Designing a Village in Detail

Not too long ago, Zalekios conquered a small village. It's something I've wanted the character to do for some time. And, in our last game, my GM was gracious enough to include an opportunity for conquest. To be honest, I have no grand and evil scheme to further overpower my character through corrupt governance. Certainly, I have plans on how I'll make use of my subjects, but the ways in which the town will benefit Zalekios are much less interesting to me than the challenges and opportunities ruling over a town will provide. The need to fortify it, defend it, and ensure that my subjects are unable to oust me while I'm out adventuring, all sound like interesting and entertaining challenges to me.

So once I had the town under my thumb, I asked my GM if it would be alright for me to make a detailed map of the village. He agreed, and we spent some time going over what my limitations were. Geographically, the village is located in a large area of plains, with no major shifts in elevation or terrain type for several miles around. Neither are there any significant bodies of water, or forested areas nearby. Honestly, I think he just made the environment as simple as possible because he's afraid of my ingenuity. But that's okay with me. I like a challenge.

I was also told that I had a total of 377 villagers, 27 of which could be level 1 experts, adepts, warriors, or aristocrats. The rest are level 1 commoners. Other than that, he left everything up to me. I've checked in with him periodically throughout the town creation process, but he hasn't vetoed any of my decisions yet. Of course, I've kept everything in line with what one would find in a dirt-poor town, so he hasn't had much to say "no" to. He and I have been playing games together long enough that we have a pretty good sense of what the limits are in each other's games.

Now, even as a GM, I don't often have the opportunity to truly build a thoroughly detailed community. Normally it's simply not an efficient use of time. It's much easier and faster to simply plot out the most basic outline of what the town is like: what kind of government it has, what its economy is based on, whether it has any unusual traditions or culture, and whether it has any noteworthy landmarks or NPCs. Everything else can be generated on the fly. Even with more detailed cities which my players return to often, I rarely do more than sketch out general "districts," and identify the location of the main roads through the town. The port city of Niston, which the players in my Ascendant Crusade game have visited in between adventures for several years now, is still just a rough collection of squares marked "Affluent Area," "Merchant Section," "Slum," "Docks," and so on.

As a player preparing to govern this town, however, I find the idea of exacting detail appealing. Knowing precisely how many warriors are in the town guard will help me plan my defenses. And since the character in question is Zalekios, knowing just how many commoners I can eat before my breeding stock gets too low is important! Additionally, a large part of my plans involve modifying the town, in the form of watch towers, walls, work camps, etc, so I want to know precisely what I have to work with.

I decided to start by figuring out what kind of population I have. I broke my population into three age based groups. First would be children, defined by Pathfinder as anyone under 15 years old. Last there's the elderly, which I defined as anyone over 55. In between those two groups are the adults. So out of my 377 total population, I needed to figure out how many people fell into the three groups. I decided to use a population pyramid to work out a basic percentage. I spent some time looking for one which applied specifically to medieval villages, but didn't have any luck finding one. So I just stuck with the closest to average I could find. What I wound up with, using some very rough estimation, is 91 children, 260 adults, and 26 elderly. I figure that, to keep things simple, I would split the genders evenly. Since my population is an odd number, I flipped a coin, and determined that the odd person out is a woman named Old Ms. Dyterran, by far the oldest person in the village at 84 years. Her children are dead of old age, but she lives with her grandson and his family. She likes to tell scary stories to children.

Outliers such as old Ms. Dyterran aside, I find these numbers to be telling of the type of community this is. With a max population of 377, it's a very small community. People's lives will be interconnected. But I would estimate that the community is still too large for everyone to know everyone else. Even acquaintance level relationships are difficult to maintain when there's several hundred of them. However, when you break things down by age, the numbers get remarkably smaller. If there are only 91 children under the age of 15, then how few must there be between the ages of 8 and 12? If there's only ten or twenty kids your age in town, you probably know all of them. That goes doubly so for the old folks, who probably all know each other quite well by now.

Moving on, I estimated that there would be 89 households, based on the adult population. That's assuming that every household is centered around an adult couple. Children and elderly would live with said couples, as would a number of dependent adults who are over the age of 15, but have not yet struck out on their own. This would mean that there are 2.9 adults per household, 1.02 children per household, and 0.29 elderly per household. So if you walk into one of these 89 homes at random, the odds are that there are two wedded adults there, who live with one young child and one adult child. And there is a roughly one-in-three chance that one of the couple's parents is still alive, and also living in the house. So most homes contain 4-5 people.

