Hey y'all:

I was skimming over a list of Paladin sub-classes on another site when I noticed Oathbreaker a Paladin-Gone-Bad sub-class. I wondered if there were any Official or Semi-Official campaigns, modules, 5 or less sessions, etc., involving a team of villains?

Not that it matters, but when I thought of it further I had the Yin-Yang symbol in mind, which led me to Western films along with Kurosawa homages to the American Westerns (Seven Samurai & Yojimbo specifically) - the idea of dangerous, bloodthirsty, rough men who are occasionally merciful. Kinda like Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch: they were ruthless, but honorable...

OR, just a pack of Murderhobos - a team of N, LE, NE, and/or CE Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap Bad Company TNT Outlaw Posse. Whatever works :\

Does anyone know where I can find this, or are there some D&D adventure modules, or some Home-Brewed material that can be shared? I'd be much obliged ;)

May all your rolls be Nat20's,

Scott

It's unlikely that there will ever be an Official evil adventure. Wouldn't be a good move for a system at the heart of the Satanic Panic. A lot of existing campaigns are already morally grey, at best. In a realistic setting, the biggest difference between a "Freedom Fighter" and a "Terrorist" is who is doing the narrating.

The other issue with an Evil adventure is the lack of passive motivators. With good and neutral characters, empathy is often enough to provide a dynamic environment. Save the damsel, avoid collateral damage, serve the greater good. Without that, every brawl in a tavern could immediately turn into burning down the village. The only real incentives are going to be personal influence/wealth and avoiding the consequences of their actions.

The other, other issue is that an explicitly evil campaign is likely to encourage distasteful one-upmanship. Some players are likely to push the boundaries to see what they can get away with. Are you prepared for the murder of children? Torturing the innocent? ****? Ethnic cleansing? Where are you going to draw the line, and how likely is it that your group will participate in a mature way?

For all other purposes, reflavoring any existing module should be good enough. Replace the benevolent king with a Mafia Don and so on. Voila, your party are now criminals.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/97640/Way-of-the-Wicked-Book-One-Knot-of-Thorns - it's for Pathfinder, but converting wouldn't be hard. Will run longer than 5 sessions too, I'd think, and it's the first in a series.

Any module that's mostly hack&slash and/or a dungeon crawl would certainly work. Most modules will, really. The question is more whether it'll have much of an impact, if the module isn't written for evil or at least morally suspect characters specifically like the above one. Out of the Abyss could be good in that regard. Maybe Descent into Avernus as well, haven't played that one. Both are going to be long campaigns, however. 

Every time my group has brought up the "what if we were the bad guys?" discussion, it has always turned into a perspective shift rather than an alignment shift. Like we're all goblins and kobolds trying to defend our ancestral homelands from the encroaching warlike humans, that kind of thing. I just don't think we have the capacity to enjoy being a truly evil party. There's enough of that in the real world, we don't want to emulate it in our games.

Now you could have a setting where everyone is evil and you're all trying to swindle each other to the top of the pecking order. That could feel a little more justifiable, but you'll need an awful good reason for the party not to turn on each other at some point. The game just doesn't support that.

Quote from Scott_C >>

Not that it matters, but when I thought of it further I had the Yin-Yang symbol in mind, which led me to Western films along with Kurosawa homages to the American Westerns (Seven Samurai & Yojimbo specifically)

 

 The Kurosawa films are the originals. The westerns were remakes with gunslingers instead of samurai.

IIRC there was an adventure back in AD&D 2nd edition called Reverse Dungeon where you played evil monsters being invaded by good human NPCs

I'm toying with the idea to do a similar campaign in 5E there the party is made of orcs, gnolls, goblinoids etc 

I know Kurosawa's films were the originals, and I also know Kurosawa was paying homage to American westerns. Thanks to him he was able to change the perspective on Wild West films - no more White Hat/Black Hat style. Only a whole bunch of, say, Grey Hats, morally ambiguous characters from then on. Think of his films as "Samurai Westerns," for want of a better term.

Kurosawa was a genius - Red Castle was his version of Macbeth, Rashomon was told from three different perspectives on a crime, giving the viewer the chance to judge for themselves, Ran was his version of King Lear...

Brilliant!

Wow! That sounds amazing! Totally cool!

