Not sure if this is what you're asking, Sposta, but I'm currently working on launching an assassins guild campaign (players are adventurers subcontracted to take care of beasts/ghosts/MacGuffins that might impede the guild's regular business) and decided to adapt the Flashback mechanic from Blades in the Dark.
I intend to have a lot of heists, recon and infiltration quests, and I only have 3 hours of game time each week to work with, so I'm hoping to cut down on planning sessions by allowing players to come up with some creative solutions for impediments on the spot in exchange for a resource drain. Should be interesting to see how it plays out.
Question: Has anyone ever made a mashup game to incorporate elements of other games into their D&D?
I did a brief campaign where we used the old Marvel Super Heroes Advanced Set universal chart, rigged for d20.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Not sure if this is what you're asking, Sposta, but I'm currently working on launching an assassins guild campaign (players are adventurers subcontracted to take care of beasts/ghosts/MacGuffins that might impede the guild's regular business) and decided to adapt the Flashback mechanic from Blades in the Dark.
I intend to have a lot of heists, recon and infiltration quests, and I only have 3 hours of game time each week to work with, so I'm hoping to cut down on planning sessions by allowing players to come up with some creative solutions for impediments on the spot in exchange for a resource drain. Should be interesting to see how it plays out.
Oh, that's a really interesting idea. I'm in the camp that thinks 5e could use more narrative player options, not less (which seems to be the direction they're going in)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Hey, I’ll get in on this. I’ve been way too into the OGL crisis (they may say it’s over but it isn’t). The main game I’m playing in right now is a good one for some stories though…
Last session (yesterday night) we were rolling some insight checks on a party member with too many secretes. Gods above I got a natural 20. We had advantage from prior knowledge and I rolled again just because, and I got a natural 20. I rolled one more time to keep it going. Natural 20. Three in a row on the same die. It’s not weighted either!
Two more natural 20s happened for me that night.
We also spent a couple days at the forge of an ancient blacksmith trying to forge oskarium gear. Oskarium is an ore in our game that is very rare and very powerful. I play a ranger and our tank is a fighter. He’s up to a 21 AC (with a shield) after this upgrade and I’m up to 20 AC (with no shield). He also got a great spear made of oskarium, and we failed all of our other smithing checks.
It was our best session in a while because we finally didn’t have a four hour long combat that nearly killed us. Just some roleplaying, exploration, and some serious threads to our big story.
For me it always has been tieflings. My first real character was a tie fling and I loved him with all my heart. I haven’t played as many as I’d like to, but they always are fun, especially with the Mordenkainen’s variant ancestries for them. Of course, I’ve begun to really like aasimar and plasmoids now that I have been playing them in a campaign. They’re both very enigmatic and exciting races.
And as an addition to this thread, what is your least favorite race/ancestry/bloodline? Mine is the wood elf. I will never get over my hatred of those little bastards.
Y’all, I’ve been looking through this thread and it’s amazing what’s been built here. We don’t know each other but we can create such great ideas and share great things.
My best memories are of this game and I don’t think that will ever change. No matter what happens Wizards/Hasbro can’t take D&D from us. No OGL 2.0 can stop us from being a community that creates and plays the most amazing games. This thread is the perfect example of that. D&D made it 50 years. Let’s put our glasses together for 50 more!
Our grandkids will play this game not because Wizards upgraded it and made it more modern, but because we will carry on its real legacy: the love between players, the excitement of risky d20 rolls, and the amazing stories we build together.
Let’s keep creating. For as long as we can. Love to you all.
Y’all, I’ve been looking through this thread and it’s amazing what’s been built here. We don’t know each other but we can create such great ideas and share great things.
My best memories are of this game and I don’t think that will ever change. No matter what happens Wizards/Hasbro can’t take D&D from us. No OGL 2.0 can stop us from being a community that creates and plays the most amazing games. This thread is the perfect example of that. D&D made it 50 years. Let’s put our glasses together for 50 more!
Our grandkids will play this game not because Wizards upgraded it and made it more modern, but because we will carry on its real legacy: the love between players, the excitement of risky d20 rolls, and the amazing stories we build together.
