I don’t know about the rest of you but I don’t think evil characters should be in a campaign. After all the vast majority of campaigns are good vs evil. Seems like evil is working against itself and not very logical. What say you?

The Layers of Hell would stand in defiance of that logic.  Also, Menzoberranzan has not fallen yet.

Now, is a campaign the right place for an evil character? That is a different story.  Let me ask it this way, is an evil character the right choice for a Murderhobo? No... they do not understand alignment and are too self centered to actually survive in any kind of campaign.  Is a plotting evil character full of wit and deceipt and guile the right kind of character for a good roleplayer? Generally, I'm of the opinion to say, "You can certainly try!"  A very good player will make it to a pivotal moment before revealing their intentions or plans and leave everyone conflicted on how to proceed.  It makes story all by itself.  As the DM, you want some buy in on where they are wanting to go, but I have no trouble helping to craft situations that can be used to pursue their ends just like I have no problem crafting situations to further the cause of the paladin.  

Now, in Session 0, you need to make sure everyone is on board and clearly discusses that there are topics not to be covered.  If the evil player can steer clear of the sticky areas and still work to manipulate, then no problem.  If they want to lead a slave chapter house and any of the players do not want to even hear about slavery, then that is off the table entirely (went for over the top choice of topics, others can be just as sensitive to some players).  

Alternatively, if everyone is evil... say a Drow campaign, then everyone should realize that even their "close friends" can be just as deadly as a rival house given an opportunity.  And again, at Session 0, the laws of the land are laid out.  Anyone caught practicing evil actions or committing crimes will be taken into custody... and if you are in Menzoberranzan and you do not fare well against the "law" (read: Powers That Be), then you may end up as a Drider to live a long and lonely life outside the halls of faerie fire.  

If a player truly wants to play an evil character, you really have to sit down with them and find out what they are trying to accomplish.  If they just want license to murder and cause mayhem, then that's a flat no and that this may not be the table for them.  If they have a vision of becoming the greatest thief in the world and their friends never knowing it?  All for it.  I'll even plan out special missions for them to do solo and drop hints to the group and if they make a mistake, it is a chance for the group to find out.  Even if they are caught, it provides an opportunity for the others to have meaningful dialogue on what is causing this behavior or why they want to accomplish the thing that they are doing.  Maybe someone is holdiing a family member prisoner and asking them to do things (Dune... Suk Doctor) that go against their nature.  

So, TL;DR... with the right player, yes an Evil character in a campaign can be an amazing thing.  With the wrong player it's a train wreck.  Use caution... 

I strongly agree. I would allow some of my more experienced players to play an evil character, but only if they worked alongside the heroes and were simply selfish and manipulative, not traitorous and bloodthirsty. A bit like Littlefinger in Game of Thrones, except without that...one thing he did for Ned. But if you’re running a classic LotR game, which a lot of games are, even a reasonable evil guy has no place among the heroes.

Every single player needs to be on board with this. Intra-party conflict is typically not very fun and not what D&D was designed for. It's a cooperative game that assumes the players have a shared goal that they work towards together. Having one character sabotaging another is a great way to upset the real person sitting at the table. There are other games for that.

Now if you want to do an all-evil campaign, that's fine as long as the party still has a reason to work together. Something like the Suicide Squad where Team Evil ends up doing something good can be especially compelling.

I would agree with that.  The evil schemes (Dr. Gru) need to be applied to the world at large, not the party.  And the goal of trying not to be caught by the party is where you want to aim.  If it ever gets personal, yes, things have gone too far and no one will enjoy what happens after... except in an All-Evil Affair... 

“Evil” can encompass quite a spectrum. And non-evil characters can and will justify quite a bit of evil doings, in my experience, just like evil characters can and will choose not to indulge their baser impulses simply because doing evil for evil’s sake ultimately tends to come back and bite them in the ass in the end. Morally grey actions can be problematic for most parties, regardless of actual alignments.

Quote from brocker2001 >>

I don’t know about the rest of you but I don’t think evil characters should be in a campaign. After all the vast majority of campaigns are good vs evil. Seems like evil is working against itself and not very logical. What say you?

 I disagree that they shouldn't be in ANY campaign, as with most things it depends on what sort of experience the group is looking for. I DO believe that 1) they have the potential to be very disruptive, 2) there are a lot of players who play "evil" characters just as an excuse to be an a--hole, and 3) a player looking to roll up an evil character should check with the group to make sure it's not going to be a problem. 

Ultimately, the best thing to do is get the group together for a Session Zero to look at the group dynamic(both in and out of character) to make sure everyone's expectations for the game won't cause problems for another player. 

