My sense is, an evil campaign is going to have to be more narrative-centric and RP-centric than the standard campaign. If "evil campaign" simply refers to "regular campaign where the PCs happen to be evilly aligned", that means, in the majority of cases, that the standard murderhoboes who kill things and take their stuff for a living are now free to turn on one another. And most discussions about evil campaigns are about how to make sure other players are on board with being stabbed in the back by their allies, and how to ensure that the personal relationships between players don't spiral out of control as a result. A genuinely interesting, and perhaps, more workable evil game would be closer to a film about evil people. Why do actors enjoy playing villains so much? It's not so much that they can kill everyone around, but it's about exploring the human capacity for evil, and our weird fascination with it. In an RPG, doing this requires that the players work more closely to the DM to explore motivations and justifications for the evil characters, and to discuss how/why characters react to particular situations in the ways that they do. The DM's role in such a game would be closer to that of a director than a referee and adjudicator of the dice, and the discussions would help to transition from the evil game back to the real world, where we generally condemn the kinds of actions evil characters perform (instead of adopting the dismissive attitude that ''it's just a game, just deal with it''). One type of evil campaign would be to explore a gradual slide into evil. In this game, the characters would be tragic heroes, like Macbeth. Macbeth starts out as a perfectly normal Scottish laird, but he is tempted to become a murderer because he believes a prophecy that he will be king, and is also egged on by his wife, who is even more power hungry than he is, and emasculates him by charging that he is not tough and daring enough to take that which should be rightfully his. So step by step, this character becomes ever more murderous and suspicious. But in the end, he is not repentant, but goes out in a blaze of glory against superior odds, instead of surrendering. Some people like that sort of campaign ending. Another type of evil game might be centered around a Darth Vader-like character or party. Annakin desires power, like Macbeth, and like him, he is manipulated into crossing over to the Dark Side, but in his mind, he is justified in doing so, because he is not doing it for himself, or to take what is due him, but rather to bring order to a world which is spinning out of control. He is the classic Lawful Evil hero, but the whole structure of his narrative is his working toward repentance, which he finally gets before his death. The chaotic evil antihero should not be ruled out from the start. The concept and word "evil" are related etymologically to the word "uppity". It was originally applied to powerful people and beings who refused to take the divine-given world for granted. They rebelled, asserting their right to be co-creators, or co-rulers. That's Lucifer of _Paradise Lost_, who would rather rule in Hell than serve in Heaven. Such people assert that everything of value that people have in the world has been created by superior, daring people who have gone against the grain. Thus, great artists, scientists, leaders are all at least a bit evil by definition. Those who are inevitably hurt by their actions are of lesser (or no) consequence, because they stand in the way of progress, or us living up to our full potential. In extreme cases, such characters become artists of specifically evil acts - torture, murder, deception, not simply out of irrational pleasure, but because the pleasure they feel from such acts of transgression is caused by the release of those very creative energies that most people recognize as "greatness". This type of character would be closer to the stereotypical _Vampire: the Masquerade_ PC, whose motto is "evil we are, lest evil we become" (as a result of trying to deceive ourselves that we are evil, which he would see as purely destructive). One can also play a purely nihilist character who just wants to destroy, everything but ultimately, that would be the least interesting (and likely shortest-lived) game of all. So again, bottom line - make sure your evil games are well-scripted.
And if you have one character in a party that is adamantly nihilistic with the rest wanting something different always remember the nihilist is only one encounter away from have to roll a new character ;)
Chaotic evil person tied to lawful evil person Ramsay Snow and Roose Bolton Chaotic evil doesn't mean killing everything in sight--they're still interested in their own well being.
That was at least a couple of years. That's a pretty long campaign. And, more importantly, he's an excellent example of chaotic evil. He'll follow along right up until not following along nets him more power/wealth/whatever he wants.
scabbynacker I feel like his type don't lend themselves to D&D, he messed up everything Roose Bolton wanted to do. Also he was only with roose for a matter of days before he killed him. And he did kill a lot of people, he flayed most of the people in winterfell
scabbynacker I also think he's more of a neutral evil with a touch of chaotic evil. He wanted power and to flay people. He waged to kill his dad till after he was made a legitimate Bolton, a chaotic evil would have killed him right when he got mad.
A consequence I thought of for the Party killing an important NPC, after watching Matt Mercer's vid, is to have them return as a ghost or other Undead appropriate to the story. For instance, perhaps after killing a quest giver, its ghost returns within a week of its death with unfinished business, giving them the required info and haunting them, wherever they go, until they accomplish the task. If the NPC killed was a Paladin, perhaps the GM twists the narrative a bit so as to make the Paladin partially responsible for the wrong he wants to right in order to atone himself. Having been killed by the PCs before he could accomplish that, he later returns to thwart their plans at every turn from the shadows(and eventually in a direct confrontation) as a Death Knight! Perhaps the NPC is so overcome with hatred and anger during its final moments and is denied entry in the afterlife thereby returning as a specter. The party could later on encounter the specter when it returns to the scene of the crime. If they murdered him/her in a town or City, the specter has been slowly snuffing out life, perhaps even having killed one or many NPCs in some way valuable to the Party. Maybe the NPC they killed returns to life as a Revenant who now stalks and hunts them relentlessly(through hell and back if need be) until either they are killed or it is destroyed. Finally, if the party wipes out an entire town or village(I've seen it happen in EVIL campaigns...) and leave only to return later, they find that all the townsfolk are still there, going about there business as usual... a little too usual... as they repeat the events of the day of there death only to vanish at that point, returning on the morrow to repeat the cycle once more. If the party attacks or interferes with any of the townsfolk, they all turn on the party in all there ghostly glory!
That's one way to do it and the other is meta game the players. Always have some extra pages of notes to hand and when party ganks your plot hook tear the pages up in front of the players and make muttered comments about how adventure is looking like it might run short. Obviously this works best if the players like your games and some of scraps "accidentally" left behind page include mention of loot and bonus XP rewards.
Hobo with a Shotgun was released in 2011. I understand Ryan's befuddlement concerning the release date because the movie was a comedic pastiche of the violent vigilante films of the late 70s and early 80s so both the story and esthetics of the film are sort of made to fool you into thinking you are watching a movie from that era.
Blame that on knowing the gist of the film, but not actually getting a chance to see it. I had a friend that was really into "I Spit on Your Grave" that I've also yet to getting around to seeing, but sounds really screwed-up! I saw "Cannibal Holocaust" over that same friend's house. -Nerdarchist Ryan
Interstingly, the phrase "murderous hobo" was first used in 2007, but "murder hobo" was first used in 2011, same year as the movie, so despite his erroneous chronology, his hypothesis could still be true.
My favorite evil agenda, playing as a LE monk back in 3.5, was to praise Moander by biting the palms of the humanoids the party defeated so they could rot and offer the decaying dead to the Darkbringer. I wasn't attacked by the rest of the party until I had managed to call a skuz and was finally getting seeded. Got promoted IRL and couldn't make it anymore, so the DM helped me write my way out of the group. 😅 Evil works best when you don't let your party know your motives, means, or mindset. Players that can separate themselves from their PCs are a must, but things are easiest if you don't straight up announce your alignment- that's probably the best benefit of Lawful Evil. For all they know, you're just a sloppy Lawful Neutral.
I think the way you have a long-running evil campaign (Well, besides not being killed by the authorities, you have to manage that on your own) is have the party act lawful to group. There can be a literal set of rule for the group, such as you work for a thieve's guild, or can be as simple as your a group of bandits who doesn't lie, cheat, steal, or maul the others because at the very least you understand the usefulness in each other. I think Blades in the Dark is a system where there is inherit to, but it can be ported to other systems easily. But there is a group identity and the characters can about the success of the group as much as the success of their self because when the group succeeds, they succeed. It also helps if you lay down at the table the social contract, you might play the most chaotic stupid possibly, but he isn't going to go directly against the party.
