Anybody ever tried to run a truly evil party?

[Shorty Lickens]

And I dont mean hitmen.

I'm talking sadistic murder, torture, mind-rape, cyber snatching, deals with monsters to increase their power, war starting, psychopathic parties.

I just realized that every Rifts book has that warning on the inside cover buy my groups have never gone to the dark side. Worst we ever had was a tag-along NPC with special information but he had a nasty habit of mugging/extorting people. We zapped him immediately and dropped his unconscious butt off at some sort of local law enforcement.

We've never tried to run an evil campaign.

[kronos]

And I dont mean hitmen.

I'm talking sadistic murder, torture, mind-rape, cyber snatching, deals with monsters to increase their power, war starting, psychopathic parties.

I just realized that every Rifts book has that warning on the inside cover buy my groups have never gone to the dark side. Worst we ever had was a tag-along NPC with special information but he had a nasty habit of mugging/extorting people. We zapped him immediately and dropped his unconscious butt off at some sort of local law enforcement.

We've never tried to run an evil campaign.

I've played in an evil game in D&D, but not in Rifts.. in the D&D game.. our group was known first for the Massacre at Blood Lake (formally known as P'sst Lake).. then we were known for the Massacre at the Memorial for the Massacre at Blood Lake.. and we had a ship.. coated in bones of our kills.. with the captain's chair being an adult dragon skull.

Oh.. and our wizard would experiment in magic items, often creating cursed or items with weird side effects and sell them at discounted prices to see what happened.

I'm curious to try one for Rifts now. Most of my Rifts games have been either good, or kind of more anti-hero/mercenary types.

[eliakon]

I have had the occasional evil character in games but never a fully evil party.
This is for a couple reasons.
The first is that evil parties tend to turn on themselves fairly easily, over slights or loot or whatever.
The second is that most people play for fun and that most people I have met don't find depictions of most forms of evil fun
The third is that there isn't all that much to gain in a virtual vicarious reward from most forms of evil.

The sorts of evil characters that do end up being played tend to be of the 'kill 'em all and don't bother sorting them out' and 'loot first worry later' types. This is because loot is a tangible reward and thus you can have some sort of 'reward' from taking it.

[Incriptus]

E.A.F.'s

The first word is evil
The next two are curse words

My group have had a few E.A.F. games in D&D. We had an Assassin, a butcher, a cannibal, a pestilence, a necromancer, and a war monger.

I was the War Monger, a maker of weapons who just wanted to spread war across the lands. However I have a problem playing that kind of character cause I have difficulty with evil being and ends onto itself. Hurting people for profit is easy. Hurting people because you can isn't too hard. It's the need to take a risk to hurt someone, expecially when you'll likely take a lose for it. It made my E.A.F. machinations difficult.

----

However, Years ago, I did run a CS character campaign where the group went a bit too far into the dark side. [They were taking "Trophies" from the D. Bee's that they captured]. That wasn't the type of game I wanted to run so it got dropped. I think my new CS Game [which I really need to do a write up on] the characters are more of "Mercy is a quick death" types.

[TeeAychEeMarchHare]

Evil as most would define it....no.

Randomly slicing up farmers or burning villages to the ground isn't evil. It's more than a touch sociopathic, but out-of-control insanity isn't evil. And it isn't even fun after the first few minutes of getting to run around with no controls on you. It's like trying to play Grand Theft Auto but doing nothing except killing hookers. It gets old real quick.

*Actual* evil, the calm, collected type that has a purpose behind things is in an entirely different realm than the "LULZ I burnd down all teh villagars and stabbed my own party in teh back!" that 'evil' tends to be portrayed as by most people, both in and out of the RPG community.

And that's why it's incredibly rare for anyone to have played an evil campaign or been part of an evil group. Mindless butchery and stealing from and betraying your associates isn't evil, it's Chaotic Stupid.

I have played in or GM'ed for various games, from various publishers, where the group did things like try to control the drug trade in an area, ran slaves, participated in gang warfare, fomented warfare between other factions for their own profit, intimidated gangs of criminals to not mess with them AND profited at the same time by killing members of the gangs and then hauling their body to an organlegger, and I think they may have wiped out a village once in order to send a message.

[guardiandashi]

I am not usually the gm, but I have a real hard time getting into the mindset of the "evil char" I mean being a bit sociopathic in the sense of shooting killing people that come up and oppose what you are doing I guess I can do that.

but actively planning to kill and or destroy civilization, or dealing drugs for profit or similar just doesn't really appeal to me

[Shorty Lickens]

And I dont mean hitmen.

I'm talking sadistic murder, torture, mind-rape, cyber snatching, deals with monsters to increase their power, war starting, psychopathic parties.