Let’s keep creating. For as long as we can. Love to you all.
While this is a nice message I guess, we really aren't meant to be discussing things like the Open Game License and what people think about that situation in this thread.
Moving on from my blunder, I’ve got a new campaign beginning today, and it’s one that generally assumes players are good people (or neutral). I’ve never been sure over my years of GMing how to deal with alignment. Do I restrict evil ones or do I work with the player to make this work with the game?
Do you have a player who wants to play an evil character, or are you asking hypothetically? Either way, it boils down to what you, as the DM, are comfortable with it. In my case, I don't have a problem with evil characters per se, so long as their decisions don't lead into something that might actually cause the party to break apart or try to kill each other (PVP is a pretty hard no for me in most instances...)
That’s about what I usually think. It’s a hypothetical for now. Knowing my players it may not stay that way…
I’m just wondering if I should point out that I’ll allow evil or if I should see what they do and then decide on it. They’re arriving so I’m going to see what happens.
If the campaign doesn't make sense with evil characters, then tell the players the campaign doesn't make sense with evil characters.
The Descent Into Avernus module assumes that when your characters hear that a city got teleported into hell, they will wish they could do something about that. Do they have to be good people though? No, not really. Maybe they just have someone they care about in that city. Maybe they only want the fame of being a savior. Maybe one of them only wants something tangentially related, but the only way to get it is to help the party.
But if you need good-aligned characters, then just say so. It's not a breach of etiquette, or some kind of abuse of your DM authority. You should always work with your players to ensure the characters fit the setup.
Moving on from my blunder, I’ve got a new campaign beginning today, and it’s one that generally assumes players are good people (or neutral). I’ve never been sure over my years of GMing how to deal with alignment. Do I restrict evil ones or do I work with the player to make this work with the game?
Personally, I see a DM restricting alignment as an admission that either the DM is incompetent, the DM thinks their players are incompetent, or both. There is nothing inherently wrong with Evil players - only with certain antisocial ways of playing an evil character that cause inter-player strife. A competent player piloting an Evil character knows they (a) have to give the Evil character a reason to work with thx group and (b) cannot go overboard into making the group not want to work with the character. Competent other members of the party are going to be able to pilot their characters in a way that both stays true to their character and let’s the other person play who they want to be
A competent DM is going to be able to provide circumstances that keep the Evil character and the other party members working together and is going to be able to address problems at the player level if any arise.
A lot of that - how players react and your own ability as a DM for an Evil character - you won’t know until the game starts. Dictating alignment restrictions ahead of time is just admitting you do not have confidence in competence, without actually having the data to support how a specific party will actually work.
As others said, it's OK to say no to evil characters (no different then restricted some classes or races from a game, because they don't fit the world, for example).
The most challenging thing with players playing an evil character is not knowing how to do so properly - without ruining the game for everyone else. An evil character in a campaign should have the long game in mind. So they would ride along with the heroes until the time of the betrayal - and knowing, as soon as that betrayal happens - that the character is going to end up dead (the other players killing them) or it's going to end up an NPC in the DM's hands. Either way, the player is out a character. If done correctly, this can be a cool moment - but the player needs to understand their character's fate (death or an NPC, who may/probably will, meet death eventually as the players hunt them down).
Joe Magnelo (however you spell his name from True Blood and stuff) is an example that did a good job, during Critical Role of pulling that off. He did it at the end - knowing he was going to lose control of his character - but it created a cool moment.
He was also surrounded by professional voice actors, and an actor himself, who combined, added so much flavor to the character and moment. Something that is, as I said, very difficult to pull off and would require probably some planning with the DM if they're going to go this route so the DM can work with them (send them secret messages back and forth and such). But to the players, it's just going to seem like a sudden switch - unaware of all the potential background stuff going on that they're not privy to.
Not sure if this is what you're asking, Sposta, but I'm currently working on launching an assassins guild campaign (players are adventurers subcontracted to take care of beasts/ghosts/MacGuffins that might impede the guild's regular business) and decided to adapt the Flashback mechanic from Blades in the Dark.
