I think this discussion highlights one of the problems with the way D&D handles alignment.  Evil is always taken to the extreme (the demonic, all tainting or conquering force), when by their definition, many modern movie heroes would be villains.  People like John Wick, or Denzel Washington's character in Man on fire, or the Punisher, maybe even James Bond, or any other hero that will indiscriminately kill to accomplish his goal, even if that goal is to protect someone or something (like a country or ideal).  According to the alignments, that makes them evil, even if their ultimate goal seems altruistic.
The Eberron setting does this a little better, with characters like King Kaius who are incredibly patriotic, but when push comes to shove, will do anything to complete their own agendas.
The reason this becomes problematic is when that real world sense of moral ambiguity combines with stuff like a Paladin's sense evil or alignment specific magic.  They clash extremely, especially when you think about the fact that MOST people are selfish, and would be vulnerable to alignment specific magic.  Lawful good would be a relative rarity.
But a group of players could go a long way with that, if the distinction of evil and crazy evil was clear.  A group of patriotic soldiers fighting for Karnath, or a group of Pharlann assassins and spies could very well all be evil, yet cooperate fully and work with friendship to achieve their goal.  an evil character can have restraint, and a group of players could get into some dastardly thing and never turn on one another, if they have an ideal or close sense of camaraderie that connects them.

I think the problem with dnd alignment is more the player's expectations than the rules. According to the rules, an evil person harms others for pleasure or profit, but players tend to always assume the absolute worst of evil and assume that evil kills enjoys killing.

They also assume lawful is about legality, which is also false (well, there is conflicting implications in different places of the rules, but still, it is  not necessarily about legality)

Truthfully, I would recommend clarifying with the group a more defined concept of good vs evil and law vs chaos before starting.

Or like me, create a new alignment system that can still be used with alignment spells (only slightly altered).

I ran two groups of players, one group of "good" guys, and another group who were working with a devil lord to create his own realm on Oerth. I used my own variation of alignment that was deed based, as in the D&D book it says it is evil to murder only your own alignment (nope!).

So the players did not know this. And the "good" guys ended up torturing soldiers from the "evil" army to get a location of their main base. This of course proceeded for quite a while, forcing me to name my NPCs ("My name is Goblin number 3! They don't give us names arrgghh!") but never giving them any real info.

While the bad guys, spent most of their time finding 1000 innocent souls to pay for the boons the devil had given them to rule the world. So they ended up being pretty evil, and the good guys were really just neutral. But the fight at the end was pretty epic and worth all the work.

Made me give NPCs names too, I use this printout (even for modern games) of names from A to Z thats about 20 pages long. Comes in real handy for real-life games.

I guess in my opinion, the books lend themselves to the more extreme alignment interpretations, even though they don't explicitly say they are all that way.  When you lump all evil into one big bag, from selfish thieves to incarnate evil deities, it's hard to really focus on the more realistically human aspects.  Combine that with "set" alignments for races and creatures, makes it feel like evil is the extreme, magical, destructive force, not simple human pettiness. I agree they both fit the definition, but the game sort of lends itself to the extremes.

But I agree that as long as there is an understanding between the dm and the players, you can interpret alignment however best fits the goals of your game.  Technically Conan would be pretty close to evil, and he i the very archetype for many heroic adventures.  So trying to do something similar shouldn't be impossible.

I'm not going to start up the debate on D&D alignment.  I'll just state that I'm no where near in agreement with it.

If you're going to do an evil campaign, do it so that the characters aren't "evil".  Look at movies like Swordfish.  The 'bad guys' in that movie did some truly evil things, but they did them in pursuit of good goals.  You need to have a set reason for why the characters do what they do, both personally and 'professionally'.

PvP campaigns really should shy away from the 'good guys' vs. the 'bad guys' mentality.  Don't make it "cops vs. crooks" make it oppressive cops vs. crooks trying to support their families.  Make both sides 'the good guys'.

