In a long series of events, my previous campaign wrapped up after two full years and we are starting something new. My players expressed interest in playing a campaign where they are the classical villians and the 'evil' people are actually the heroes of the story.
I am all for this in concept as I think it would be an interesting campaign to run. I talked it over with them and they are less big on the generalized murder route and more on the take over the world route.
Does anyone have any tips and tricks for creating and running an evil campaign? Any suggestions would be appreciated!
In my opinion, you still very much need a session 0 to go over ground rules. How evil is evil? **** and Murder evil? Slavery evil? How far do you go to get what you want. An evil campaign can go really far off the rails and be upsetting for a lot of people in a short space of time. So it's important to get some really solid evil boundaries in place.
From there, just work with twisted logic. Almost all "Evil" real world entities have a purpose that they think is valid. So you need the same thing. Even in D&D, evil thinks it's in the right. The Lords of the Nine Hells think the world would be a much better place if they were in charge and they could bring their structure to what they see as the chaotic world of mortals. So what's the goal. World Domination. But why? Power for powers sake is a bit thin for a plot. What's wrong with the current power? Why would your party be better? Religion is always a nice one to play, and Organised Religion has a pretty solid track record of doing horrible stuff to "Save" the world. One of your party could actually be a lost heir. Or a descendant of an ancient family that was overthrown long ago. Or maybe they're like the 9 hells and just want structure. Everyone in their place, doing their job. True communism, where the state owns everything.
During the session 0 you sbsolutely must set the rules for PVP. In other words, agree before starting the game how far characters are allowed to go against other characters. As the game progresses, keep to this agreement carefully.
Also continually monitor the feelings of players. Someone might be all excited about playing an evil character, but when one of the other characters kills their character in the middle of the night... well, that's different. That can be friendship-destroying.
In the few games I've run where I allowed this, I had a simple and unbreakable rule. "Any character betrayal needs to have the prior permission of everyone at the table." That way, if one player wanted their character to backstab another character, they had to first get permission. Permission from everyone, including the GM. The way I described it at the table was, "us players are going to conspire against our characters."
Makes sure the players are ready for untrusting, greedy, party stealing, bribery, black mailing, possible toture, and more. Make sure that the players can take the actions of another player. An evil campaign is very hard to do, if the players get mad at each other for being evil toward each other. ^^
You might also want to plan a short story arc at first, let them try it out for a few sessions and see if the idea is as good in practice as it is in theory.
If you go with it, as has been said above, the best villains have a compelling reason for being how they are, and usually start with good intentions before they take things too far. Lawful evil, where they can at least keep their word to each other, would probably make for a more stable campaign. It’s also one of the best alignments for real world examples of dictators running oppressive regimes which could help seed some stories. And if they succeed, the next campaign could be a set of new characters trying to overthrow the system set up by these characters.
And probably the characters don’t think of themselves as evil. Everyone is the hero of their own story.
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In a long series of events, my previous campaign wrapped up after two full years and we are starting something new. My players expressed interest in playing a campaign where they are the classical villians and the 'evil' people are actually the heroes of the story.
I am all for this in concept as I think it would be an interesting campaign to run. I talked it over with them and they are less big on the generalized murder route and more on the take over the world route.
Does anyone have any tips and tricks for creating and running an evil campaign? Any suggestions would be appreciated!
In my opinion, you still very much need a session 0 to go over ground rules. How evil is evil? **** and Murder evil? Slavery evil? How far do you go to get what you want. An evil campaign can go really far off the rails and be upsetting for a lot of people in a short space of time. So it's important to get some really solid evil boundaries in place.
From there, just work with twisted logic. Almost all "Evil" real world entities have a purpose that they think is valid. So you need the same thing. Even in D&D, evil thinks it's in the right. The Lords of the Nine Hells think the world would be a much better place if they were in charge and they could bring their structure to what they see as the chaotic world of mortals. So what's the goal. World Domination. But why? Power for powers sake is a bit thin for a plot. What's wrong with the current power? Why would your party be better? Religion is always a nice one to play, and Organised Religion has a pretty solid track record of doing horrible stuff to "Save" the world. One of your party could actually be a lost heir. Or a descendant of an ancient family that was overthrown long ago. Or maybe they're like the 9 hells and just want structure. Everyone in their place, doing their job. True communism, where the state owns everything.
During the session 0 you sbsolutely must set the rules for PVP. In other words, agree before starting the game how far characters are allowed to go against other characters. As the game progresses, keep to this agreement carefully.
Also continually monitor the feelings of players. Someone might be all excited about playing an evil character, but when one of the other characters kills their character in the middle of the night... well, that's different. That can be friendship-destroying.
In the few games I've run where I allowed this, I had a simple and unbreakable rule. "Any character betrayal needs to have the prior permission of everyone at the table." That way, if one player wanted their character to backstab another character, they had to first get permission. Permission from everyone, including the GM. The way I described it at the table was, "us players are going to conspire against our characters."
Makes sure the players are ready for untrusting, greedy, party stealing, bribery, black mailing, possible toture, and more. Make sure that the players can take the actions of another player. An evil campaign is very hard to do, if the players get mad at each other for being evil toward each other. ^^
You might also want to plan a short story arc at first, let them try it out for a few sessions and see if the idea is as good in practice as it is in theory.
If you go with it, as has been said above, the best villains have a compelling reason for being how they are, and usually start with good intentions before they take things too far. Lawful evil, where they can at least keep their word to each other, would probably make for a more stable campaign. It’s also one of the best alignments for real world examples of dictators running oppressive regimes which could help seed some stories. And if they succeed, the next campaign could be a set of new characters trying to overthrow the system set up by these characters.
And probably the characters don’t think of themselves as evil. Everyone is the hero of their own story.