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Coward posted:getting us to play a cabal that ran a city. If you're actually in charge, where's the line between a protection racket and taxes, really?
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Sep 8, 2014 01:08
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Zombies' Downfall posted:So I'm here with a request, inspired by a story in the D&D Next thread of a DM rolling 200 Perception checks for a crowd of peasants. Earlier I mentioned the part in Call of Cthulhu where I, as fat old man Theodore G. R. Gilbo, succeeded 13 times on Sneak rolls at a 10% chance of success each time in the span of two sessions and Metal Geared my way into the police station and spied on the party by disguising myself as a plant, but other than that there was also that one time where I suggested summoning a giant robot to defeat a horde of zombies, and the DM made me roll lower than my Luck stat divided by 9 to summon the giant robot successfully, and I passed. This somehow led to two of the other PCs beginning a long-standing romantic relationship based on one of them telling the other to "work my sword." (The robot had a laser sword.) This was somewhat my revenge towards the DM for randomly having my car get a flat tire earlier in the session (on an equally unlikely roll- 10% chance to happen!)
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Sep 8, 2014 02:06
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Zereth posted:If you're actually in charge, where's the line between a protection racket and taxes, really? Well, we weren't the face of the rulership. There was a mayor and a council of lords, but it was an open secret amongst the powerful that our cabal controlled them. I have a vague recollection that we had the mayor announce to the populace the good news that, unlike the oppressive city down the river, they would never have to pay taxes! Of course they would need to pay tithes to our most holy Church, and we are of course sending our loyal city guard to investigate reports of extortion down by the docks but those are likely mere rumours.
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Sep 8, 2014 02:25
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Zereth posted:If you're actually in charge, where's the line between a protection racket and taxes, really? One is payed for things to get done, one is payed to make sure things don't happen. A fundamental but easily blurred difference.
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Sep 8, 2014 02:43
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Mr. Maltose posted:One is payed for things to get done, one is payed to make sure things don't happen. A fundamental but easily blurred difference. Actually, one of my favorite bits from "And Man Created God" was an observation the author had about ordered government and its relationship to banditry along the rich trade routes of the middle east around the turn of the era. "The difference between a protection racket and an ordered state is sometimes just one of organization and monopoly. Indeed, the basic logic of a trading empire can perhaps be seen as replacing a series of bandits with a single bandit." 
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Sep 8, 2014 03:05
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Agrikk posted:Echoing others sentiments that this is funny as hell and I really want to use this sometime. "Yeah you have an awesome familiar but you can't communicate with it until you skill up in its language." "What language is that?" "You don't know." I played a corporate suit in Cyberpunk 2020 who was tasked with shutting down unauthorized clubs held on unused property owned by some Zaibatsu. I played him as a family man, who treated everything outside of his solipsistic little world with arrogant fascism and unbound privilege. I basically played him as a run of the mill police officer. He was rather boring and depressing to play really, but he kept the game rolling, period. That's one of the ways to play an evil character well. You keep the plot moving, and not grinding to a loving hault every five seconds because you just have to slap your dick on a passing commoner or pee in some little kids cheerios. So as an evil character that didn't suck. I would be given a task. I ask NPCs to do something to complete my task, like "shut down this illegal club and vacate." Then demand they do something, "By order of this and this statute, you are not in compliance. Unless you leave the area than this and this corporation will be forced into further action." And when they didn't comply twice I would shoot them in the face. Then the rest of the party would shoot them in the face. Multiple times. I did this because I simply had the power and authority to do so. For some reason, this rear end in a top hat I played also believed this made him a hero. His other acts of heroism were based completely on helping other members of the corporate group in personal ways. Since these were hired solos and a junkie decker, this meant to get them to do things legally. He wanted to fix their faults, merely so they would be in compliance with what he (and Human Resources) saw as a functional person. But even if I was a total law abiding company man, I would never tell my other party members not to do something that was illegal or against company protocol. I would simply take the, bleh, higher road. And approach them like a, puke, annoying Christian. You know, because I'm such a hero and fart. It was a completely believable character. It was a corporate game that was linked with a separate campaign of sprawl heroes, if there are heroes in cyberpunk, nonetheless the other game must of been a much lighter shade of gray... This dual-game was supposed to be ran to where each campaign would effect the other campaign in long lasting ways. But we were not tasked by the DM with killing the other squad. However, very quickly the good campaign's players heard about us and decided to ambush us on a deserted street, which was tactically stupid. We met together the next week, and we killed their party in about an hour. This campaign was abandoned because to continue it would just be depressing. I got no enjoyment out of role playing my character, and was actively rooting against him. All enjoyment came from the story