Roleplaying in an Evil Campaign

I’ve only tried running an evil campaign twice in my life, and only succeeded once, and that was a one-shot.

The first time, I decided to try a Star Wars D20 game in which all the players were dark Jedi, summoned by the Emperor for a very specific task. Everyone made characters of 7th level (the sweet spot in the OGL D20 rules), and we began.

All were summoned to a remote warehouse in Nar Shadda, where they were informed by a hologram of the Emperor that they were needed on Coruscant for an important mission. They were to board the waiting shuttle and depart immediately. None of them knew each other, but hopped on board.

It rapidly went downhill from there.

One of them made a snarky comment about another, then lightsabers were drawn. Before the droid-operated shuttle made it to Coruscant, all five were dead in the passenger cabin.

I should have seen it coming.

After that, we decided to play a scoundrel campaign, where the heroes aren’t quite so evil and self-centered.

Following that, about a year later, I ran a D20 Modern one-shot of The Godfather. The players all came over, we made up some 1920′s characters, some nobodies in the Corleone family, and we began.

Working for the caporegime Salvatore Tessio, they began going around town bombing the warehouses and taking down armored trucks belonging to the Tattaglias. They had a great time, and it allowed my buddies to all fulfill their dream of being a gangster. I think if we did end up doing a campaign, it would have gone over well as they worked their way up in the ranks.

Now, in this case, they weren’t playing a really “evil game”, since it was generally seen in the movies and book that the Tattaglias were the real “bad guys”, but the fact that they were blowing up things and killing people in cold blood means it technically was an “evil game.”

So why is it that evil games normally don’t work, and what is needed to make them work?

I think first and foremost, the reason they don’t work, is what Tracy Hickman said in his Ethics in D&D essay: “Evil feeds on itself.”

He says,  ”[t]his does not mean that evil will always fall right away. Hitler ruled most of Europe for years before he was finally beaten. Evil characters will, from time to time, be victorious. However, those who are evil either make a mistake in their arrogance or, once they have conquered, find their fellows turning on each other. Devoid of sufficient threat, the self-centered evil nations quickly fragment themselves in contention with each other.”

In our Darkside game, the players, devoid of a sufficient threat, began turning on one another, hoping to gain the upper hand and be viewed as superior to the Emperor. They were arrogant and self-centered. This is one of the main problems.

I think another big issue is a lack of leadership.

The players in the Godfather game, they were all of one mind, working for the Corleones. With the Darkside game, the players may have had a leader (the Emperor), but they didn’t know what their primary mission was or what exactly they were doing. They had no guidance.

I think if the Godfather game progressed, and I began dropping hints that other players were perhaps traitors to the Corleones, other players would not have hesitated to murder the “traitorous” PCs, whether there was much evidence or not. Not so in a good game, in which the players would most likely give each other the benefit of the doubt.

What are some other issues with evil campaigns I haven’t covered? Why is it that evil simply doesn’t work?