Every rebel is somebodies freedom fighter... could make a interesting game were the characters play the secret police or rebels and have do evil things to win... and then confronted with their deeds.... could even put them in a mock trial in the end... their level of evil play determining their sentence or freedom.... how sneaky or blatant were they .... chaotic or lawful.
Villains by Necessity by Eve Foreward is a novel about an evil campaign! A druid gets a group of mostly evil characters together to save the world from destruction because the balance has gone too far to the good side, and though they would normally kill each other, because they value their life they will work together to save the world. It is a great premise for an evil campaign, and as long as the characters aren't suicidal, it should be able to work.
This respect for LE shows a distinct belief that law is somehow more virtuous than chaos. A CE character can be chaotic in the same way that a CN, or CG character can be. Those characters work in parties fine. A character I was designing was beaten heavily by his father, for this reason, he doesn't have the highest opinion of law and authority. CE can have limits, CE might not enslave for just enslaving, nor torture just to torture.
Connecting this back to the Batman example, if you look at btas, joker worked with other villains, and had very interesting chemistry. Look at the "I almost got him" episode, this is how your evil party can interact, they may not like each other, they make cracks at each other, but overall they are a family United in evil and in hatred of the Batman.
You can have Evil characters that do Good deeds for their own gain. Orphanage on fire? Go help save the children, make yourself seen, make a show of it, so that when you do something Evil later, people are less likely to believe it was you. The best Evil can set itself up so that they're the last person that suspicion falls on. Hell, think about an Evil Investigator. He/She commits crimes and then goes back to the scene the next day with the party and offers to try and find the person who did it, making up evidence to point towards someone else in town. Now you're getting paid from your loot, and by the people you just stole from. Having the party of Good with you makes you all the more trustworthy.
having a suicide squad set up sounds like a really good way of doing an evil campaign since it lets you set up in game fail safes to stop things getting out of hand i think having a jekyll and hyde character in an evil party could also help curb the evil and allow for some interesting rp
Example: I am currently running a game where the players are essentially evil. I do not use alignment in my games and I tell my players I do not want to know their alignments. So this isn't about alignment. They are evil because they are part of the dominant political and economic faction and they are law enforcers and have enormous discretion in how to exercise and apply justice. And justice in this world is based on honor. They have tortured, murdered and sent innocent people to their doom, but they do not see themselves as evil nor are they playing "EVIL". They are playing in the world presented to them and they are doing it well.
The only successful evil campaign I was in as player was set in a Lawful Evil theocratic kingdom where the party acted as enforcers for various LE temples. I played it totally straight, by-the-book lawful, so no random murder or theft, while still being harsh on law breakers and enemies. In the end the party was fighting both a Chaotic Evil coup inside the kingdom (part of the Bloodwar) and an invasion by good powers at the same time.
The 2 best examples of Chaotic Evil characters working as a PC are Heatwave(Mick Rory, Wants to watch the world burn) and Victor Zsasz(just a murderer) but both of which work because they can(and often are) tied to other characters. Zsasz is a hired killer, that's all that takes. In the case of Heatwave(taking the example from Legends of Tomorrow) he was morally bound to Leonard Snart(Capitan Cold) who is more a Lawful Evil character. Snart's personality dominated and gave Rory a direction, which he still fallows even though Snart is no longer around. but they work because these example work because they are adaptable and can easily be bound to another PC or NPC, consider having one of the primary characters hold the billet to the CE character, working off an existing prison sentence(or avoiding execution) by working for the billet holder.
Its funny, i've always found the whole eventual PvP thing to happen way more often between neutral and good characters due to the higher standards they hold themselves and others to. While most evil characters tend to easily stay out of infighting due to them really not caring enough about "what to do with the baby orcs" to fight over it. From my experience, Evil tends to go the path of least resistance, and that never includes pissing off the party Barbarian or Cleric :p
"You might want to rethink your friends if they are into the darker things." I strongly disagree. I personally like to go as dark as possible in evil campaigns mainly because I dont get to walk down the street and knife someone in the throat for no reason. Escaping a life where I am bounded by modern laws is a great way to purge my demons. Allowing all that darkness out is what keeps me a sane person.
I have to admit that in a Stormbringer campaign, my sorcerer kidnapped and murdered a 9 year old girl in order to summon a Wish demon. Some people in the campaign were quite offended.
My wizard was locked in a little girls room while she was asleep and he just sat next to her bed with a dagger waiting to kill her if he needed to but never did then robbed what he was meant to get and ran off
You can't softball an evil campaign. 5e gives player characters two silver spoons, one in their mouth, and one in their ass. Evil campaigns need to really hardball the players with consequences that actually do result in frequent death rolls or capture, rather than the traditional softball feeding of xp so they grow and cultivate as heroes. Evil players in evil campaigns should be underdogs looking to get a leg up wherever they can, and being careful where they step. If they are smart, they'll keep the action economy in their favor. If they're stupid, the 'consequences' show up with both levels, abilities, and numbers. Don't underestimate what a pack of 6-8 trained warhounds can do to a character, because DM's love to forget hounds and wolves are instinctive trippers and grapplers.
I just had the idea of two partys. One Party are the evil once and the other the good one :D And on the end of the campaign you bring both parties together and let the evil mafia thievs/assassins guild party fight against the Paladin Investigator Policeforce xD
So wheres the next vid? I need a steady supply of videos while i work on various character builds here, and i really cant settle for the dawnforged videos, i need the quality vids from nerdarchy please
Arthur DeLuca tired of watching Andrew play Shadowrun? I wish he'd post a d&d campaign he was in instead of just his patreon supporters. That or continue the one-on-one game with his wife. it was an interesting story.
From something I've heard Andrew say before, his wife isn't really into RPGs, the one-on-one campaign and his teaching her how to the game worked in vids seemed like he was attempting to get her into the hobby (and his livelihood), but this hobby doesn't "stick" for everyone. My biggest thing is that people at least give RPGs a fair shot (and hopefully they're not gaming with terrible people, but that goes back to the "fair shot" thing). -Nerdarchist Ryan
AncapFTW It's more something I inferred based on him saying that his wife didn't get that into RPGs, so it's more speculation on my part, but it'd be silly to have someone RPing that didn't enjoy it.
Evil Acts 1. Look for an opportunity to "Beat the System, Profit from loopholes & vague rules, and exploit them 2. "Minimize" the harm that you have done, and blame the victim / system 3. Display no empathy / remorse for harms that you have done - justify your actions as heroic
but then you'd have to pick which incarnation of lex you'd want to take after, im partial to presidential lex from the animated universe myself but new 52 lex from elements of evil was pretty cool too
One other possibility for a character that would work as chaotic evil for an archetype is the HK-47 style, love isn't the only reason for someone to follow someone else...
A fun thing you could do...if you have a camping...if your party kills a essential quest giver....first tell them. - That was a quest giver you killed there. And them try to fix it...or just f it and let them be under leveled if they do it to often. And do not tel them before they kill them that they are quest givers...so that they will not relay on you to see whom they can and can't kill.
I'm running a campaign(AD&D 1) with two C.E. player characters. A Druid(think Eternal Champion) and oath sworn fighter. It runs very much like a good party with a bit more tense encounters. Evil vs an overly dominant Lawful Good regime. Would love an opinion. These videos you guys put out are great 👍
Hobo with a shotgun is actually 2011, and first appeared in the "Grind House" trailer contest, which was 2007. I think the term is much older than 2007.