itself. But I maintain that he was a good character. Was not cat piss. Because he moved everything forward in a manner that was in loose agreement with the other players and the GM. I think this might be the problem with playing an evil character well... If you are playing an evil character, you, unless you are a psychopath, should not like the character you are playing. You should have your character believe that he is right, but you should understand that your character is not right. So it creates this problem. If you are a person of any ethics or morality, then it would be hard to get enjoyment from playing an evil character, even if he was well conceived. So what would be the point? I'm currently playing a game in which there are players playing evil characters. For some reason they get satisfaction on saying "Ha Ha! I showed those imaginary townspeople, ha ha!" By trying to get this satisfaction they completely gently caress up the flow of the game with a complete disregard for the goals and plots of the other party members. Therefor they are poo poo characters who infringe upon the fun of others, and muck up the gears of the story by keeping it static instead of moving forward. I'm playing a neutral roguish type who comes up with schemes with the other party members on ways to make large sums of money in-between completing missions that are plot points. I am not playing him as outright evil though, but I could, and it could work. This adds to the fun of the game. Generally, if you want to play a good evil character. Play a rogue. Play a rogue who plots and schemes ways to make a ton of money for very little work. These plots, heists, criminal plans can be great fun if you have a party that are down to do some dirt. Create the plots with an open ear to ideas from your other party members. This could be a neutral character, and the evilness is only dependent on the depths you are willing to go, or the lack of redeeming qualities of your character. Yes this is cookie cutter D&D cliche, but it also is proven to work within an RPG party. If you want to play anything else that is evil, move forward, do not commit completely random nonsensical acts of evil, do not ruin the fun of others, and do not constantly gently caress up the game for your party. God Of Paradise fucked around with this message at 10:30 on Sep 14, 2014 |
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Sep 14, 2014 10:22
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I don't think in everyday life in a D&D setting--such as can be said to really exist in D&D--that anyone would really be able to tell the difference between most good or evil adventurers. Certainly a peasant wouldn't, and when adventurers get down to business about what will get them ahead in life and what won't, working together with unlikely allies is one of the things that will.
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Sep 14, 2014 13:09
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Nostalgia4ColdWar fucked around with this message at 01:06 on Mar 31, 2017 |
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Sep 14, 2014 17:21
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God Of Paradise posted:I think this might be the problem with playing an evil character well... If you are playing an evil character, you, unless you are a psychopath, should not like the character you are playing. Eh, I'm gonna disagree with this. Fiction is full of incredibly compelling and entertaining villains. I'd say that you maybe shouldn't want to be the character you're playing but it's definitely possible to like a character, even an evil character. Like Falstaff's Burning Wheel character for example, that dude sounds fun as hell. I agree with the overall sentiment that if you're going to play an evil character that rising above the Bioware level of random puppy-kicking, disruptive interparty conflict, and general catpiss behavior is all to the good.
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Sep 14, 2014 19:01
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God Of Paradise posted:
This is actually how you describe a bad RPG character. 'I moved things forward but hated my character and didn't have any fun and was too depressed to play' is not an example of a good evil character. You're right not to cause bad problems for everyone else, but if your character bores the hell out of you you probably shouldn't bother playing them.
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Sep 14, 2014 19:18
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Night10194 posted:This is actually how you describe a bad RPG character. 'I moved things forward but hated my character and didn't have any fun and was too depressed to play' is not an example of a good evil character. You're right not to cause bad problems for everyone else, but if your character bores the hell out of you you probably shouldn't bother playing them. It was requested by the DM that someone play a corporate suit. Nobody else wanted to do it. I had fun kind of mocking my own character, and playing him up as some satire of an action hero cop. Some times that poo poo happens and a DM asks you to be something to help his game. It's kinda a lovely thing to do, and I wouldn't do it to my players. I don't like playing lawful or evil characters. Though CP 2020 doesn't have alignment my dude was LE. Doesn't mean that the character was bad in the grand scheme of the game, you know, for everyone. But I gotcha. Generally, yeah, you'd want to play someone you like. God Of Paradise fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Sep 15, 2014 |
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Sep 15, 2014 00:12
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I almost forgot. I played two games as a NE D20 Future character that was awesome. He didn't last long because of the dice. Rico Whatshisnuts Pallatzo. Essentially he was Christopher from the Sopranos, in space. I guess mafia type characters that carry a code of honor with their friends, but gently caress everyone else would be another way to make an evil character work. But that's pretty much the same thing as playing "the rogue," so I guess there's nothing special about it. The thing I liked most about that character was playing as an Italian human who was racist as gently caress towards aliens.
