HOW TO HAVE A GOOD TIME BEING EVIL

By Roger Moore - January 1981

Let’s all face it. Some days, you come home from work, you’re grouchy, you haven’t had a good day, and you want to be a stinker. You feel rude, crude, and socially unacceptable . . . in short, a little evil. Bare your teeth a little bit. There, that’s the idea. People get like that in D&D, too. After playing a Paladin for a couple of months, you can really pick up a feel for an Assassin. Male D&Der’s in particular, in my experience, feel the urge to get involved in an evil campaign. Inspiration may be drawn from Satan of Milton’s Paradise Lost, or from less ethereal sources such as The Wild Bunch, Darth Vader, 007’s latest adversary, or “Jaws”.

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Being evil and tough seems to have a lot of machismo, and can draw quite a bit of respect for you in the game. If the Dungeon Master is willing, a group could set up a campaign composed solely of evil characters. Group norms, or rules, need to be discussed to provide some coherence to the proceedings; some possible norms are discussed below, as well as some notes on setting up such a campaign.

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Character classes and races will have to be restricted. No Rangers, Druids, or Paladins (obviously) should be involved; lawful evil Monks and neutral evil Bards can be allowed, but may be few in number. Fighters, Mages, Illusionists, Clerics, Thieves, and Assassins will predominate. I would suggest that the character races be limited to humans, half-orcs, and Gary Gygax’s version of the half-ogre (as discussed in TD #29). All other races, even if played evilly, will likely still hate and be hated by orcs and ogres. The DM may well plan to set up the campaign in an area where orcs, men, and ogres live in close (and generally helpful) proximity to each other. They might all be allied under a powerful ruler. If the central rulership is neutral evil, then conceivably any evil alignment may be involved, from lawful to chaotic. The DM should place outlets of the Assassins’ and Thieves’ Guilds near the players’ starting point, and other high-level NPC’s should be placed to serve as the teachers of the player characters who are Mages, Fighters, and Clerics. Two or more evil temples, heavily guarded to protect them from the congregations of the other evil temples, may be in the vicinity.

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Being evil can open up whole new opportunities to you that aren’t possible when you’re good. For example, while pegasi won’t have anything to do with you, hieracosphinxes will (if bribed, charmed, or trained). You can replace Fido and blink dog with Fang the warg, though your food bills will increase. Hired help around the castle and dungeon becomes much cheaper when goblins and orcs handle the chores. Those dreams of the all-night orgies that you did penitence for as a Paladin can become hard-core (excuse the pun) reality for you as an evil Fighter. Undead servants and warriors may swell your armies, though it is usually the case that living troops won’t have anything to do with undead ones. And, for Mages who are getting along in years, one can always consider becoming a lich. Len Lakofka’s article on vampires (TD #30) may also prove to be very helpful for those who think they’d enjoy being undead themselves, but can’t be a lich. The list of things you can do when you’re evil is long indeed, and should be well explored. If you’re undead, maybe you could get a nightmare . . .

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Now for the group goals. Anyone who’s played Monsters! Monsters! already knows what the goal is in an evil campaign. The goal is to beat up on the good guys. The goody-good Paladins, sneaky Rangers, and less-than-macho elves are going to get what they deserve. What right have they got, breaking into our lairs, killing our underlings and friends, and taking away the treasures we worked so hard to steal? Besides, what we’re doing is the way of the universe. Only the strong survive. Nice guys finish last. I’m number one. If you help all the wimps get ahead in the universe, you undo natural selections and evolution, which is trying to make us tougher. Might makes right. And so on. Working up the goals and general background philosophy of an evil campaign is not difficult (and is actually a little disturbing, as some people say such things in seriousness. How little we know about our own alignments . . . )

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Alignment may well become a particularly sensitive issue among players. Lawful evil people can theoretically be trusted to some extent to keep their word, though they may bend it a little. Chaotic evils, however, may need to be watched. On his own, out spying or assassinating someone, a chaotic evil character may be matchless in ability. You might have reservations about letting him pull guard duty alone a night after a big treasure haul has been made, though. Sleeping creatures may be slain at the rate of one per melee round, saith the Player’s Handbook. Forewarned is prepared. This is not to say that chaotic evils should be banned from play; they just act more independently.

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Everyone needs to be aware that unless some kind of trust can be formed among the players in AD&D or any other role-playing game, the game quickly falls apart. Who wants to get involved if you keep getting stabbed in the back all the time? Players with a history of killing other player characters should know that they may become prone to accidental falls from great altitudes, food poisoning, being mistaken for a hunting animal by one’s own party, and so on. After repeated incidents of this kind, one may not be invited to any more meetings of the D&D club, either. Chaotic evil should be played with care. If you plan on counting on your fellow adventurers in a crunch, regardless of your alignment, you’ll have to treat them with respect. For further thoughts on this, see Gary Gygax’s comments on “Evil: Law vs. Chaos” in TD #28.

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One other aspect of role-playing should be mentioned concerning an evil-oriented campaign. This is a personal prejudice of mine, but it is shared by others I know who are involved in such games. It’s a bad idea to let the game turn into a contest of who-can-make-the-worst- atrocity. This is a self-centered and tasteless dead-end that eventually becomes boring for everyone (and may actually drive some people out of the group in disgust). Wanton cruelty should be avoided by lawful evils as wasteful and unnecessary, and by chaotic evils to prevent their being drawn and quartered by fed-up partners or the local populace. This is not to say that you can’t tie the Ranger down over an anthill for some laughs, but defenseless noncombatants should be left alone. Villagers can be aroused to fearful rage by someone who beats up on pregnant hobbit females. Wise players will avoid someone like that to prolong their own character lives. DM’s are encouraged to make use of the “Angry Villager Rule” if the need arises.

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These are just a few of the ways you can put an evil-oriented campaign together. It can be nice to not be good all the time, and at least you’ll be on the other side of the poisoned dagger—giving and not receiving.