I'm actually very interested in origins of terms like "murder hobo", RPG dot net claims to have been the place to coin this term, but games like Human Occupied Landfill existed since 1994, which is a game about literal murder hobos. It could be the source, but it may go deeper than we think.
A session zero is vital imo. I was in a "pick up" game once where the party was evil and therefore would not trust one another without breaking alignment. It was a disaster.
I have a necromancer character that would be more on the political side then economic but they are more focused on becoming a lich so that they could become a lichgod and eventually become a life and death God but in the short term becoming a vampire is fine also they are a high elf I'm just not sure if they should have 14 charisma or 16 dexterity
A session 0 is when you get your group together and put everything on the table from saying what kind of game everyone wants to play to character concepts. So always have a session 0.
I use session 0 as an opportunity for players to come up with ideas on how their backstories might be related, to let them introduce their characters and discuss any aspects they want a second opinion on etc. as well as establishing what sort of campaign it will be, what the world is like in terms of general knowledge or major events and that sort of thing. It usually leads to a bit more depth for the PCs coming into the campaign. If you're running a module, it's probably not super necessary, but otherwise I'd do it.
You could also kind of play it the way they do in Hunter X Hunter with Hisoka and the phantom troupe. It may be a gang of psychopaths but the way his lackluster sense of loyalty and responsibility grates against their fanatical dedication makes all the double agent drama even better. Why meet someone in a dark alley when you can voluntarily fail on a saving throw that will give them access to the information? Why show your cards when relatively subtle manipulation will have a far more drastic and hard to trace effect? Play it subtle, play it smart, and show restraint when necessary. If your playing a predator how have they survived this long without getting caught? How do they prepare their approach when it comes to prey? Why would they potentially see their fellow party members as desirable prey? Remember if you want to make a truly terrifying character less can be more, the monster becomes far less scary when it enters plain site but that doesn't mean you can't drop hints. Also a character like this may "jokingly" brag about committing horrific acts if there in a context where they can get away with it or make jokes about horrific taboo topics. This can serve as a method of desentizing potential victims and this kind of psychopath gets off on seeing how much they can get away with and pushing others boundaries. They may also act very nice polite, charming, and even quite useful much of the time, gotta put on a good act to lure in more potential victims. Now if this all seems to real it's because I'm basing it off someone I actually dated unfortunately enough, however if you want to have a real thriller of a campaign and send those visceral chills down players spines there's nothing like using real life psychology as inspiration. This is pretty heavily dependent on the players though and if they've had real life experiences of gas lighting and this sort of abuse of the psyche even having their characters go through that might be triggering. Personally I just love delving into the darker aspects of psychology and how they can force the better angels of someone else's nature to come out and or break that person. Everything falls eventually but how do you build it back up?
I ran a Drow campaign ( D&D becmi ) a couple of years back where the party killed Santa and his reindeer in a "Xmas special ". How dark is that.... LOL .
I'm running an 'evil' campaign atm. but its more 'game of thrown s' intelligent evil. doing bad things but also manipulating people and ensuring you get away with it without leaving any loose ends. My players have had to think and plan more than a normal campaign which is fun
i often play as an evil character because i find evil characters interesting especially their motivations and rationale especially when they are "broken" in some way for instance i recently played a warlock who was abused by her family and offered retribution by a demon is it cliched maybe but i thought it was a fun character to roleplay
This vid could not have come at a better time.I have been recruited to DM a evil campaign.I'm thinking along the line of evil vs evil but it's unknown to PC's.What do you think?
How about a drow elf's agenda is starting a Cashew farm? With Slaves of course and a "re-education" room with Cats surrounding the plantation singing the meow miz song if anyone tries to escape. So he would try to be "good" by getting land from the king and be left alone.
Evil does not necessarily mean being a dick to everyone. It can be keeping your options open while trying to maintain good or at least LN reputation. Just killing random annoying people is not advised, unless you know you can get away with it. It should usually be enough to just beat them up with nonlethal damage or cast "sleep" and leave them there for other people to rob. A good setup for a legally justified evil campaign could be becoming privateers for some country and playing pirates. This even has some historical basis. Another would be "A war breaks out between two kingdoms. Because you are proven adventurers, instead of joining the frontline troops, you are drafted to black ops. You are to smuggle yourself into enemy territory and stir things up. On a success, you will be given full pardon (and therefore you can get away with almost any crime). The exact methods are up to you, but your job is to make the enemy unable and/or unwilling to fight." Think the Mountain that rides plundering the Riverlands in GoT. They can take a stab at military wagon trains and destroy supplies. They can sneak into a city as refugees, then at night kill guards at a gate and let their own troops in for an easy victory. They can attack random villages, steal, kill, rape and burn everything down to terrorise the population. They can even raise some zombies or cooperate with monsters or whatever.
Remember the Skeksis from The Dark Crystal? Remember the part where they battle for the crown, and end up banishing the really annoying one? If something of that nature doesn't happen at least once in an evil campaign, both DM and players are doing it wrong. Something most players and possibly DM's forget to remember, evil campaign or not, is a great lesson most people should have learned from Grand Theft Auto, or even Game of Thrones; kill enough people and eventually someone is going to come and kill you.
im in the middle of planning a campaign in where the players are suppose to be tricked into becoming evil by playing on their greed, my question is how would you guys at nerdarchy handle it, ive got my ideas but having an experienced groups opinion would help
We've had a very successful lawful evil campaign. We weren't "baby eating" evil and each had our own motivations that ran way counter the social norms. It was a blast. Everyone has to agree to keep things on the rails. Chaotic evil... no way.
Hopefully someone can answer this question for me I am running a campaign with people who chose bugbears all of them are barbarians who are chaotic evil or lawful evil how would I go about making that campaign work
Give them an enemy they all want to or have to fight? For example their home is razed by a group of scourgers belonging to say a human extremist group. They now have to forage and find supplies for the surviving member sof their tribe/clan let alone find a new home and keep their family safe.
@@Darkwintre Campaign is long over now but I’ll keep that stuff in mind, The campaign went well though they ended up fighting a golden dragon at the end of the campaign all level 14
Ryan, you're kidding, right? Hobo With A Shotgun was from 2011, based on a fake trailer that ran along with Tarantino/Rodriguez' movie Grindhouse. From 2007.
Always remember: What Would Orcus Do? And everyone loves the rampaging monster devouring their **enemies**. Very important. Eating villagers is only good when they're paying their tribute to someone else.
I would run an 'evil' campaign in a world where evil dominates, and the players are either seeking to destroy the last bastions of good, or going about their evilness and the 'good' are rallying forces against them. But running an evil party or campaign in a world dominated by good/neutral just - I think - spirals into stupidity.
my friend and I had a rule we called the mantell rule. in short it was no party infighting or violence. it came from a coworker of ours who happily told me about one session of dnd where he attempted to rape the character of his friends wife, who in real life had been raped as a child. she flipped out screaming and crying and it ended with him being thrown out of their house. the really weird part was the asamatteroffact way he told the story like it was her problem that she overreacted. tbf I liked the guy but he was a bit of a sociopath...
I think Evil characters *need* to have something going on for them, running or part of a business, or organisation. Or at least some overwhelming drive other than purely murdering people etc
I gotta disagree with you on the CE characters not being capable of playing with others in a party for an evil game, you're falling into the trap of stereotyping CE as chaotic stupid with that's just one facet of it. Personally though that's the biggest problem I have with D&D's alignment system in general, which is why i try to use it as little as possible, because I've always preferred shades of grey over black and white.