Once I had some ideas on what the population numbers looked like, I moved on to economics. Fun fact, if you google "Plains People," all you really come up with are the Plains Indians, and they were nomads, so information on them was no help in this project. However, Wikipedia has a great deal of information on plains which I found extremely useful in this endeavor. While it may not be an ideal source if you're looking for facts you can rely on, Wikipedia more than accurate enough if you're just looking to inject a little realism into your role playing games. Turns out "plains" is an exceptionally broad category, which covers dozens of terrain types.

I decided that my GM's goal in providing me with an endless flatland of plains was probably closest to the American prairie. Which, I learned, is excellent for farming. However, farming there required more advanced farming equipment than was available when it was first settled. Apparently, up until that point, farmers used wooden plows, but steel plows needed to be developed to handle the tougher earth. I decided one of my experts would need to be a dedicated toolmaker. Animal husbandry is also an option for people living in an area like the American prairie. Using that information, I decided that farming would be the main source of food and income for this village, with pigs and chickens providing them with some dietary variety.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

The only major landmarks of note are the homes of the mayor and wizard, both of whom Zalekios killed in his secret coup. Since Zalekios is impersonating the mayor, he's taken up that residence, and billeted his small army of 33 goblins in the Wizard's home. I mocked up this "Town Character Sheet" in open office writer.



From there, it was time to draw the map. As with the previous steps, I decided to do some research first. I dug through a number of sources for maps, including my own books, the Cartographer's Guild, and just plain old google image search. I saved a few dozen samples to reference as I went to make my own map, and used elements from several of them. However, this map, from the Warhammer Fantasy RPG, was my biggest aide. It is at the same time both extremely simple, and extremely detailed. If you step back and look at the whole map, you see what appears to be a birds eye view of a large city. Each building and side street is distinct, and you get a sense of what the town is like from a street view. There are clearly affluent areas near the parks, with larger houses, etc, along with poorer areas of much smaller buildings clustered together. Yet for all its detail, the map is drawn quite simply. Each individual building is little more than a brown shape with either an "X" or an "I" drawn on top of it to indicate the slant of the roof.

To start with, I sketched out a "districts" map, like the ones I mentioned above. It looked like a series of circles, like a bulls-eye. The small, center circle was designated for important buildings, like the mayor's residence. It's also the location of the town square, where meetings would be held. Around that is the residential area. This was a much larger section, which would contain most of the town's buildings, arranged around the center of town roughly evenly. The largest circle, by a significant margin, is the farmland, which surrounds the entire town.

Here's what I've come up with so far:

The areas of brown within the town indicate pig pens, whilst I imagine many homes have chicken coops next to them. The small circles in the center of the two ancillary "town squares" represent wells. The two white buildings are the Mayor's residence and the Wizard's home. The crosshatch patterns surrounding the town represent farmland.

There are still a number of problems with this map. My scale is way off, for one thing. The more important buildings near the center of town should be much larger, while the residential buildings can be relatively small. The farmland was also truncated due to the limited size of the paper. Normally I'd remake the map before posting it, but at this point I'm not sure I'll bother remaking this map. Even though it's not "to scale," it effectively demonstrates the layout of the town.

Anybody else have experience detailing small towns? Any tips on how to improve my process?

Training Groups of NPCs

Over the many many years which I've played my Rogue/Warlock, Zalekios, he has often run into a group called the Dragon Forged. Truth be told, I don't even recall our first encounter. I believe they tried to accost me on the road, followed by a healthy dose of torturous murder on my part. If I recall correctly, I was so annoyed with their attempt to burgle me, that I performed the closest thing to a good deed which Zalekios has ever attempted. I rooted out their evil plan to trick the nation of Alamon into going to war with their southern neighbor, Mulgran, and foiled it simply to spite them. Alamon awarded me with a rather rare artifact, and I believe I'm still considered a minor hero in that kingdom, since I never had a second adventure in that area.

