An Evil Party?

Not a new idea but what do you think of having an evil party? LE, NE, CE maybe or all LE, all NE or all CE?

How do you see it playing out? Would you join an adventure with such a party?

Griffith from Berserk is the best example of how Neutral Evil should be played.

In AD&D mechanics Griffith is a 40th level Fallen Paladin that regained all his powers, and a great host of many more by bargaining the souls of all his compatriots and followers. Everyone is convinced he is a good man because he performs miracles in healing the sick and raising the dead.

But he is wholly self centered and uses the adulation to propel his vision into reality as the Antigod Femto who has absolute dominion over causality, fate, and gravity.

This is Advanced Evil

@jomsviking I remember a Dragon magazine coming out with an Anti-Paladin class. 'Totally disthpicable' (said in a Daffy Duck Voice).

@toob

Yes it is a fascinating class from Dragon Mag #39 it would require some care as it tends to break the traditional system.

I for one think it would be amazing to have a human Antipaladin dual class into a Necromancer at level 12. And then try as hard as possible to convince the world that he is not only a good man. He is in fact the best of them. What a wild story

evil is usually "egotistical" and its hard to form a party, without an outside treat.
I was in a one-shot game where we all evil aligned, but we were directed by an even more powerfull evil dragon. In the game Baldurs Gate 3, you will be tranformed into a mindflayer if you do not act. That is an outside treath that can move an evil party down a unified path.
In Vampire The Maskerade, everyone is a vampire, and according to D&D alignment's evil. That works because of the outside tread of princes, sires and the mondane world.

Would I join such an adventure? Perhaps VTM in the forgotten realms could be an interesting mix.

VTM???

sorry WTM = Vampire The Maskerade. You know, playing vampire spawn in baldurs gate.

I'm not trying to force your suggestion into a specific path, I was just hit with inspiration :)

I've ran and played in a number of Evil Campaigns over the years.

I've never really seen them work out great for basically 3 reasons:

1. The players/characters eventually betray each other and it devolves into PVP. EDIT: and/or the party splits up, at which point in a pnp setting it's no longer really tenable long term

2. The players/characters do not constrain their evilness and really end up being more Chaotic Stupid and before long the entire world is their enemy and trying to kill them, and... they die.

3. The players really just kind of eventually stop rooting for their characters, they literally don't want to see them win, and so the campaign just ends, when people decide they want to play characters that they "like".

Or 4. actually... some combination of those things.

Certainly I've had experiences that are not that, but I've had more that are.

And certainly other people have made it work.

But...

Those 3 (or 4) things summarize most of the Evil Campaign experiences I've had over the decades.

EDIT: this is all through the lens of D&D (and Pathfinder), as you mentioned that alignment system specifically.

I applied for a standard 'rescue the princess' game, the twist being that the princess was an evil drow princess and we were all her ride-or-die friends. A very striking concept. I wish I had gotten to play it.

I think that I might be in an evil party right now, I applied for a VTM game despite knowing very little about the lore, and we're Sabbat. Everything I learn about them leads me to believe they're complete assholes.

I think there needs to be a binding at the core of the evil party that ties everyone together and keeps them from betraying each other. Something like fear of a mutual evil overseer keeping them in line, a long-standing villainous friendship, or an overwhelming goal that demands cooperation. Personally, my fantasy revolves around being able to do good without consequence rather than being able to cause harm without consequence, but it's an interesting twist to be sure.

I'm typically a lawful good player. The one time I played an evil character the idea was to try and pretend to not be evil as long as I could. Essentially had a false character and persona that only dropped if I was forced to reveal it. Sadly the reveal happened waaaay early on and then the group TPKd in the first encounter. I was gonna play a patient evil that could cooperate with the group in their short term goals while I focused on personal (well, commanded) goals that might not hurt anyone in the moment. Playing a long game I guess.

It was probably for the best that they all died. I somewhat doubt it would have worked long term. Maybe if you want to run evil characters you can just keep it as a one shot with the guideline that you are working together however you want to justify it.

You would never know a real evil character. They would be functionally normal. Just with a few people chained up in the basement.

I'm not sure about that. After all, plenty of evil people form parties in real life, usually more due to incentives than an outside threat. If anything, the evil groups often are the outside threat that causes normies to also form defensive groups. Some examples that come to mind:

• A team of confidence or other swindlers working together to pursue a bigger fish.
• Bunch of thugs forming into a gang to allow extortion against local shops.
• Enforcers signing up to work for a local robber-baron (whether that term is literal or metaphorical).
• Soldiers signing up for a conquering military and engaging in some warcriming and plunder.