Totally agree with you on this, CE isn't Chaotic Stupid in the same way LG isn't Lawful Stupid. Boil down many campaigns to their basics and at their heart its either "Loot and kill your way through the enemy for a cash/power reward" or "Bring down death and mayhem on the enemy until their plan fails". Guardians of the Galaxy has the paraphrased cry that evil characters can get behind - "I'll help save the world because I live in it". Self-interest can be served without being utterly selfish to the detriment of everybody else, laws can be ignored without having break every law encountered. Around the heart of an evil campaign or character lies the interpretation of 'does the end justify the means'. Given the actions of a typical adventuring party I don't see why CE is that much likely than CG to cause PvP problems. An adventurer (certainly in fantasy games) is mostly on the gravy train to power, wealth and success by undertaking frequently, in a strict sense, morally dubious actions. A truly Good PC would always be on look out to shut down a party because of its actions. From a personal side the biggest problem we've had with evil campaigns is keeping the party on track with the story when party in character decide that the reward/risk ratio is wrong and hop off the rails.
I concur, historically we've had lots of examples of evil groups which stuck together till the bitter end... from evil empires to evil cults, like David Karesh. The key component is the cult of personality of the leader binding the group together and getting others to buy into their vision. This could also be accomplished by having the leader be outside the party, like a party of Vecna cultists. Either way, I think people confuse evil with selfishness, which isn't necessarily accurate. In fact selfishness aligns well with chaotic neutral.
The Joker is certainly Chaotic Evil, and while he may not play nice with others, he can manipulate events to suit his will and therefore work with other characters like Bane, Poison Ivy, Zsazz who is completely insane, and so on by playing them like a fiddle.
Yup, "the screw job" as I believe it was called, was pretty awesome though I do feel like he set it up to TPK the party in the end and I think it would've been cooler to have the character's own machinations really be the reason why they fell. -Nerdarchist Ryan
Fallout series has great dark stories you can borrow from, Fallout 3 had you blowup a town that was settled around a Nuke. another great game series is the Overlord, it's a comedy take of Lord of the Rings.
I have never understood why evil characters are always thought as stupid evil half the characters you see out right act evil, but because they are tagged as something else they are fine?
what about a chacter that is evil but, thinks he is good. forinstance burning an entire city to the ground to teach others obediance to him and have him justify his actions because he is stopping wars and cracking down on crime?
I love evils campaigns and playing evil characters. But more so to be the one evil character in a good party. One or to neutral players and 2 to 3 good players... Having to blend in with them is great. Your evil manipulating the group. Comet a crime get the good party member involved in such way that if they turn on you. You have dort on them. Or slowly turn the to evil. Mwhajahahahaha. All so you must get a good reason for why your evil charter is with the party. Be evil bit be good as well be good at being evil. Be smart about it. If you can do it with out get caught sure. Other wise it a waste of time. Or your gonna spend most the game covering your tracks that hard and not fun.so pretend to be good when being evil is the fun part. Once played an assassin who was hired to kill a paladin. Who was another player. I trued honestly I did but failed every time. Saved him more often then not. He though o was his friend. 2 people is party knew o was trying to kill him the other 3 did not.
Stranded Starfish How can it be the focus of anyone? It's literally the first question. Not to mention it's an evil campaign, being indecent is the point.
Stranded Starfish Actually no one knows the answer to the question that's why it's asked. Just because it's an evil campaign means it's ok. All the other questions you posed are far less relevant than any question having to do with the boundaries of immortality that people find comfortable.
Stranded Starfish Actually no one knows the answer to the question that's why it's asked. Just because it's an evil campaign means it's ok. All the other questions you posed are far less relevant than any question having to do with the boundaries of immortality that people find comfortable.
Stranded Starfish You are either on some very high moral high horse or are soft in the head and don't understand the content of the video. In an evil campaign people are expected to do things that are morally reprehensible. Determining exactly what kind of evil acts are ok for all players is vital for the campaign to run without making some people uncomfortable.
pvp is great if everyone is on board if not shut it down. also i think evil and narrativly dark r not the same thing. ppl in things like the god father,got, or gentalmen basterds do evil things cus they have to bot they dont feel anything after
Evil is so generic. It's not being Ted Bundy. To me evil is a more selfish character. I hate the black and white look at it. Evil is so general. Yes you may have done some act that is "evil" but you did it for good. Game of Thrones characters are great examples. None of them are good. They have a flaw. To me you follow Ander Woods formula: ask the evil character "what is good about you"
How I generally see it is that chaotic evil is the sociopath who just does whatever he wants without caring what anyone else thinks about it. Neutral Evil is the assasin or gangster, willing to do any job as long as they profit enough to care about it, and doesn't shy murdering someone if it benefits them in some notable way, but doesn't go out of their way to hurt others if he doesn't have anything to gain from it. Lawful Evil is the corrupt politician or ruthless baron who enforces the law to the letter, but also exploits it to their own benefit whenever they can, they prefer to not get their own hands dirty when doing something against the law, but rather hire the neutral evil person to do it for them.
I know its off topic but the no pvp comment made me want to know what are peoples thoughts on actuall pvp one shots? I did it a few weeks ago when I needed a quick 1 shot and just said the players woke up in a giant arena with a dragon watching over them. Last man standing walks out alive.
PvP one-shots can be interesting, but they can also be really one-sided depending on who the characters are. One time my druid got mind-dominated, and the only reason the rest of the party didn't die is the DM realised I was about to kill them all and ended the effect early.
They're fun just so long as there isn't too much time between first player exit and wrap up. In the gladiator pit scenarios giving NPC control over to early-out players prolongs the fun.
How about a drow elf's agenda is starting a Cashew farm? With Slaves of course and a "re-education" room with Cats surrounding the plantation singing the meow miz song if anyone tries to escape. So he would try to be "good" by getting land from the king and be left alone.
My sense is, an evil campaign is going to have to be more narrative-centric and RP-centric than the standard campaign. If "evil campaign" simply refers to "regular campaign where the PCs happen to be evilly aligned", that means, in the majority of cases, that the standard murderhoboes who kill things and take their stuff for a living are now free to turn on one another. And most discussions about evil campaigns are about how to make sure other players are on board with being stabbed in the back by their allies, and how to ensure that the personal relationships between players don't spiral out of control as a result.
A genuinely interesting, and perhaps, more workable evil game would be closer to a film about evil people. Why do actors enjoy playing villains so much? It's not so much that they can kill everyone around, but it's about exploring the human capacity for evil, and our weird fascination with it. In an RPG, doing this requires that the players work more closely to the DM to explore motivations and justifications for the evil characters, and to discuss how/why characters react to particular situations in the ways that they do. The DM's role in such a game would be closer to that of a director than a referee and adjudicator of the dice, and the discussions would help to transition from the evil game back to the real world, where we generally condemn the kinds of actions evil characters perform (instead of adopting the dismissive attitude that ''it's just a game, just deal with it'').
One type of evil campaign would be to explore a gradual slide into evil. In this game, the characters would be tragic heroes, like Macbeth. Macbeth starts out as a perfectly normal Scottish laird, but he is tempted to become a murderer because he believes a prophecy that he will be king, and is also egged on by his wife, who is even more power hungry than he is, and emasculates him by charging that he is not tough and daring enough to take that which should be rightfully his. So step by step, this character becomes ever more murderous and suspicious. But in the end, he is not repentant, but goes out in a blaze of glory against superior odds, instead of surrendering. Some people like that sort of campaign ending.
Another type of evil game might be centered around a Darth Vader-like character or party. Annakin desires power, like Macbeth, and like him, he is manipulated into crossing over to the Dark Side, but in his mind, he is justified in doing so, because he is not doing it for himself, or to take what is due him, but rather to bring order to a world which is spinning out of control. He is the classic Lawful Evil hero, but the whole structure of his narrative is his working toward repentance, which he finally gets before his death.