I intend to have a lot of heists, recon and infiltration quests, and I only have 3 hours of game time each week to work with, so I'm hoping to cut down on planning sessions by allowing players to come up with some creative solutions for impediments on the spot in exchange for a resource drain. Should be interesting to see how it plays out.
Yeah Blades in the Dark's flashback system lends well to D&D, I'd actually say it can make more use of a character's background feature than RAW D&D usually calls for.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Yeah. I don’t usually mention it beforehand, and if it does happen I try to work with the player. The issue is that they often end up being chaotic and lots of people die. I wouldn’t say that I’m incompetent or they are, but frankly, I wish that they’d be less crazy. However, they all chose LN independently. It’s time for a morally ambiguous game!
Moving on from my blunder, I’ve got a new campaign beginning today, and it’s one that generally assumes players are good people (or neutral). I’ve never been sure over my years of GMing how to deal with alignment. Do I restrict evil ones or do I work with the player to make this work with the game?
There are a number of factors at play here and the answer varies group to group and campaign to campaign.
Evil characters can cause problems to arise if everyone in the party is not okay with having a member like that. This is why a session zero is so important: It provides players with the perfect opportunity to ask whether or not people are alright with their idea, and to hash out what is and is not tolerated, as well as making it clear what style of play the group wants to focus on most (bad guys stealing stuff, heroic adventurers save the world, rag tag band put into morally ambigious situations, etc).
For me, the most important thing about an evil character is that they are actually a character. Some people just want to play a character that murders everyone and has no personality or features. However, other people just want to pay a real person with flaws, hopes, goals, and dreams, and part of that person's personality is that they're evil. The latter situation I allow, the former I ban.
Another piece of criteria I use is whether or not the evil character would have a reason to cooperate with the party. Adventuring groups are typically a group of companions, and they need to work together, not fight. There must be reasons in and out outside of game that ensure PVP and fights between characters don't happen, if you don't want to run a campaign where either of those things occur.
Before I wrap up my post, I just wanted to say that there is nothing wrong with giving your players a flat-out NO in certain situations. Your campaign is your campaign, and your job is to make sure that everyone at the table has fun. When allowing something would get in the way of enjoyment or a workable set of adventures, then you shouldn't allow that thing.
In Summary:
It is up to the Dungeon Master whether or not to allow evil characters in their game/s. Saying no is alright, and not all Dungeon Masters will give the same answer, since everything varies by campaign and group.
Someone who wants to play an evil character needs to talk with the rest of the group. If the other players aren't fine with a PC like this, then there probably shouldn't be one.
I personally allow evil characters as long as they are real humans and have a reason not to betray or abandon the party.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explainHERE.
Do they think they might be picking the pockets of the rest of the party and hiding found loot from them? Sure have fun with the idea, but do not be surprised if the barbarian finds out and makes sure you never do it again.
Your an assassin hiding out in the group as a different class or name? Sure have fun with it.
Your goal is to take over the world and force others to your will? Your party might not be what you are looking for or might end up fighting you. The player will have to be an experienced player with a set goal that fits the campaign. I will not change the campaign just to fit your goals, much.
Your evil character plans on killing the party? No, not at all.
Its very hard to make an evil based campaign and just as hard to play an evil character. A whole party of evil characters? Someone in the group is going to be disappointed. And someone will take control by force and those who do not submit will be hurt in some way. Its just the way it happens.
This is why all the greatest stories have good hero's and not mostly anti hero's or evil leads. Hero's with flaws is not a recent invention in media. But it was not normally pointed out in the stories, it was left to the reader to figure it out on their own. Its been said that the Greeks/Romans and Shakespeare himself have written every story possible. All new stories are just variations on their themes.
An all evil party needs to understand that they need to hide their evil side very well of all the NPC's they run into will start to figure them out and not be as helpful as possible. Nothing will be offered without a stiff price the higher ends of society will not be offering them many invites to parties. Just think about all the people you run into in real life. Some just give off that bad guy vibe and that makes you tend to not want to work with them. You in fact want them away from you as fast as possible. Imagine a small village with just 250 people. Everyone knows everyone, By the time your party walks through the edge of town the rumors are already spreading.
