I’ve never found alignment to be a useful construct in any way, shape or form. Whenever I DMed a game I would always discard it entirely and just ask players to give me some short, three or five word character motivations. “Gold,” “The spouse and kids,” “glory,” “pride,” etc, and then ask that they expand upon them a bit later. What was your character’s attitude about these motivations? And I would not punish with an alignment black-mark for say, being greedy, or trying to use diplomacy on the Devil as opposed to smiting and cleaving it.
These ideas are also present in the Spirits of Eden in a way. Everyone’s free to DM it as they want to – but I was recently asked “how would you play an evil campaign in The Spirits of Eden” and the answer I would give is “you wouldn’t.” At least not traditionally. What this typically means is “campaign in which everyone writes ‘evil’ on their character sheets, and picks race and class options which are ‘evil’, and then do things which are ‘evil’.”
You can’t just pick an Orc as your race and go around town slaughtering peasants. Well, you could, but you wouldn’t get very far. Being an Evil PC in Eden means committing selfish actions toward a personal agenda. Chaotic Evil people in Eden die, they die fast and they die meaninglessly, because they turn the entire world against them. Maniacal people in Eden fail, they fail because they are trying to control something too far out of their scope. It is nigh impossible to take over the entire world of Eden. No artifact will grant you that amount of power. The spirits won’t let you get that far. The world itself and its essence flows and karma won’t let you get that far.
Remember that you would be playing a Point of Darkness in a Sea of Light.
Mercenaries, criminals and assassins are effective evil characters in Eden. They can commit evil actions towards surreptitious goals that can create a dramatic campaign. They can kill politicians to raise their patron or themselves to power. They can be greedy and double-dealing in a scope which can display their cunning at its utmost.
Intrigue characters are effective in Eden. They could aspire to control certain titles and objectives via political power or courtship or through magic. They could eliminate or humiliate rivals and make critical, subtle moves towards their hidden ambitions. They could be out for vengeance, even dealing it themselves using hidden identities.
Extremists are effective evil characters in Eden. They could be under the employ of governments such as Vedaria and Sargasso which have certain repressive policies, or governments in which there are corrupt elements like Periterim’s and Andaliel’s. They act in the interest of flawed authority to carry out what they see as good.
Cultists are effective evil characters in Eden, if they try to bring about the coming of a spirit creature which does have the power to wreak havoc upon the world (such as the scourges of eden, like Kuannei). Unfortunately the campaign will end on a bad note, as your cultist will also be destroyed or subjugated along with everything else.
One final interesting kind of evil game in Eden would be for the players to play evil spirit monsters like Asura and have to deal with groups of heroes. This could be a reverse of the mythological campaign type, where the mythical hero fails to defeat the mythical beast, or the mythical beast has to hunt down the mythical hero instead of it being the other way around. It would undoubtedly be a short game, as the PCs might get bored of their unchanging monster stat blocks after a while, unless the DM is willing to let them change those from time to time.
These are only examples, but the point is that evil should be approached differently in Eden.
On a final note, remember that this only applies to Evil PC characters in Eden. You can certainly have heroic PCs find and defeat Chaotic Evil NPC creatures, maniacal villains or something generic like drow priestesses and chaotic evil goblins – after all, your heroes are proving why these sorts of people fail at what they do, by defeating them.
Its sorta funny when Alignment comes up in one of your Eden articles. You have this knack to set off an alarm and then put me at ease within the same sentence.
On the subject of evil campaigning in Eden, when you say things like “you wouldn’t,” I have this gut reaction against it, because it just seems too “safe.” I end up questioning how viable ANY threat in a game world is, much the same way I question how PC’s (evil or good) can do anything worthwhile in settings like Forgotten Realms. But then you go and point out that rather then just a “no” stamp on evil, you just focus on a different, less mustache twirling type of evil. Less of the “BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD” ridiculousness. Evil in Eden appears to be less megalomaniac/maniacal, and more bottom line, intelligent and realistic in its goals, which is often scarier and much more intriguing when done right. I would think an antagonist/evil PC would be less likely to overreach stupidly. Most importantly, you stress evil as method, mindset, and actions, not evil as a stamp on one’s character sheet.
