Evil characters

[slimykuotoan]

Oft times, an evil character tends to mess up a party and cause ill feelings all around.

I've found that initiating a simple rule helps make evil fun again. We've made harming other party members prohibited, so players are free to play characters with an evil bent, who typically work well with the party.

One thing we've discovered, is that by solely playing good aligned characters, we were really missing half of what the game could offer.

[Go0gleplex]

I ran with a group for a while that only ran evil characters as an excuse to do whatever they pleased though they ran them more like a bunch of goody goodies when not needing an excuse to pillage and rampage. Almost NOONE EVER plays evil as evil in my experience.

I showed them the true nature of evil...and I got a bit detailed with a few things. Suffice to say that after two of them got back from throwing up and the rest calmed down the presence of evil in the party decreased a lot. Another evil character of mine ended by killing the entire party. He was interested in only power (NE), out-bargained Hel for more power, and turned away most things that wouldn't benefit him. He turned on the party simply because his gf, the priestess of Hell took an item he wanted. So he lightening bolted her at point blank range during coitus, got dressed, took the item, calmly walked out of the inn pausing only to turn around and fire three fireballs into it. No witnesses. That character had the emotional range of an ant.

Suffice to say evil has no place at my table as part of a party. It will ALWAYS turn on others to suit itself. The exception may be lawful evil but even then its a tiger by the tail situation.

[Buttmonkey]

I don't use alignment, but have required PCs to be designed to work well in a party environment and also ban PC versus PC combat. That has solved most problems, although I've had a player run what turned out to be an evil PC in a way that caused a lot of problems. The PC evolved into kind of a sociopath. He would drag the other PCs into problems by taking wildly risky actions (e.g., attacking the town guard or killing miscellaneous NPCs in the presence of witnesses). The other players were stuck having to decide between backing up the fellow party member or confronting the fellow player about the PC's behaviors. No one wanted to deal with the real life conflict, so they backed up the PC. In hindsight, I should have pulled the player aside and reminded him about the house rule that the PC has to be conceived as someone who works well in a party environment. The psycho PC's behavior was not party-friendly. No party would keep the PC around in the face of that sort of behavior.

[Captain_K]

Playing an evil group always sounds fun, but I found most folks I want to share a table with have too much moral fiber to really do "evil".. I find being evil or playing an evil thing is tiring in the extreme.

That said, I do like to tell the story, making the bad guy bad enough to encourage the divine wrath of the good group.. so as Gaiman wrote in Sandman, "There must be a Hell for without Hell, Heaven has no meaning."

Wait until you see The Adversary.. coming to you in a Domesday soon I hope!

[slimykuotoan]

It works very well in my group. The players typically have a Rifts or Vampire background, so their characters are rich and multifaceted. It's fun, just as it would be to play multi-layered characters with complex motives on a movie set, etc.

My neutral evil half-orc for example, is selfish and jaded, due to a life growing up on the streets. He has the capacity to overcome his faults and grow as time goes on, perhaps shifting alignment down the road.

And lawful evil tends to be an awesome alignment to play, for characters can be fiercely loyal, keeping their words at all cost.

There are sooo many roleplaying possibilities when evil is an option imo.

[Jyrdan Fairblade]

Give me an honest evil character with real motivations over a CN murderhobo that only does lip service to alignment and personality traits any day. I finder the latter to be far more disruptive and damaging to the integrity of a game.

From time to time, I like playing LE characters. Good or bad, give me a character with a code and I’m happy.

[Ancalagon]

Oft times, an evil character tends to mess up a party and cause ill feelings all around.

I've found that initiating a simple rule helps make evil fun again. We've made harming other party members prohibited, so players are free to play characters with an evil bent, who typically work well with the party.

One thing we've discovered, is that by solely playing good aligned characters, we were really missing half of what the game could offer.

From 1989 - 1994 I played the only evil character in a party of good and neutral PCs. While my PC was a neutral evil bastard, the nastiness was never focused on party members... unless someone stepped out of line. I played what I refer to as "cooperative evil" in that the party works together to accomplish goals. Our DM ran some great, challenging adventures so we had to rely on each other to succeed.

[Treebore]

I used to allow evil characters. I never will again. As the CK/GM/DM, I get to play evil characters all the time.

[slimykuotoan]

Give me an honest evil character with real motivations over a CN murderhobo that only does lip service to alignment and personality traits any day.

Hear hear.

[slimykuotoan]

I played what I refer to as "cooperative evil" in that the party works together to accomplish goals. Our DM ran some great, challenging adventures so we had to rely on each other to succeed.

Yeah, I find this 'cooperative evil' style works very well.

[Captain_K]

Here's a twist to this line.. if PC are a small percent of the population, what percent of those are evil vs good or neutral?