All of these look like examples of evil characters working together, in very cohesive groups, in order to improve their efficiency at obtaining whatever they're after, while not initially under external threat.

I've run two evil parties in D&D over the years and here were the results:

1) The party killed one another squabbling over who was the most evil.

2) They burned down the entire town, were beset upon by the remaining guardsmen, and executed. The end. A campaign that should have taken a year or more to complete was over in 10 minutes.

Played properly, I suppose it could work, but most people don't portray evil properly.

I agree with Vicky. Those are some great examples of everyday mundane evil.

I'll add that while chaotic evil might be egotistical, lawful evil is about the goal. Lawful evil has a plan to achieve that goal. Order and discipline must be strictly maintained in order to achieve that goal. There are rules, and you are expected to adhere to them. Violating those rules calls for harsh punishment. Self-sacrifice for the greater evil is expected for you are nothing without the cause. The end justifies the means to achieving that goal.

I think part of the problem is peoples own understanding of evil. Some take it as amoral, others and pure anarchists set on creating chaos. However if you look at most long term villains they have goals and objectives, they just don't always follow social norms in how they accomplish it.

The thing is to make sure players/characters realize the world is big and little bugs that go around biting everything eventually get stepped on. Many 'evil' characters have trouble working together forcing a power structure. IF the party is a group of peers then have them work for a common boss, organization, or share a common goal they are all committed to. This should be resolved in session 0. otherwise why are they together? Once the premise of the party is set you can work the campaign to work around that.

EX: A band that works for the local/national thieves guild.
EX: A group of individuals set out to destroy a beloved leader, who is secretly worse than any of them and has destroyed each of the characters lives some how.
EX: If you have a group that want pure anarchy put them in an evil totalitarian regime that doesn't tolerate anything like that, turning them into freedom fighters. Their enemies are just as viscous and have more resources, so they players need to be smart unless they want a one shot.

For an evil party game to be successful a level of trust needs to be baked into the group. Just because you’re evil doesn’t mean you screw over each other at every opportunity. Honor among thieves and all that. Think about how entire evil monster societies thrive without total chaos, surely a party of 5 can find a way.

Corporations are evil.

Therefore we must assume a corporate structure as baddies.

I have played a lot of evil characters over the years (no one who played with me is shocked, I know). But that was also because I was molded by my experience. In the long-long ago when I was a teenager my first ttrpg was Earthdawn (which I still play today irl and was Shadowrun's Fantasy counterpart from the same publisher). Earthdawn is a post-apocalyptic fantasy setting where xp is replaced with 'legend points' as the power of the characters is tied to collective belief in them (very interesting magic system btw). But it's post apocalyptic fantasy, with the Galactic Theran Empire as one major antagonist, and literal Lovecraftian horror the other, and from there it's great dragon plots, racial division, slavery and whatnot that adds the spice to the world. Add to that the politics of everyone crawling out of the bunkers after the magical apocalypse and you got a lovely setting in which survival often becomes before being nice. So waaay back in 1st edition, there was a quote from the dwarven king that goes a little like: "We call these adventurers heroes, in the hope that they become heroes." (meaning the PC's). And while it's perfectly possible to play nice, kind characters, there's certainly no discouragement to play a raider, a thief or a mad god worshipping loonie.

With that setting as the foundation for my roleplay experience, I naturally also dabbled in D&D. But to be honest I was never too impressed with the system, as it was 98% focused on various types of dungeon crawls in the earlier editions, at least in the games I played in. In D&D I also feel that there is much less foundation to play an evil character, and less motivation for an evil player character to cooperate with the other pc's. That meant it was really up to the player to ensure that while playing an evil character, you didn't kick the rest of the party in the shins. I currently play an evil character in one of Alordis' games where the pc's are in a mercenary company. I ensure I don't antagonize the other players by having my character (an evil dwarf warlock dedicated to Khorne the local god of bloodshed) direct his malice outwards, towards whatever the DM kindly tosses us to turn into mincemeat, and limit the harm to the other pc's to an occasional barbed comment when they get too sickeningly goody-goody.

Then I moved to World of Darkness (primarily Vampire the Masquerade) and Warhammer 40K (mostly Rogue Trader and Dark Heresy, although I tried most of the variants over the years) and I don't think it requires explaining that in games where you play literal monsters or as the nasty brother of the Galactic Empire you are, in fact, the baddy. Those systems also encourage cooperation through overarching shared goals or outside threats that has the pc's cooperate.

Always the biggest challenge remains to have players who understand the nuance of playing an evil character cooperatively. Lone wolves are troublesome from the start. You need players and characters that, while evil, will not do serious harm to party cohesion.

The Prince is required reading.