Banality of Evil

[themink]

I must admit, as ref, I didn;t push ethics at anyone in Traveler (I did in D&D but that's a very different tube of goo).

I set up adventure hooks and with a clear gradient of :-
i) Good guys choose door one
ii) Cash hounds choose door two

and they alway chose door two - After doing this for a little while (two years - I was young at the time) we had a long chat about what they actually wanted - they wanted to do plots from books - instead their players followed plots from real life (well sorta).

After discussion they wanted to keep following the money but agreed to doing good deeds when I guilted them into it.

In D&D I've had players who are morally neutral (I class that as CE) as well as actively EVIL (mostly LE) and even Psychopathic (NE/CN). Of these the only ones that were really memorable were the hidden psychopaths(two of them). Bad things would happen to nearby strangers and it often took a long time for the players to draw the causal link. Eventually the player would have to roll up a new Char, but the other players loved having someone who wasn;t the DM mess with their heads. One of my Psycho players was also a decent artist so they would spend most of their time distracted "doodling" and showing me their work - with long notes on the opposite page - nobody realised they were passing the notes, so they could get away with murder (as well as general skull duggery). After the game we showed the other players what had happened - priceless.

But none of the really EVIL players lasted more than a couple of games - most people would rather feel like heros. Evil is boring.

 

[JulianXSJ]

How to Deal With Evil Characters
1) Exterminate The Brutes: If in case you haven't noticed the law levels on a lot of Imperium worlds, you can't carry most weapons with you anyway. Play this up with weapons checks and shake-downs. The Imperium (and many of the other major players), like their cities silent. And security should have absolutely no sense of humor when dealing with obvious threats to public safety.
2) Steal They Gear: Via hook or by crook, or governmental inspection teams, if the players are being a pain in the ass, take they stuff away. If they complain, shrug and move on. Do this enough times, and they may get the idea that being 'evil' doesn't pay.
3) Pull the same gags they like to pull...on them. Nothing will get their attention quicker when they realize you've pulled a gag on them that they've used on someone else.
4) Skip-Tracer's and bounty hunters: Let's be honest here, you annoy enough people, and you're going to get people who are legally allowed to B&E in the local area (relative) and generally violate sophant rights to get their sophant(s) and are paid well to do it. The prospect of bounty hunting teams coming after them should scare the buggers down to they little vac suits.
5) Be a dirty, Rotten, Sneaky Bastard of a GM: Study your players. Take notes. Let them hang themselves on little slip ups. They don't like it, tell them that maybe the crminal route kinda sucks and to suck it up.

 

[MT++]

Originally posted by Murph:
Evil is a matter of outlook and intent. The Nazis did not think they were evil, but everyone else did.

Actually they did. Sort of.

They made it a point to hide evidence of their goings-on. (a friend of mine works for the war crimes division in Canada)

Reading this topic over, I believe my point was missed (not explained well, my bad). I didn't ask what to do about evil players but players who wanted to experience evil vicariously.

Many Traveller games have characters committing espionage, genocide and theft.

It is too easy to fall into evil for an adventure, "the dark side is easier" so to speak. How do you prevent this slide. GMs do it. It is easier to give out cash bonuses than reward them with good feelings.

How do you put the humanity back into humaniti?

 

[Liam Devlin]

I have never had my PCs slide into evil, as I paint it as it is. They have more time to be "saving these people" than they have for vicarious evil "slides". Yes, I leave em the options open. They decide. And IMTU, it isn't always "nice guys finish last".
Yeah, you don't always get the gal, or the megacredits..,but you can get ahead, by your reputations in word fame. (Which has no coin price, but a high amount of this in a good light, gets you placces, connections, and favors that will be repaid.

The players once thought they had a gold mine in salvageable relics and were doing the jig about the table, picking up this and that as they went through this ruined arcology from the collapse..till they hit the hospital, and saw OB/GYN, right off the ER entrance. I described what they saw in detail, right down to the last corpse, killed by Virus' take over of the Life support on this airless world. None had been spared.
They didn't laugh about dead people ever again, or "grave-rob". In fact they spent time burying folks, then removed the machinery they were sent to fetch back. Several PCs became (in character, heavy drinkers after that...And weren't the boisterous mob at the home starport they used to be.

heretically, and ethically yours,

 

[PapaGolfWhiskey]

I think it really depends on your Ref.
I remember a Top Secret campaign were the player characters (I among them) engaged in all sorts of acts of wanton destruction and murder in an attempt to cover up earlier acts of wanton destruction and murder. I think the place the Ref failed in that game is by making the consequences humourous instead of gory.

