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View Full Version : Evil Campaigns: What are your accomplishments as a player?



kladams707
2016-01-14, 10:16 AM
We all know being evil is fun, but what did you do as a character that really made you feel accomplished.

Right now, I'm in a Star Wars D20 Revised Edition campaign. We reflavored the Jedi classes (and I homebrewed a Sentinel for my character). So the party make up is Guardian, Sentinel (myself), and force-sensitive Fringer. We're actually high ranking within Imperial forces, but still kept secret from Vader (we just went with it).

We had our first game & it went really well. Keep in mind the Guardian is more a tank and Sentinel the way I made him is for stealth & infiltration.

I killed a Bothan Governor and his second in-line after the Guardian force choked the former unconscious. I let the stormtroopers we brought with us kill the rest. I told the Guardian to kidnap a force-sensitive girl ..after directly ordering an HK unit to kill Bail Organa (right after we met him in person). Oh, and I killed the mother of the girl after the Guardian whiffed in his attempt. I also made the battle plan to massacre the colony where Bail Organa was.

I'm always worried about being Chaotic Stupid in thesw sorts of games, but it worked out well I think. The Guardian had two kills, neither of which mattered in the grand scheme of things politically or even story-wise. My Sentinel is responsible for directly killing two top politicians and the mother of a child who could very well seek revenge on him in the future. If you include his orders against Bail Organa & the colony, he's essentially responsible for the death of 1604 people. That's what I"m most proud about my character in one game. Minimal effort, maximum efficiency.

Geddy2112
2016-01-14, 10:55 AM
Most evil people want power, in some form or another. Power over others, power over some force, power over nature, etc.

My first evil character was a necromancer. Like most necromancers, he wanted power over life and death. Like most necromancers, he wanted this power because he believes he was wronged by death-death took someone from him, and he wanted them back. Although he never was able to bring his mother back from death, he was able to control life and death quite well. It did not matter if I was killing, raising the dead, destroying undead, or even getting the living to do my bidding-I wanted in on all aspects of life and death.

The best moment was when I gained control over an undead- a vampire of much higher level than myself. I was able to control undeath and use it like a puppet. The control was temporary, but in destroying my toy I was able to bring death to undeath. A very satisfying victory.

Âmesang
2016-01-14, 05:02 PM
My longest running character, from the WORLD OF GREYHAWK® setting, has the lofty goal of becoming the first "Mage of Power" since the fall of the Suel Imperium over a thousand years prior; so to do so she gathers arcane knowledge from wherever she can, from trying to track down the lost manifesto of Slerotin to seeking the forgotten secrets of the invoked devastation (much to my joy, the Shackled City Adventure Path has plot-points that can tie into this surprisingly well).

…however this is all very long term stuff, the kind that doesn't necessarily need to happen — just provides her with ambition and goals. Still, you can't expect to accomplish a whole lot by being blatantly evil, you have to be subtle, discreet, even behave beneficent to those around you, aid them in their tasks and receive their aid in return… especially if it subverts and perverts their own actions towards unintended villainy (like answering a horde of goblins' crimes of petty larceny and graffiti with their utter genocide. We don't bother to imprison them and bring them to justice, nope, and instead our party was rewarded for our brand of "justice." SCAP's "Drakthar's Way" was such fun).

Makes me wonder how Bond villains ever made it as far as they did. :smalltongue: I admire the description of the Black Robed Wizards of High Sorcery from the DRAGONLANCE® Campaign Setting:

"Black Robe wizards embrace the cause of evil. They do not, however, hurl random fireballs at peasants' cottages (at least, not usually), since such activities would abuse and jeopardize their primary loyalty, which is to magic itself. Black Robe wizards may be cruel, but they are also selfish and cunning, and avoid open acts of violence if a more subtle way can be found."
(Though my character keeps a bottle of fine liquor and a bottle of alchemical acid on hand, and once successfully Bluffed a non-player character to drink the acid… just for fun. "Care to sample from my private stock?")

CharonsHelper
2016-01-14, 05:09 PM
Sometimes the most interesting evil character's goals aren't all THAT different from any other character's. It's the methods they use that makes them evil.

For example - a common one might be "Protect my People".

Good method: Train up / Stop any threats who attack them / make alliances etc.