The chaotic evil antihero should not be ruled out from the start. The concept and word "evil" are related etymologically to the word "uppity". It was originally applied to powerful people and beings who refused to take the divine-given world for granted. They rebelled, asserting their right to be co-creators, or co-rulers. That's Lucifer of _Paradise Lost_, who would rather rule in Hell than serve in Heaven. Such people assert that everything of value that people have in the world has been created by superior, daring people who have gone against the grain. Thus, great artists, scientists, leaders are all at least a bit evil by definition. Those who are inevitably hurt by their actions are of lesser (or no) consequence, because they stand in the way of progress, or us living up to our full potential. In extreme cases, such characters become artists of specifically evil acts - torture, murder, deception, not simply out of irrational pleasure, but because the pleasure they feel from such acts of transgression is caused by the release of those very creative energies that most people recognize as "greatness". This type of character would be closer to the stereotypical _Vampire: the Masquerade_ PC, whose motto is "evil we are, lest evil we become" (as a result of trying to deceive ourselves that we are evil, which he would see as purely destructive).
One can also play a purely nihilist character who just wants to destroy, everything but ultimately, that would be the least interesting (and likely shortest-lived) game of all. So again, bottom line - make sure your evil games are well-scripted.
And if you have one character in a party that is adamantly nihilistic with the rest wanting something different always remember the nihilist is only one encounter away from have to roll a new character ;)
Chaotic evil person tied to lawful evil person
Ramsay Snow and Roose Bolton
Chaotic evil doesn't mean killing everything in sight--they're still interested in their own well being.
scabbynacker that doesn't work for a long running game. He killed his dad and was killed in a relatively short amount of time.
That was at least a couple of years. That's a pretty long campaign.
And, more importantly, he's an excellent example of chaotic evil. He'll follow along right up until not following along nets him more power/wealth/whatever he wants.
scabbynacker I feel like his type don't lend themselves to D&D, he messed up everything Roose Bolton wanted to do. Also he was only with roose for a matter of days before he killed him. And he did kill a lot of people, he flayed most of the people in winterfell
scabbynacker I also think he's more of a neutral evil with a touch of chaotic evil. He wanted power and to flay people. He waged to kill his dad till after he was made a legitimate Bolton, a chaotic evil would have killed him right when he got mad.
scabbynacker I just think people who play chaotic evil usually just play a stabby-er neutral evil
My favorite kind of evil campaigns are the kind that lead the players thinking they're doing good by end up actually being evil.
The evil version of Sam and Frodo: "I can't carry you, but I can take all your stuff while you're down!"
"God dammit Sam..."
A consequence I thought of for the Party killing an important NPC, after watching Matt Mercer's vid, is to have them return as a ghost or other Undead appropriate to the story.
For instance, perhaps after killing a quest giver, its ghost returns within a week of its death with unfinished business, giving them the required info and haunting them, wherever they go, until they accomplish the task.
If the NPC killed was a Paladin, perhaps the GM twists the narrative a bit so as to make the Paladin partially responsible for the wrong he wants to right in order to atone himself. Having been killed by the PCs before he could accomplish that, he later returns to thwart their plans at every turn from the shadows(and eventually in a direct confrontation) as a Death Knight!
Perhaps the NPC is so overcome with hatred and anger during its final moments and is denied entry in the afterlife thereby returning as a specter. The party could later on encounter the specter when it returns to the scene of the crime. If they murdered him/her in a town or City, the specter has been slowly snuffing out life, perhaps even having killed one or many NPCs in some way valuable to the Party.
Maybe the NPC they killed returns to life as a Revenant who now stalks and hunts them relentlessly(through hell and back if need be) until either they are killed or it is destroyed.
Finally, if the party wipes out an entire town or village(I've seen it happen in EVIL campaigns...) and leave only to return later, they find that all the townsfolk are still there, going about there business as usual... a little too usual... as they repeat the events of the day of there death only to vanish at that point, returning on the morrow to repeat the cycle once more. If the party attacks or interferes with any of the townsfolk, they all turn on the party in all there ghostly glory!
That's one way to do it and the other is meta game the players. Always have some extra pages of notes to hand and when party ganks your plot hook tear the pages up in front of the players and make muttered comments about how adventure is looking like it might run short. Obviously this works best if the players like your games and some of scraps "accidentally" left behind page include mention of loot and bonus XP rewards.
Hobo with a Shotgun was released in 2011. I understand Ryan's befuddlement concerning the release date because the movie was a comedic pastiche of the violent vigilante films of the late 70s and early 80s so both the story and esthetics of the film are sort of made to fool you into thinking you are watching a movie from that era.
EpifanesEuergetes I, so, rolled my eyes when you said that.
Blame that on knowing the gist of the film, but not actually getting a chance to see it. I had a friend that was really into "I Spit on Your Grave" that I've also yet to getting around to seeing, but sounds really screwed-up! I saw "Cannibal Holocaust" over that same friend's house. -Nerdarchist Ryan
there is NOTHING occult about ISOYG
Interstingly, the phrase "murderous hobo" was first used in 2007, but "murder hobo" was first used in 2011, same year as the movie, so despite his erroneous chronology, his hypothesis could still be true.
Rutgers Hauer. Rip
My favorite evil agenda, playing as a LE monk back in 3.5, was to praise Moander by biting the palms of the humanoids the party defeated so they could rot and offer the decaying dead to the Darkbringer. I wasn't attacked by the rest of the party until I had managed to call a skuz and was finally getting seeded. Got promoted IRL and couldn't make it anymore, so the DM helped me write my way out of the group. 😅
Evil works best when you don't let your party know your motives, means, or mindset. Players that can separate themselves from their PCs are a must, but things are easiest if you don't straight up announce your alignment- that's probably the best benefit of Lawful Evil. For all they know, you're just a sloppy Lawful Neutral.
Put simply be magneto sounds great
I think the way you have a long-running evil campaign (Well, besides not being killed by the authorities, you have to manage that on your own) is have the party act lawful to group.
There can be a literal set of rule for the group, such as you work for a thieve's guild, or can be as simple as your a group of bandits who doesn't lie, cheat, steal, or maul the others because at the very least you understand the usefulness in each other.
I think Blades in the Dark is a system where there is inherit to, but it can be ported to other systems easily. But there is a group identity and the characters can about the success of the group as much as the success of their self because when the group succeeds, they succeed.
It also helps if you lay down at the table the social contract, you might play the most chaotic stupid possibly, but he isn't going to go directly against the party.
Every rebel is somebodies freedom fighter... could make a interesting game were the characters play the secret police or rebels and have do evil things to win... and then confronted with their deeds.... could even put them in a mock trial in the end... their level of evil play determining their sentence or freedom.... how sneaky or blatant were they .... chaotic or lawful.
Villains by Necessity by Eve Foreward is a novel about an evil campaign! A druid gets a group of mostly evil characters together to save the world from destruction because the balance has gone too far to the good side, and though they would normally kill each other, because they value their life they will work together to save the world. It is a great premise for an evil campaign, and as long as the characters aren't suicidal, it should be able to work.
This respect for LE shows a distinct belief that law is somehow more virtuous than chaos.
A CE character can be chaotic in the same way that a CN, or CG character can be.
Those characters work in parties fine.
A character I was designing was beaten heavily by his father, for this reason, he doesn't have the highest opinion of law and authority.
CE can have limits, CE might not enslave for just enslaving, nor torture just to torture.
Connecting this back to the Batman example, if you look at btas, joker worked with other villains, and had very interesting chemistry.
Look at the "I almost got him" episode, this is how your evil party can interact, they may not like each other, they make cracks at each other, but overall they are a family United in evil and in hatred of the Batman.