I hope you can mod the game to 5e - I'd like to know how it plays out ;)

The problem you'll find is that evil doesn't work well as a team (there's a reason for that, it's no coincidence, but it would derail the thread I think). As said before in this thread, evil is really hard to motivate properly. It's inherently selfish and self-centred, which becomes problematic in designing quests that allow them to play their character.

Another issue is that the central themes of D&D are indirectly based around moral questions. For example, do you take the easy route of killing  or do you take the riskier and harder route of negotiation? For neutrals and neutralish, that's a conundrum. For good, it tests how good they really are. Even if here paragons, then at least there isnthenextra challenge. Evils though? Boring. The moral question is a foregone conclusion (similar to paragons) and doesn't test their resolve, and it's the easier route to boot. The depth of the quest just collapses for evil players.

I imagine most of the time the alignment would collapse to one of two conclusions:

1. In finding proper motivation, the players "realise" that their characters are actually good people who are really just forced into a conflict with the "good" aligned. The alignments aren't really good v evil at all, just good people who have quarrels with other good people. Perhaps quite realistic, but that means your party isn't really evil.

2. Players end up compromising their alignment in order to move the game forward. That evil Kobold that won't take a quest because there isn't enough reward to risk his life is going to get old pretty quickly.

That's not to say it's impossible, it can be done. It would just be difficult pull off (out side of a few tired tropes). And difficult doesn't do well in the mass market. There are some adventures designed around an evil party, but they're never going to be large in number.

Quote from Linklite >>

The problem you'll find is that evil doesn't work well as a team (there's a reason for that, it's no coincidence, but it would derail the thread I think). As said before in this thread, evil is really hard to motivate properly. It's inherently selfish and self-centred, which becomes problematic in designing quests that allow them to play their character.

Another issue is that the central themes of D&D are indirectly based around moral questions. For example, do you take the easy route of killing  or do you take the riskier and harder route of negotiation? For neutrals and neutralish, that's a conundrum. For good, it tests how good they really are. Even if here paragons, then at least there isnthenextra challenge. Evils though? Boring. The moral question is a foregone conclusion (similar to paragons) and doesn't test their resolve, and it's the easier route to boot. The depth of the quest just collapses for evil players.

I imagine most of the time the alignment would collapse to one of two conclusions:

1. In finding proper motivation, the players "realise" that their characters are actually good people who are really just forced into a conflict with the "good" aligned. The alignments aren't really good v evil at all, just good people who have quarrels with other good people. Perhaps quite realistic, but that means your party isn't really evil.

2. Players end up compromising their alignment in order to move the game forward. That evil Kobold that won't take a quest because there isn't enough reward to risk his life is going to get old pretty quickly.

That's not to say it's impossible, it can be done. It would just be difficult pull off (out side of a few tired tropes). And difficult doesn't do well in the mass market. There are some adventures designed around an evil party, but they're never going to be large in number.

 That's a rather shallow take on evil.  There's nothing about being evil that requires you to be a nihilist or a sociopath who's incapable of forming emotional bonds with other people or understanding that there are times when cooperation rather than conflict is better for you.  And evil character can be loyal.  They can be able to understand that murdering everyone they meet isn't actually a viable option. They can understand that working with someone else can be useful to them.  They can even respect other people and have friends and even loved ones.

The real problem with evil PCs is that too many players just go edgelord and want to play Stabby McBackstabber and think that they're being "cool" and "mature" for being disruptive and annoying.

I've been in an "evil" campaign where we were akin to Vikings as portrayed in movies from the English's perspective.  We raided for wealth, power, land, etc, but still had to tactfully interact with our opposition, knowing that if you cannot negotiate and endlessly murder - you will meet an end.  Evil definitely doesn't mean that you're some monster that cannot recognize society, allies, or law.  The problem is that no one ever sees themselves as evil or the enemy - it requires a look at oneself from their opponent's perspective.

People keep mentioning the satanic panic like it's still a thing. It's not the 70s anymore, guys. People play D&D in Church basements these days. Very few people are being barred from playing the game because it means promoting satanism by playing wizards.

Acquisitions Incorporated could be an evil campaign, although it feels more like a neutral 'out for myself' thing. You could probably play it evil, though.