Hello D&D community,

I am the DM for a new D&D group I started(pitifully small, two players and a DM), and we've been doing the Lost Mines of Phandelver adventure, and while it's going relatively well, these players are Chaotic Evil. Technically, their alignments are Lawful Neutral and True Neutral but they act Chaotic Evil. They kill most villagers, and when someone offers a quest, they kill the quest offerer and take the gold(I didn't let them do that for long, after a while the quest offerers started hiding the gold) so needless to say, it's been kind of hard to progress through the story. 

But unlike most DMs, I do not mind one bit(and encourage it a bit) because it makes for some hilarious games. I wouldn't have them play any other way. But here lies the problem: As I said, they don't progress through the story that much because they're too busy killing everybody. So, I plan to make an adventure for us to do instead of LMoP, but it's hard to make a story in which mass killings and peeing off cliff(don't ask) pushes the story forward. Any ideas for a story. If you read this entire thing, I commend you.

TL;DR 

I wanna know how to craft a story where peeing off cliffs and mass killings push the story forward.

I'd suggest starting things off with a Halfing Hunt. After that, you can spin them off on any other manner of adventures.

Thanks for the advice, I plan on doing that now that I know about it.

Most importantly, what exactly do your two players want to do? Are they just meat-grindering random folks to get their jollies off, is this some sort of stress relief, or is there a particular reason they think that this is the sort of way they want to play this game? There really aren't that many wrong ways to D&D, but some ways are harder and lead less places than others.

We started playing D&D because we're all nerds and we heard about, and said "Why not?". But now, I think it's because killing people is a more fun option than adventuring. Also, killing entire villages is mostly frowned upon in real life.

Fair enough. In that case, depending on what your players end up making for this new campaign, I'd suggest maybe a "reverse dungeon" adventure is in order as some point. After your evil PCs clear out a nice little spot for themselves in a cave system or old mine, have them go out and recruit monsters, set traps, and lure in bands of adventurers who come to kill or arrest them for bounty. Then let them see how creative they can be as adventure parties try to fight through their dungeon. Make money a big part of it because some great monsters don't work for free and trap supplies aren't cheap. Make them have to leave and go raiding for materials and wealth to pay off their minions.

Mmm, that sounds interesting. I'll have to give that a try.

you don't necessarily have to do the "role play" part at all, you can make a dungeon crawl that can keep them busy killing lots of things (including humans, dwarves, elves, etc.).  Maybe their only interaction in "role play" is with an apparition they cannot kill, and keeps taunting them.  Their mission will quickly become finding the source and destroying it (especially if you make it heckle them).  Throw in some traps, sentient objects (like talking doors/chests), mimic's, etc.  Need to replenish supplies?  maybe they find a "resting" area and find a corpses nearby that have some gear on them still (potions, magic items, new armor).

You don't necessarily ever have to go to a town, but maybe you actually live in a world/region where this kind of behavior is normal, and as such the local town/market is filled with many who double as bodyguards (protecting the NPC's so they can't be killed).  Nobody ever goes to a meet alone, and nobody ever trusts anyone they do not know, including your players.  (I played a session once where the DM actually had the merchants somehow controlling Demons and basically had a Balor protecting the blacksmith.  We were level 1, no way were we trying to mess with that guy.).  Maybe there are multiple towns and the town your players visit have some opportunity for kill orders on families/people in the other town who might be innocent but maybe have a good trade route that someone wants to take over for their own gain.

When playing either extreme, LG or CE (I also think true neutral is pretty hard), continuity is important. So, if your players continue to basically be CE in game, keep in mind a developed world environment may develop an opinion about that. There's plenty of stories to draw from where evil characters had to deal with blow back from groups of lesser individuals that pooled their efforts and capabilities to contain/expel/eliminate said bad guy. 

Maybe have the town constable take interest in them, investigating a spike in murders, etc. Like I said, continuity.

Dangle lots of shiny things behind locked doors for them to get. Honestly, for that kind of play, you don't really need a fleshed out story. Just put them in a very small town where there are a few rich ******** with a lot of cool stuff. The story will practically write itself. 

But if i were to make one serious suggestion: throw them into a large dungeon crawling with treasures, traps, and baddies. If they enjoy the meat grinder, let them do it in a productive way. 

I'd recommend using the players greed or a past the characters might be trying to avoid, in order to motivate them to do the quests such as by having a NPC work with part a large organization that promises them the reward upon completion of the quests or maybe having the organization blackmail the party. This is similar approach to what the DM used in the Dead Reckoning Campaign. 

You might check out Way of the Wicked by Fire Mountain Games. You'd have to convert it to 5E, since it was written for a different system.

(Part II is exactly what Metamongoose mentioned above, a reverse dungeon).

Dave