You can have Evil characters that do Good deeds for their own gain. Orphanage on fire? Go help save the children, make yourself seen, make a show of it, so that when you do something Evil later, people are less likely to believe it was you.
The best Evil can set itself up so that they're the last person that suspicion falls on.
Hell, think about an Evil Investigator. He/She commits crimes and then goes back to the scene the next day with the party and offers to try and find the person who did it, making up evidence to point towards someone else in town. Now you're getting paid from your loot, and by the people you just stole from. Having the party of Good with you makes you all the more trustworthy.
having a suicide squad set up sounds like a really good way of doing an evil campaign since it lets you set up in game fail safes to stop things getting out of hand
i think having a jekyll and hyde character in an evil party could also help curb the evil and allow for some interesting rp
Example: I am currently running a game where the players are essentially evil. I do not use alignment in my games and I tell my players I do not want to know their alignments. So this isn't about alignment. They are evil because they are part of the dominant political and economic faction and they are law enforcers and have enormous discretion in how to exercise and apply justice. And justice in this world is based on honor. They have tortured, murdered and sent innocent people to their doom, but they do not see themselves as evil nor are they playing "EVIL". They are playing in the world presented to them and they are doing it well.
The only successful evil campaign I was in as player was set in a Lawful Evil theocratic kingdom where the party acted as enforcers for various LE temples. I played it totally straight, by-the-book lawful, so no random murder or theft, while still being harsh on law breakers and enemies. In the end the party was fighting both a Chaotic Evil coup inside the kingdom (part of the Bloodwar) and an invasion by good powers at the same time.
The 2 best examples of Chaotic Evil characters working as a PC are Heatwave(Mick Rory, Wants to watch the world burn) and Victor Zsasz(just a murderer) but both of which work because they can(and often are) tied to other characters. Zsasz is a hired killer, that's all that takes. In the case of Heatwave(taking the example from Legends of Tomorrow) he was morally bound to Leonard Snart(Capitan Cold) who is more a Lawful Evil character. Snart's personality dominated and gave Rory a direction, which he still fallows even though Snart is no longer around. but they work because these example work because they are adaptable and can easily be bound to another PC or NPC, consider having one of the primary characters hold the billet to the CE character, working off an existing prison sentence(or avoiding execution) by working for the billet holder.
Its funny, i've always found the whole eventual PvP thing to happen way more often between neutral and good characters due to the higher standards they hold themselves and others to.
While most evil characters tend to easily stay out of infighting due to them really not caring enough about "what to do with the baby orcs" to fight over it.
From my experience, Evil tends to go the path of least resistance, and that never includes pissing off the party Barbarian or Cleric :p
playing a group of goblins causing chaos, trying to steal an item from a paladin for their boss, while being chased by heros was awesome.
"You might want to rethink your friends if they are into the darker things." I strongly disagree. I personally like to go as dark as possible in evil campaigns mainly because I dont get to walk down the street and knife someone in the throat for no reason. Escaping a life where I am bounded by modern laws is a great way to purge my demons. Allowing all that darkness out is what keeps me a sane person.
I have to admit that in a Stormbringer campaign, my sorcerer kidnapped and murdered a 9 year old girl in order to summon a Wish demon. Some people in the campaign were quite offended.
My wizard was locked in a little girls room while she was asleep and he just sat next to her bed with a dagger waiting to kill her if he needed to but never did then robbed what he was meant to get and ran off
You can't softball an evil campaign. 5e gives player characters two silver spoons, one in their mouth, and one in their ass. Evil campaigns need to really hardball the players with consequences that actually do result in frequent death rolls or capture, rather than the traditional softball feeding of xp so they grow and cultivate as heroes. Evil players in evil campaigns should be underdogs looking to get a leg up wherever they can, and being careful where they step. If they are smart, they'll keep the action economy in their favor. If they're stupid, the 'consequences' show up with both levels, abilities, and numbers.
Don't underestimate what a pack of 6-8 trained warhounds can do to a character, because DM's love to forget hounds and wolves are instinctive trippers and grapplers.
I just had the idea of two partys.
One Party are the evil once and the other the good one :D
And on the end of the campaign you bring both parties together and let the evil mafia thievs/assassins guild party fight against the Paladin Investigator Policeforce xD
so what you're saying is; murder-hobo = PC with PTSD having difficulty adjusting.
So wheres the next vid? I need a steady supply of videos while i work on various character builds here, and i really cant settle for the dawnforged videos, i need the quality vids from nerdarchy please
Arthur DeLuca tired of watching Andrew play Shadowrun?
I wish he'd post a d&d campaign he was in instead of just his patreon supporters. That or continue the one-on-one game with his wife. it was an interesting story.
From something I've heard Andrew say before, his wife isn't really into RPGs, the one-on-one campaign and his teaching her how to the game worked in vids seemed like he was attempting to get her into the hobby (and his livelihood), but this hobby doesn't "stick" for everyone. My biggest thing is that people at least give RPGs a fair shot (and hopefully they're not gaming with terrible people, but that goes back to the "fair shot" thing). -Nerdarchist Ryan
Nerdarchy ok, I thought he said in the comments of one of them that she didn't have the time because they had a baby now.
AncapFTW It's more something I inferred based on him saying that his wife didn't get that into RPGs, so it's more speculation on my part, but it'd be silly to have someone RPing that didn't enjoy it.
Evil Acts
1. Look for an opportunity to "Beat the System, Profit from loopholes & vague rules, and exploit them
2. "Minimize" the harm that you have done, and blame the victim / system
3. Display no empathy / remorse for harms that you have done - justify your actions as heroic
If I was to play an evil character I would probably base him on Lex Luthor.
but then you'd have to pick which incarnation of lex you'd want to take after, im partial to presidential lex from the animated universe myself but new 52 lex from elements of evil was pretty cool too
One other possibility for a character that would work as chaotic evil for an archetype is the HK-47 style, love isn't the only reason for someone to follow someone else...
A fun thing you could do...if you have a camping...if your party kills a essential quest giver....first tell them.
- That was a quest giver you killed there.
And them try to fix it...or just f it and let them be under leveled if they do it to often.
And do not tel them before they kill them that they are quest givers...so that they will not relay on you to see whom they can and can't kill.
I'm running a campaign(AD&D 1) with two C.E. player characters. A Druid(think Eternal Champion) and oath sworn fighter. It runs very much like a good party with a bit more tense encounters. Evil vs an overly dominant Lawful Good regime. Would love an opinion. These videos you guys put out are great 👍
I want to watch the rest of this video, but a 27 minute long ad from showtime will not let me skip the ad.... (annoyed)
Hobo with a shotgun is actually 2011, and first appeared in the "Grind House" trailer contest, which was 2007. I think the term is much older than 2007.
If you ever want to get schooled on a given subject that you've gotten wrong, start a TH-cam channel. :P Thanks for correcting me. -Nerdarchist Ryan
I'm actually very interested in origins of terms like "murder hobo", RPG dot net claims to have been the place to coin this term, but games like Human Occupied Landfill existed since 1994, which is a game about literal murder hobos. It could be the source, but it may go deeper than we think.
Nerdarchy did you mean to say got incorrect :)
Don't leave witnesses. Take heads to prevent pesky problems like Speak With Dead. Stay on the move.
A session zero is vital imo. I was in a "pick up" game once where the party was evil and therefore would not trust one another without breaking alignment. It was a disaster.
I have a necromancer character that would be more on the political side then economic but they are more focused on becoming a lich so that they could become a lichgod and eventually become a life and death God but in the short term becoming a vampire is fine also they are a high elf I'm just not sure if they should have 14 charisma or 16 dexterity
I like that the four of you wear beards and glasses, I wear a beard and glasses too. *insert secret beard and glasses handshake*
@@romdogg1994 isn't gay if they have the power of the bro code
Could you perhaps discuss what to do during session 0? Is it a waste of time or necessary for any campaign?