I just realized that every Rifts book has that warning on the inside cover buy my groups have never gone to the dark side. Worst we ever had was a tag-along NPC with special information but he had a nasty habit of mugging/extorting people. We zapped him immediately and dropped his unconscious butt off at some sort of local law enforcement.

We've never tried to run an evil campaign.

I've played in an evil game in D&D, but not in Rifts.. in the D&D game.. our group was known first for the Massacre at Blood Lake (formally known as P'sst Lake).. then we were known for the Massacre at the Memorial for the Massacre at Blood Lake.. and we had a ship.. coated in bones of our kills.. with the captain's chair being an adult dragon skull.

Oh.. and our wizard would experiment in magic items, often creating cursed or items with weird side effects and sell them at discounted prices to see what happened.

I'm curious to try one for Rifts now. Most of my Rifts games have been either good, or kind of more anti-hero/mercenary types.

Oh yes, I've done it once in D&D. A whole gang of evil clerics. They murdered and raised zombies and murdered some more. And summoned a demon to do more bad stuff. I think our group got stopped due to somebody moving and another person getting a full time job. We never got back together. I think our ultimate goal was to own/create/rule a small evil dimension or plane. Yeah we did a lot of plane jumping too.

[Eagle]

In our area? It's hard to get people to play anything else.

[Warshield73]

I have had the occasional evil character in games but never a fully evil party.
This is for a couple reasons.
The first is that evil parties tend to turn on themselves fairly easily, over slights or loot or whatever.
The second is that most people play for fun and that most people I have met don't find depictions of most forms of evil fun
The third is that there isn't all that much to gain in a virtual vicarious reward from most forms of evil.

The sorts of evil characters that do end up being played tend to be of the 'kill 'em all and don't bother sorting them out' and 'loot first worry later' types. This is because loot is a tangible reward and thus you can have some sort of 'reward' from taking it.

No for the same reasons as above. I have asked players if they wanted to play limited campaigns but they have never been interested. I gave them a chance to play a team of Splugorth minions about 20 years ago but no interest. After CS War Campaign and Navy came out I offered a short campaign as a CS kill team. Most of my players who have tried to play evil characters in a group have gotten bored with them and have switched during the campaign. Most people want to be Captain America or Luke Skywalker, most get bored and don't know what to do with Darth Vader.

[Killer Cyborg]

Quite a few times.
As has been mentioned, they're prone to in-fighting.
Other than that, it can be quite fun!
(Sometimes including that, in fact!)

[TeeAychEeMarchHare]

Most people want to be Captain America or Luke Skywalker, most get bored and don't know what to do with Darth Vader.

Yuck. I can almost agree with Skywalker, just because it could be fun to play a naive turnip-farming clod that undergoes a lot of growth and development.

But T.H.E. most boring thing I can think of to play is Dickie Dogooder. I have to follow all kinds of retarded laws, rules, and regulations every day in real life, under constant threat of imprisonment, fines, or even death if I decline, so why would anyone want to play a character whose greatest ambition is to enforce and uphold laws?

I've never understood the superhero appeal. Cyclops, Spiderman, Superman....they're boring. Especially Superman.

To each his own though. Some people love it, my lack of understanding doesn't invalidate their opinion. One of my best friends growing up loved playing an Apok, paladins, etc.

[Natasha]

I enjoy playing many things I am not. The kind of evil described in the OP isn't among them.

[Curbludgeon]

I played a Three Galaxies dark coven game which, when it wasn't dealing with space combat or courtly intrigue as a pretense for magic theft, was focused on ritual communications with demonic or alien intelligences. There was a fair amount of fade to black, but collection and preparation of sacrifices came up.

[The Oh So Amazing Nate]

Truly evil? No I haven't. The closes I've come is a mutant Mt. Lion in ATB with a carnivorous diet. He routinely kills and eats foes/combatants/people who are rude/threaten him/his business, but not without offering them the chance to cease and desist under threat of death and consumption first.

I do have an Aberrant Ninja who straight murders people who are "dishonorable" (@$$holes and criminals) in his eyes.

[Jorick]

I haven't but I think it's an interesting problem from a GM perspective.

Players have alignments they can follow, and they can create backstories that give purpose to their characters no different from good characters. So, as a GM you can give them challenges according to those backstories. To that extent, the game would not be different than any other. The player needs to get the thing, or defeat the group. The thing in this case just happens to be the Ultimate Death Gizmo, or the group is the Knights of Shining Goodness. Same thing different label.

I could see a game based on trying to gain power, which would require thoughtful progression. You can't just slaughter everyone. You have to play sides against each other. You have to avoid the cops as long as they have a chance to stop you. In some settings in Rifts, it would really be no different than any other game, because of all the chaos, and every side with power is basically "bad" so you're still fighting the same bad guys even, because you're just other bad guys.