The Dragon Forged have been a pebble in my shoe ever since. And as I've gained higher and higher levels, my dealings with them have become ever more comical. Most recently I was awakened by one of my goblins and alerted to the fact that my tower was under siege. I look out over my balcony, and what do I see but two small warbands of Dragon Forged, impotently attempting to break down my door. So I spend a few rounds lobbing Eldritch Blasts at them before I get bored, jump off the third story balcony, and attack the low-level twats in melee.

What? Zalekios has a wisdom modifier of 0. It's ROLE PLAYING. >.>

The rabble is dispatched quickly enough, and I'm left wondering why my GM would waste time on such a pointless little skirmish. I actually made sure I kept a few of the pests alive, just so I could torture them and hopefully discover why the GM had chosen to send them against me. But first, I resolved, I would finish my night's rest.

Yet no sooner had I laid my evil head to my evil pillow, than I was awakened yet again. I seriously considered killing the goblin this time, but Zalekios is trying to work on conserving his resources better, and I resisted. The goblin had a good reason to awaken me anyway: there was a dragon circling the tower. Thinking my GM was sending me a somewhat more deadly challenge, I rushed to the balcony, skeletal hands glowing black with eldritch might. But the dragon didn't attack. It alighted on my balcony, and morphed into a human shape.

This dragon, as it turned out, was the dragon in 'Dragon Forged.' Apparently his goal all along has been to cause all the great nations on the continent to go to war with each other, and continue warring until nothing is left but ruination. Being Chaotic Evil himself, Zalekios is fond this this notion. The dragon had also noticed that, given his follower's repeated failures, and my repeated pwning of them, that perhaps I was just the psychopath to lead him to victory. He offered me a position as his chief lieutenant, with complete command over the forces of the Dragon Forged, to the end bringing about the catastrophe we both desired.

It took me a few days, but I came up with a rather solid plan I think. It's not only multi-layered, but has fail-safes which kick in if some element of the plan fails. Made me feel like god-damned Xanatos. The details of that plan, however, may be written about at a later date after I've had an opportunity to see how the plan unfolds. However, one of the elements of the plan was that I required the Dragon Forged to not suck. To that end, my GM and I worked out some simple rules for training large groups of NPCs. I'm not sure if I've seen rules for anything like this in any official supplements, so they may be of use to you if you are ever in need.

• A character can train a group of NPCs in any class that character has at least 3 levels in. For example, a 4th level rogue / 2nd level fighter can train a group how to be rogues, but not how to be fighters.
  
• A group of NPCs can never be trained to a class level higher than 2 levels below the current class level attained by their teacher. For example, a 10th level rogue can train a group of NPCs to be level 8 rogues, but not level 9 rogues.
  
• Each level requires [2 * The Level Being Trained To] months. For example, training a group from level 6 to level 7 requires 14 months.
  
• Training costs [1000 * The Level Being Trained To] gold pieces. For example, training a group from level 6 to level 7 costs 7000 gold. This cost is for training only. Items such as training equipment etc. Any cost for food and lodging of the trainees would be extra.
  
• Training more than 10 people at a time adds a 2% failure rate for each additional person. For example, if you're training 10 people, then there is no failure rate. However, if you're training 11 people at once, then you must roll a D%. If you roll 1-2, then the training fails and the materials and time is wasted. Training 12 people at once has a 4% failure rate, training 13 has a 6% failure rate, and so on.
• Hirelings can be used to train groups in classes which they have.
• New Feat: "Teacher:" Characters who have this feat only need to spend half as much money when training groups of NPCs.
• New Feat: "Improved Teacher:" Characters who have this feat reduce their failure rate for students above 10 to 1%. (11 students has a 1% failure rate, 12 students has a 2% failure rate, and so on.)

I quite like the system. At first glance, and for our game, it balances well. Each level of training comes with a cost in both time and money which keeps the system from being abused to create massive armies. Also, note that this system says nothing about loyalty. Simply that skills are imparted from one high level character, to multiple lower level characters. If the GM is feeling particularly dickish, he or she could simply have the students turn on their teacher once they have nothing more to learn.

I'm sure the system has numerous flaws, though. It was really just slapped together by the two of us chatting back and forth one evening. I'd be interested to hear anyone's thoughts on what flaws it has, or how it could be improved.

