Banality of Evil

[parmasson]

If you are the GM and the majority of your players want to play evil characters, you have only have a few choices:
1. Let them play the characters they choose, and switch your game around to make sure you have pushes and pulls for their types of characters (altruistic push/pulls don't usually work on amoral maniacs).

Hear hear!

Most of us spend our days being good guys in one way or another. We give that customer a break, handout that spare change, open a door for that old lady and get to work on time with a regulation haircut and a clean shirt. It is good stuff to be sure but it is damn hard work.

Every now and again we just want to pull that trigger and watch the lead fly. Or how about that NPC that really cheesed us off and nothing would be funnier that a little explosive decompression in that section. The best part is that it is guilt free! Nobody gets hurt and satisfaction is had.

After all the characters are not us, they are fictional characters and sometimes they need just need to be evil.

I'll allow players to play what they what normally. But if you've got a bunch of players whose characters will clash because of their divergent names & I do try to caution them to find a reason why they work together

Yep, good players will MAKE it work. I have seen it happen.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Actually, Kurega, I think a lot of folks (obviously, not all!) see it the other way around: they spend their days being less than useful in the great struggles, and they want to be unalloyed good heroes.

But, yeah, even heroes get to shoot the villians without too many questions being asked....

 

[jfetters]

Originally posted by Kurega Gikur:

Most of us spend our days being good guys in one way or another. We give that customer a break, handout that spare change, open a door for that old lady and get to work on time with a regulation haircut and a clean shirt.

Speak for yourself!

 

[robject]

Yeah, I find myself doing 'nice' things just to keep from getting kicked in the butt by something else.

 

[archhealer]

Whenever my players want to do an evil game, in whatever game, be it Traveller, DND, or something else, I always compromise. We usually do a few quick adventures with an evil party, then return to our regularly scheduled game as good guys.

If an individual player wants to play an evil character, I discuss it with them... Sometimes, I use them as a pseudo NPC working against the party from within, or if they haven't the subtlety for that, I just tell them the other characters will probably put them down, and I won't stop it.

 

[Straybow]

I did, once, play an evil character. His form of evil was simply looking out for numero uno at all times. This meant being nice, just like the "good guys" most of the time. But when it came to sticking his neck out for the dorks who got themselves in over their heads...

"Sorry to see you go, fellas. I'll make sure all this lovely swag finds a new home." He had a very convincing tale of narrow escape, and he really did miss his old friends. It was just easier to make new friends than save the old ones.

"Look on the bright side: I'm still alive!"

 

[Andrew Boulton]

Playing a real bastard can be fun sometimes. I played one in the COTEM PBEM game. He made no secret of the fact that he was there to make money, not friends. The rest of the crew were useful tools to make that job easier, nothing more, but as long as their goals were the same there would be no problem.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Yeah, we had a guy who liked to play that way. The other players tended to cut him out, as they never knew if he was really with them in something or not. He discovered space is lonely when you have no friends....

 

[Andrew Boulton]

Fortunately, my guy was too useful to ignore (very smart, well-educated, and a genius with computers).