Quote from pangurjan >>

“Evil” can encompass quite a spectrum. And non-evil characters can and will justify quite a bit of evil doings, in my experience, 

 I just had to start with that quote, as pangurjan said it first. D&D is first and foremost an escape or diversion if you will. Second it is a group activity. One of which I will not be participating in if it is overtly evil. Having lived through the D&D scare of the early eighties this does make me chuckle a little. Most party members live in the gray area and are at best murder hobos for hire. They aren't however advancing an evil agenda. They are in general questing against it. My group doesn't allow evil parties. That is our choice. It is a free world and others are free to choose or play as they wish. After all it is just a game.

Quote from pangurjan >>

“Evil” can encompass quite a spectrum. And non-evil characters can and will justify quite a bit of evil doings, in my experience, 

 I just had to start with that quote, as pangurjan said it first. D&D is first and foremost an escape or diversion if you will. Second it is a group activity. One of which I will not be participating in if it is overtly evil. Having lived through the D&D scare of the early eighties this does make me chuckle a little. Most party members live in the gray area and are at best murder hobos for hire. They aren't however advancing an evil agenda. They are in general questing against it. My group doesn't allow evil parties. That is our choice. It is a free world and others are free to choose or play as they wish. After all it is just a game.

All I can say is that I've seen many, many campaigns with decidedly Evil player characters that aren't disruptive.

When it comes to a player being disruptive, it's not the character or the character's alignment. It's the player being disruptive.

Evil character are very dependent on the player.  A /good/ player can make evil work just fine.  Evil doesn't have to be disruptive, and you don't have to murder every little thing that moves.  Bad players feel that an evil alignment gives them a license to be disruptive, and that's where problems come in.

I made a Lawful Evil Nightblade (magic assassin) work for a long while in Rolemaster. Everyone but the GM thought she was a Thief.

Once they found out what she was, they were wary of her... all except the guy who insisted on playing practical jokes on her. And she put up with it until he used a spell to cut open her backpack and all of her potions smashed on the floor and were destroyed. She assassinated him while on watch that night.... Only truly EVIL thing she did to anyone in the party the whole campaign.

The Healer saved his life, unfortunately... and the rest of the party decided to forgive her. The dim-witted Paladin, who was besotted with her, would believe no evil of her and insisted it was all a misunderstanding.

I dunno.. I think as long as you're actually playing a character and make an effort not to sabotage the game for everyone else I think it's just fine. I'm not really fan of the idea of "good" and "evil", so I don't particularly think what rigid alignment you happened to pick at character creation is very important at all. 

It's perfectly fine with playing a character with motives which are entirely selfish and potentially harmful to everyone around him... aslong as the player respects the fact that other players aren't interested in having their game spoiled..So you dont go stabbing the fish merchant because he refused to give you a discount, making the entire town turn hostile.. instead you can try to take revenge in a way that's fun and entertaining for the rest of your party and doesn't ruin everyone else's experience.

I generally don't like playing an evil character, nor having another PC on my team who does evil things. For me D&D is about living out a fantasy, and I just don't fantasize about doing awful things to people.

Ironically, one of the campaigns I'm in is an all Rogue party who is part of a crime syndicate (the Black Crows), who took over a rival gang's compound by stealthing in - in the middle of the night - and slaughtering them. Bad things to bad people, that was no problem for me. I kind of had to be "talked into" one of the earlier missions. We got paid to kidnap a wealthy woman and deliver her to a group who demanded ransom from her family (we wore disguises). After getting paid by that group, we then got paid by her family to rescue her lol.

I was able to stomach it because I knew we were going to rescue her in the end. And I have to admit I was amused by the double-dipping, which makes my question my own humanity :(

So now that we terminated the rival gang, we've taken over their entire operation. We obtained all of their documents that outline which politicians and law enforcement they were paying off, supply networks, underworld connections, who owes them favors, the whole 9-yards. I sort of feel icky. Not because I'm playing this role, but because I'm actually enjoying it!

It's only natural that at some point a lawful-good adventuring party will come into town, and want to rid the town of us bad guys. Ending the session with a reverse boss fight... where we ARE their boss fight. I floated an idea to the DM to invite another group a one-shot, and have us pop out at the end with our character sheets PvP boss fight!

I like the idea of turning the players into a boss encounter for another party... I'd probably do it with a party of npc's though.. It's a fun idea to call out the supposedly neutral/good party on all their questionable desicions have them realise how their actions affect how other people in the world view them.

I generally don't like playing an evil character, nor having another PC on my team who does evil things. For me D&D is about living out a fantasy, and I just don't fantasize about doing awful things to people.