Back to the characters themselves, give the evil character a reason for the evil.  Heck, even our modern day terrorists see themselves as the good guys.  Very, VERY few people look at themselves as evil.

Thieves:  They deserve the things they steal because they were (or are) denied the opportunities presented to others.  Maybe they are stealing for a greater cause.

Killers:  Are they killing for personal or professional reasons?  Personal, maybe these people deserve to die for other things they did.  Same professionally.  Maybe killing these people accomplishes a greater good?

Manipulators:  Are they manipulating to perform a greater good?

You get the idea.

Yeah, I'm... not really a fan of alignments, to say the least. I'll leave it at that. What inspired this thread wasn't any D&D-related thing anyway, I guess I just used the term 'Chaotic Stupid' in the OP because that's a common fixture in so many of those bad experience stories. Basically, I like gray morality and conflicting ideologies more than any kind of black vs. white-style divide. Good and evil isn't straight up hard-coded; we live in a world with crazy nuance, and I think it's fun to explore that.

I think I mostly just needed some kind of assurance that these kind of games are possible, and it's not all super edgy tryhard or lolwacky random violence kind of stuff. It's great to see that people have had good experiences! Even though the person who posted it said they didn't know if it applied, I really liked the Star Wars Empire war criminals example. More stuff like that would be great, especially considering what prompted me to post this thread in the first place was the RL friends I play with approaching me about a potential cyberpunk game and saying (paraphrased) "Look, we basically want to try playing the freak show philosophy-spouting Metal Gear gimmick bosses instead of the mostly-good guys like Snake or Raiden or whatever."

Whoever mentioned above that it all relies on the maturity of your players is definitely right. Regardless of how you tackle it, if you're going into a game featuring dark or complex themes and the group doesn't have the sensitivity and maturity to handle it properly, it just won't work out and things'll probably get gross, creepy, or weird. Or dumb. So basically, establish ground rules and make sure you have mature players. That seems like the first, and most important step.

Another thing that I wonder about is the matter of sympathy, as in the sympathy you have for the character. Whether they're a heroic figure or the biggest scumbag ever, being a player character basically puts someone in the protagonist role. Protagonists tend to have the grit, the right stuff to succeed when they set their mind to it. Sooo... does a villain lose their appeal when their worst machinations aren't stopped by a plucky hero in the nick of the time, and they actually win? One thing to counter this that you see in a lot of media starring anti-hero/outright villain characters is the "we're bad, but they're worse" shtick. It's an easy solution, I guess.

Cyberpunk campaigns are almost certainly into the realm of "villainous campaigns", heck you're playing thieves who almost certainly end up murdering in the process of the theft.  (And that is ignoring the usually hundreds of other crimes they commit just getting to the START of the caper.)

But they aren't (usually) approached as evil campaigns.  The runners (I'm going to use Shadowrun terms because it's the game I'm most familiar with), almost invariably have redeeming qualities, people they care about, causes they care about, normal(ish) hobbies, etc.  They are PEOPLE.  Though if you looked at at from a strictly out of genre, non-biased point of view - it is a villain campaign.  These people are against the establishment, robbing, murdering, and committing numerous other crimes for their own (usually monetary) benefit.  Heck, they aren't even doing it for a cause they believe in, they are doing it to make a buck.

YOU personally, how would you feel if you heard about a small group of people that broke into IBM headquarters last night to steal the latest processor chip prototype.  They killed 15 guards, a few other employees, 3 cops, caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damage all for each one of the perps to make 50 grand each?  I bet most of us would consider them to be quite evil people.

It's all about perspective and what the game is about and how you approach it.  You can play all sorts of "bad guy" campaigns.  Do you want to play the type where they don't even LOOK at it like they are being the bad guys?  Do you want to play the type where you are playing a truly bent and disturbed person?  Do you want to play the type where you are committing numerous atrocities but for the right reasons?  There are SOOOO many ways to do it.