But then there's all the in between stuff. How do the players show that they're evil, beyond their role in the plot as the bad guys? I have to agree with TeeAych above that it's like randomly running over stuff in GTA. "I found the clue, so now I'll burn everyone in the village alive." Meh.

It's more fun to be boring ol' Superman and have to struggle with the varied interests of the villagers who you feel should stay alive no matter how difficult they make life for you. It's often the central tension in good vs evil stories. The good guys are limited in their choices. The bad guys aren't. Order vs Chaos. Or being invincible, but trying to keep the innocents alive as a goal. Superman could let the world blow up and still be fine, but that would be worse than death for him. "Winning" as a good guy is inherently more of a challenge, because the stakes are higher and more difficult to define. In a world like Rifts Earth, where there's so much moral ambiguity and chaos, simply making good choices can be the greatest challenge. If you're bad the choices are simpler, and the complexity of the setting is ignored. It would be similar to a game world where there's just "Light" and "Dark" sides, or something, and you're with the angels, and everyone you want to be cool with to is also with the angels, and everyone you want to fight or confront is with the devils. The only choice you make is how you do it. That's great for a first person shooter. I'm not sre it translates into a fun game.

That being said, a good group could probably do a great black market/pirate/slave trade game if they can really get into the setting. Dig into the depths of Atlantis and whatnot. If well crafted bad guys can have well crafted, exciting backstories, then proficient players can play out such stories and have them be exciting as well. Dr. Doom or Magneto might be boring to play, but becoming Dr. Doom or Magneto might be fun (I was gonna use Anakin as an example, but that felt too much like suggesting The Prequels were well crafted).

[Shorty Lickens]

Sub Question!


Anybody here ever tried an all Aberrant group?

[eliakon]

To be honest...
...I always just get rid of alignments entirely in my games. I find that people tend to act more 'naturally' and in character better if they don't feel that they have to live to a specific arbitrary set of rules. It also makes it so that you can't just point at people down the line and say evil, evil, good, good, good, evil, good, evil...

[13eowulf]

I ran one game once. The group, among other things, robbed the louvre, burned it down in the escape, and set fire to much of Paris in the resulting chase to the air port. They then sought out a Bratva stronghold in Russia, committed many a crime towards the people living and working in the town atop the subterranean stronghold, before going in, doing stuff to the food, fairy magic stuff, and once the chaos and death had subsided, used magic to rain the bodies down on Paris. They also did a number on Cape Town as well.

Another group had incidents, like an injured character deciding to cut on an immobilized prisoner, to use the blood to paint the prisoner's face like a clown, while the rest of the group took down the rest of the prisoner's team. They also at one point mass assaulted civilians as a distraction, at another point took the hearts of their fallen foes, shook them in a sack of brown sugar, and passed them around the team as candied hearts. And at another point, after a failed save vs illusion (the illusion was concealing a fight and other items) one party member decided to start murdering and taking the heads of people in the crowed with a P.B. over 16, so that later they could use the faces to weave a pretty cloak (pretty faces will make a pretty cloak). Also they initiated Dark Day, though that was an accident.

These were not specifically or explicitly evil campaigns either. I just didnt say no to evil characters.

[Blue_Lion]

Yes.
Some groups you get evil even if you do not want it.

One group during a CoT campaign captured tortured and killed CS, hollowed out the chest cavity filled it with NG MD plastic explosives turned them into zombie suicide bombers(that came back) to attack their old unit. They also burned down multiple towns for having pro CS views. Set abase in a orphanage and fed let demon minions use the kids as play things. When the got tired of it they tied the kids up lit the building on fire and left.

[Shorty Lickens]

Yes.
Some groups you get evil even if you do not want it.

One group during a CoT campaign captured tortured and killed CS, hollowed out the chest cavity filled it with NG MD plastic explosives turned them into zombie suicide bombers(that came back) to attack their old unit. They also burned down multiple towns for having pro CS views. Set abase in a orphanage and fed let demon minions use the kids as play things. When the got tired of it they tied the kids up lit the building on fire and left.

I wish I could upvote posts.

[HarleeKnight]

In answer to the sub-question...
All aberrant groups is what we usually run. None of us really wants wanton mayhem, but none of us has a problem with death and torture as a means to an end. Oh, and that torture, can take many forms; from slow painful death to slavery. None of us has a problem taking dirty money. We usually use it for good purposes; soup lines, orphanages, etc. None of us has a problem with breaking the law to get what we want. Thing is, what we want is usually a short path to a good ending. We don't lie, ever, but the truth we say isn't always the truth you hear. Technicality is a big thing for us. We also never betray a friend and we protect the innocent - no collateral deaths. We are fair, but ruthless if crossed.
The real world analogies to how we play, (how, not why) would be akin to Pablo Escobar or a certain Motorcycle Club TV show.

"Yeah, we do evil ****, but we do evil for the greater good. We do evil, so you don't have to."