This is why all the greatest stories have good hero's and not mostly anti hero's or evil leads. Hero's with flaws is not a recent invention in media. But it was not normally pointed out in the stories, it was left to the reader to figure it out on their own.
Its been said that the Greeks/Romans and Shakespeare himself have written every story possible. All new stories are just variations on their themes.
All of Greek literature is about pointing out the character’s flaws. It is such an important part of their literature that they even had a specific word - hamartia - for a character’s flaws. The earliest single book in the Western canon - the Iliad - is primarily about how Achilles’ snivelling cowardice and fear of death leads him to put his life above others and get scores upon scores killed. Heracles, Greece’s most popular hero, slaughtered his own children and did other horrific things. Zeus did acts of unspeakable sexual violence - portrayed even by the Greeks as fairly horrific, so not only by modern standards.
Shakespeare is much the same - his characters are overtly flawed, from Hamlet’s madness and dedication to vengeance driving Ophelia to suicide, to Romeo’s foolish chasing of Rosalind and Juliet, to everything in Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare is absolutely full of characters defined by their flaws.
I am not sure I could think of two worse literary categories to follow up a statement that flaws where “not normally pointed out” than the Greeks and Shakespeare.
Not sure if this is what you're asking, Sposta, but I'm currently working on launching an assassins guild campaign (players are adventurers subcontracted to take care of beasts/ghosts/MacGuffins that might impede the guild's regular business) and decided to adapt the Flashback mechanic from Blades in the Dark.
I intend to have a lot of heists, recon and infiltration quests, and I only have 3 hours of game time each week to work with, so I'm hoping to cut down on planning sessions by allowing players to come up with some creative solutions for impediments on the spot in exchange for a resource drain. Should be interesting to see how it plays out.
I
I did a brief campaign where we used the old Marvel Super Heroes Advanced Set universal chart, rigged for d20.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Oh, that's a really interesting idea. I'm in the camp that thinks 5e could use more narrative player options, not less (which seems to be the direction they're going in)
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Hey, I’ll get in on this. I’ve been way too into the OGL crisis (they may say it’s over but it isn’t). The main game I’m playing in right now is a good one for some stories though…
Last session (yesterday night) we were rolling some insight checks on a party member with too many secretes. Gods above I got a natural 20. We had advantage from prior knowledge and I rolled again just because, and I got a natural 20. I rolled one more time to keep it going. Natural 20. Three in a row on the same die. It’s not weighted either!
Two more natural 20s happened for me that night.
We also spent a couple days at the forge of an ancient blacksmith trying to forge oskarium gear. Oskarium is an ore in our game that is very rare and very powerful. I play a ranger and our tank is a fighter. He’s up to a 21 AC (with a shield) after this upgrade and I’m up to 20 AC (with no shield). He also got a great spear made of oskarium, and we failed all of our other smithing checks.
It was our best session in a while because we finally didn’t have a four hour long combat that nearly killed us. Just some roleplaying, exploration, and some serious threads to our big story.
For me it always has been tieflings. My first real character was a tie fling and I loved him with all my heart. I haven’t played as many as I’d like to, but they always are fun, especially with the Mordenkainen’s variant ancestries for them. Of course, I’ve begun to really like aasimar and plasmoids now that I have been playing them in a campaign. They’re both very enigmatic and exciting races.
And as an addition to this thread, what is your least favorite race/ancestry/bloodline? Mine is the wood elf. I will never get over my hatred of those little bastards.
Y’all, I’ve been looking through this thread and it’s amazing what’s been built here. We don’t know each other but we can create such great ideas and share great things.
My best memories are of this game and I don’t think that will ever change. No matter what happens Wizards/Hasbro can’t take D&D from us. No OGL 2.0 can stop us from being a community that creates and plays the most amazing games. This thread is the perfect example of that. D&D made it 50 years. Let’s put our glasses together for 50 more!
Our grandkids will play this game not because Wizards upgraded it and made it more modern, but because we will carry on its real legacy: the love between players, the excitement of risky d20 rolls, and the amazing stories we build together.
Let’s keep creating. For as long as we can. Love to you all.