I agree. That's why when I played my evil Nightblade (Magic assassin) in Rolemaster, I kept her secretly evil for a long time. She knew she could not come right out and do overtly evil things. The Paladin wouldn't tolerate that, no matter how besotted he was. And the rest of the party (including btw, my other character, since we played 2 per player, who was a Neutral Good archmage and would have been the first to condemn her). would not have put up with her doing overtly evil things. When she was outed as being a Nightblade (a terrifying and outlaw profession), they immediately kept a close eye on her. They would permit her to assassinate other evil beings, but not innocents, and she knew that, so if she had to do something really bad, she snuck away to do it. (She was pretty good at sneaking, no matter how much of an eye they were keeping on her.)

So yeah, a couple of times with notes passed back and forth with the GM, I managed to have her circle back and collect a nice purse for assassinating someone innocent, but the party never knew about it (the players might have known something was up, passing notes -- the characters IC never found her out despite how hard they tried). She only did something evil right in front of them that one time and the players had a hard time being too mad at me because she was clearly and obviously provoked (and the guy who did it was stupid enough to provoke a known Nightblade with the ability to choose whatever crit she wanted on a sneak attack). And to put it bluntly, most of the other characters (and players) detested the PC she tried to assassinate.

My point here is, even though I was playing an evil PC, other than that one backstab attempt (that was honestly well-deserved), no one in the party had to RP about "having another person on the team doing evil things." I played her as smart, savvy, careful, and fully understanding that her values were not the party's and they would not tolerate it if she was overt about it. In other words, I didn't force the other players to RP about my character's evilness all the time. Or even much at all. (She was quiet and I was much more verbal about RP with the good/innocent archmage.)

You can also have a character that's morally evil, but awful at executing evil deeds.

For example, my hobgoblin is lawful evil because they were raised in a lawful evil society, but they're still a child that can be intimidated easily. Also with low charisma and dex, they have a hard time convincing people to comply with their evil deeds, or tricking people.

As long as you don't make the character OP, in my book it should be okay. An OP goody two-shoes could ruin a game as well.

There's a gulf of difference between an evil mastermind and an evil character, and also there's the misconception that "evil" means untrustworthy and treacherous.

Picture any "good vs evil" classic and then flip it to make the good guys evil and the evil guys good. To pick an absolute classic:

The (good) emperor of the world was once defeated by an evil army, and the king in the evil army (who had personally slain the emperor) stole from him an artefact, which was bound to the Emperor's soul and prevented him from truly dying. Thousands of years pass, and the emperor's power starts to return, and so the forces of evil (who had settled into a form of society) set out to try and destroy the emperor's artefact and so slay him for good. The forces of good set out to stop this evil group from succeeding, attempting to recover the artefact and restore their emperor to his full power, allowing him to wipe the evil off the land and allow his good followers to spread into the world.

Such is Lord of the Rings, but backwards.

There's no reason, really, to assume that a group of evil characters, who all want to do evil things (raid villages, kidnap and ransom people, do what their BBEG commands to further the evil cause) will be any different from a group of good characters, who all want to do good things (defend villages, rescue people, do that the arbitrary good person commands to further the good cause).

At the end of the day, provided peoples motives align, then they will work together. and people are more complex than "good" and "evil". One might be entirely driven by money, and not care for who gets hurt as long as he ends up richer. I have an artificer who's a good person, and always works for good, and steals everything that's not nailed down in the hope it's magical and he can learn from it, or that he can make it magical. does stealing everything make him evil? good people don't steal, right?

Lawful Evil is the alignment people will need to use for mixed parties, really - unlawful or chaotic has risk of roleplaying their characters as untrustworthy, whereas lawful evil might have a shared goal, and will not turn on the party as long as they seek the same result.

EG, if they have been asked to slay a dragon. The evil overlord who commands the bad guy fears the dragon may be more powerful than he, and if turned good will be able to stop his plans. The good guys are concerned the dragon's a freaking dragon and it's gonna eat children and stuff. net result is that they all want to kill the dragon, so just because one guy wants t odo so for ultimately evil purposes doesn't mean he's going to stab people at random or go all murderhobo while they sleep. evil =/= bad guy, as Wreck-it Ralph so eloquently put.

Such is Lord of the Rings, but backwards

I love it!

To me, there is nothing wrong with playing an evil character, or even and evil party, if that's what you desire. They may not even think of themselves as evil: An Orc Paladin may exist who thinks Humans are a plague who constantly attack and destroy his people. I think it is rare that evil people think of themselves as evil: They may realise they are doing bad things, but think the results of those actions good enough, from their perspective, to warrant them.

Now, I doubt that many published campaigns would easily accept an evil party, but that's a different story.