprised by the great depths of the parties enterprise and ingenuity. The group initially started as nothing more then a band of cut-purses, plying their trade in the slums of Waterdeep but from those humble beginnings the group has managed to thwart the machinations of a guild of Slavers, disrupt the dark crusade of the Cult of the Dragon and has even foiled the plans of the Evil god Bane during the Time of Trouble (godswar). Don’t get me wrong, these guys are evil, they have manipulated others time and time again in an effort to best serve their own goals, murder and betrayal are not the norm with this group (it does happen though) their main modus operandi are however intricately woven plots, schemes and subterfuge. They have made many an ally and an enemy, The Harpers hunt (and are hunted) by most of the party however they have served the King of Cormyr when it suited their own needs and even assisted his army during the Tuigen Horde invasion, They have slain foul beasts and overthrown tyrants (and taken their place). They have been both the greatest of heroes and the vilest of villains but above all they have been a party. I can honestly say that its been one of the most enjoyable campaigns that we have ever played in!!! What about you guys?
Red_Wizard 05-01-07, 09:11 AM	With a good group, and strong RPers I believe Evil can be done. Personally, I prefer playing the evil character. But on average, most people think they are of the good mentality, and thus lean towards playing, and DMing good aligned parties/ campaigns. If it works/worked, congrats :). Wish mine had gone as well :(
Tarus 05-01-07, 09:27 AM	It boils down to whether your group knows how to play evil. If they all want some character whose personality is to slay anyone that disagrees with them it won't work. Those types of evil people typically have short lives and they don't work well together. If, on the other hand, you have a group that realizes their strength in numbers and tackles problems intelligently then it can.
Bolithio 05-01-07, 01:05 PM	As someone else suggested, it is painfully important that the players you are with are going to still work together, be discrete in a largely "good" world, and acquire powerful allies. I have taken part in several "evil" games, and most of them did not turn out so well. People tend to just randomly do evil things, such as stab a party member in the back for an item etc, and it creates animosity real fast. Between "not-so-thought-out murder in towns(in which the law strikes down with no mercy) - to killing other party members, it is hard to keep a group together. Now if the DM is good, they can work everyone into a good story line - and people can be "evil", but run with the philosophy that they are .... just misunderstood. I played in a game once where we were all part of a Zehnt "Cell", and in that format, we had someone to answer to, had a common goal, and had consequences for our actions. That worked very well.
MarkusTay63 05-01-07, 02:58 PM	Although your players deserve quite a bit of credit, don't sell yourself short. I have played in numeous campaigns in my life, some good, some bad, but it all comes down to balance. If you were not DMing well then it would have devolved into a silly hack'n'slash despite the maturity of your players. I 'guest DM'd' a group a few times that my brother-in-law had been running for two years. Basically, he let them get away with anything, and they were a party of good-aligned characters! First time I tried to run the group I was describing the area, and mentioned that they were passing a small farmstead, two dogs yapping in the yard - The 'good' Ranger: "I shoot a dog with my bow" The 'Paladin': "I kill the other one with my sword" DM: "Excuse ME?!" They killed the farmer, his wife, his kids, and rummaged through the house to find a handful of CP's. I couldn't believe this group, reigning them in was nearly impossible. At the end of the adventure, instead of dividing up the treasure, they fought over it! Only one player was left standing and he got everything. I asked my bro-in-law about this, and he said they did that every session! The would have to roll-up new characters EVERY week, and the first thing they would do is all attack the survivor from the week before! I asked how they were able to get any experience that way, and he said they don't, that's why he let's everyone start out 5-7th level each time. They were basically breaking every single rule in the game (including Masive meta-gaming), and he let them. Thank god I only ran them a few times, it was nerve wracking. One guy actually refused to play with me because his character did something VERY stupid and died. He said "Eric NEVER kills our characters!" Hmmmm.. I figured out the problem right there... The stupid thing he did, BTW, is stay underwater for over five minutes fighting something. I kept telling him "your lungs are starting to hurt" and then "Your getting woozy" and finally "Don't you think you should go to the surface for some air?" I thought I was being nice with that last one, but he replied "I don't need to." Congratulations on your game, it is so rare to find a group that can 'do' evil right.
Suncapcd 05-01-07, 03:23 PM	We ran an evil campaign and honestly, it was the best campaign we ever ran. Now I honestly think the secret to running an evil campaign is thus: 1) Everyone be LE. At least with this approach, they will respect laws and somewhat of a pecking order without meaningless rampage and slaughter. NE is too selfish and CE is to rampant and well, chaotic. 2) Have goals. You cant just wing it with an evil campaign like you can with a good one. Stay organized and have the characters focus on personal goals as well as group goals. This will keep them concentrated on the goals instead of falling to bickering and backstabbing. 3) Have mature roleplayers. This isnt going to work with a pack of 16-17 year olds. They have to respect authority and be mature enough to handle the situation and not act like kids on spring break free of authority. Good luck! If you play a well thought out evil game it can very well be the best game you've ever played!