The Traveller games I ran when I was 15 devolved into adventures that were brutally amoral. I blame my own inexperience.

One of my more recent adventures self-destructed at least in part because I allowed a 'prior history' between a couple of characters that put one wrongly in debt to another the underlying tension between the characters was a factor in the player exploding and 'in character' turning on his comrades and basically blowing up the campaign. it was an ugly scene.

My current, campaign however has started much differently. I've repeatedly told the party that they aren't obligated to respond to the signal GK they are recieving that there is nothing in it for them. But I've also given the example of the large merchant ship that's willing to risk its pinnances anyway. The party over all seems willing to do the right thing... surprising little reluctance in fact.

 

[Murph]

A party that wants to be EVIL should be allowed to be EVIL. At one point we ran two campaigns one normal campaign, and then a seperate one for the players when they wanted to be EVIL complete with different characters.

 

[Ran Targas]

If you're going to be EVIL, then you better be really smart; unfortunately, the two seldom go hand in hand.

IMTU, my players are revolutionaries but they are not terrorists. They are privateers, not pirates. And this thin line must be walked carefully. Although Imperial Intelligence has growing files on each of them, they are only nuisances right now. When they cross that line, the special task forces and bounty hunters will be unleashed and no populated planet will be safe.

The players learned this the hard way when a reoccuring NPC was captured and publicly executed (witnessed by the group) for bombing an Imperial office complex. You can't build public support for a revolution or become "heroes of the people" when you kill innocents indiscrimantly.

 

[Liam Devlin]

Speaking of Traveller/ and banality of evil...
In our current campaign (online), theplayers have uncovered a multiplicitous thread:

On one hand, they themselves were set up to deliver/ or lose a valuable cargo of Battledress (labelled in its cargo container "jump-drive parts")--only it had a nasty bioweapon agent in the rebreathing filtration system (infecting the wearer/ symptoms in 48hrs, 92% kill ratio/ highly infectious for 48hrs afterwards-appeared as common cold till the 96hr mark hit--then the ebola like affects kicked in.)
On another, they rescued an alien girl, and discovered through her, and several others multiple threads of clues of an interdicted sentient species smack dab in the middle of some Duke & a megacoprs trade rte across the reft sector..and the genocidal warfare being waged upon them..

Again, the choices were the PC's..
THey did not lose their ship, they obeyed their orders from a corrupt higher command, and then turned about, and surrendered their vessel and threw themselves at the mercy of IMOJ to turn evidence against those who'd framed them for the possible outbreak. (they are currently gathering investigative steam as I write, and the comeuppances will occur..!); the genocidal theme versus this new alien race involves higher levels of banal evil in pursuit of megacredits at the expense of a "troublesme race" unique, and found in the depths of a once thought empty subsector...

stay tuned!

 

[Eric]

What also works is haveing multiple ways of screwing your PCs. I tend to find the nonlethal ones more intresting.

For example, the ships medic gives everyone a routin check up and when he gets to your Evil character he says some thing like "Uh Oh"

You may then procced to weaken some of his ability scores.

Note you should only do this if the player is realy messing up the game.

 

[Sophiathegreen]

In real life good and bad stuff is alway going on. Sometime good can do more harm than evil can. The 1920's ban on makeing and selling alchol drink lead to than raiseing crime rate among law abireing people
in general who want to have glass of beer or wine once than while. This ban was push throught congress and the state legerator who where control by than small religious christian party who want to ban all alchol drink from life. It fail because they didnot change the culture belief public. Saudi Arabia can ban beer and other alchol drink as the Saudi culture never have alchol drinking as than big part of it culture.

 

[campbell]

banal adjective
boring, ordinary and not original:


if evil is to succeed then it cannot be boring nor ordinary. adolf hitler had to be charismatic to initially succeed otherwise he'd have been just another nobody. lucifer (devil,source of all evil) to tempt you would have to be interesting.

the old saying' women admire gentlemen yet sleep with cads. evil and bad characters have an allure about them. why else are so many people interested in reading about serial killers. why else are so many films and tv programmes given over to subects on the sick and depraved.

for evil to succeed it cannot be boring

 

[Zutroi]

Good and Evil Test.
Below are described two parties from the same fantasy game. Tell me which one was evil.

A group of faithful on a religous quest to obtain an item that would assure the continued stability of the world as it stood. Whenever possible the party worked to avoid confrontation and killing.

A mercenary band working to aquire vast wealth by slaughtering the first group (as well as any other members of the faith they might find, all for the bounty it would bring)and destroying said relic in order to upsset a balance of power that had existed for centuries.