Please don't take any D&D evil campaign experiences as how they work in other game systems or groups.  D&D tends to force a very skewed viewpoint onto players and that tends to come out in play, especially in evil campaigns.

In reply to gladiusdei (msg # 9):

 And vice-versa... Anyone else notice that the Evil Terrorist Middle Eastern Folk in the gloriously cheesy True Lies had a Very small number of nukes... And were specifically going to detonate the first on an uninhabited island as a warning rather than starting with say, Miami?

 They were evil - they were fighting Arnie (that always means you're evil) - but they had a goal they wanted and there was a line they weren't willing to cross without need... And that's where the interesting parts of evil come from; Not what you will do, but what you won't. Hans Gruber from Die Hard was a total damn' monster - happy to hide in a sea of body parts if that earned him one more minute of delay in the police investigation (even if his plan was insane) - but absolutely capable of inspiring family loyalty, building a competent team of professionals willing to work readily with him and carry out a complex plan without randomly setting fire to that orphanage that just attacked him; If your villain can't manage to achieve some of these things, then maybe playing with others isn't for you?

 I've taken part in a couple of evil games now - there was a memorable Palladium one (which has an interesting alignment system but one that gets half-way to being good, then stops) where a whole bunch of evil folks worked together and cooperated while one lunatic set about crapping in the street and murdering people in bars (thus crashing the campaign), a couple of decent D&D ones where despite what the alignment system might be read as by some, the majority of characters were defined by the things they would and would not do rather than 'for the evulz' and were willing to deal with resistance or protest or even humiliation if it came in keeping with the group dynamic established early on. Haven't managed to  see a good Sabbat game yet, but I think that might be an anomaly because I'm damn' sure one could be run.

 D&D, Shadowrun, Werewolf? Doesn't matter. There are as many flavours of villain games as hero ones, they just take a little more work and a touch more GM oversight in character generation than classic campaigns. If someone can't give you a couple of good reasons their character'd work with a group towards some useful goals and put up with some crap to do so then politely inform them they need to come up with some.

In reply to girl in green (msg # 14):

I think one of the tricks for playing an enjoyable villainous campaign is accepting the premise that very often, 'good' and 'evil' are arbitrary labels slapped on people, groups, and actions by either their opposition or by outside groups...when you get to the actual heart of the matter, for most individuals, they are the hero of their own story.  Terrorists are generally accepted as evil by most of the world, for instance...but they feel that they're involved in a righteous cause that demands extreme sacrifices.  They don't envision themselves as evil (at least, I don't imagine they do.)

Cyberpunk/Shadowrun characters, especially, fall in this category...they rarely, if ever, see themselves as evil, they're the heroes...unless you work for one of the megacorps they're attacking, in which case they're pestilent vermin that need to be exterminated.  So, especially in role-playing games, 'evil' and 'villain' are a matter of perspective.

I agree with the caveat that this is mostly an interpretation mistake. In the books, it states that Neutral Evil is specifically someone who "is more interested in personal gain than helping others'. In truth, I think that describes me in real life. I'm somewhat greedy (yeah I'm a bad guy whatever >;p), but that being said, I'm not likely to donate money I worked hard to make, because I'm more interested in what I can use it for. That by definition of D&D terms makes me neutral evil.

Lawful evil on the same regard is someone who is out to benefit themselves, but doesn't go out and do crazy things to do it. A crooked cop for instance, who uses the law to his advantage, but doesn't /TECHNICALLY/ break it, might be considered Lawful evil.

Chaotic evil is where the hardest translation comes from, because technically this /COULD/ mean crazy insane murder machine, but it could also just mean someone who's mostly unpredictable, and often will disregard other people's well being. A typical thug or bully could be classified in the truest form as a Chaotic evil person, even if they never physically harm anyone. This is because there's no purpose behind them doing harmful things, but even if they're not doing overtly harmful things, it's still negative toward others for their own fun/self-esteem/etc...