Goblins Redux

My friend Jeremy, his family, my ladyfriend Morrie, and I have a half-assed Thanksgiving tradition which we started three years ago. In that far off year of 2009, I was doing quite poorly financially, and Morrie (not yet having met either Jeremy or myself in person) wanted to come up and visit the both of us. So during the time off, Morrie and I both spent the Thanksgiving vacation staying with Jeremy and his family. We spent the week having all manner of fun with one another, and among other things, we spent one very enjoyable evening playing an extended session of D&D. It was the Zalekios campaign, which Morrie made a character for. Since then, we try to get together over Thanksgiving to enjoy each others' company, and wreak some havoc with some chaotic evil role playing.

This afternoon, while Morrie and I were getting ready to head off to Jeremy's home, we realized something annoying: neither of us had the slightest clue as to where her character sheet for "Jerry the Chaotic Evil Halfling Barbarian" was. We were already late, and had no idea where to look, so Morrie suggested something which would end up teaching me several valuable lessons before the day was done:

"Why don't I just play the four Goblins?"

I blinked. The idea was twofold odd: I've never been in a game where a player played more than one character, and I've never been in a game where a player's character is so drastically lower in level than the other players. Truth be told I've been interested in trying both of those things for a long while now, and Morrie was willingly taking on the task of guinea pig. "Sure," I finally replied. "I'm sure Jeremy won't have any problems with that." So we show up, pumpkin pie in hand, and I tell Jeremy about Morrie's idea. As I suspected, he's fine with it, and we begin play.

As play began, Zalekios was standing over the body of his good twin, and the GM gave me space to come up with a plan. Seeing that I was trying to take over the town, I decided to assume the role of my twin. After all, we were twins. The only problem was Zalekios' rather horribly self-mutilated face. Fortunately, I had a dead twin on hand whose face I could cut off and wear temporarily. I then promptly chopped up my twin's body, and spread his remains about town. When the townspeople became frightened, I told them that I would go off and gather a fighting force to protect us from "these vile acts." Having a charisma of 23 comes with distinct advantages; such as being able to dupe 377 villagers into believing you're not wearing their dead mayor's face as a mask.

So off Zalekios went to fetch the small group of goblins which he had conquered in a previous game. A few days later he returned, no longer wearing the dead mayor's face, and with the 33 goblins in tow. When asked about his "injuries," he claimed that he had been cut viciously while defeating the goblin tribe's chieftain. But now that chief was dead, and the tribe owed him their absolute loyalty. Again, 23 charisma can be damned helpful in duping level 1 commoners. Once I had everyone convinced, I began directing them in constructing better "defenses." A phrase which I've placed in quotation marks because only Zalekios knows that the pits and walls won't be used to keep anything out. The purpose of those obstacles is to keep the villagers in once Zalekios begins to establish the new order of things.

The whole thing was done in a very rules-light way, because there aren't really any rules on the subject. Essentially, Zalekios' role in the first half of the session was that of director. I told the GM what I wanted the villagers to do, and he told me what worked, what didn't, and what complications presented themselves. I was really very happy with the way this played out. I tried something almost exactly like it a few months back which failed miserably, so I'm glad to see it can work if done properly. I may need to give it another try soon.

Morrie, playing the goblins, really shined during this part of the game. Building on the role playing the party (especially Poog) had done the last time these goblins were in play, she set about to cause goblin mischief, and generally make Zalekios' life more difficult. When Poog cut off all the pig tails in town "for his collection," Zalekios had to quickly spin some lie for the population about pig tails being a necessary reagent in a spell which would ward the town against evil. Even my 23 Charisma was strained getting them to accept that one, and I had Poog flogged for the nuisance.

The town needed lumber for its walls, so I sent Rita, Chuffy, and 3 other goblins to protect the humans who were gathering it. The GM used this as an opportunity to run an ad-hoc 1st level adventure. He sent a couple bears to terrorize the commoners, and Morrie took control of Rita & Chuffy, while I played as the three Monster Manual standard goblins. It was a genius idea, nestling a 1st level adventure within a 13th level adventure. It worked fantastically, and everyone had a great deal of fun.