And I appreciate that. It might not be my favorite way of play, but its still viable, and damn enjoyable. Though to be honest, I’m really not the biggest fan of the “Points of Blah in a Sea of Blah” analogy, for D&D or Eden, and I cringe every time you use it to describe your setting. I know they work as analogies, but they tend to carry baggage, in the form of preconceived notions of stratification between elements within the campaign. Which is an overly simplistic descriptor for the dynamic you have between Spirits, Races, and other forces within Eden. I have this same problem with Eberron being called a “Points of Light” setting.
In any case, good post. (also, Dynamic Points look like their gonna be fun in play. Can’t wait to utilize them.)
The Points of Light moniker WOTC uses and the Points of Darkness moniker I use in counter against it are meant to be simple, fast descriptions for the reality of the world. They’re buzzwords and soundbites meant to ease new people into concepts.
Like I said, this article is NOT about evil creatures. This is about Evil PCs. The dynamics for running an evil campaign for evil PCs are entirely different from the storytelling concerns of having an evil villain, because PCs are more constrained than villains are. Villains have a potentially endless ability, while PCs cannot. Therefore the evil that PCs are capable HAS to be different than the things “villains” (evil NPCs) do, due to their different constraints.
For ideas about villains for the campaign, the Campaign Styles and the Monster sections of the Expanded Setting page are where you look.
Suffice it to say that yes, you can have extremely dangerous rampaging chaotic evil monsters in Eden. They just tend to be either very, VERY big (I’ve been working on some Colossal heroic tier monsters for example) or they have very powerful and destructive magic, both of which make them threatening enough to be successful. They’d just be bum rushed and murdered by somebody sooner or later. That’s just reality. Even in D&D the psychotic masses of orcs get killed by something, sometime. More than likely, the PCs, and like I said, that’s how it should be. There aren’t any NPCs in Eden that are there to steal your thunder all the time, but again, the PCs also aren’t the only 5 people in the world.
Realistically, while you’re having your important adventure, someone can be having an equally-important adventure somewhere else, and I don’t see why this is terrible. In fact the adventurer myth that spreads from that (PCs hearing about other adventurer’s stories while doing their own) is something I find very interesting and which sadly seems to have died out thanks to the “only 5 guys who can do anything” mentality.
This article is good and you should feel good!
But I LOVE the “Blood for the Blood God” shit that saturates W40k! What if I WANT a mindless setting where all the violence is pointless and brutal, where people concoct billion-year schemes to unleash daemons of the primordial chaos from chains forged of sin? You need to accommodate EVERY POSSIBLE PLAYER CONCEPT EVER in your setting, or else it’s just rampant pandering!
The setting does accomodate BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD. It means you worship one of the dark spirits that just like to wreck shit. But, you know, congrats. You’re the sickest fuck in fuckton, and sooner rather than later some hero is going to come along to destroy, just like the SPACE MARINES come to PURIFY THE FOUL CORRUPTION OF CHAOS IN THE EMPEROR’S NAME. Or the Imperial Guard comes along and blasts you the fuck away with like a billion lasguns, Leman Russ tanks, artillery, etc.
But I can’t help but wonder if there’s just too fine a distinction being made here. I mean, what’s the difference between a scorned lover who is seething with bitterness at being rejected in favour of some fox character who spends his time trying to poison the relationship and culminates in kidnapping the object of his affections, resolving that if he cannot have her, then no one can, and Snidley Whiplash? I mean, apart from one having more window dressing.
It seems to me that, in much the same way as you can be BIG DAMN HEROES, and “the PCs are the ones who must save the world, because for that moment, it is everyone else’s destiny to fail and theirs to attempt to succeed” there should be a time when the PCs are the ones who must threaten the world, because for that moment, it is everyone else’s destiny to be judged and theirs to attempt to determine who is worthy to survive. A Scourge shouldn’t be Fate’s only mechanism of testing the world’s worthiness to survive, and surely Fate should lay out something to forge and temper the heroes before their final crucible.
That’s a really good idea Andrew. I never thought of that particular possibility, and thankfully that’s why I have the comments field! But yes, that would work splendidly. The PCs threaten the world because fate intervened and gave them that ability. Perhaps they found themselves a mechanism from the old world and are getting Cthulhu up in here or something. However, you do it, that sounds like a pretty good way to go about making PCs world-threatening.
That sounds really interesting, PCs as cosmic arbiters. They gather power and worldy experience so that they may judge–and purge–the wicked.