While this is a nice message I guess, we really aren't meant to be discussing things like the Open Game License and what people think about that situation in this thread.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.Indeed, while nice, thou art not to speak of The Acronym...
Yeah, I know. I was just moved by this thread.
No more OGL out of me.
I’ve had enough of it for a lifetime…
Moving on from my blunder, I’ve got a new campaign beginning today, and it’s one that generally assumes players are good people (or neutral). I’ve never been sure over my years of GMing how to deal with alignment. Do I restrict evil ones or do I work with the player to make this work with the game?
Do you have a player who wants to play an evil character, or are you asking hypothetically? Either way, it boils down to what you, as the DM, are comfortable with it. In my case, I don't have a problem with evil characters per se, so long as their decisions don't lead into something that might actually cause the party to break apart or try to kill each other (PVP is a pretty hard no for me in most instances...)
That’s about what I usually think. It’s a hypothetical for now. Knowing my players it may not stay that way…
I’m just wondering if I should point out that I’ll allow evil or if I should see what they do and then decide on it. They’re arriving so I’m going to see what happens.
If the campaign doesn't make sense with evil characters, then tell the players the campaign doesn't make sense with evil characters.
The Descent Into Avernus module assumes that when your characters hear that a city got teleported into hell, they will wish they could do something about that. Do they have to be good people though? No, not really. Maybe they just have someone they care about in that city. Maybe they only want the fame of being a savior. Maybe one of them only wants something tangentially related, but the only way to get it is to help the party.
But if you need good-aligned characters, then just say so. It's not a breach of etiquette, or some kind of abuse of your DM authority. You should always work with your players to ensure the characters fit the setup.
Personally, I see a DM restricting alignment as an admission that either the DM is incompetent, the DM thinks their players are incompetent, or both. There is nothing inherently wrong with Evil players - only with certain antisocial ways of playing an evil character that cause inter-player strife. A competent player piloting an Evil character knows they (a) have to give the Evil character a reason to work with thx group and (b) cannot go overboard into making the group not want to work with the character. Competent other members of the party are going to be able to pilot their characters in a way that both stays true to their character and let’s the other person play who they want to be
A competent DM is going to be able to provide circumstances that keep the Evil character and the other party members working together and is going to be able to address problems at the player level if any arise.
A lot of that - how players react and your own ability as a DM for an Evil character - you won’t know until the game starts. Dictating alignment restrictions ahead of time is just admitting you do not have confidence in competence, without actually having the data to support how a specific party will actually work.
As others said, it's OK to say no to evil characters (no different then restricted some classes or races from a game, because they don't fit the world, for example).
The most challenging thing with players playing an evil character is not knowing how to do so properly - without ruining the game for everyone else. An evil character in a campaign should have the long game in mind. So they would ride along with the heroes until the time of the betrayal - and knowing, as soon as that betrayal happens - that the character is going to end up dead (the other players killing them) or it's going to end up an NPC in the DM's hands. Either way, the player is out a character. If done correctly, this can be a cool moment - but the player needs to understand their character's fate (death or an NPC, who may/probably will, meet death eventually as the players hunt them down).
Joe Magnelo (however you spell his name from True Blood and stuff) is an example that did a good job, during Critical Role of pulling that off. He did it at the end - knowing he was going to lose control of his character - but it created a cool moment.
He was also surrounded by professional voice actors, and an actor himself, who combined, added so much flavor to the character and moment. Something that is, as I said, very difficult to pull off and would require probably some planning with the DM if they're going to go this route so the DM can work with them (send them secret messages back and forth and such). But to the players, it's just going to seem like a sudden switch - unaware of all the potential background stuff going on that they're not privy to.
Check out my publication on DMs Guild: https://www.dmsguild.com/browse.php?author=Tawmis%20Logue
Check out my comedy web series - Neverending Nights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Wr4-u9-zw0&list=PLbRG7dzFI-u3EJd0usasgDrrFO3mZ1lOZ
Need a character story/background written up? I do it for free (but also take donations!) - https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?591882-Need-a-character-background-written-up
Yeah Blades in the Dark's flashback system lends well to D&D, I'd actually say it can make more use of a character's background feature than RAW D&D usually calls for.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Yeah. I don’t usually mention it beforehand, and if it does happen I try to work with the player. The issue is that they often end up being chaotic and lots of people die. I wouldn’t say that I’m incompetent or they are, but frankly, I wish that they’d be less crazy. However, they all chose LN independently. It’s time for a morally ambiguous game!