Once the goblins returned with the lumber, it was starting to get late in the evening, and we still wanted some time to play Magic before Morrie had to go to work. To speed things along, we decided to put off furthering the construction for a later date, whilst Zalekios, with all four goblins in tow, answered a persistent call from Al'Kim. Al'Kim is a high level government official with the nation of Mulgran who believes Zalekios is a loyal compatriot. And while the two do share goals, Zalekios is also the second-in-command of an organization seeking to overthrow Mulgran. I hold that it is Al'Kim's fault for making Zalekios sit in a waiting room for 30 minutes once. But I digress. Al'Kim wanted Zalekios to investigate some unusual goings-on at a port town a few days' travel away.

On the road, the five characters were attacked by three wyverns. This is what I had been waiting for: a chance to see how well level 1 characters survived combat geared for my level 13 powerhouse. I began combat by casting Fel Flight, granting me wings, and flying up into the air. This left most of the goblins somewhat helpless, but Rita managed to hit one of them with an arrow, and Mogmurch successfully threw an alchemical explosive at one of them dealing a few damage. On the wyvern's turn, they mostly ignored me and went straight for the goblins. Poog was reduced to -3 in a single bite attack, and none of the goblins managed to make any hits.

Zalekios, with his lowly 10 wisdom, decided to dive bomb the Wyvern laying atop Poog, and attempt to pin it to the ground with a slam attack to the neck. I rolled my Combat Maneuver roll against the wyvern's Combat Maneuver Defense (Zalekios' game hasn't switched fully to Pathfinder yet, but we have house-ruled in a few of the better rules) and Zalekios succeed. The three wyverns failed to make any progress that turn, but Rita did manage to pull Poog aside and feed him a healing potion. In the following round, Zalekios channeled his Eldritch Blast ability into the Wyvern, killing it. And, as a bit of theater for my goblin minions, Zalekios used his move action to take a big bloody bite out of the dead Wyvern's head. They cheered for their Blood God.

By then, though, a second wyvern had landed and made a bite attack against Zalekios, which fortunately missed. Still riding the high from his utter domination of the previous wyvern (and still suffering from 10 wisdom), Zalekios used his clawed hands to grapple the offending beast's head, digging his sharp fingers deep just behind the jaw. He was again successful. I jokingly asked the GM what the DC would be to rip the dragon's head off. Truthfully, my plan was to try snapping the creatures neck, but I never expected what happened on the goblin's next turn.

First, Chuffy managed to make a devastating sneak attack on the wyvern's underbelly. But even more spectacularly, Mogmurch successfully threw his last alchemical bomb of the day into the snapping maw of the grappled wyvern. The GM allowed this as an automatic crit, and Mogmurch rolled just below max damage an all his dice, blasting the mighty CR6 creature with a fiery explosion which left it reeling. This left me wondering just how plausible my earlier joke was. So when my turn rolled around, I asked the GM what the explosion's visible damage had done. He confirmed that numerous muscles and tendons had obviously been severely damaged or even destroyed. So Zalekios looked the monster in the eyes, set his legs against it's shoulders...

...and pulled.

I think Jeremy was a little flabbergasted. He asked me for a strength check. I rolled the twenty-sider in my hand for a long while. This was the kind of roll which could make-or-break a game session. For all my philosophical skepticism, I tried to force the die to roll high through sheer will. Finally, I threw the die, and a 19 came up. I think Jeremy had been hoping for something low so he could simply ignore the question of how to adjudicate such a ridiculous plan. He settled on making an opposed strength check for the wyvern, and I kid you not: he rolled a 19. I thought for sure I was finished. No way was Zalekios stronger than a fucking dragon.

But as it turns out, Zalekios is just strong enough that his roll was 1 higher than the wyvern's. The bones cracked, the skin tore, and Mogmurch and I were bathed in the blood of our victory. The final wyvern fled.

We ended the session there, and I came away having learned 3 very important lessons which I will take with me into my future GMing:

• Anyone who says 'playing characters of vastly different levels sucks' doesn't know what they're talking about. Based on how much she was smiling, I would say this ranks among Morrie's top five gaming sessions ever. And I say that as as someone who has been gaming with her for 3.5 years. In RP, the goblins were providing a lot of the game's entertainment and challenge. And in combat, never once did they feel useless.
  
