evil PCs

Come on i could totally see it

Evil PCs

Right, since I Still haven’t gotten my computer back, and editing isn’t done, lets talk about of the more misunderstood issues of D&D, evil PCs, or evil parties. Now, almost all of the official D&D material condemn the very idea of evil PCs, and are strongly against the very idea of it. 4^th edition pretty much out right forbids it (insert one of my many criticism of 4E here), and while none of the other editions go that far, they are all strongly opposed to the idea. Now, this prejudice has two basic arguments behind it, and both of them are fairly justified. The first one is that people don’t know how to play evil. And, while I think this is a fallacy, it has some basic logic behind it. I know that the first evil characters in my games simply acted psychotic, randomly killing NPCs, kidnapping women at the various inns, and randomly betraying the main party. You know, basically Belkar in Order of the Stick, but not as a comedic character. And when you get an party of Evil PCs, you get a band of psychotic armed warriors pillaging, raping and murdering everything that gets in there path…a bit like General Santa Anna actually, but less classy (I’d say Andrew Jackson in Florida, but I make fun of him a lot, and his ghost is eventually going to beat me to a pulp). People just play evil with wild abandon and go crazy, playing evil people so ridiculously over the top that they resemble villains from children’s cartoons (I’d reference Captain Planet, but then it would seem like I’m ripping off Yahtzee….wait) rather than legitimately evil people. Now as I said, this is generally logical, but I still think it is a fallacy that evil parties don’t work because they inevitable give way to backstabbing and infighting. Now I think that evil parties have that option open to them, but if you think about it, psychotic evil people aren’t actually good representation of evil. A truly evil person would pretend to be good and use that to take power. I mean, one of my few complaints about the otherwise amazing Baldur’s Gate series is that evil characters will leave your party if your group’s reputation got to high. It didn’t make sense, why would evil people object to getting discount prices and being declared heroes by the common people. But more upon this later.

The second main argument against evil parties is that the game is designed for heroic fantasy, with good guys defeating the forces of evil and helping people across the world. Considering the sheer depths of evil that exist within the game, demons, devils, evil gods, and the depravity that they can steep to, it is really hard to sympathize with them, and the feeling that good guys should go out and put them down is natural. And I’m not saying that the truly evil creatures should be removed, on the contrary, I like how the supernatural forms of evil are utterly inhuman, because it provides some cool contrasts to humanity, people get use to the truly vile evil, that they ignore the more “tone down” evil, the evil of normal men and women. Against the truly evil creatures, the idea of supporting evil characters seems…revolting and justifiable so. Playing a servant of hell who is determined to destroy all humanity and devote of goodness isn’t really that cool, its…icky. I mean, when ever I played the villain in very early parties, I just felt, well, ill trying to be evil. Murdering innocents for fun, hurting people for its own sake, and destroying the forces of good, its hard to feel good with yourself. Maybe this is just me, but I just found the “typical” evil, approach, IE fighting against good the way good fights against evil, just sickening. Destroying a village of innocents, desecrating a temple to a good god, slaying good heroes, it didn’t make me feel cool or empowered it made me feel…wrong. But that was the only way to play evil characters right, because evil has to be in opposition to good. So the idea of playing evil is not only dysfunctional, its disturbing right?

It wasn’t until later that I realized it is very narrow minded to a simply assume that evil was as polite and understanding to manifest just as open attackers of all things good and decent. Because, if you haven’t noticed by my articles on the subject, being good is tough. There is a pretty high standard set, especially if you consider real life morality and bring the alignments of historical figures/cultures into play, good is a pretty high standard, one which people can slip easily. A man can be evil for assassinating political rivals, killing civilians in time of war, torturing terrorists for information (hey, no subtly political jab there…nope). So, while the extreme and truly dark evil still exists in D&D, the more “human” way of playing evil characters exist. I’ve always been a fan of flawed characters, or villain protagonists, as long as it is clear that the characters are in fact flawed, and not being glorified. Within the elements of Role playing game, playing flawed and not perfect characters is something that I think is perfectly workable. Playing as a roman legionnaire, a Viking warrior, Spanish conqueror, or a pirate are all interesting concepts, but most of those are evil because they are products of their culture. But they can still have honor, friends, loved ones, and a sense of duty.

Even with more openly evil/amoral PCs, there is nothing that keeps the group from being friendly with each other, or even having some ethics. Darken (webcomic) is a very good example of this. Even if the character are all tragic heroes, a sense of comradely and personal loyalty. Hell, if you think about it, most real life mercenaries were (and are) pretty dark folk, but they get along with each other, Evil Adventures are basically just bandits with shiny stuff. Evil characters aren’t by default psychopaths and won’t pathologically murder each other, through the option to do is often what keeps DMs from encouraging it. Here is the thing through, the reason why people play evil immaturely is that it is the only way we are told evil functions. In a moral system as strict as D&D, evil is a very broad category, but D&D always shows evil as nothing more than psychopathic. Now I’m not saying that Evil needs to be show more positively, it is evil for a reason, but I do feel like the complexity of evil needs to be shown. It isn’t just for the serial killers and sociopaths, it is where all of the fallen dwell, from those who are simply not particularly ethical, such as dubious sellswords, to misguided warriors, to simply the ignorant. Nobody in real life is wholly evil.

From

EE