Evil method: Crush anyone who you think MIGHT become a threat (See Captain America: The Winter Soldier)/ gain power through horrible methods in order to become so powerful that no one can stop you / Raise an army who is totally loyal through brain-washing etc.

Frankly - going back to Star Wars - that's part of how Darth Vader was seduced to the dark side. He wanted to control all of the crazy factions within The Republic & get rid of the corruption/inefficiencies of the bureaucracy. None of those are bad goals. He just chose the methods of power, mercilessness, & inspiring fear.

Frankly - as protagonists, they tend to be much more interesting evil characters. The kind that you sort of want to root for. And sometimes, they even accomplish something good. (You can't rule the galaxy with an iron fist if there are pirates messing with trade. Get rid of them!)

Kane0
2016-01-14, 07:54 PM
Well, I had one warlock-esque character that turned 4 of his 7 party members from good/neutral to evil, killed off one more, acquired himself a dragon egg, captured souls for his own advancement and re-established a thieves den that was set to quite quickly become a respectable criminal empire under his name. All by level 2 with a serious multiple personality disorder.

Sadly we didn't get to play the campaign for much longer after that, I think my dude threw off the plot too much to continue properly.

TheCountAlucard
2016-01-14, 08:15 PM
My most accomplished evil characters? My Twi'lek crime lord was pretty successful.

Far more memorable, in my mind, were the confusing exploits of Arch Whitman, my Malkavian vampire in a game set in NYC.

He basically realized that, being from a vampire clan known for its debilitating madness, other Kindred would default to seeing him as a threat, unless he made himself seem so mad as to be benign.

To say it worked well would be an understatement - even the other players weren't sure of Arch's real derangement. Moreover, he got more or less the whole coterie mutually one- or two-step blood-bound to him, all without ever giving away that he wasn't subject to the bond himself.

LadyFoxfire
2016-01-14, 09:36 PM
My DM really likes acrobat-thieves, and took it to its logical conclusion by having our party be a thieves guild that used being a traveling circus as a cover. Many of us were acrobat-thieves, but my character, the ringmaster/head thief, was an illusionist.

So we roll into a new town, and some shady businessman tries to shake us down (I don't remember the specifics, but it was something like trying to get us to buy advertising space at an exorbitant rate), and tells us we're going to regret it when we turn him down. Next thing we know, the local cops are harassing us, despite the fact that we haven't done anything illegal yet. My best performers are getting arrested, our cart gets impounded, etc. We decide to break into the mayor's palace to figure out what's going on.

I use an illusion to disguise us as city guards returning from patrol to get into the palace compound, and we make our way into the main residence. We sneak into the room where the mayor's entertaining his cronies, and we figure out why we're being targeted--the shady businessman is the mayor's brother.

Obviously, there is only one way to deal with this kind of corruption: murder the mayor, and frame his brother for it. I made an illusion of an assassin leaping out from the shadows and stabbing the mayor, and then I transposed the illusion of the assassin on top of the mayor, while an illusionary copy of the mayor fell to the ground, dead. The guards in the room, naturally, immediately turned the "assassin" into a pincushion. Then, while everyone's freaking out, I had another illusionary mayor step out from behind a curtain and say "Ah-ha! I knew my brother was plotting against me! Good thing I was clever enough to use a body double to lure the assassin out. Guards, arrest my brother, and also release those circus performers from jail-they were the ones who warned me of my brother's treachery."

We're still disguised as guards, so we escort the illusionary mayor out while we drag the fake assassin/real mayor's corpse out, and leave it in his bedroom. When it was discovered the next morning, it was assumed that the brother had had the foresight to hire a second assassin, and this one had succeeded. We got our cart out of impound, and skipped town before anyone figured out the truth, if they ever did.

chainer1216
2016-01-15, 05:32 AM
In a Star Wars SAGA game I and another player are in, we played wanna-be sith lords, we started out on the planet Thyfera, the home world of a race of praying mantis people that are able to produce Bacta, the strongest healing agent in the galaxy.

While on planet we managed to 1. rally a large number of the bug people to raise up in rebellion against their bacta company masters, 2. Cause a local durasteel union to go on strike, 3. Start up protest rallies on college campuses against local lawmakers and the bacta corp, 4. Tricked the local police forces to react violently at the previously mentioned strike and protest, 5. Rigged an election so an equivalent of {Scrubbed} won, 6. We are secretlt funding and organizing a rebellion against the government we forceibly turned into a tyranny, 7. Secretly assassinated the Jedi on planet. All the while my character leads the majority of the natives as a willing slave army and the other PC is entering the political race as a vocal reformer.