• At least in some circumstances, a single player can play multiple characters without being overwhelmed.
  
• Adventures where the PCs simply direct others in performing tasks (finding lumber, digging trenches, etc.) can be a lot more fun than you might think. I'm starting to ponder a game where each party member is given a task: one to build the defenses, one to train the villagers to fight, etc.
  

For the record, all of Morrie's goblins survived the game, and everyone agrees they should return. But Morrie, wisely I think, has decided that she does not want these characters to level. She thinks it's more entertaining when they're low-level goofballs who get on Zalekios' nerves and sometimes manage to help despite themselves.

We have decided, though, that Mogmurch deserves something special. He has been granted the title of "Dragonboomer," and from now on will always receive a +4 when attempting to throw objects into a small space.

GMing For The Holidays

Just a few hours ago, my old friend and I got together for a Zalekios game. For those who didn't read my post on evil in games, Zalekios is my character in the only game I'm currently in which I don't GM. He's a chaotic evil psychopath with a penchant gratuitous violence. The game is just me and the GM, though other players have cycled in and out during the six years this campaign has gone on.

As of late, Zalekios has been seeking a kingdom to rule. Nothing too grandiose. The plan was to subdue a tribe of goblins beneath my level 12 gestalt heel, then march those goblins on an unsuspecting settlement which I could reshape in my own image. To his credit, my GM has made me work for every inch of this goal. I had the good luck to happen upon some fire breathing goblins, only to learn they would freeze to death in temperatures below 100°F (38°C). And when I found a wizard who could fix it, he needed me to get the blood of an adult white dragon before he could cast the spell. It's been nothing but work, work, work, and I don't even have a village yet!

Anyway, one of the first events in this session was the report from one of my goblin scouts that a village had been found. It met all of the qualifications I had insisted upon: it was on the outskirts of civilization, with a population of about 100 people. Small enough to rule, small enough not to be noticed, but large enough to satiate Zalekios' desire for power over others. At least for now.

I rode south for a day until I came upon the small village. My initial scouting revealed that the village was ripe for the picking. I wasn't able to spot any exploitable land formations which would provide me an advantage in my attack, but that's just as well. I wouldn't want anyone to use it against me once I'm in control of the thorp. With my scouting complete, I took a room at the inn for the evening. Zalekios was enjoying his sleep, when he was awakened by a knock at the door. Angered, and ready to stab whoever was standing there, he flung the door open. And before he could say anything, a chorus of little voices shouted;

"Trick or treat!"

Yes, my GM had thrown me in the middle of Halloween within his game world. It's not the first time he's done this, either. A few years ago, I hunted down and killed Santa Claus right around Christmas time. I don't actually recall why I did that, though I think it was one of the few times Zalekios actually did something which benefited people. The game world Santa Claus was an asshole for some reason.

Some might find this overly goofy, or even be angry at the break in the 'fourth wall.' People can take their gaming pretty seriously, and even those who don't often prefer things don't go completely off rails. But I, for one, have always enjoyed the sessions where a GM steps back and lets things be goofy for an adventure.

So what did Zalekios do? First, he scared the children off by exposing his mutilated features, and his fleshless skeleton hands. And for the rest of the evening he played along with the goofiness. Thanks to some magic items and a few Wish spells, he's a ghost when it comes to moving silently and hiding. Houses had their candy stolen while the family's backs were turned, children had bags snatched right out of their hands without noticing, and Zalekios ATE ALL THE CANDY!



Sure it was out of character. On a normal day, Zalekios would have been more likely to eat the children than to eat their candy. Seriously, he's done that before. But the game was a fun departure, with the operative word being fun. A GM should never be scared to completely break with convention and be silly once in a while. It pays off. One of Zalekios' most memorable fights was when he was chased by a dragon which had a breath weapon of bubbles. And despite being mostly a silly, out-of-character session, the evil (read: good) twin of Zalekios I fought today actually got me down to 9 hit points before I killed him.

I've never done it myself, but I think my friends can expect a Thanksgiving, or perhaps Christmas themed adventure in the near future.