Chaotic evil?  Two-Face, in some of his earlier comic-book incarnations.  He'd pull a caper, flip a coin, and if it came up heads, he'd turn around and donate the money to a charity instead of keeping it for himself.  If he was about to shoot someone, he'd flip a coin...if it came up heads, he'd let them go.  At any given time, you couldn't predict the end result of the crime he was committing (except to say that flipping the coin would decide it).

I think the qualification of Chaotic Evil as 'doing stuff for no reason except their personal gain' (not to attack the definition above, because it's one I commonly hear from a variety of sources) doesn't feel remotely realistic to me.  There's ALWAYS a reason for what we do...it's just a question of whether or not that reason is accepted as valid by society, or even recognized.  If people did stuff for no reason, the whole concept of criminal profiling would be useless.  Chaotic characters would be harder to profile, granted...but there's still a reason for what they're doing (if they're being played well, at least).

All that being said...I'm among the players that tend to steer away from games that use clearly delineated alignments, because I don't know very many people who live a specific alignment all the time.  Generally speaking, sometimes we're Lawful, sometimes we're Chaotic, I think most of us are Good most of the time but we're prone to moments of Neutral or even Evil...and in many cases, things like 'good' and 'evil' are (as mentioned in my last post) as much a matter of perspective as they are any sort of arbitrary standard.  As such, I tend to like games where you just play the character, and the other players can make their own determination about how good or evil the character is.

Umm, personal gain is a reason. I would dare say that it is likely the most common reason for doing something.

You should check out various alignment systems though. Not all suffer these issues. And a good alignment system can be useful.

I.E. in my system I adapted a concept I read, so alignments are based on the psychological motivations and karma. The karma aspect is a simple number and it is affected by single objective factor, who gets hurt for who's benefit, and how much they get hurt. Says nothing about morality, but one might very well make moral judgments based on these.

I have yet to see any type of alignment system that is strict enough to show a use, yet open enough to to handle all (or even most) of the variations that people have.

I for one am normally a very kind, open person.  Numerous times I've given my last dollar to a homeless person because I just had the feeling they needed it.  I hold the door open for people, will stop to help anybody, I tend to stand up for the underdog no matter what, just almost invariably good.

Put me in the right situation, I could happily commit heinous acts with a smile on my face and without a trace of remorse.

In reply to pfarland (msg # 21):

You sound like True Neutral to me.  :)

I think D&D alignment system works for the type of games the system is aimed for, I just think most players don't really want to abide by it.


I think White wolf's morality system works fairly well.  And, if it seems too restrictive, you can modify it pretty easily.

But pfarland's comments kind of show that most people aren't as "good" as they would want themselves to be labelled.  And why sticking to a good alignment is a difficult thing, when faced with trauma and horrible situations.  Which I think is the idea.

True Neutral, hell no.  My overall motives are mostly good.

As for what gladiusdei said, Yes, just about anyone would do bad things in terrible situations, but I'm not even talking about that.

You give me a decision such as kill a thousand innocent people and get the cure for cancer, I wouldn't even miss a heartbeat answering yes.  Something like that where I see a greater good, those kinds of acts.

And in regards to most people not being as good as they want to be labeled, you are correct.  For myself, I've never given a damn what people think of me.  I follow what I believe to be right, I tell the truth unless the truth does more harm than good, and do what is necessary.  If people sanctify me, vilify me, or just ignore me for it all I could care less.

That is why I suggested alignment based on motivation.

Good and evil are subjective, the motivations are much less so, and the karma aspect is objective as well.

When I ran across these questions when working on my own home brew game, i began working on a Deed based alignment system. Each  of the four alignments had five or so deeds I had attributed to each belief system with a sort of point based system (the points affected different factors in the game world).

I have since discarded that idea in favor of a Moral Code system, which gave an in-game interaction bonus. Each code has things a person of that moral belief would and would not do in a given circumstance. Performing "negative" deeds invoked a Sanity check in my system, representing the stress felt for performing such deeds. Horribly failing these Sanity checks resulted in said person becoming "dishonored," in that everyone in the game world would just "feel" that those people were not trust worthy.