That's right, the first group were the evil ones, they were also a hell of a lot more moral than the second!

 

[womble]

Campbell said:

...for evil to succeed it cannot be boring...

I'd disagree. For evil to succeed requires only that the good do nothing. An insidious, inconspicuous, apparently inoccuous evil can be more devastating than a showy one.

Zutroi said:

...Whenever possible the party worked to avoid confrontation and killing...[they]...were the evil ones, they were also a hell of a lot more moral...

What was it that made/defined this group as evil, then? Was the status quo based on cruelty and slavery and torture and corruption and other commonly considered "evil" things? If the 'faithful' were working to preserve the status quo, where did the bounties for their death or capture come from?

 

[Zutroi]

What was it that made/defined this group as evil, then? Was the status quo based on cruelty and slavery and torture and corruption and other commonly considered "evil" things? If the 'faithful' were working to preserve the status quo, where did the bounties for their death or capture come from?

Mostly it was a matter of worshipping the evil half of the pantheon, capturing the strongest of our foes instead of fighting them to the death so that they could then be sacrificed to our god (in a very quick manner). That sort of thing. Almost like finding out the nice neighbor across the street who helped fix your lawn mower and is captain of the neighborhood watch is a cannibal...

 

[Murph]

Eeevil, hmmmm what a concept, a party of Pirates, Reavers, and anti-social types. OTOH sounds like a regular party to me.

 

[parmasson]

Eeevil, hmmmm what a concept, a party of Pirates, Reavers, and anti-social types. OTOH sounds like a regular party to me.

Yeah there can be differently moraled party members but most PCs as played by most players tend to prefer to be “good guys” in their point of view.

Let’s face it, the risks increase as the evil increases. If you are going to pillage and burn settlements then you better be prepared to deal with lots of enemies.

Once the Imperium knows who you are you better run for the frontier and pray that the reward is not worth a bounty hunter’s trouble or a battleship squadron does not find you.

In Traveller evil should be a choice that the players and referee need to be willing to explore. With that choice comes risks and rewards.

 

[Merxiless]

How to prevent the evil backslide?

Refuse to deal with players that want to run evil characters.

Star Wars d6 has the mechanic of dark side points.

When they do evil they roll a d6, if the number is equal to, or less than the number of evil acts, the PC becomes an NPC. "Went over to the dark side."

So in Traveller, "NPC" that Evil PC.

Thus, going evil is no longer the "Thrill " of doing evil and getting away with it, as it is all GM/Ref doing it now.

It saddens me when so many players who were taught wrong by their former D&D DMs come to a game like traveller and their first instinct is to get a ship, and the second one to rob a bank by using ship's guns to blow the front off the building, or some other hare-brained scheme, then blast out of the port.

I think it stems from the idea of Travellers as troubleshooters/ causers. Fun for a while perhaps, but uiltimately no theme, other than random violence and mayhem leads to jail /death.

Never my cup of tea.

 

[Uncle Bob]

Very few people are comfortable being Evil (consider the suicide rate among Nazi concentration camp guards). I alway found that confronting the players with graphic detail revolted them, and they reformed.

Being really evil usually requires the cooperation of the referee.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

An ex-gf of mine was disturbingly comfortable playing evil characters.

 

[Gnusam Netor]

What is Evil™ - what is Good™, that’s one of the questions of Life™…

IRL, I think the best definition of Evil is only the mere absence of Good, or God if you’re religious. Where there is not light, darkness is.

I like Traveller in this aspect because Good and evil, lawful and chaotic or the mysterious true neutral, is simply not part of the rules, you don't have to think about it.

In D&D it's easy though, your alignment is there on your char-sheet.
I played in a D&D 3.5 campaign last spring (BTW Cymew was the GM). He had ebay:ed for a bunch dungeon-crawl adventures from the 70’s (d&d 1 style adventures). Anyway, I played the paladin of our group. Paladins can and do kill a lot without becoming Evil, as long as they don’t break the law of the land (the land under their king only) and don’t kill “monsters” that surrender, most of the time at least. So what do you do with those minions who think they can weasel out of the just wrath of Deathbringer (my paladin’s bad-ass sword). You torture them of course, how else can they really repent? When they have repented (or died) they become new converts for Hieronomys(?), my paladins God.

I don’t think it’s wise to apply modern, real-life morals and standards when you are gaming, everything gets so complicated then.

Anyway, if the players are doing something that the referee does not want them to do or think is a bad idea, inform them of the consequences or let them find out why later.