Just some advice on RPing evil aligned characters, maybe an analysis.

[DemonAbyss10]

Just throwing some tidbits of advice in here since I feel I should contribute some sort of advice. Been playing tabletop RPGs for a long time, mostly D&D since AD&D and I think these tips will help quite a bit for evil aligned RP, and just RP in general.

Some people like to ham it up when it comes to evil, or even RP in general. I myself, prefer more realistic depictions. These tips favor a more "grounded in reality" approach, which some of you may or may not favor. If anything this should hopefully get peoples creative juices flowing a bit.

1)An evil character does not necessarily go out and commit as much evil as possible. The evil traits... best way to think of it, are character flaws taken to an extreme. For example: You have a character who is greedy. Are they just simply Necessarily greedy, or Excessively so? You can slot this concept into a "Thief" character. Do they steal out of necessity (Survival for instance), or out of profit?

2)Just because a character is Evil does not make them incapable of good. The inverse also applies. In the end you can, and perhaps should, view alignment as a net-sum of actions a character has taken. As for judging such, each character, just like ourselves, can view certain acts as more evil/more good than others.

3)Just because you are evil does not mean you have to be a murder hobo/bandit king/Dictator. How about, at least in my case with Baram, being a merc willing to take just about any job as long as the price is right. Going back to my first piece of advice. I could actually throw this into defining how he is evil by illustrating the extremes in his character flaws. He is purely motivated by a greed, a lust for wealth and eventual power/influence. Some people may argue that that simply isnt enough to judge alignment. How about I also add in that he particularly enjoys the more sadistic side of the mercenary lifestyle?
I understand, some people may take evil characters to the more extreme ends of things, so called choosing an archetype and running with it full tilt, hamming it up to a degree that would make Khan proud, perhaps because doing so is fun, or doing so more prominently shows other players "look how evil I am". However, at least in my own experiences, I enjoy RPing and interacting with the more... insidious, behind the scenes type of evil. It is kinda like comparing Gregor Clegane/Mountain that Rides, to your friendly neighbor who does some pretty messed up things behind the veneer of virtue.

4) I always throw this in whenever giving out any sort of RP advice, but there are some great, and I mean great articles of TV Tropes. for the purpose of evil I can link the following. Just a warning though::: TV TROPES is not fun for those who hate spoilers. However it is a very useful tool for story and character ideas and such. The best practice is to avoid looking at the examples and just read the description of what said trope entails. The link is just a list and a very short summary of evil tropes one can use for development/characterization.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvilTropes

Above all, play a character archetype you enjoy. If you are not having fun with the character, of course the RP will suffer, not just on your end but others as well. IMO it is noticeable when a person becomes bored with RPing a character. Characteristics/personality either feel forced or diminished usually.


<<Gonna keep this open since I may expand on this later.>>

[Dagesh]

Welcome to BG!