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Old 10-06-2019, 12:05 AM   #11
William
 
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Default Re: Evil Player characters/PvP games

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
Do you want to portray a cleaned up historical past where nothing that offends our sensibilities ever happened? Or to find the past repugnant and not play any campaign set in it? Or do you want to portray the past as it was and ask your players to adopt its sensibilities for their characters? Or do you want some balance among those three?
I suppose many people do aim for the latter. I dare say that the number of player characters in sword-and-sandal campaigns who happen to have some plausible moral objection to slavery, personally, certainly to ever owning one themselves, is a much higher percentage than the actual number of abolitionists in ancient Greece or Rome. Just as our far-traveling characters are probably considerably cleaner in their personal habits than your average historical frontiersman or explorer, with a far smaller incidence of tooth decay, they probably are rather more modern in their outlook simply because we're comfortable with that. (And feel that we can muster reasonable arguments for being so, even in character, of course.)

I've done both myself. Had one Planescape character who, late in the campaign, was fair on his way to starting a sect with his cross-faction, multi-planar abolitionist movement, and I was quite proud of it. On the other hand I remember a short stint in Roma Arcana where one operative took on an identity as a slave and another, a woman, had to travel around with another agent as a tutor; as outsiders to the culture we could express contrary opinions among ourselves, of course, but we went about our primary task in the worldline and none of us went around rabble-rousing the oppressed classes.

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PvP, however, I'm much starker on. Hate hate hate it. I play RPGs precisely because they're cooperative entertainment. If I wanted to work at cross-purposes to a fellow player there are any number of other sorts of games I can play. When I'm RPing I like to be part of a team. With some independent ambitions, sure, but cross-purposes? No thank you.
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Old 10-07-2019, 07:18 PM   #12
jason taylor
 
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Default Re: Evil Player characters/PvP games

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Yeah, but there are certain disadvantages that... take Sadism for instance. I have difficulty seeing someone who actively likes torturing others as a hero or even as a protagonist. People who advocate for genocide.
Byron Henry served under a captain in War and Remembrance who pretty obviously had genocidal urges. Such situations of course can be arranged by making him an NPC.

It is reasonably common in modern cop shows to make police brutality look like a high school prank and accompany it with lots of black humor. It is to be honest, amusing when well done but more corrupting to viewers than the mere fact of violence.
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Old 10-07-2019, 07:23 PM   #13
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Default Re: Evil Player characters/PvP games

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post

Do you want to portray a cleaned up historical past where nothing that offends our sensibilities ever happened? Or to find the past repugnant and not play any campaign set in it? Or do you want to portray the past as it was and ask your players to adopt its sensibilities for their characters? Or do you want some balance among those three?
In The Robe the only slaves the hero's family is shown keeping are pampered luxury slaves rather than field grunts. Demetrius is a batman for the hero.
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Old 10-08-2019, 08:38 AM   #14
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Default Re: Evil Player characters/PvP games

One of the reasons I like GURPS is that it doesn't do character alignment. There are no "good" or "evil" characters - although characters may have traits that can be defined as either - and as has already been pointed out, these can be highly subject to values dissonance.

As to PvP - I think it comes down to your players. If you have a KoTD or Binder of Shame style group of backstabbers then it quickly becomes unbearable, but there may be times when immersion and good roleplaying might require PCs to draw a blade on one another. I suspect the trick is not to play with people who will disrupt the game for lolz.
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Old 10-08-2019, 11:34 AM   #15
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Default Re: Evil Player characters/PvP games

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In D&D, nobody plays Chaotic Evil,
The more I think about D&D Alignment the more I come to the conclusion that virtually every PC is Chaotic Evil and in denial. They murder sentient races without concern for the survival of their family or even their culture. They break into homes, steal goods. Very rarely do any of them make an attempt to talk things out with orks of goblins. That's decidedly evil. They're also not champions of law. Even the best of paladins support and aid mobs of dangerous thugs who's activities are only helpful to society to the extent of battling the chaos that stands in the way of civilization. Most adventurers aren't people who could be of real help to anyone else in society except as a cautionary tale, not teachers, not builders, not artists. They're killers who've found a less-damaging outlet for their skills. That's Chaotic.
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Old 10-08-2019, 12:01 PM   #16
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Default Re: Evil Player characters/PvP games

Gaming groups like evil players when the evil is done well. When one player is pursuing a goal that is out of alignment with the rest of the group and they're smart enough to trick the other players into doing their bidding it's bleeding cool, even for the players who are duped. It's cool because you're a player in a story that's cool. It doesn't matter if your goodly priests has fooled the players into collecting artifacts that will allow him to summon his dark master or if the quiet charitable rogue in the party lulls everyone else into a false sense of security swaps the huge take of treasure from the dungeon with sacks of rocks and sneaks off with the coins to help rebuild the orphanage in town, putting their names on it's plaque. However there's a number of things that are needed for this story to go well.