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Sep 15, 2014 00:19
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If you want a good look at totally non-sympathetic characters, watch the Way of The Gun, wherein the only actual decent human being is a surrogate mother, carrying the child of rich woman, too lazy to carry the child herself. Whose husband launders money for shady money out of mexico. No one else in the movie is actually something resembling "A decent human being".
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Sep 15, 2014 01:51
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SpookyLizard posted:If you want a good look at totally non-sympathetic characters, watch the Way of The Gun, wherein the only actual decent human being is a surrogate mother, carrying the child of rich woman, too lazy to carry the child herself. Whose husband launders money for shady money out of mexico. No one else in the movie is actually something resembling "A decent human being". A Clockwork Orange is better: it does not have a single redeemable character.
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Sep 15, 2014 01:57
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The book does one better in that there are no redeemable characters and yet all characters are capable of redemption. The message of the movie is totally skewed by a bit of publishing butchery when the novel came over to America.
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Sep 15, 2014 02:09
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SpookyLizard posted:If you want a good look at totally non-sympathetic characters, watch the Way of The Gun, wherein the only actual decent human being is a surrogate mother, carrying the child of rich woman, too lazy to carry the child herself. Whose husband launders money for shady money out of mexico. No one else in the movie is actually something resembling "A decent human being". Great movie. GREAT score!
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Sep 15, 2014 05:28
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Excuse me? How is the prison chaplain in A Clockwork Orange an irredeemable character?
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Sep 15, 2014 13:46
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Doug Rattman posted:Excuse me? How is the prison chaplain in A Clockwork Orange an irredeemable character? I'm pretty sure he cares more about having loyal followers than he does about actually helping people in the book, but it's been a long time since I've read it.
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Sep 16, 2014 14:36
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One of the players in my Dungeon World game has been doing a pretty good job running an evil character so far. He's a very soft spoken and polite guy who does want to help out the group and keep everyone alive. He's also a Metamorph that loves eating the dead and seeks to complete his form by eating the corpses of his companions. He's made it clear he's not going to kill any party members or fail to prevent death, but he's done a pretty solid job of being a quietly hosed up presence that the party just kind of denies existing. It's been a pretty decent way of being evil in a fun way that affects the party without disturbing anything.
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Sep 16, 2014 16:22
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So what are they doing that makes them evil?
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Sep 16, 2014 16:34
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I think it was in the previous thread, back when Good and Cat-piss were separate threads, someone mentioned an evil character concept I liked: The character was a decent person, friendly, helpful, but if you wronged him, he would do everything he could to utterly destroy you, even if it were a trivial thing that was done to him. Which doesn't sound as good when I type it, but I remember the original post being better worded about it.
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Sep 16, 2014 18:24
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the_steve posted:I think it was in the previous thread, back when Good and Cat-piss were separate threads, someone mentioned an evil character concept I liked: This basically describes a character in a game I'm playing in and I've gotta be honest, it's not really that great, especially when the disproportionate vengeance side comes out and grates against the tone of the game hardcore. As a concept it could probably work provided the player was a little more self-aware about it, but I can't say I'm a big fan.
