Can somebody point me to Red Fel's masterpost on how to do evil *right*?

[Segev]

This is how I do evil characters

http://earnthis.net/wp-content/uploa...id_Xanatos.jpg

While I am a huge fan of villains in general, and he's one of my favorites, it's when that is how you do GOOD characters that I am most impressed.

[Red Fel]

Look at David Xanatos. He's one of my favorite archetypes.

This is how I do evil characters

We'll be such good friends.

While I am a huge fan of villains in general, and he's one of my favorites, it's when that is how you do GOOD characters that I am most impressed.

So much this. One of the things I try to emphasize is that what makes Evil characters great, compelling, effective, and sympathetic, works just as well for Good characters. People have often commented that, but for the actions they take which could be considered "obviously Evil," my Evil characters read like fantastic Good characters.

A character - any character - needs depth. It needs conflict, nuance, and complexity. It needs virtues and vices. It needs sharpness and softness, an exercise in contrasts. Xanatos is cunning and severe, but surprisingly amiable. He is ambitious, but can be relied upon to act in his own interest. And he's hardly incapable of love, as shown with Fox. None of these traits apply solely to villains. He's so deliciously complex, so wonderfully ambiguous, that he could just as easily be the hero. There's a reason he's one of my favorites.

... On the other hand, Dr. Lecter is, too, so your mileage, and all of that.

[goto124]

Sad but true. That's why I, for one, make it my mission on these boards to end discrimination against Evil.

Not all Evil is created equal. Don't judge a villain by the bad publicity of others. All that I'm saying is give scum a chance.

What I meant was, a lot of people play evil as 'burns orphanages'. As if evil can't have depth, because evil.

To be fair, there are plenty of fleshed-out evil PCs as well.

And the good-only restriction usually applies in games where strangers are involved, for the car-bicycle reason you mentioned.

If I played a game, I'll write down True Neutral on my character sheet, then ignore it totally and just play in a way that's easiest for me and the group.

I would've written Chaotic Neutral, but that one gets bad reptutation as a guise for Chaotic Evil in campaigns where Evil is banned.

[tadkins]

Characters are just hard to flesh out and make complex in general. Alignments are just what people (myself included) tend to fall back on when they're not sure what to do. We're not all Machiavellian genius minds, able to craft overreaching devious machinations that span years, after all. xD

Personally, I think I'd be just as likely to mess up good as I would messing up evil. Has nothing to do with the alignment itself, really.

[Segev]

Unless my class or other mechanics rely on a certain alignment, I will usually tell a DM that what is on my character sheet is my best guess, and to feel free to change my character's official alignment to whatevere he thinks it is based on my character's behavior as the game goes on. If my mechanics do rely on a certain alignment, I will ask the DM to discuss with me if he thinks my character is acting out of accord with what is written on my character sheet.

It's usually a lot easier than arguing over the meaning of "Neutral Evil."

(My signature necromancer, Segev Stormlord - whose name I appropriate for my online monicker - is what I consider NE. In general, I suspect he and Red Fel's evil characters would get along swimmingly.)



I suppose, however, it's worth noting that "burns orphanages" evil is a thing. There are psychopaths and monsters out there who just really LIKE inflicting pain and suffering. They are not, generally, party-friendly. If you want to play THAT kind of evil...you'd best have a good, solid restraining bolt on them. Something that makes them unwilling or unable to perpetrate their preferred acts on the party and on things the party would very much rather they didn't (at least insofar as the party's reasons for this preference are rooted in something self-interested, as opposed to "nobody deserves that.")

It's not something you should play very often, because it takes a great deal of trust and behaving with trustworthiness on the part of the players in order to make it not a game-wrecking experience.