Evil can't be dumb. It can't be having a lark. It can't be using the player when a much easier method is available. It can't be pursuing a goal that's ultimately disappointingly dull. The "Evil" character in the group has to have a detailed plan of how they'll manipulate the other characters into protecting them or overcoming obstacles for them and the timetable for that plan has to be relevant.

Evil's plan should be compromised. Someone who knows the "evil" player should intentionally or unintentionally pose a risk of exposing them. An unexpected detail of their hiding plan should become exposed. This is both to give the players a chance to catch their betrayer and also to make the "Evil" character work for it. In fact ideally these little struggles to expose and cover-up should be the extent of the PVP in the game. It makes no sense for an evil person to infiltrate a group only to risk making enemies by attacking them. it would make much more sense to quietly depart from the group once they have what they want or try to convert them to "Evil".

The "Evil" player should be better than the other players, more committed to their goals, given a stronger motivation to succeed, driven by more convincing motives than what the players want. Because very likely just by virtue of numbers the players will find out and outnumber their betrayer and killing a party member for being an evil **** is a bummer. The much better twist is that they find that they empathize and understand the "evil" player and discovering the betrayal leads them to question their own ethics.
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Old 10-08-2019, 02:38 PM   #17
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Default Re: Evil Player characters/PvP games

Evil characters* and PvP can be interesting in theory, but I've had enough bad experiences with players who take things to too far of extremes I'd be inclined to disallow them, in order to avoid ruining the campaign (and possibly friendships, as some people take things far too seriously and hold grudges). I'm usually not too big on there being anything like absolute good or absolute evil, however, although I do like for the "good guys" to actually be decent folk (at least most of the time).

*That is, evil characters in an otherwise-good team. An entire team of evil characters is readily doable, so long as they don't adhere to the "good wins because evil is too stupid to work together" trope.
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Old 10-08-2019, 04:55 PM   #18
The Colonel
 
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Default Re: Evil Player characters/PvP games

I've played the party pet monster a couple of times - the (usually lawful) evil PC who will do things the others won't. Usually the guy who will kill the juvenile orcs ("kill them now or kill them later") or otherwise (for all those Buffy fans out there) kill Ben when he needs to be killed...
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Old 10-08-2019, 05:54 PM   #19
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Default Re: Evil Player characters/PvP games

As I see it, you're playing with three sliders.

1) Group cohesion. I generally stipulate at character creation that this will be mandatory. Occasionally, I will allow for moderate strife but overwhelm it with outside forces that make characters cooperate. My group doesn't do well with outright combat between characters, and I like a cooperative table.

2) Campaign tone. How dark are the themes? Are there R-rated or X-rated themes of grim-darkness? I like to explore these themes more than my current group. At some point, I will get a chance.

3) Character morality. How morally upright are the protagonists? Are we villains bent on genocide? How much are the characters willing to sacrifice to meet their ends? To me, the genuinely reprehensible protagonist is unrelatable enough to be a gimmick character and not good for long-term campaigns, but can be fun for short-term. Others have fun long term, but it's not for me.
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Old 10-08-2019, 09:02 PM   #20
ericthered
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Default Re: Evil Player characters/PvP games

When I played a "political sandbox" I saw some character vs. character action, and I welcomed it. Its fun when one player wants to pull the nation one way and the other is trying to steer it another. I made it clear that there were limits to this, and asked the players not to do any thing that would end with them at opposite ends of a civil war. They were good natured about the conflict, and we had good laughs over some of the underhanded deceptions.

With one exception, who was a little off the rails and was the one I had to draw the line for at "No Civil Wars". The player ended up having other personality issues, and was ejected from the game before the PvP became an issue.

I suspect that functional social groups with good boundaries can run and enjoy evil characters and PvP action. I also suspect that dysfunctional/abrasive players are drawn to such play, and that such play magnifies existing issues in a group.
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