"Am I the only find finding it a bit creepy people are having graves of their loved ones dug up so they can be buried with them?"
"Hell, when I die now I want to be buried with some guy I've never met."
"When I die now my will is gonna specify "If any lonely people want to be buried with someone, my grave has plenty of room."
- 86. Final Fantasy Seven was really my first exposure to roleplaying games. I remember thinking how awesome Vincent (dark mysterious guy wearing alot of black and red). However, this is because I was very young at the time and mistook "dark and mysterious" for "deep and cool", a very easy mistake to make. I outgrew it. Apparently, from what I've seen on the internet, I'm the only person to outgrow this.
Well, I might as well get around to writing a post I said I'd write a while back.
Why I want to, one day, be involved in an evil-based Pen and Paper roleplaying game.
For starters, it avoids some of the basic, all-too-common aspects of the roleplaying campaign.
1. The characters are always reactive, rather then proactive.
This is a simple fact involved in the majority of good-based storytelling. In general, unless the bad guys are already in power, the villains are trying to upset the status quo in a manner that'll affect most people negatively, and so the heroes are trying to stop that from occuring. To stop that they have to react to the villain's movements.
In an evil game, since the main characters ARE the ones trying to change the status quo, meaning the players need to think about how they'll accomplish their goals, rather then how they can interfere with the opposing NPCs plan. This requires far more player planning and roleplaying then simple "I charge at the enemy and stab them."
2. "You all meet in a tavern and decide to adventure together".
While this can be a good thing, that 'good' characters are far more likely to work together for the general good, since it means that the players are just working together, I prefer the alternative. The players sitting down pre-game and working out why their evil characters would be working together, with knowledge of what their end goal will be. This leads to more developed character interaction, plus can 'force' a bit more Roleplay out of people.
3. No "(alignment) for (alignment)'s sake" possible.
Something that always bugs me is when people have "good for good's sake" characters. It just seems so one dimensional.
If you try that in an evil campaign, it just doesn't work since they'll screw up plans, betray for the sake of betrayal, and generally get their party members so pissed off they'll be killed in their sleep. This forces them to put some consideration in the characters, go a bit further then "chaotic stupid". Maybe they're an amoral, sociopathic mercenary fighting for the big payday? Maybe they're a follower of (insert power here) who has loyalty to the cause so engrained in them (the cause being represented by another player here, who has a higher ranking in said-cause) they will follow to the death. Just something MORE INTERESTING.
4. Genuine challenge
The old saying goes "it's alot easier to rip down then to build up", but that doesn't mean it's easy to rip down, either. Think about it, take your basic generic medieval fantasy kingdom, consider the infrastructure and power system in place. Think about how tough it would be to devolve that into chaos, which can get even harder depending on your reasons for doing so.
A) Remove them as a millitary power, so their ally can be invaded. For this you need to either remove their armies as a force (not easy) or somehow manipulate things so that the place erupts in relatively evenly matched civil war.
B) Cause a certain amount of suffering for arcane reasons. You would need immense backup to somehow manage to get an external force to cause the suffering needed, which involves getting this backup on your side. Plus you'd still have to weaken things internally in order to get it to a degree your ally would be willing to assault a whole kingdom.
C) Attempted power coup. Now not only are you trying to weaken the king's powerbase, you're trying to build your own one up. This means you have to weaken the guy in charge, without weaking the kingdom you're trying to overtake too much.
And those are just SOME of the reasons the villains/main characters may be trying to assault the kingdom.
Come on, read all that and try to tell me it wouldn't be an awesome evil campaign.
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