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Sep 16, 2014 18:47
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I'm playing a DND 5e game and decided to do my own rendition of the Elf Supremacist high elf. I picked LE just for the sake of alignment. The general concept is that he is a member of the gold smithing guild, and he is an agent tasked specifically with controlling gold inflation caused by irresponsible wizards and adventuring parties digging up assets that are considered lost. His general beliefs were inspired in this thread in that only elves are people and everyone else is just a different kind of monkey of various sizes attempting to emulate the Elven culture. Instead of telling the party, "You're the good ones, forget what I said" I've continually barbed them for anything and everything that I could to enforce the concept of elven superiority. First and foremost, however, he is a professional that has managed to infiltrate the party in his task to control the world's gold market. Right now we have a human bard who is a fop trying to be a great hero, a half-elf paladin of vengeance, a half orc barbarian, a wood elf druid, a wood elf monk, and myself as a rogue. My various amoral things have included- Opening a door and peeking inside, seeing two human prisoners in a cell staring back at me. Closing the door, and when the bard asked me what I saw I replied, "Oh, nothing of value. Just two monkeys in need of rescue by a fellow monkey hero." This inherently wasn't bad, but I wasn't sure if the room was clear so I hyped him up to rescue the captured maidens to find out if the room was occupied. It WAS occupied, and he was immediately clubbed and stabbed to -2 hp by the brigands hiding around the corners of doorway. With the room confirmed dangerous, instead of helping him I just laughed at him and asked the paladin to help him. Paladin stabs a dude, I run in and stab both of them to death and take credit for the rescue. The barbarian, meanwhile, has rushed ahead and is getting stabbed after activating a full hallway of pit and dart traps. I begin helping the prisoners, an older mother, a 'very beautiful' daughter, and a young son. The first thing I tell them while unlocking their shackles is, "If you ape-things so much as touch me, I will gut you here and now. It would displease me greatly to have to clean my blade again." So we successfully rescue them after the human, half orc, and half elf manage to continually hurt themselves by running into swords and traps that they wouldn't let me disarm. Later on the road the paladin offers to shake my hand and thank me for aiding in the rescue of the three. I tell him to not touch me, and he asks if I have a problem with the party. I respond with, "Oh, I've no problem with two uncultured hicks, a monkey, and two abominations against nature." Later in the return I fall off a rope bridge as it is cut in halves by a hobgoblin, and while hanging from the cliff the paladin reaches down to offer me a hand. Instead, I spit in his face and call him filth, then have to spend inspiration to climb back up on my own. After returning to town I put the figurative thumbscrews on the dwarven outpost liazon, telling him that I would expect the corrupt and bumbling officials purged, or else the guilds would be greatly displeased with his performance and would act accordingly to protect their investments. He tried to bribe me to not make the report and I called him "A worthless soup-stained beard that would be better serving as a mop in a debtor's prison" than he would be as the outpost's liazon. I told him he had two weeks to straighten things out. The concept of THE HIGH ELF'S BURDEN is extremely fun, and being an rear end in a top hat with a heart of coal who is only tolerated for his competence is great. I've actually convinced both the wood elves of elven superiority and have created a small rift in the party. Commoners fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Sep 16, 2014 |
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Sep 16, 2014 18:50
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The insult of "monkey" for humans has always confused me in time-locked western medieval fantasy settings where evolution isn't a concept that exists and monkeys are exotic enough to be pretty much unheard of even to elves.
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Sep 16, 2014 21:02
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The Elves have been around long enough to witness evolution first hand, is how I'd interpret it.
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Sep 16, 2014 21:04
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ellbent posted:The insult of "monkey" for humans has always confused me in time-locked western medieval fantasy settings where evolution isn't a concept that exists and monkeys are exotic enough to be pretty much unheard of even to elves. Gods frequently elevate animals to sentience or create races out of effectively nothing in D&D and elves are typically treated as the first such created race. Then the other races compete for the elves' resources and things get ugly. What I'm saying is that in D&D, the gods are the 1% and the creation myth is the Southern Strategy.
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Sep 16, 2014 21:15
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I've always preferred "goldfish" as an insult an elf would hurl at a human, given the difference in lifespans.
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Sep 16, 2014 21:23
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ellbent posted:The insult of "monkey" for humans has always confused me in time-locked western medieval fantasy settings where evolution isn't a concept that exists and monkeys are exotic enough to be pretty much unheard of even to elves. It's more because they're hairy, covered in poop, and stupid. I'll be sure to use the goldfish one too, especially if they get distracted like they usually do. I also plan to compare them to rats and dogs. Commoners fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Sep 16, 2014 |
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Sep 16, 2014 21:25
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Absurd Alhazred posted:A Clockwork Orange is better: it does not have a single redeemable character. The thing about her is that she's not that super decent of a woman, their embryo didn't take and she's selling her own baby. I'm not sure if it's on Netflix, but it should be. it's a great flick.
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Sep 16, 2014 23:43
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Falstaff posted:I've always preferred "goldfish" as an insult an elf would hurl at a human, given the difference in lifespans. Naw, goldfish are mostly harmless, live for a surprisingly decent amount of time, and are mostly fine by themselves. Humans are mayflies. They die in a flash, live their few remaining hours as obscenely as possible, get everywhere, and are annoying as hell to boot. Edit: Plus, if you go with the Mayfly metaphor, it means you can call human children "grubs" 
Captain Bravo fucked around with this message at 03:43 on Sep 17, 2014 |
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Sep 17, 2014 03:39
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So thanks to your post, I just learned that goldfish live upwards of 20 years. Huh. Yeah, the mayfly thing works better.