A session 0 is when you get your group together and put everything on the table from saying what kind of game everyone wants to play to character concepts. So always have a session 0.
I use session 0 as an opportunity for players to come up with ideas on how their backstories might be related, to let them introduce their characters and discuss any aspects they want a second opinion on etc. as well as establishing what sort of campaign it will be, what the world is like in terms of general knowledge or major events and that sort of thing. It usually leads to a bit more depth for the PCs coming into the campaign. If you're running a module, it's probably not super necessary, but otherwise I'd do it.
Can a true neutral character work well with a evil party
I would say yes. Neutral tends to do things in their self interest, so they are inclined to do good if it helps them, but they can do otherwise.
hey guys, love the set up! but if you spread out just a hair we would be able to see everyone better!
You could also kind of play it the way they do in Hunter X Hunter with Hisoka and the phantom troupe. It may be a gang of psychopaths but the way his lackluster sense of loyalty and responsibility grates against their fanatical dedication makes all the double agent drama even better. Why meet someone in a dark alley when you can voluntarily fail on a saving throw that will give them access to the information? Why show your cards when relatively subtle manipulation will have a far more drastic and hard to trace effect?
Play it subtle, play it smart, and show restraint when necessary. If your playing a predator how have they survived this long without getting caught? How do they prepare their approach when it comes to prey? Why would they potentially see their fellow party members as desirable prey? Remember if you want to make a truly terrifying character less can be more, the monster becomes far less scary when it enters plain site but that doesn't mean you can't drop hints. Also a character like this may "jokingly" brag about committing horrific acts if there in a context where they can get away with it or make jokes about horrific taboo topics. This can serve as a method of desentizing potential victims and this kind of psychopath gets off on seeing how much they can get away with and pushing others boundaries. They may also act very nice polite, charming, and even quite useful much of the time, gotta put on a good act to lure in more potential victims.
Now if this all seems to real it's because I'm basing it off someone I actually dated unfortunately enough, however if you want to have a real thriller of a campaign and send those visceral chills down players spines there's nothing like using real life psychology as inspiration. This is pretty heavily dependent on the players though and if they've had real life experiences of gas lighting and this sort of abuse of the psyche even having their characters go through that might be triggering. Personally I just love delving into the darker aspects of psychology and how they can force the better angels of someone else's nature to come out and or break that person. Everything falls eventually but how do you build it back up?
I ran a Drow campaign ( D&D becmi ) a couple of years back where the party killed Santa and his reindeer in a "Xmas special ". How dark is that.... LOL .
It would really be interesting if AL had some evil mods allowing for evil characters to play😈👍🏼👍🏼💯
I'm running an 'evil' campaign atm. but its more 'game of thrown s' intelligent evil. doing bad things but also manipulating people and ensuring you get away with it without leaving any loose ends. My players have had to think and plan more than a normal campaign which is fun
you can also make your npcs be evil but have a code like a criminal code. smack them down towards the right way
Harly Quinn will always chotic neutral (blame her comics)
i often play as an evil character because i find evil characters interesting especially their motivations and rationale especially when they are "broken" in some way for instance i recently played a warlock who was abused by her family and offered retribution by a demon is it cliched maybe but i thought it was a fun character to roleplay
Hobo With a Shotgun came out in 2011. And Rutger Hauer is a boss.
I suspect they are confusing The Hitcher with Hobo with a Shotgun.
Love the show guys keep it up
This vid could not have come at a better time.I have been recruited to DM a evil campaign.I'm thinking along the line of evil vs evil but it's unknown to PC's.What do you think?
How about a drow elf's agenda is starting a Cashew farm? With Slaves of course and a "re-education" room with Cats surrounding the plantation singing the meow miz song if anyone tries to escape. So he would try to be "good" by getting land from the king and be left alone.
Kickin in the Door waving my crossbow
Evil does not necessarily mean being a dick to everyone. It can be keeping your options open while trying to maintain good or at least LN reputation. Just killing random annoying people is not advised, unless you know you can get away with it. It should usually be enough to just beat them up with nonlethal damage or cast "sleep" and leave them there for other people to rob.
A good setup for a legally justified evil campaign could be becoming privateers for some country and playing pirates. This even has some historical basis.
Another would be "A war breaks out between two kingdoms. Because you are proven adventurers, instead of joining the frontline troops, you are drafted to black ops. You are to smuggle yourself into enemy territory and stir things up. On a success, you will be given full pardon (and therefore you can get away with almost any crime). The exact methods are up to you, but your job is to make the enemy unable and/or unwilling to fight." Think the Mountain that rides plundering the Riverlands in GoT. They can take a stab at military wagon trains and destroy supplies. They can sneak into a city as refugees, then at night kill guards at a gate and let their own troops in for an easy victory. They can attack random villages, steal, kill, rape and burn everything down to terrorise the population. They can even raise some zombies or cooperate with monsters or whatever.
Remember the Skeksis from The Dark Crystal? Remember the part where they battle for the crown, and end up banishing the really annoying one? If something of that nature doesn't happen at least once in an evil campaign, both DM and players are doing it wrong.
Something most players and possibly DM's forget to remember, evil campaign or not, is a great lesson most people should have learned from Grand Theft Auto, or even Game of Thrones; kill enough people and eventually someone is going to come and kill you.
im in the middle of planning a campaign in where the players are suppose to be tricked into becoming evil by playing on their greed, my question is how would you guys at nerdarchy handle it, ive got my ideas but having an experienced groups opinion would help
@nerdarchy is there an evil campaign on your channel that we can watch to see how to do one properly?
Hmmm I don't think so but we should make that happen
That would be awesome to see Nerdarchy's take on a villain campaign. Even if there's only one or two sessions.
Definitely, go to the dark side!!
I love being the villain! Gir, activate the murderhobo9001! MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Gir; IT'S OVER 9000! WEHEHEHEHEHEHE!
Gir why is there bacon in the soap?!
The God you never knew I MADE IT MYSELF!
Hobo with a Shotgun came out in 2011.
Rival evil factions and their motives and witch side the evil PC's might come down on.
I have one rule about alignment no chaotic evil PC.
Wow this is the earliest I've been. Good vid!
We've had a very successful lawful evil campaign. We weren't "baby eating" evil and each had our own motivations that ran way counter the social norms. It was a blast. Everyone has to agree to keep things on the rails. Chaotic evil... no way.
Hopefully someone can answer this question for me I am running a campaign with people who chose bugbears all of them are barbarians who are chaotic evil or lawful evil how would I go about making that campaign work
Give them an enemy they all want to or have to fight?
For example their home is razed by a group of scourgers belonging to say a human extremist group.
They now have to forage and find supplies for the surviving member sof their tribe/clan let alone find a new home and keep their family safe.
@@Darkwintre Campaign is long over now but I’ll keep that stuff in mind, The campaign went well though they ended up fighting a golden dragon at the end of the campaign all level 14
Ryan, you're kidding, right? Hobo With A Shotgun was from 2011, based on a fake trailer that ran along with Tarantino/Rodriguez' movie Grindhouse. From 2007.
Always remember: What Would Orcus Do? And everyone loves the rampaging monster devouring their **enemies**. Very important. Eating villagers is only good when they're paying their tribute to someone else.
Smoking orphange children's burned husks? Sign me up for that game please
people are funny. They want to be heroes but not villains. most people in real life do not act like either, they are the npcs.
I would run an 'evil' campaign in a world where evil dominates, and the players are either seeking to destroy the last bastions of good, or going about their evilness and the 'good' are rallying forces against them. But running an evil party or campaign in a world dominated by good/neutral just - I think - spirals into stupidity.