Anyway, my whole lecturing post boils down to a few simple facts that people have already stated. Alignment/Moral Standing is not just a title, and its nigh impossible to categorize morality and in both system i have run across players who "don't fit the mold" given and will fight me on every step whether their character is truly good or evil.

What you as a GM has to do is set forth your own moral system, and never tell the players what is up. Hint at them through the game world if said character is considered good or bad with npcs they interact with. As a GM I have no problem with players acting out horrible acts through the players, this is supposed to be a medium where we can explore these things without actually performing them in real life.

However if your players keep playing that same psycho killer, you may have a problem lol. Anyway I probably just rehashed what everyone else in this thread said, I did not read all the posts so I apologize if I'm steal thunder from someone.

I'm certain that, for some people, systematized alignments work out fine.  And if you like them and they work for you, great.  More power to you.

The majority of games I've been in have chucked the whole question of some kind of codified alignment.  You play the character.  If the character would do evil things in the situation in which you find yourself, then evil things happen...but you are not constrained to choose them because of some entry on your character sheet.  Character alignment, such as it is in those games, is dictated by the character's personality and motivations.  And, yes, sometimes good guys do bad things, and vice versa...but the question is always, "Would my character really do this?" rather than "Does this fit my character's alignment?"

It feels much more natural and comfortable to me.  And in spite of all the arguments in favor of codified alignments (and I've heard most, if not all, of them), I'll always prefer to play my characters in this way.  Even when I was still playing D&D, the only time the question of alignment came up was during character creation...for the rest of the game, the GM pretty much skipped the issue completely because it was just another encumbrance to the smooth flow of the game (in our opinions).

Like I said, if they work for you, use them.  If they don't?  Skip it.  I'm not a purist when it comes to realism in my gaming...but I don't know anyone who actually walks around in real life saying, "I'm Lawful Good...I can't do that."

Yes actually. I have. (A few times I might add.)

My favorite though, was not an Evil Campaign, but one where I played an evil character in a GOOD campaign. It's a long story, but soooo worth it.

A long time ago (back in the hay-day of 3.5) my friends and I were playing a long-running campaign. Standard D&D. We had your typical tree-hugging Druid, a chaotic Rogue (mostly a good guy), a Paladin of Heironeous, a "battle-field control" type Wizard... and me.. a Cleric of "Pelor".

The reality of the situation was, I was a cleric of Nerull in disguise (Pestilence and Trickery domains). I had a story (and a pretty believable one, both IC and OoC), of why I did anything remotely suspicious.

"A farmer saved my life a long time ago, gave me this scythe to defend myself. I keep it as a reminder that no man is an island unto himself."

"I cast disguise self from 'a scroll'..."

I carried tons of potions of nondetection, misdirection, undetectable alignment, etc., etc. (just in case).

There was this one incident, where we were in a frontier type town, being harassed by hobgoblins and bugbears. I, being the most diplomatically inclined (maxing Bluff, Intimidate and Diplomacy for my character was a survival trait really), was elected by the rest of the party to go talk to their leaders, to try and find a peaceful solution. Unbeknownst to the party, I was their leader. I played both sides of this little fiasco for awhile. I almost even had convinced my own party that the townsfolk were poisoning their own well. Unfortunately for me, (and unknown to me), the druid wild-shaped and was secretly following me one night "for safety" as I went to meet with my bugbear/hobgoblin minions, and he found out everything! Boy was he shocked. So, instead of heading straight to the party to tell them, he confronted me. I slit his throat, didn't even blink an eye. Then I took his dead body to a cave, and rezzed him as an intelligent undead. And spent the next 3 days barricaded in a cave with him explaining to him that if he told anyone who I really was, I'd out him as an undead, and blame all of the town's troubles on him. It worked out perfectly because I needed to spend 3 days alone with an intelligent undead for the True Necromancer prestige class I was trying to go for.

