Recently, my thoughts have turned to going down a different path with a campaign; the evil adventuring party. It's an idea I've always wanted to toy around with and one that intrigues me. A party consisting of an evil necromancer, an assassin who specializes in poisons, an evil priest who practices dark rituals, a fighter who would just as soon kill a man and take his riches as look at him. The great thing about the game of DnD is that you can, essentially, play whichever character type you want (or the DM will allow anyway.) Sure, I know many out there have played evil adventuring parties in their time or at least had an evil character sprinkled in a campaign just for fun, but in all my years playing, I've never ran a game or been part of a game that included an entirely evil adventuring group.
Surely this type of group creates a challenge for a DM as players of evil alignments are wont to betray each other, steal from other party members, use them to their own advantage, etc. Still, I find the idea of centering a campaign around evil characters fascinating. Rather than stopping the brigands, they become the brigands. They become the evil slavers running a black market trade out of a port city. They become the assassin group hired to murder a local lord or king. So what do you think? Have you ever been in an all evil adventuring group? How was your experience? What are some of the things the DM did to focus on an all evil group?
I remember that my high-school group attempted it and had one fantastic adventure. However, the party ended doing the heroic thing in the end (for very unheroic reasons). Nowadays, I find the idea of playing in an evil party (or running a party of evil adventurers)... UNLESS... it is played with tongue firmly in cheek. I do recall an *awesome* game of Mutants & masterminds at genCon where most of the party were "reformed" supervillains. My character was one of the few real heroes and he ended up being mind-controlled by the party's brain-in-a-jar. *That* was great fun.
ReplyDeleteI have also attempted a few games where the party is essentially split into good guy and bad guy factions. Never worked well at all.
Yes, I think the idea of an evil party sounds interesting, but provides a great many challenges to the DM. Naturally the PCs will start turning on one another as each seeks to further his own end. Still I find the idea fascinating. Oh and that reformed super villain campaign sounds absolutely fantastic.
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