Hobo with a Schotgun is a good movie.
For the Shadovar, for the glory of Netheril!
and for other people Hannibal is a show with great cooking tips.
hobo with a shotgun and rutger hauer is awesome for what it is
my friend and I had a rule we called the mantell rule. in short it was no party infighting or violence. it came from a coworker of ours who happily told me about one session of dnd where he attempted to rape the character of his friends wife, who in real life had been raped as a child. she flipped out screaming and crying and it ended with him being thrown out of their house. the really weird part was the asamatteroffact way he told the story like it was her problem that she overreacted. tbf I liked the guy but he was a bit of a sociopath...
I think Evil characters *need* to have something going on for them, running or part of a business, or organisation. Or at least some overwhelming drive other than purely murdering people etc
Pulling off strongly eyebrow-raising combinations of clothing for example
lesjconj Conj omg LoL!!!
I gotta disagree with you on the CE characters not being capable of playing with others in a party for an evil game, you're falling into the trap of stereotyping CE as chaotic stupid with that's just one facet of it. Personally though that's the biggest problem I have with D&D's alignment system in general, which is why i try to use it as little as possible, because I've always preferred shades of grey over black and white.
Totally agree with you on this, CE isn't Chaotic Stupid in the same way LG isn't Lawful Stupid. Boil down many campaigns to their basics and at their heart its either "Loot and kill your way through the enemy for a cash/power reward" or "Bring down death and mayhem on the enemy until their plan fails". Guardians of the Galaxy has the paraphrased cry that evil characters can get behind - "I'll help save the world because I live in it". Self-interest can be served without being utterly selfish to the detriment of everybody else, laws can be ignored without having break every law encountered. Around the heart of an evil campaign or character lies the interpretation of 'does the end justify the means'. Given the actions of a typical adventuring party I don't see why CE is that much likely than CG to cause PvP problems. An adventurer (certainly in fantasy games) is mostly on the gravy train to power, wealth and success by undertaking frequently, in a strict sense, morally dubious actions. A truly Good PC would always be on look out to shut down a party because of its actions. From a personal side the biggest problem we've had with evil campaigns is keeping the party on track with the story when party in character decide that the reward/risk ratio is wrong and hop off the rails.
I concur, historically we've had lots of examples of evil groups which stuck together till the bitter end... from evil empires to evil cults, like David Karesh. The key component is the cult of personality of the leader binding the group together and getting others to buy into their vision. This could also be accomplished by having the leader be outside the party, like a party of Vecna cultists. Either way, I think people confuse evil with selfishness, which isn't necessarily accurate. In fact selfishness aligns well with chaotic neutral.
The Joker is certainly Chaotic Evil, and while he may not play nice with others, he can manipulate events to suit his will and therefore work with other characters like Bane, Poison Ivy, Zsazz who is completely insane, and so on by playing them like a fiddle.
Liam's clasp one-shot is a great example of an evil game.
Yup, "the screw job" as I believe it was called, was pretty awesome though I do feel like he set it up to TPK the party in the end and I think it would've been cooler to have the character's own machinations really be the reason why they fell. -Nerdarchist Ryan
Yeah. Agree with you there.
Yeah, but within a one-shot the opportunities for self-destruction are a bit more limited without some form of gentle shove.
Properly run/created evil characters do not see themselves as evil.
Fallout series has great dark stories you can borrow from, Fallout 3 had you blowup a town that was settled around a Nuke. another great game series is the Overlord, it's a comedy take of Lord of the Rings.
I wood be a bad ass verein of SKELETOR
Good player characters that are good but have to do bad things,wanted by the law! THE A TEAM!
I have never understood why evil characters are always thought as stupid evil half the characters you see out right act evil, but because they are tagged as something else they are fine?
what about a chacter that is evil but, thinks he is good. forinstance burning an entire city to the ground to teach others obediance to him and have him justify his actions because he is stopping wars and cracking down on crime?
I love evils campaigns and playing evil characters.
But more so to be the one evil character in a good party. One or to neutral players and 2 to 3 good players... Having to blend in with them is great. Your evil manipulating the group. Comet a crime get the good party member involved in such way that if they turn on you. You have dort on them. Or slowly turn the to evil. Mwhajahahahaha.
All so you must get a good reason for why your evil charter is with the party.
Be evil bit be good as well be good at being evil. Be smart about it. If you can do it with out get caught sure. Other wise it a waste of time. Or your gonna spend most the game covering your tracks that hard and not fun.so pretend to be good when being evil is the fun part.
Once played an assassin who was hired to kill a paladin. Who was another player. I trued honestly I did but failed every time. Saved him more often then not. He though o was his friend. 2 people is party knew o was trying to kill him the other 3 did not.
Session 0: First question, "Is rape ok?"
Stranded Starfish How can it be the focus of anyone? It's literally the first question. Not to mention it's an evil campaign, being indecent is the point.
Stranded Starfish Actually no one knows the answer to the question that's why it's asked. Just because it's an evil campaign means it's ok. All the other questions you posed are far less relevant than any question having to do with the boundaries of immortality that people find comfortable.
Stranded Starfish Actually no one knows the answer to the question that's why it's asked. Just because it's an evil campaign means it's ok. All the other questions you posed are far less relevant than any question having to do with the boundaries of immortality that people find comfortable.
Stranded Starfish You are either on some very high moral high horse or are soft in the head and don't understand the content of the video. In an evil campaign people are expected to do things that are morally reprehensible. Determining exactly what kind of evil acts are ok for all players is vital for the campaign to run without making some people uncomfortable.
Stranded Starfish Have you ever played in an evil campaign?
Hobo with a shotgun came out in 2011 not the 80s
pvp is great if everyone is on board if not shut it down. also i think evil and narrativly dark r not the same thing. ppl in things like the god father,got, or gentalmen basterds do evil things cus they have to bot they dont feel anything after
Evil is so generic. It's not being Ted Bundy. To me evil is a more selfish character. I hate the black and white look at it. Evil is so general. Yes you may have done some act that is "evil" but you did it for good. Game of Thrones characters are great examples. None of them are good. They have a flaw. To me you follow Ander Woods formula: ask the evil character "what is good about you"
Isn't neutral evil the worst, really? Evil on a whim just seems remorseless and supremely selfish
How I generally see it is that chaotic evil is the sociopath who just does whatever he wants without caring what anyone else thinks about it. Neutral Evil is the assasin or gangster, willing to do any job as long as they profit enough to care about it, and doesn't shy murdering someone if it benefits them in some notable way, but doesn't go out of their way to hurt others if he doesn't have anything to gain from it. Lawful Evil is the corrupt politician or ruthless baron who enforces the law to the letter, but also exploits it to their own benefit whenever they can, they prefer to not get their own hands dirty when doing something against the law, but rather hire the neutral evil person to do it for them.
I know its off topic but the no pvp comment made me want to know what are peoples thoughts on actuall pvp one shots? I did it a few weeks ago when I needed a quick 1 shot and just said the players woke up in a giant arena with a dragon watching over them. Last man standing walks out alive.
PvP one-shots can be interesting, but they can also be really one-sided depending on who the characters are. One time my druid got mind-dominated, and the only reason the rest of the party didn't die is the DM realised I was about to kill them all and ended the effect early.
They're fun just so long as there isn't too much time between first player exit and wrap up. In the gladiator pit scenarios giving NPC control over to early-out players prolongs the fun.
how dare you flash matt mercers name in order to raise your views.
How about a drow elf's agenda is starting a Cashew farm? With Slaves of course and a "re-education" room with Cats surrounding the plantation singing the meow miz song if anyone tries to escape. So he would try to be "good" by getting land from the king and be left alone.