MarkusTay63 05-01-07, 03:42 PM	You hit the nail on the head with this one - 3) Have mature roleplayers. This isnt going to work with a pack of 16-17 year olds. They have to respect authority and be mature enough to handle the situation and not act like kids on spring break free of authority. This was the EXACT age range of the group I described above. They started playing together at 15 and never changed their style. When I started playing, I was only 15 but everyone else was 20+ and the DM was around 30 (I thought that was ancient back then), so I was fortunate enough to not have to go through a bad group first. I also had a second group eventually, and the DM was around 25 (by that time I was 18, and most of the others were smewhere around there). I guess I was lucky, because we had excellent, mature groups and the first (best) one was more about RP then anything else. We even had a Paladin (Christian, the world was a fantasy version of medieval Europe) AND a Necromancer in the SAME party, which led to lots of fun sesseions debating philosophical conundrums. The fact that I was a Voila (Norse Priestes of Odin) didn't help matters much. :D As long as you have valid reasons for working together, as we did, anything is do-able. In our game, there was a 'holy war' declared on the Dark Elves, which forced many people to work together for the common good (or at least, for survivals sake). Oh, the memories....
The Ranger 05-02-07, 01:16 AM	My group did a drow campaign a few years back, playing a house of Vhaeruanites in Menzo. The backstabbing, social climbing and scheming was quite fun. I was playing a rogue/mage who was the heir apparent as house spymaster and became locked in a back-and-forth silent war with another player's evoker, who was next in line to be house wizard. It's really too bad I never got the chance to enact my master plan that would have had my carefully cultivated cult of loyal followers cut him down like the dog he was. Overall, I would say it was the best campaign we ever played because even though we were mortal foes trying to kill or at least one up each other, the greater glory of the house forced us to work together. That said it's best to make sure every one is on board with the whole backstabbing your fellow players thing and are skilled enough roleplayers to keep up. A couple players in our group didn't really have what it took to scheme against their fellows and simply took sides in the power struggle between my rogue/mage and the evoker, more or less as pawns.
The_Shaman 05-02-07, 07:33 AM	What may help is the same thing often advised for chaotic campaigns: have some pressure from above (the DM). If the party are members of an organization(s), things get a bit easier - evil overlords are much more straightforward in explaining to their underlings why it's a good idea to do something and not dabble about it. My first association is that the party is composed of Zhentarim agents, and they've been told to work to retrieve an item or scout a ruin. From then on it depends how things turn out. Oh, and of course, just because the players are evil doesn't have to mean they're psychotic or can't form bonds.
wtf_thats_my_head 05-05-07, 08:23 AM	i was in a great evil one where part of it was rasieing asmall force take a town and get its relic they had some evil eye then we went under water to swim in to one of whose caves you see on old shows like the cave is under water but there was air there shows with air caves scooby doo jonny guest scrapy doo i know there are more
ArnimThayer 05-06-07, 07:01 PM	I run a lot of 3.5 campaigns set in past time periods of the Realms. I ran an evil campaign about three or four years ago. The PCs were all members of the Zhentarim serving a wizard based in the Citadel of the Raven before the fall of Zhentil Keep. One was a 1/2 orc Fighter/Cleric of Bane, who was hiding from the Cyricists' Bane Purge. One was a halfling Ranger/Exotic Weaponmaster (skiprocks!) with a Favored Enemy of Hillsfar Red Plumes. One was a Sembian Swashbuckler Duelist, a mercenary. And one was a Shade Rogue; he was a criminal from Shade that they had used the Shade process on as an experiment (he was expendable to them!), that served as a spy for the Shades previous to their return. Since the party consisted of a group of misfits, each with their own secrets and agendas, I decided that the one thing that keep them together was loyalty (sometimes forced) to a master. The halfling had been rescued from Red Plumes by the wizard; the 1/2 orc saved from being a sacrifice to the Dark Sun; the Sembian had been saved from being sold into slavery; and teh Shade had been caught trying to steal from the wizard and was geased into serving him. I used this campaign to show that no matter how evil the players wanted to be, I could find things more evil than them to face... effectively making them heroes (albeit to the Zhentarim) despite themselves.
CuttinCurt 05-07-07, 06:04 PM	I liked reading the stories of evil campaigns. I think anyone who has been in more than one campaign of this type can say that almost all of these scenarios were experienced in some way. A good dm is so important, and good players are as well. With that mix, anything is possible. I have not run an evil campaign, but as a character contemplating what I would run in the few I have been in, I made a special effort to get all the guys together to discuss our character ideas before making something that would not mesh with the other players. Using this tactic, We were able to make characters that were LE, NE and CE and get them to work together with good reason and realistic backgrounds. The one thing I remember (as it has been 6 years since I was in an evil campaign), was coming up with a CE Rogue/Cleric of Mask that was every bit the one that took offence to being called names or being made fun of, but he was loyal to just one person, and that was a cleric of Umberlee. I dont have time to describe it all, but the Cleric was LE, and she was the only one I trusted. She had never done anything to betray me, and so, I respected her and she did me, or i thought she did...). She was the second in command of our little group, and because of that, the leader never spoke to me directly, but through her. This was fine with him as I did exactly what my friend Umberlee cleric told me. Sure, I didnt get along with everyone in character, but I repsected the fact that the cleric wanted to be involved with these folks, and so I followed her. She became so important to them that I was respected as well and within 6 months of game time, we had worked out a relationship between my character and two others in the group. I enjoyed my group, but I knew I was really only going to RP with one person going in. It was set up perfectly, and the others took to it well. We meshed, made a but load of gold, and flourished in the City of Waterdeep as well, although, we eventually moved to Luskan, where even greater challenges awaited us. There was nothing more fun than when we reconed the streets of Luskan, found the weakest power group, infiltrated them, and eventually, took them over from within. the RP was amazing and then building that group into something more than it had ever been was the grand reward for our efforts. But it required a good dm, and even better players. CC