There are a number of factors at play here and the answer varies group to group and campaign to campaign.
Evil characters can cause problems to arise if everyone in the party is not okay with having a member like that. This is why a session zero is so important: It provides players with the perfect opportunity to ask whether or not people are alright with their idea, and to hash out what is and is not tolerated, as well as making it clear what style of play the group wants to focus on most (bad guys stealing stuff, heroic adventurers save the world, rag tag band put into morally ambigious situations, etc).
For me, the most important thing about an evil character is that they are actually a character. Some people just want to play a character that murders everyone and has no personality or features. However, other people just want to pay a real person with flaws, hopes, goals, and dreams, and part of that person's personality is that they're evil. The latter situation I allow, the former I ban.
Another piece of criteria I use is whether or not the evil character would have a reason to cooperate with the party. Adventuring groups are typically a group of companions, and they need to work together, not fight. There must be reasons in and out outside of game that ensure PVP and fights between characters don't happen, if you don't want to run a campaign where either of those things occur.
Before I wrap up my post, I just wanted to say that there is nothing wrong with giving your players a flat-out NO in certain situations. Your campaign is your campaign, and your job is to make sure that everyone at the table has fun. When allowing something would get in the way of enjoyment or a workable set of adventures, then you shouldn't allow that thing.
In Summary:
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.It depends on just how evil.
Do they think they might be picking the pockets of the rest of the party and hiding found loot from them? Sure have fun with the idea, but do not be surprised if the barbarian finds out and makes sure you never do it again.
Your an assassin hiding out in the group as a different class or name? Sure have fun with it.
Your goal is to take over the world and force others to your will? Your party might not be what you are looking for or might end up fighting you. The player will have to be an experienced player with a set goal that fits the campaign. I will not change the campaign just to fit your goals, much.
Your evil character plans on killing the party? No, not at all.
Its very hard to make an evil based campaign and just as hard to play an evil character. A whole party of evil characters? Someone in the group is going to be disappointed. And someone will take control by force and those who do not submit will be hurt in some way. Its just the way it happens.
This is why all the greatest stories have good hero's and not mostly anti hero's or evil leads. Hero's with flaws is not a recent invention in media. But it was not normally pointed out in the stories, it was left to the reader to figure it out on their own.
Its been said that the Greeks/Romans and Shakespeare himself have written every story possible. All new stories are just variations on their themes.
An all evil party needs to understand that they need to hide their evil side very well of all the NPC's they run into will start to figure them out and not be as helpful as possible. Nothing will be offered without a stiff price the higher ends of society will not be offering them many invites to parties.
Just think about all the people you run into in real life. Some just give off that bad guy vibe and that makes you tend to not want to work with them. You in fact want them away from you as fast as possible.
Imagine a small village with just 250 people. Everyone knows everyone, By the time your party walks through the edge of town the rumors are already spreading.
All of Greek literature is about pointing out the character’s flaws. It is such an important part of their literature that they even had a specific word - hamartia - for a character’s flaws. The earliest single book in the Western canon - the Iliad - is primarily about how Achilles’ snivelling cowardice and fear of death leads him to put his life above others and get scores upon scores killed. Heracles, Greece’s most popular hero, slaughtered his own children and did other horrific things. Zeus did acts of unspeakable sexual violence - portrayed even by the Greeks as fairly horrific, so not only by modern standards.
Shakespeare is much the same - his characters are overtly flawed, from Hamlet’s madness and dedication to vengeance driving Ophelia to suicide, to Romeo’s foolish chasing of Rosalind and Juliet, to everything in Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare is absolutely full of characters defined by their flaws.
I am not sure I could think of two worse literary categories to follow up a statement that flaws where “not normally pointed out” than the Greeks and Shakespeare.