We are mere days from a total take over of the planet and nothing can stop us. We will be in complete control of the galaxies bacta supply, which will give us virtually infinite credits but that's not the end goal. My character has knowledge of sith sorcery, he's been slowly mutating some of the natives, causing the bacta they make to be tainted with sith poison which makes people more susceptible to falling to the Dark side.

After a few years of standard production and distribution(as well as gathering strength and followers) we'll begin to circulate the poisoned bacta and watch the galaxy tear itself apart.

MUWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

CNdruid
2016-01-17, 06:20 AM
I'd love to play a warlock who has some connection with Graz't. He enjoys leading anarchic revolutions against the lords of small villages, he doesn't care what happens to the village as soon as he leaves, which is often after weird sex rituals and orgies and whatever else seems good at the time. He can make friendships but is pathologically drawn to destroy lawfulness.

He's smug, handsome, homoerotic and darkly brilliant.

Dienekes
2016-01-18, 01:03 AM
One of my two favorite characters I've ever played was an evil guy.

So we were playing an online heavily modified version of mutants and masterminds that was designed around two groups the heroes and the villains who were in theory supposed to work together to try and beat the other. But it didn't really take long for the villains to fall into in fighting.

So the campaign had already been going for a few months when I started and I noticed that everyone was playing very combat focused characters, also my first choice of character was already pretty much taken so I decided to try a completely defenseless villain. I picked a character who could read minds, maxed intelligence, a bunch of diplomatic non-combat skills, and had a ridiculously high will defense and that was it. If one of the other characters sneezed on me I would probably have died. I based him on Arnold Rothstein and Lex Luthor.

Anyway, the first 3 months I played the game my villain didn't really do anything to get on anyone's radar I gave him a small job in the city government and proceeded to read the minds of every character he came in contact with and blackmailed every politician with their dirty secret until he got himself a position as the comptroller of the city. From there he kept detailed files on every politician and every hero he met near instantly discovering their secret identities, their families, and everything else he found that was important. So then he reached out to the other villains, offering information for services. Don't attack a certain award ceremony held in his honor and he would give the name of Captain Goodie Two Shoes secret identity. Stop selling drugs in a wealthy area and receive funds to arm your gang. And if a villain stepped out of line or tried to betray him, well, then the heroes would get an anonymous tip on that villains whereabouts. And he let it known among the villains if he should die every file he had on them would hit the public.

By the end of the year Arnold Roth basically ran the game. The heroes were his personal bodyguards and attack dogs, the villains jumped when he said jump and in theory no one even knew that he had a super power (though the players knew of course). Illegal funds were sent to reconstruction and city development projects, crime was localized into specific ghettos.

But, for obvious reasons, a lot of people didn't like the way the game was playing. So one character, who was some sort of magma monster, planned to kill Roth. It was really obvious too, but every time I read his mind he would always claim that he really didn't have that intention. Meanwhile he was funneling two months worth of experience into bumping up his Will Saves. And the GM seemed very much willing to let the player rather blatantly lie about what his character was doing, and frankly he seemed to not be a fan of Roth's prominence anyway. So with the player cheating and the GM favoring him I kinda felt like Roth's time was up.

Then Magmar (I think his name was) did something stupid. After presenting his plan to a few other villains so he could no longer pretend to not be plotting against me there was one final confrontation where he paid his monthly dues before his final plan was going to take place. But he brought a few of his henchmen for defense. I think he thought that I would cheat and just set a trap for him at they money exchange. But, instead I just read his minions mind realized they were planning to betray me in character, finally, and planned accordingly. By the time he struck one of the few stronger villains was by Roth's side and a few of the other plotters were rounded up by the heroes. My allies won, and I stayed on as king of the city.

The Magmar player quit the game and about a week later the GM stopped showing up. So the game died. Which is probably for the best because the only thing to do after that would be to try and rule the world and I had no plan on how to do that.

Several times I've tried to create reincarnations of Roth in various games but they never live up to the first. Easily my most successful character and one of my favorites.