On Zalekios Gromar, and the Undervaluation of Evil Campaigns

Everybody who plays RPGs is familiar with the harm that religious zealotry can cause. Thankfully, the general populace's opinion or role playing has largely shifted from "satanic" to "dorky" in recent years. But as a person who had to hide his Player's Handbook from his parents as a teenager, no one is more aware than I that this prejudice still exists. There are people, a lot of people, convinced that role playing games are the first step on the road to virgin sacrifice.

I suppose they've almost got it right. But it's not "virgin sacrifice," it's just "virginity," amirite?

Taking that into consideration, it's only prudent that Dungeons and Dragons has spent a long time avoiding the subject of evil PCs. Player Characters are good almost by definition, and the evil alignments only exist as labels for NPCs. There are other games which are not quite so shy about evil, such as World of Darkness, but they have that luxury only because most people are unaware that there are pen and paper rpgs other than Dungeons and Dragons.

Even the excellent Dungeons and Dragons 3.0 book "The Book of Vile Darkness," which was labeled with a sticker marking it as containing mature content, skirts the issue of evil PCs. It presents itself solely as a tool for GMs, to help them create truly vile villains for the truly heroic heroes of their gaming group. Though, to give credit where credit is due, I still think publishing the book was a courageous move on the part of Wizards of the Coast, and I applaud them for that--even if they did avoid a few issues I would have liked to see addressed. Publishing a book which covers topics as controversial as cannibalism, slavery, and incest had the potential to generate a lot of bad press. I like that Wizards of the Coast had enough respect for their product, and for their customers, to risk that.

Yet still, the very concept of evil PCs is relegated to a three page appendix in a 191 page book. Which saddens me, because I love evil PCs.

Who hasn't imagined what it would be like to break the rules? To take what you want, eliminate those who frustrate you, or even force the world to march to the beat of your own drum? It's only natural to think about these types of things. Musing about how nice it would be to punch a cop in the face while he's giving you a speeding ticket does not make you a bad person. It just makes you a person. If anything, it's a coping mechanism to deal with the sense of powerlessness being at a cop's mercy can cause.

There is nothing wrong with playing the bad guy in a pen and paper role playing game. Nothing wrong with capturing damsels (male or female) rather than saving them. Nothing wrong with stealing the quest reward rather then earning it. Nothing wrong with constructing a fortress of evil, rather than raiding one. Of course, it's important that everyone at the table be comfortable with the content of the game. Topics like rape, slavery, or racism should be verboten in groups where they would make others at the table significantly uncomfortable. However, villains exist in any D&D game, so any table should already have an acceptable level of villainy established.

Allow me to introduce you to Zalekios Gromar.

Zalekios is a level 12 gestalt character, with four levels of Hexblade, ten levels of rogue, and ten levels of warlock. He is the most chaotic evil motherfucker in the room, and that's true even if he's in the same room as Orcus. He's committed every depraved deed you can think of from conceiving a child with the same succubus which gave birth to him, to using that child's bones to fashion a sword. He is a murderer, a slaver, a cannibal, and a rapist. He is a highly intelligent sociopath with a penchant for taking unnecessary risks just to further pain those who cross his path.

He's been my player character for half a decade now.

I was in Highschool when I first rolled up his stats. I only had one friend who shared my interest in D&D at the time, and as the more experienced player he did all the GMing. Sometimes his girlfriend would join the party, but most often it was just him and I. After playing several of the traditional hero types (like Tarin the Half-Elf rogue, or Xunil'Nerek Sharpedge the Illumian Fighter), I got it into my head that I would very much like to play an evil character. I had read about the Vasharan race in the Book of Vile Darkness--an entire species of pure sociopaths intent on killing the gods themselves--and I wanted in.

I won't bore you with the details of a campaign which has lasted five years or longer. To be honest, a summary wouldn't sound all that different from the summary of a normal D&D game. I fought an ancient civilization of phase-shifted trolls, infiltrated a magic college, explored a castle which sank beneath a lake in ages past, foiled a plot to trick two nations into going to war with one another, killed a dragon, and established a stronghold. Zalekios has even been taken through at least one published adventure (the Standing Stone) without completely breaking it. The only thing which really changes is an evil game is the motivation and the methodology.

Allow me to use a recent game as an example. For reasons unknown, the plane of fire intersected with the prime material plane. A rift was torn between the two dimensions, and now a large area of land which was once peaceful planes is a flaming hellscape. I don't know yet how it happened, but when it did happen it burned down my secret apartments within the city. So, thus enraged, I set out to see what was up, and what I found was a tower filled with fire-breathing goblins.

