Thoughts and Tips on Playing Evil and Organizing Evil RP

[jester]

Me too, actually. History repeats itself unless we learn from it.

[Bubbajoe]

Solution: Play in the Underdark. Oocly everyone is buddies, but in character we might stab you in the back.

Yup! Just remember in the coming years, what I do is not personal

[Carski]

Regarding NPCs and the politics/culture that exists on the Sword Coast of which this Server is based around:

There are 2 areas—Darkhold and Roaringshore—that host or support either known evil or non-lawful behavior, beings, and agendas. Compare that to how many places that host or support known good and/or lawful behavior? This is not a problem, but simply factual. What is a problem is how "dead" these places are, for RP, Events and for out Characters to develop their stories.

They are dead, though there are two separate handful of players that seem to "originate" from there. I say this because, most of those characters that are of Guilds that reside in either Darkhold or Roaringshore, spend a majority of their time at the FAI, or any place other than these Evil-orientead places, because there is little happening in those places.

And when I say little happening, who is supposed to "make stuff happen?" Players and DMs, equally.

I can only speak for myself as a player, and trying to do that, is not very easy, as I mentioned and alluded to in the OP. Players often work against players of evil characters, and for that, it doesn't surprise me to see many supposed "evil" characters seek out means to "hang out" with publicly Good characters.

For lack of better words, it is an OOC mess perpetuated by a OOC social need, to be relevant in our RP, the existence of our Characters to effect the living world around them. That living world is not the persistent world of the Server, it seems, because that change requires DMs to leave a door open for our PCs to actually affect it (which is still in question). The living world is that of Player Characters.

We are told by the DMs that "things will happen" when more-than-one PC is making an attempt to effect change. To quote one of the sources from the OP:

"Bad guys" tend to make things happen rather than simply react to them.

But when few "bad guys" do nothing together...you will see Evil agendas fail, time and time again. Obviously if the character really is someone that trusts no one and is a loner, then fine, that evil agenda is a solitary one.

But if Evil Characters can't be RP'd to be supportive in reaching goals...good luck with that. Maybe we are just as screwed as the "good guys" are...according to Deathgrowl, that is.

[Hitman Hard]

The Dead Crows have become more and more relevant to the realm's polities, and are a prime example of bad guys playing together accomodatingly to tell a story without aggrandizing our egos, and we don't make it Purposefully personal when sensing an upper-hand either.

So, there is three areas. Remember: It is easy to be a good writer, but it's much more demanding to be a decent RP'er.

[Demolicious]

Being someone who plays a lot of characters that could be considered evil, I might as well throw my own thoughts in here.

ALERT: Wall of Text incoming.
NOTICE: Following text contains writer's personal opinions and experiences. It is by no means guideline that others are expected to follow, nor is it in any way meant to be used for or against someone.

There's a large amount here on this thread that I agree on, but I feel that one thing hasn't been put up on the stage enough. The fact that playing evil requires cooperation not only with other evil character, but also from players playing good characters and vice versa.
Yes, I'm indeed saying that not only do characters of both alignment need to work together with other characters of same alignment ICly, but they also need to work together OOCly with those playing characters of opposing alignment. Why? Becouse I find that too often the "good vs evil" RP resembles competition. It isn't just RP for fun anymore. It's become an OOC competition to see who can beat the other side more often. And that, on my opinion diminishes the actual enjoyability of the rp, because both sides view each others more as opponents than people to create interesting situations and have fun with.

For example, I feel that character's death has became insignificant event. Atleast couple times a week, some good pcs go ahead and pvp evil pcs, either side wins, kills the other, RP done. Next day they are all again piled up in front of FAI like nothing happened. And then they kill each other again.

Now we have the problem of "how can we get these people work together to improve good vs evil rp, instead of just bashing each other's brains out couple times a day".

Yes, close your eyes and let's pretend that the alignments in people's character sheets were never picked and that when you press "C" the slot where once appeared this misleading alignment label is gone, blacked out from existence. What do you see? Nothing, your eyes are closed, open your eyes though and you may find that the world of Faerun is 9.999.998 colors richer.

do not approach role playing that alignment as a limitation to your character's actions to that specific line of decisions, but as a value of your character. If that makes any sense.

This is something I very much agree on. While I'm not saying that everyone has to completely ignore alignments, I agree that situation can be improved by getting people to see OOCly beyond 3 alignments. It has been brought up here many times so far that people often won't interact outside RPing hostility because they OOCly know that other person is of opposite alignment.

A good example of PCs of different alignments working together on this server on my opinion, was the orc/hezrou invasion from Shraptooth forest. Most participants knew what was going to happen when they went in the cave, but people went in anyhow. Then someone collapsed the cave (no surprises there) and everyone was stuck in. And that resulted in mix of good, neutral and evil PCs working together for common goal: survival. Everyone even chose to follow Zeno's lead, just because he appeared to have the power to make it through, so it was obvious choice for even more good aligned to let him lead, instead of risking survival to argue.