I played this character (successfully) for 3 years in real life, every Saturday. No one (except for the druid, who "unfortunately died at the hands of the bugbears while I tried to save him") ever found out...

End-Game climax comes along, they FINALLY get to fight the End-Game BBEG, get into his throne room, it's empty except for a crown on his throne, I walk up to the crown, pick it up, and say "Hmm, this isn't right." Turn to the party, smile, put the crown on and say "There, that's better. Come get some." Jaws dropped. It was great.

It's fantastic when you can genuinely surprise your friends like that... I killed all of them. (though the Paladin did get me with his dying blow as well).

They were so amazed I could pull off the ruse for so long (both in and out of game), they weren't even mad when I TPK'ed them.

I'll chime in here.

I ran an Orc game for a little while on this site. I challenged the players to not consider the Orcs as "evil" but as more of a culture. A culture that prizes horses, and strength as a rule, as well as skill with a bow, etc.

I also made sure that the entire campaign was tilted to the Orcs point of view. So, the humans encountered were often times hostile and kinda mean, really.  Sometimes attacking for no real (apparent) reason. I also added in little wrinkles that forced the players to decide how "evil" they wanted to be.  During one encounter, they took a traveling human party's horses from a wagon (it was 6 Orcs vrs 2 visible Human Males), but chose not to kill the humans.  There was almost a confrontation, but it became apparent that children & women were in the back of the wagon & I thought the players did a good job of RPing a disgust for the human men even considering a fight with the children & women nearby. Culturally, the orcs found it contemptible & not "a warriors way". Good stuff.

But then a player got banned (the leader- ofcourse) and the whole game crashed to a halt. :)

My point is: if you can make the game less about "being evil" and more about cultural or personal motivations for behaviors that might be interpreted as evil you can get some good gaming.

That was the entire notion behind the all-Imperial Star Wars group that I mentioned.  We--the players--knew that we were playing bad guys.  Our characters, however, saw themselves as engaging in some distasteful activities in order to facilitate a greater good...the planets they were sent to already had a lot of corruption and oppression in place, they just came in and shook stuff up so that the way was open for the Empire to come in and remove those corrupt leaders and replace them with fair-minded, Imperial personnel.  *grin*

It wouldn't have been anywhere near as entertaining to play just outright villains.  I'm a firm believer in the notion of every good villain being the hero, in his own mind.

That sounds awesome. Ever thought about resurrecting it?

On the idea that all PC villains need to be slightly deluded and/or sympathetic from a certain perspective to work, I have to disagree.Not to say that that doesn't make an interesting story and can be a good way to go, but a truly villainous group can work at times with the right players.

Perhaps the most interesting game I was ever in was a 2nd Ed. Ad&D pirate game in which the characters were just vile, awful, greedy, violent people and things. Wholly unsympathetic in every way. The crew had personal grievances which often ended violently, even fatally. We had about 7-8 players a week and went through probably 50-70 characters in 15 weeks or so, at least 80% of which were murdered by other PC's. The two things that held it together I think, were the fact being in the same boat, both literally and figuratively, kept some cohesiveness to the story, and to the sense of being part of a group . Also we had an awesome captain, the one player who never lost a character. He was just a human rogue on a ship with a powerful necromancer, a minotaur that had a shoulder-wielded cannon, a minor demon, A High Priestess of Tiamat and other equally dangerous and treacherous officers, but he was brilliant.
This message was last edited by the user at 00:18, Tue 16 Dec 2014.

The vast majority of my characters in any game I play are some flavor of evil, unpleasant, or ruthless. I've found I enjoy them, and I have rarely ever had any complaints from other players about them. Many of my 'evil' characters have been considered to be largely goodguys by all observers, GM's who knew the characters' real reasons and motivations excepted, and many of those characters have done some truly heinous things including torture and genocide, in the name of accomplishing their goals.