Now, Zalekios had decided recently that he wanted to acquire some minions. Conquest was starting to sound good to him in his old age, and subduing a tribe of goblins seemed like a good first step. So what did Zalekios do? He kicked in the tower's doors, melted the faces of the goblins which got in his way as he ascended to the top of the tower, and confronted the goblin king. Zalekios waited until a large number of the goblins had rushed to their king's aid before cutting the king's head off, picking it up, and taking a bite out of it as though it were an apple.

I then stood up at the table, and (blatantly ripping off a game I've never played) shouted "I am the blood god! Bring blood to the blood god! Brings skulls for his skull throne!"

This serves as an excellent example of how an evil game can function. Allow the player's to revel in their bloodlust. Give them motivations like rage and vengeance to get them started on their adventures, and allow them to further their own evil schemes within the context of the greater storyline. The GM which runs Zalekios' game does a good job of this, even if he does constantly complain about how difficult Zalekios is to plan for. I've promised him my next character in ones of his games will be a paladin named Kronus Mountainheart to make up for it.

Despite spending five years inside the head of an imaginary sociopath, sometimes to the point of excitedly shouting his evil proclamations at the table, I think I've become a better person rather than a worse one. It's difficult to point to moments in time and identify them as when you became 'more ethical.' However, it's only since I started playing Zalekios that I came to acknowledge and confront the fact that I carry a lot male/white/heterosexual/cisgendered privilege. I would call that an ethical step forward.

In closing, I'd like to offer a lists of "evil campaigns" which I've come up with. I've actually got a notebook filled with potential plots for future campaigns which I'd like to either run or play in someday. Evil ones probably make up about 25% of those. (Note that all of these below are for D&D/Pathfinder unless otherwise noted)

Band of Thieves The PCs would all play the role of thieves, and each adventure would be focused on stealing some item or items. At low levels they might simply be knocking over taverns or shops for money, but they could eventually build up to stealing great pieces of artwork or even the crown jewels.

Band of Assassins Much like the band of thieves idea, but rather than the object being the theft of items, the adventures would focus on killing people. At first perhaps they're merely contracted by a jealous wife eager to have her cheating husband out of the picture. However, as their levels rise they could find themselves in the middle of political intrigue, or plots to usurp the throne.

Urban Vampires There are games specifically designed for the players to be vampires, but I would very much like to try it in Pathfinder. Vampires have such a unique blend of limitations: inability to go into sunlight, inability to cross running water, inability to enter buildings without an invitation, etcetera. I would love to throw all those restrictions at players, and watch them try to survive and flourish in a town. Particularly one in a setting where everybody knows monsters exist, and there are many out there eager to fight them.

Slavers Touchy as the subject may be, slavery is a reality in many D&D style games. And where there's slavery, there is the slave catcher. Someone who needs to find people which can be taken without being missed--or who needs to be able to fight off those who miss them. Adventure variety could come from certain kinds of slaves being needed (such as ogre slaves for a large construction project) or re-capturing a specific slave which has escaped.

Pawns on the Overlord's Chess Board I actually did start running a campaign based on this idea once. The PC's boss is Dark Lord Evilguy, and he needs them to further his goals so that he might achieve the world conquest he's so long desired. What's great about this is that it's just as open-ended as a standard campaign. While good heroes fight goblins to save small villages, these PCs would fight the small villages and tell the local goblin tribe to start sending tribute to Mount Scaryhorror.

BBEG* in training The PCs start at level 1. Their only task: to conquer the world. They could choose any method they find preferable. Perhaps they'll construct an elaborate plan which is undetectable by the forces of good until its too late. Or, perhaps, they'll immediately set out to conquer one small village at a time.

Imperial Navy This is for the old West End Games D6 Star Wars game. I don't have much of a plan for it really, but I would really love it if all of my PCs were members of the Imperial Navy. TIE fighters, Star Destroyers, and greasing rebel scum. That's the life!

There are more, but I think that will do for now. Thanks for reading.

*(You may see this on the blog from time to time. It means Big Bad Evil/End Guy)