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Sep 17, 2014 03:57
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Had a character for a game that never went off the ground that would've been evil, the character's an Aasimar who buckled hard under the pressure of being a paragon of virtue by everyone in his village (stuff that'd get laughed off as 'boys will be boys' get treated as a serious transgression if he did it) and their expectations that he should help them every time they asked for free no matter what he's doing at the time. The plan was that he'd start off as him being passive-aggressively snippy towards demanding people and quietly sabotaging their poo poo while putting on a plaster smile, then outright snapping and viewing most of these (in his eyes) selfish people as leeches to be removed and stamped out.
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Sep 17, 2014 05:07
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My DM is cool but he can't think up a character name to save his life. Of course now I can't help but ask the name of everyone we meet. Fred the wizard, Milo the barbarian, two unrelated (male) NPCs named Ashley. Maybe I'm the bad one.
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Sep 17, 2014 07:30
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This is why any decent DM will have a list of pregenerated names. 
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Sep 17, 2014 07:43
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Thats what I do when I'm naming NPCs. Silly overwrought names are pointless. Fred the Wizard will be easier to remember than F'r'e'd or some poo poo.
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Sep 17, 2014 08:13
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The Mighty Biscuit posted:Thats what I do when I'm naming NPCs. Silly overwrought names are pointless. Fred the Wizard will be easier to remember than F'r'e'd or some poo poo. the best names are alliterative. Willy the Wyvern!
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Sep 17, 2014 08:25
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I much prefer giving locations descriptive names rather than polysyllabic jumbles. Springvale or Sweetwater or Firestone are much easier to remember than Xy'gol'ath. I should really try doing something similar with NPCs -- the Lawful Obnoxious angel fae in my setting love their titles and my players can usually at least remember enough of them to come up with an insulting nickname.
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Sep 17, 2014 11:25
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Best evil PC I've played with was a young warlock who was adventuring to find out why her home village had been destroyed and find her missing sister. She started out as an awkward and naïve young woman who was somewhat arrogant and caught up in the glamour of being a hero. However, over the course of the game, she became more and more detached from reality, and her actions became increasingly irrational. She began to treat NPCs like they were less than human, tried to have people burnt alive for even the smallest inconvenience, and acted like the rest of the PCs were her minions. It gradually came out that very little of her backstory was actually true – she’d razed her hometown herself after discovering her murdered boyfriend and, in her grief, making a terribly bargained pact with a demon which she immediately lost control of. Her sister was either dead, or had never existed (her story changed so much we never did clear up quite what was going on there). It all came to a head when the warlock’s player decided to leave the game, and, as a sendoff, had her lose control of her pact once again and turn on the party. They managed to beat her down, but then there was the question of what to do next. There was a horrible argument between the remaining PCs – no one really liked her anymore,but they’d been her traveling companions for a long time, and no one was sure how much of what she’d become was the result of the demon’s influence, and how much was just her. The swordmage wanted to kill her, the artificer wouldn’t stand for that and insisted that they find a way to break her pact, the bard thought they should just ditch her but everyone else agreed that she was too dangerous to be left alone. After listening to everyone’s arguments, my PC, a ranger who couldn’t stand his friends arguing like that, stepped in and sided with the artificer, persuading the swordmage to back down and let the artificer attempt to fix the warlock the next morning. Then during the night he drugged the warlock, slit her wrists and set it up to look like a suicide. He really did hate conflict.
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Sep 17, 2014 11:57
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Commoners posted:I'm playing a DND 5e game and decided to do my own rendition of the Elf Supremacist high elf. I picked LE just for the sake of alignment. This idea sounds cool in theory but playing in a game with a character like this could be loving tiresome after while if it wasn't executed with panache. All NPC conversations immediately becoming confrontational and just generally creating apathy in working cooperatively. Evil characters can be fun but its hard to play evil in high fantasy because they end up being mustache twisting douches so much of the time. Sneaky Fast fucked around with this message at 12:22 on Sep 17, 2014 |
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Sep 17, 2014 12:13
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Captain Bravo posted:Naw, goldfish are mostly harmless, live for a surprisingly decent amount of time, and are mostly fine by themselves. Rabbits. Live fast, breed fast, take stupid risks, destroy all your crops (plans), but cute when they're young. The kind of sapients you can understand your kids wanting to look after.
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Sep 17, 2014 14:16
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