But yes, over all I'm saying, that sometimes it's allright to let the other side "win". This is after all not a competition on who can stop "team of opposite alignment" more often. We're here to create rp and enjoy it, and OOC support from opposing team for your team's plans can go a long way in creating that rp.
And most importantly: Not all good vs evil RP has to be PvP. Managing to stop someone's plan and either
1) capturing them and them escaping later on, so you need to track them down
2) giving them (OOCly) chance to flee, while RPing attempting to capture them
Has already created far more rp than beating their heads into pulp just because you're better at PvP or got drop on them(which results them being at FAI tomorrow).

Personally my most enjoyable evil character was cleric of Velsharoon I played years before I joined this server. He was obviously evil character, and everyone knew he had to be evil, because he served Velsharoon. That however did not stop occasionally polite, occasionally hostile RP with server's good aligned knights and paladins. But over that character's 3-4 year career, I ever PvP'd 2 times.
Reason how I manged to play that character so long without pvp, wasn't that I tried to hide what I was playing, or be inactive. But because worship of Velharoon was not illegal at the time there, I was able to act publicly as long as I didn't go out on spree of breaking every law and moral code as often as I could.
My first ever pvp attempt with that character was attempt to kill tormite who ran into me and red wizard, while we had host of devils and undead along, in order to silence him. That got botched up, but I managed to escape it alive. And I used that failure to develop long standing RP rivalry with that tormite character. We never PvP'd each other again, but there was large amounts of interaction. Ofcourse the tormite reported my cleric and the red wizard for breaking laws, but since he was only one there, and didn't have any clue on workings of conjuration and necromancy, I was able to spin truths of that encounter enough that royal knights and other tormites never investigated it further, and put it off as misunderstanding.
My 2nd PvP on that character was accidentally startling hin paladin to attack me in crypt we were exploring (we ran into hin's party) and fight ended up with hin dead and her companion getting away from us. Our party spent next terrifying half hour struggling through rear exit of said crypt, absolutely sure hin's companion had alerted squad of knights to come slaughter us.
Turns out were were being expected in town by knights indeed. And usually that would lead in rp of "you killed our fellow paladin, die evildoer!" and immediate pvp. But no, by getting hin's companion as witness on what happened and paladin's sense of fair play, I was able to get out of there freely, as I managed to put her death as "self defence".

Now, I was also talking about how it's sometimes okay to let the other side win. Example I have about this, was on same cleric, when server was invaded by undead army worshipping velsharoon. They attacked town I was in at the time, and naturally being hostile NPCs, attacked me as well, so I joined with paladins to fight them off to survive. Later on, DM's undead let me out unharmed, being cleric of Velsharoon. That resulted in 3 good PCs, all lvl 30+ (NWN1) being convinced that I was cause of that invasion (I was lvl 14). Normally this would lead in very short pvp, my pc dead, and then back to the town next day and none cares. Instead, it caused months of RP because instead of using haste and implosion to blast my fleeing char to bits, we had almost hour of rp where those 3 chased me through the woods while I was desperately trying to flee them (and eventually did). This resulted in long term RP, where my cleric went into hiding for months, as paladins and such had declared publicly they would execute me. And while I was in hiding, undead attacks intensified. Guess who got the blame? Yep, my character ended up getting reputation for leading massive army of undead in unholy crusade across the kingdom, which in turn changed a lot of how I had to play, all becouse 3 epic characters chose to rp instead of instagibbing me.

Other experiences with interaction with good characters on same cleric included, when paladins sent their squire to see about my help against that undead army. Yes, it was velsharoon's, but my cleric had publicly denounced it as foolish attempt (honestly, he just wanted them gone, since their invasion caused illegalization of necromancy in that area, which hampered his research). I ended up sharing information with a squire that was deadly afraid of the evil cleric she had to deal with, (she was also wife of high priest of Illmater) eventually getting close to her by being polite and supportive, and end result was that me and few banites together managed to corrupt her and turn her from Bahamut to worshipping Tiamat, all done while helping knights against the undead. Another was saving young, innocent girl from undead and eventually turning her into devout necromancer and servant of Velsharoon, all because town guards didn't take her seriously, but that one evil cleric did.

Well, that's been more than enough of me rambling (probably too much) put point I'm trying to have here, is that on my opinion, people should view these situations not as competition where they have to win no matter what, but as chances to create long term RP interaction, even if it means yielding a bit on occasion. Sometimes greater good requires using whatever help you can get, even if you knew OOC or IC that help isn't from most trustworthy person, and sometimes greater evil needs you to work with those pesky goodie goodies.

[Hitman Hard]

The Dead Crows have become more and more relevant to the realm's polities, and are a prime example of bad guys playing together accomodatingly to tell a story without aggrandizing our egos, and we don't make it Purposefully personal when sensing an upper-hand either.

So, there is three areas. Remember: It is easy to be a good writer, but it's much more demanding to be a decent RP'er.

Did I say that? No. I didn't say that. Opposite aligned characters working together can be done, but it takes calculations.

[Steve]

*timely bump*