It’s So Good To Be Bad!Posted: 06 Jan 2009 11:04 PM CST
Many times we are told that Dungeons & Dragons is a game of heroes. Characters are expected to be good or at least morally neutral, even if some stretch the bounds of what that really means. Even the loose moralled characters tend to good overall, just with a bit of an attitude and some collateral damage along the way. Why is it that we never give being evil a chance?
The Opposition to EvilThere’s a lot of standard arguments against playing evil character:
* It causes inter-party fighting
* it can make it impossible to tell a decent story
* players don’t want to be evil
* burning down random villages just gets boring after a very short time.
All these things are technically true, but at the same time misleading. These arguments assume a very narrow view of evil, a chaotic figure who is evil only for the sake of evil. While that type of character can be entertaining as a villain, the latest movie incarnation of the Joker springs to mind, it is not a sort of evil suitable to build a campaign around. If you want to run a successful evil campaign it take a bit more work and I want to help. Here are some tips to keep your players entertained in an evil campaign beyond burning down the first village:
Perspective: Contrary to what nearly every edition of D&D has told you, evil is not a moral absolute. Drow, hobgoblins, kobolds are all intelligent races that we think about as evil because we traditionally play on the other side of a zero sum resources grab. From their perspective they are defending their homes and trying to create a better life for themselves and their families while the more privileged races cut them down (you can find this concept used very well in the D&D webcomic
Order of the Stick). A fun way to do an “evil” game is to have you players as monstrous races, who from their point of view are hunted to near extinction and must fight back against a better organized, better equipped foe so their people can survive just a little longer.
Little Fish: One of the problems of running villainous characters is that once they achieve success they tend to rest on their laurels. On the other hand, a hero’s work is never done, they just react to larger and larger threats. Therefore if you want a villain game to have some longevity they need to start off small fish in a big pond. If victory comes too quickly they will just sit around in their giant skull castle all day, waiting for heroes to attack. Ideally they will have competition from their more noble, heroic counterparts and from other evil interests in the world. It is possible a higher power villain game but it will likely be shorter and you will have to focus hard on the next tip.
Goal Oriented: When dealing with a group of heroes it is fairly easy to lead them around with no clear purpose, perhaps eventually grabbing them with some long term story hooks. With villains this is a much harder way of going about things, their hooks tend to be more difficult. During character creation you should establish what is going to interest the villainous characters and if they have any plans they already have cooking. You don’t want you villains to be indulging in evil for the sake of it because that gets old fast and you don’t want them to be put in a situation where they become reactionary. A good villain should always have his eye on some new prize.
Works Well With Others: Another important thing to establish during character creation is why your party is working together. You want to avoid the cliché backstabbing that can accompany an evil campaign. You back story can be something which is a bit complex, such as being fanatics of the same radical ideology or as simple is it is mutual beneficial to work together, just make sure that alliance has at least a little loyalty in it. If your party does not trust each other to stand watch in the night or there is bloodshed over magic item discoveries, you are in trouble.
Do you know the joys of being bad? Have you fallen victim to the dangers? I want to hear your comments!